Transmedial Generation of Printmaking Thinking—A Case Study of William Kentridge
Abstract
Most studies that have been done so far about William Kentridge's artworks mainly look at their stage structure, visual storytelling, and links to South Africa's political and historical background. They mainly explain the themes and symbolic meanings in his works, but they do not pay enough attention to the common working rules inside his different art forms. To fill this gap in research, this paper uses printmaking as a starting point to study how his artworks keep the same features across different media types. The first part studies how these media work from the inside. It finds that imprint is the key sign that forms the way images are made. It also shows that erasing and adding layers put time into the pictures through physical marks. The second part explains how printmaking ideas shape different media. It talks about four main kinds of ideas: randomness, reverse images, putting parts together, and printing one layer over another. The third part further looks at how this structure moves from one media to another. This lets different media develop using the same basic working rules. By studying these structural elements, this paper finds the shared idea behind Kentridge's cross-media art. It also gives a new way to understand why his works have such a consistent style.
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