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Art is True North

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Is the studio a public place?

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Still from "Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot"

INTERVIEW — William Kentridge, the eminent South African painter and star of Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot, weighs in

ISSUE 14 | STUDIO SESSIONS

CAN | Is the studio a public place? 


WK — The working of the studio is not a public space. I mean, I don’t have a balcony for people to come watch the work in progress. But the processes of the studio, the things which are natural to the studio—collage, dichotomy, doubt, uncertainty, stupidity—give us insights into how the world outside the studio constructs itself. The things that are normally invisible outside the studio become very clear and visible inside. And I’m happy to share that process. But when one’s doing a lot of very stupid things, which are the activities of the studio: your gestures, drawing on the floor, behaving the way a five year old would—those I would not be able to do if there’s kind of audience watching. 


So it’s both a public and private place. Sometimes it’s me alone making drawings, but sometimes there are many collaborators, dancers, musicians, filmmakers, and editors that are involved in the realization of something that starts as a solitary activity, but develops into something much more collaborative.



CAN | Is a degree of chaos necessary for a studio to function?


WK — There’s some painters whose studios don't get touched for years and years and it slowly accumulates this thick layer of drying oil paint all around. My studio breathes in the sense that there are a lot of different projects that happen in it and, when it reaches a certain point, it’s very good to have a clearing of the table, and then gradually you breathe out and a whole lot of new objects appear and come in.


There are certain pictures that stay on the wall for ages and they’re there as a kind of a touchstone. A riddle which you can’t quite solve. And so the next works are connected to them, not identical, but come out of them and shift. And so that movement around the studio is a bit like the movement of the different thoughts in your head, trying to make sense of something, an impulse, but it’s not clear.


So there’s a lack of clarity, which is sometimes chaotic. There’s sometimes a sense of throwing all possibilities up into the air, like a cloud of paper, in the hope that when they land you’ll suddenly see a connection and pull those two pieces together. So, it’s not the same as chaos and chance, but it’s not the same as careful programming. It floats somewhere in between. 


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