William Kentridge Quotes

I am interested in a political art, that is to say an art of ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures and uncertain ending - an art (and a politics) in which optimism is kept in check, and nihilism at bay.

Forgetting is natural, remembering is the effort one makes.

My grandfather was a member of Parliament for 40 years. Obviously we're talking here South Africa, a whites only parliament. I grew up in a family that was very involved with the legal battles against apartheid - the great treason trials in the 1950s and early '60s, and later with the legal resources center that my mother founded. My father was involved with a number of very prominent cases that had political aspects to them, whether it was the inquest into the Sharpeville Massacre, the death of Steve Biko, or one of the trials of Nelson Mandela.

It's always been in between the things I thought I was doing that the real work has happened.

The uncertain and imprecise way of constructing a drawing is sometimes a model of how to construct meaning ... The ethical and moral questions ... in our heads seem to rise to the surface as a consequence of the process

To say that one need art, or politics, that incorporate ambiguity and contradiction is not to say that one then stops recognizing and condemning things as evil. However, it might stop one being so utterly convinced of the certainty of one's own solutions. There needs to be a strong understanding of fallibility and how the very act of certainty or authoritativeness can bring disasters.

I'm interested in machines that make you aware of the process of seeing and aware of what you do when you construct the world by looking. This is interesting in itself, but more as a broad-based metaphor for how we understand the world.

I am only an artist, my job is to make drawings not to make sense.