Created in 1979, Will of a Rebel (Thumbprint Man) originates from a formative moment when William Kentridge’s graphic and theatrical practices were closely intertwined. That year, Kentridge directed the Junction Avenue Theatre Company’s Will of a Rebel, a production centred on the imprisoned poet Breyten Breytenbach. The play conceived solitary confinement not simply as physical isolation, but as a condition produced through observation – the audience became both witness and metaphorical wall.

Within the monotype’s compact black field, a solitary figure appears compressed and inwardly drawn. The surrounding darkness and unusually expansive margins heighten the impression of enclosure, while the figure’s contorted profile and folded limbs convey both vulnerability and latent force. Fingerprint-like whorls articulate the head and body, transforming bodily touch into an image of identity, surveillance and incriminating trace.

The work’s subtractive method intensifies these associations. Kentridge formed the image by removing ink from an inked plate – the untouched black becomes the dominant ground, while the figure materialises through erasure in modulated greys and exposed white. Whether read as prisoner or as an embodiment of Moloch – the collective social and institutional “monster” invoked in the play – the subject resists stable identification.

Catalogued as S.82, this unique impression provides important evidence of Kentridge’s early fusion of printmaking, performance and political thought. Its emergence from darkness through a process of subtraction anticipates his enduring concern with images that remain provisional, unstable and marked by the history of their making.

NOTES

The play unfolds in Breyten's cell; throughout the play he is in solitary with a tin plate as his only companion. The cell is defined by the audience, the 'eyes' as Breyten indicates during the play. The audience is thus both brick and onlooker, an indispensable structure which betrays that the isolation involved is always social.

[…] Moloch, comprising an ensemble of acto[r]s, is the incarnation of the military-economico-social 'monster' that defines the domination of our everyday lives.

–Preface to the original script, privately published in a small edition by the Junction Avenue Theatre Company in 1980

–Siebrits, W. (2022). William Kentridge: Prints and Posters 1974–1990, Volume 1.2. Göttingen: Steidl Publishers, p.477.

It is interesting that the transfer monotype Exhibition: Exhibition (Siebrits 130) was selected for the cover image of the published script for Will of a Rebel. This transfer monotype informed the design on the silkscreen poster made to advertise Kentridge's first solo exhibition (Siebrits 157). It makes one realise that there was a strong conceptual parallel between this theatre production and Kentridge's exhibition, both taking place in 1979.

The omnipotent and all-pervasive character of Moloch in the play was performed by a number of different voices. These actors' and actresses' names are listed in order of appearance:

Nadine Cohen

Brenda Goldblatt

Hanchen Koornhof

Elaine Proctor

Colin Purkey

Lucas Tshabalala

Mavuso Tshabalala

Lisa Jacobson

Although still a monotype, this unique portrait was printed differently from the previous trace monotype (Siebrits 81). In this instance, the image was created by drawing into an inked-up plate, the solid black ink remaining untouched, and all the lighter shades of grey and white are the areas where Kentridge has removed the ink from the plate.

–Warren Siebrits in Siebrits, W. (2022). William Kentridge: Prints and Posters 1974–1990, Volume 1.2. Göttingen: Steidl Publishers, p.477.