Finding the Less Good Idea

William Kentridge delivers a lecture focusing on The Centre for the Less Good Idea and discussing its influence on his own practice.

Founded in 2016 by William Kentridge and Bronwyn Lace in Johannesburg, South Africa, The Centre for the Less Good Idea nurtures collaborative and cross-disciplinary projects, with a particular focus on supporting artists from the African continent. Their unique strategy is to encourage artists to pursue the 'less good idea': i.e. that idea which first appears on the margins, as a result of creative blockage or chance, but which subsequently permits a more vital exploration.

“What does it mean to follow the less good idea?”, asked Kentridge in his acceptance speech when elected Foreign Associate Member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris earlier this year. “When I started making animated drawings using a technique of charcoal drawing and erasing, I was very apologetic. I could not get a perfect erasure. I tried different papers and erasers, there was always a grey trace left behind. In the end, friends said to me, “Stop complaining, it is this grey smudge, this trace of time, that we are interested in, How stupid was I, not to have seen that before? The grey smudge follows the line – this is the less good idea. But ‘the less good idea’ also has wider meanings, including a suspicion of the grand ideas”. Kentridge added: “The history of the twentieth century has shown us the disasters that have attended every project that claimed certainty about how the world should be. When the grand ideas fail, find other more local, more particular, solutions.  An African proverb advises ‘If the good doctor can’t cure you, find the less good doctor.”