William Kentridge at Royal Academy review: Overstretched show doesn’t play to the artist’s strengths

A solo exhibition in the Royal Academy’s vast Main Galleries is a privilege given only to the most major artists. Following on from shows by heavy-hitters Antony Gormley and Anish Kapoor, South African artist William Kentridge is the latest artist to be accorded the honour. But it’s an honour that doesn’t come without a degree of risk. Gormley and Kapoor’s shows were both solid crowd-pullers, but both were widely criticised for being “bombastic” and “overblown”.

While the Johannesburg-based Kentridge is less well-known, he’s similarly aged – in his late sixties – no less fond of the grand gesture, and unafraid of massive jumps in scale: from exquisitely made artist books to truly epic live events. But though Kentridge is a brilliant illustrator and stage designer I’ve never been entirely convinced by his art as, well, art.

Born in 1955 to lawyer parents, both active in the anti-Apartheid struggle, Kentridge worked in theatre and television as an actor before turning seriously to art. And that feels significant as the vast majority of work in this show relates to film or performance in one way or another. Drawing has always been Kentridge’s main medium, and the earliest works are some of the strongest. Koevoet (Dreams of Europe) (1984-5), a charcoal triptych showing surreal goings-on in a cafe, has a gauche but compelling rawness that is soon lost as Kentridge’s signature style sets in. We’re shown vast numbers of large, densely worked charcoal drawings, all in a highly proficient, illustrative “realist” style that clearly isn’t supposed to be taken at face value – though I’ve never been sure how it is supposed to be taken.