Global Animation Theory: International Perspectives at Animafest Zagreb
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Wells, Paul. "Animation in the Gallery and the Gestalt: György Kovásznai and William Kentridge." Global Animation Theory: International Perspectives at Animafest Zagreb. Ed. Franziska Bruckner, Nikica Gili#, Holger Lang, Daniel Šulji# and Hrvoje Turkovi#. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. 11–28. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 30 Sep. 2021. <http:// dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501337161.ch-002>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 30 September 2021, 15:57 UTC. Copyright © Franziska Bruckner, Nikica Gili#, Holger Lang, Daniel Šulji#, Hrvoje Turkovi#, and Contributors and Cover image Zlatka Salopek 2019. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 2 Animation in the Gallery and the Gestalt Gy ö rgy Kov á sznai and William Kentridge Paul Wells The practice of drawing – professional knowledge – can be derived from two sources: either from universal faith, i.e. on the basis of the idea conception, which implies a collective ideal, or on the basis of a non- collective, individual–sensualistic, positivistically–individualistically solitary venture of discovery KOV Á SZNAI in IV Á NYI-BITTER 2016 : 35 We, however, who intend to do something for the people’s sake as well as for our own glory, have to concern ourselves a great deal with politics, and in a proper manner KOV Á SZNAI in IV Á NYI-BITTER 2016 : 41 This chapter explores the work of recently rediscovered Cold War Hungarian animator, Gy ö rgy Kov á sznai, and the contemporary artist to whom he has been most compared and affi liated, South African William Kentridge. Both were part of a co- exhibition in Budapest in 2015, and recently in London in 2016. Kentridge also appeared on a panel looking at ‘Animation and the Avant Garde outside the Western Canon’, talking about Kov á sznai’s work in 2016, in which I took part, too. This discussion will address the individual 11 12 GLOBAL ANIMATION THEORY works of both artists, looking at their approaches and outlooks, and how this is understood as directly affi liated to art and arts culture, and animation’s presence in the gallery context. Further, the analysis will seek to use Kentridge’s ethos and approach to mediate an address of Kov á sznai’s perspectives, summarized in his statements above, to situate works within a broader understanding of the gestalt of the ‘Animation Spectrum’, and the presence of animation both in the academic and the public sphere. It should be stressed that this version of the gestalt moves beyond the established and orthodox notions of animation as a cinematic and broadcast practice, into contexts where it is present and observable, but less recognized and acknowledged. This concept insists that animation is present in a range of moving images – for example, visual effects, virtual reality, data visualization and real- time interaction – and that these contexts are imbued with animation aesthetics. As such they represent an omnipresence of animation – the gestalt – that speaks to social and cultural processes and practices, which are in turn informed by cultural and political knowledge. This begins to suggest an ‘animifi cation’ of human experience that has emerged throughout the history of animation as it has been re-confi gured through new technologies but, more importantly, the techniques applied by leading authorial sensibilities. Writing in 2005, fi lmmaker and artist, Lewis Klahr ( 2005 : 234), sought to distance himself from the idea that he was ‘an animator’, insisting ‘the expectations of collage can help the viewer more deeply engage in and follow the formal decisions contained in my fi lms. The expectations of “animation” will not’. Klahr is not alone in such preferences, of course, merely signalling that the sources and infl uences in his work are much more attuned to the Fine Arts. Interestingly, South African William Kentridge ( Wells 2016 ) also resists the idea that his work should be associated with ‘animation’, but only because when he fi rst considered using the form, at least, he felt his efforts did not have the competence and technical specifi city of classical animation, exemplifi ed at the Disney studio. When artists resist the view that they are ‘animators’, then, they are for the most part denying that they are animators not merely because ‘Disney’ might represent mass entertainment, global dissemination, serial characters and a cast of animals ( Krauss 2005 : 102), but because of the regulation in the Disney classical animation style, for a long time the dominant approach to the form. It is a style, of course, privileging the role of drawing within the process of making ‘cinema’, and not the singular drawing within ‘art-making’. There is some irony in this, of course, in the sense that the animators at the Disney Studios in the Golden era were inventing and refi ning an ‘art form’. The newly emergent ‘Eighth Art’ of animation was in essence the theorization of the ‘Twelve Principles’ that govern the execution of effective drawn animation in the early shorts and features that emerged from studios as it established itself in Hollywood in the 1920s and 1930s (Johnson and ANIMATION IN THE GALLERY AND THE GESTALT 13 Thomas 1981 : 47–69). The classical animation style that the Disney animators perfected, though, was soon perceived less as art than as an industrial process that serviced mere entertainment. Though the Disney model was understood as ‘state of the art’ worldwide in the pre-World War II period and after, and much copied by independent artists and major studios in, for example, the UK , Japan and Russia, the quasi-Taylorist model used to create shorts and features frame-by-frame at the Disney studio in essence diminished the idea that it had the imprimatur of Fine Art. Disney’s animation nevertheless retained its primary and distinctive aesthetic and, as such, its long shadow of infl uence in defi ning ‘animation’ per se . It is this history and orthodoxy that other artists using animation are explicitly aligning themselves with – even if they are working in a different style or technique – or deliberately distancing themselves from. As a consequence, Disney’s pop(ulist) art sat in direct opposition to the experimental tradition that emerged in Europe and elsewhere in the fi gures of Len Lye, Norman McLaren and Lotte Reiniger. This schism has characterized the fi eld of animation until comparatively recently when gallery shows like ‘Momentary Momentum’ at Parosol Unit, London in 2007 and ‘Watch Me Move: The Animation Show’ at The Barbican, London in 2012, sought to place animation – popular and experimental alike – into the gallery space. Lawrence Dreyfuss reminds us, though: Contemporary art is constantly generating new mediums, the study of which implies a radical revision of our habitual artistic categories. Animation is one of the least known of these forms because of its traditional production process, which places such importance on drawing, a discipline that has long been ignored to the advantage of painting and sculpture. DREYFUSS 2007 : 30 This observation both recovers the signifi cance of ‘drawing’ within industrially produced animation, but also of ‘drawing’ as a particular form of expression that might be ultimately animated. I would further suggest here, too, that ‘drawing’ might be understood to also stand alongside, and engage with painting and sculpture, in the broader context of specifi c kinds of mark-making. This seeks to locate ‘animation’ beyond its traditional boundaries as a drawn form, to embrace different formal properties and techniques as part of its vocabulary, and to promote a revision of production history that re-situates animation in the artist’s ‘studio’ rather than in the ‘quasi- factory’ that now defi nes the production identity of major studios. It follows, thereafter, that animation may be placed within parameters by which it might be viewed and evaluated as ‘art’, measured by the codes and conventions of established arts practices and art historical idioms and, 14 GLOBAL ANIMATION THEORY crucially, within an intellectual framework that properly and unselfconsciously acknowledges the relationship between animation, philosophy and politics. In the modern era, and with the post- digital shift, the schisms and categorizations that separate different kinds of animation seem increasingly unhelpful in addressing the form, and serve only to distance particular kinds of more personal or authorial work from ‘the (American Animated) cartoon’. This kind of positioning now seems intellectually as well as practically redundant when artists like Mathias Poledna make Imitation of Life (2013) – to all intents and purposes a Golden era, Disney-style, fully animated and orchestrated cartoon, but made within the context of art culture. As such, upon its premiere at the Venice Biennale, the catalogue could make two signifi cant claims. First: Imitation of Life appropriates and reassembles this language as it revisits the contradictions and ambiguities that accompanied the medium’s development. Advanced methods of production and visual ingenuity – indebted to the syntax of European modernism in its handling of surface, depth and color, and lauded by the avant garde and critic intelligence of the time – coexisted with sentimental characterization and storytelling based on age- old fables and fairy tales. And second: Beyond its engagement with animation, Imitation of Life incorporates into its fl eeting narrative a number of other elements from the early history of entertainment, such as Vaudeville, silent comedy and fi lm musicals, and diverse artistic forms including fi lm, music, painting and literature. But even while it subscribes to the synergistic logic of its medium, the fi lm deliberately eschews a seamless whole, remaining at once alien and utterly recognizable. PADIGLIONE AUSTRIACO 2013 These comments serve to remind contemporary audiences of the place of European Modernism in the development of classical animation, and the critical recognition that attended the fi lms, especially at the Disney studio.