Critique of "Walking Man"

William Kentridge’s “Walking Man” uses line, texture, values, and composition to create a dynamic image that comments on man’s interference with nature.
Kentridge uses the linoleum medium in an evident way to create different lines and textures. For example, the outline of the man is not carved out but rather implied by the ends of the lines that make up the back ground. His use of line creates interesting textures. The thick cuts create a dramatic effect by showing harsh positive and negative spaces. This is evident in the difference between the almost all black shape of the man’s body and the texture in the tree. The texture of the back ground and the texture of the tree are distinguishable because of the thickness and curviness of the lines. The background is made up of horizontal lines stacked on one another, but the fact that they are slightly wavy and vary in thickness creates a surreal, unnatural texture to the background. He breaks up the background by creating shapes of different values which adds to the unnatural feel. This use of texture in the background may indicate dark clouds of pollution or another kind of human interference with the sky.
The composition creates a unified piece. The man is clearly the center of attention because he takes up most of the composition and he towers over what little ground we can see. But his implied direction and that he is tilted to the right brings our eye into the background, down, and toward the small scene happening on the ground so that we get the overall image and are not stuck on one part. Although the tree has a different texture than the background, it has a similar value such that the figure is almost surrounded by these different types of grays which also keeps the eye moving. One interesting compositional choice Kentridge makes is to only uses straight lines inside the form of the man walking and in the phone towers on the ground. The lines inside the man show the stitching and light on his clothing which are the only parts of his body that are not made of tree. He doesn’t show his face or hands or other identifiers of humanity. That he only reveals the clothes part of the man and makes all his other parts into parts of a tree may intend to create a visual distinction between the natural and the man-made. Man is not inherently bad – after all he is natural and part tree. But what man does is bad – crushing the county side nonchalantly. Kentridge is interested in the issue of relations and interference of humans on nature.