For my two blog posts this month, I want to present information, comment and images on two artists who are well known for their work in other media but have also produced significant work in book arts domain.
William Kentridge is a South African artist best known for his static and animated drawing (stop motion films), sculpture, printmaking, and the use of all these in his stunning Metropolitan Opera productions (including sets and costumes) of Stravinsky’s The Nose and Berg’s Lulu. He has also produced a number of artist’s books including Lexicon, No It Is, Trace (discussed below) as well as Second Hand Reading and The Refusal of Time.
Lexicon is virtually a facsimile of an 1825 Latin-Greek Lexicon apparently used by his father during college (we see his father’s name penciled onto the title page). The page spreads are the background for rough charcoal sketching which transforms from a coffee pot into a cat and more. This rigorous, academic reference book becomes a rough, playful and conceptual flip book. The intimate space and interaction possibilities characteristic of the book form are employed here to connect thought processes and concepts across distant points in time.
Lexicon by William Kentridge, Photo by Ruth Bardenstein
No It Is also incorporates antiquarian books, but in this case Kentridge selects pages from a variety of technical books and places them in thought provoking pairings on each page spread. The drawings on top of these pages range from static to animated, abstract geometric to playful figurative, black and white to color, and text to image. Again, the book form is critical in allowing intimate interaction/exploration of the background print and the drawing on each page and page spread. It also allows a flip book dynamic, oppositional page spread dynamic, and the creation of perception and meaning from absorbing the book as a whole.
No It Is by William Kentridge, Photos by Ruth Bardenstein
Trace is actually an exhibition catalog of prints at the MOMA which Kentridge directly responds to by drawing, printing and writing on translucent pages which serve as overlays to both recto and verso sides of a number of the pages. The book format allows for this conversation between past work and present thought and for participation by the viewer in creating different layering of the translucent and opaque pages. The result is an engaging and dynamic layering of meaning and response; one feels a part of Kentridge’s dialogue with his own work and his mind at play.
Trace by William Kentridge, Photos by Ruth Bardenstein
Other links that provide more in-depth information on Kentridge, his studio practice and work:
Kentridge gave the 2012 Norton Lectures at Harvard where he very personally and brilliantly discusses (and shows in various video pieces) studio practice and the development of his art and themes. http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/william-kentridge-drawing-lesson-one-praise-shadows; http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/william-kentridge-drawing-lesson-two-brief-history-colonial-revolts; http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/william-kentridge-drawing-lesson-four-practical-epistemology-life-studio; http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/william-kentridge-drawing-lesson-five-praise-mistranslation;
For a probing discussion with Kentridge of his underlying themes and concept development, see “that which is not drawn” by William Kentridge and Rosalind Morris. (http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/T/bo16862889.html).
