Critique of "Walking Man"

William Kentridge's "Walking man” is a rather big scale linocut print hanging in the stairwell. When standing right in front of the print, one can hardly to see the top of the picture. You can suddenly feel the pressure that the “walking man” is imposing on you. And the clear black and white print lines show us the detailed work that the artist has done. The use of different kinds of lines also implies the shape of the man, the cloth he’s wearing and also the depth of the background. The print is framed in a thick plastic transparent cover, so it does not give us a sense of distance, rather it is more like a real person stands (or walks) in front of us. The horizontal white lines really helps to push out the person without losing the function of depicting the background.
I we keep walking up the stairs, we can start to have a comfortable distance with the person and see the whole picture. Clearly, the subject is a man with his head and hands turning into branches instead of the real body. The top half of the print is filled with the branches reaching out of his collar. The branches are robust and healthy, and are energetically reaching out of the work. And the person is leaning forward with two hands on his back and one foot step up. He seems more inactive, and the branches on his head seem to give him too much pressure to take. And on the right lower corner there are two wire taps and a tree and a factory far away. There are right next to the lifting feet, so it seems that the person will step on to them. The walking man, in my opinion, represents the development and industrialization of the world. And the branches on him imply the problems that the development has brought to the environment. The person is struggling between trying to conserve the nature resources and the industrialization.