Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Some Charcoal-Erasure Animation Goodness From William Kentridge
William Kentridge creates these animations by covering a piece of paper in charcoal, just as you're doing in class, and then erasing into it to create a drawing. For each new frame of animation, he erases part of his original image and then draws in the new change. Imagine the sheer amount of work that it took to do something like THIS...
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That was kind of a freaky theme. Why exactly does Kentridge do this? Why does he choose to animate in charcoal? Is it because it is dramatic? It looks like the man in the hospital ran over a person because he was distracted by his workplace musings. Is that what happened? Did he run over a black person that was already dead? Was that scene of those two figures chopping away at the figure on the ground a murder? Of course the more important point here is that he told a story in charcoal; imagine, as if animating itself is not a lengthy enough process!
ReplyDeleteI'm going to assume that all of those questions are rhetorical, since I wouldn't be able to answer for Kentridge as to what all of his imagery means. But, as far as why he uses charcoal erasure, I think it may have something to do with the evidence that is left behind from the frame before it. There are always residuals because charcoal is so difficult to erase completely.
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