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Thinking Through Drawing with William Kentridge

Karen Kurczynski 1

1University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Freedom of expression is a foundational concept of Western modernism. It is closely associated with the two-dimensional mediums of painting and, it has become especially clear in the past few decades, drawing. Drawing has now achieved the status of a major medium in contemporary art; yet the social and theoretical implications of this remain unclear. More importantly, the political implications of its association with free expression have not been widely recognized. Drawing’ unique ability to evoke divergent discourses of public and private, expression and control, information and intuition, the personal and the political, deserves exploration in depth. Conceptual artists first expanded the possibilities for drawing in the 1960s, making use of its marginal status to critique the polemical free expression of abstract expressionism. Contemporary practitioners such as South African artist William Kentridge, known for his handdrawn animations, have taken drawing in a new direction. Making use of the expressive possibilities pioneered in early 20th-century modernism, Kentridge conceptualizes drawing as an expanded social field to question the political contexts that have defined the medium historically and explore its possibilities for registering the complexity of recent events beyond the limited scope of the art world.

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