William Kentridge: Five Themes

With a searing body of work ranging from drawings and films to prints, tapestries, and sculptures, William Kentridge (b. 1955) has offered a fresh and distinctive glimpse of the daily lives of South Africans - both during the apartheid regime and after its collapse. This extraordinary catalogue, produced in close collaboration with the artist, investigates the five primary themes that have engaged Kentridge over the course of his career: Soho and Felix: works featuring Kentridge's best-known characters, the businessman Soho Eckstein and his alter ego, the anxiety-ridden Felix Teitlebaum; Ubu and the Procession: inspired by Ubu Roi, these projects reflect the excitement, conflict, and rapid social changes in post-apartheid South Africa; Artist in the Studio: an examination of Kentridge's practice and his emergence as an installation artist; The Magic Flute: work related to the artist's set designs for Mozart's opera; The Nose: Kentridge's most recent production, including work inspired by his staging of the Shostakovich opera for New York's Metropolitan Opera in spring 2010.
Kentridge has created a DVD especially for this publication; it includes fragments from significant film projects (both known and newly completed) as well as commentary that sheds further light on the artist's work.

Mark Rosenthal is adjunct curator of contemporary art at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida.