CIRCLING THE POINT
William Kentridge in conversation about art and the creative process
I interviewed William Kentridge once. Not in a public conversation like the ones Denis Hirson brings together in the new book Footnotes for the Panther, which records 10 interviews between 2010 and 2015. In fact, I didn’t quite do in person. I sent a list of questions to him, and received audio files in return with his answers.
One Sunday evening before dinner, Kentridge took my questions and went to his studio, read them out, and recorded his responses into his phone.
I saved one slightly cheeky question for last: Why does he do his interviews like this? Why couldn’t I do the interview in person? Surely it would have been easier to chat and allow all the chances and accidents that he embraces in his artworks to come through in the interview format?
He had the good grace to consider my question and give me a number of pretty good answers. First, he works during the day — the time he has available to answer questions is limited, so he tries to fit in his interviews at odd hours, sometimes late at night. He mentioned that he gets two or three interview requests a week. He can’t possibly do them all, but he does find he can do more of them this way. Second, when doing them alone in his studio on a Sunday night, there are no interruptions and disturbances. He can concentrate, focus on the question and think of answers properly. He added that he thinks there’s a kind of intimacy about the quietly spoken answers coming from an empty studio, even if I wasn’t there in person. He was right.
Kentridge is a big deal — probably the SA artist who is the biggest deal of them all. His status and stature is unprecedented. Irma Stern and Pierneef get good prices when they’re auctioned overseas now, but in their lifetimes they had nothing like the international presence he has. Someone suggested maybe Tretchikoff, but he didn’t have the gravitas, despite the undeniable way he made his way it