Arc/Procession / 7 16.10.89

A work titled Arc/Procession by South African artist William Kentridge (b1955). The work of art, entitled Arc/Procession, is a drawing by South African artist William Kentridge that is part of a larger series. It is comprised of eleven sheets of paper displayed in a curved formation, depicting a march of people from right to left. The characters in the drawing include miners with torches, a man with a bandaged leg on crutches, a worker weighed down by industrial equipment, a man with a megaphone, a naked woman, and other figures with open umbrellas. In the center stands a figure with arms outstretched, resembling religious imagery, with a hyena at his feet and one on the back of a miner to his left. The image is predominantly black and gray, with blue water adding a pop of color. On the sides of the arc are the words "Develop," "Catch up," and "Even Surpass" in cursive handwriting. These words were taken from the downfall of Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, as recorded by Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski in his book The Emperor. The words were used by the emperor's staff as a slogan for modernizing Ethiopia to match the developed Western world. Short Biography: William Kentridge was born on April 28, 1955 in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is a multidisciplinary artist known for his drawings, films, and theater productions. Kentridge attended the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg where he studied Politics and African Studies before moving on to study art at the Johannesburg Art Foundation. Kentridge has become one of the most prolific contemporary artists in South Africa. He has global recognition as an artist and has had his work showcased in institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and the Tate. He has received multiple honorary doctorates from universities including Yale, Oxford, and the University of London. Kentridge originally studied Political science at WITS university in 1970 and then afterwards, in a truly contradictory Kentridge style, studied the art of miming in Paris during the 1980’s. He is a multi-disciplinary artist who has dappled in an array of mediums including film and animation. Kentridge’s thematical motives always act as a juxtaposition and he perpetuates this either through the multitude of mediums he uses or through his subject matter. Although he would not characteristically call himself a political artist his subject matters do compare the turbulent socio-political landscape of South Africa before and after Apartheid. His stylistic tendencies denote an influence of expressionism and the chaotic lines he is identifiable for often allude to a sense of catharsis. Kentridge is known for working on multiple artworks consecutively and often a thematic interconnectedness begins to form amongst his bodies of work.