William Kentridge

Fortuna, 2013

Author: Lilian Tone
Pages: 320
Format: Hardback
Size: 258 x 304 x 32mm
Publisher: Thames & Hudson

€54.00

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About the work

Fortuna, 2013

A compelling survey of one of the most significant artists at work today South African artist William Kentridge (b. 1955) is internationally acclaimed for his innovative and poetic work in drawing, sculpture, film and printmaking.

This monograph, the most complete yet published on Kentridge’s expansive body of work, brings together nearly 200 of his artworks made since 1989. Exploring his diverse expressions across a wide range of media, the book is lavishly illustrated with more than 2000 images. It reveals Kentridge’s love of contradiction and uncertainty, showing how his work moves between the personal and political, the static and temporal, the humorous and profound, the real and metaphorical, and between acts of making and of disassembling or erasure.

William Kentridge: Fortuna also reveals Kentridge’s dynamic way of working in his Johannesburg studio, a creative process that can be described as an act of performance during which he searches for ways to express his powerful ideas. This process follows the principle of ‘fortuna’, a principle not subject to rational control but, in the words of the artist himself, one in which there is ‘neither programme nor chance in the making of images’. Kentridge’s own lively commentaries accompany his works, offering indispensable insights into his working methods and creative thinking.

Essays by curator Lilian Tone and artist and writer Kate McCrickard put his practice into a wider context, investigating the conceptual and visual tendencies in Kentridge’s work, and the relationship between his art and his native South Africa.

The book is supplemented by a bibliography and a chronology, which includes the artist’s key solo and group exhibitions as well as his film and theatrical performances, William Kentridge: Fortuna is a rich and compelling survey of one of the most significant artists at work today.

Contributors: Lilian Tone, Kate McCrickard, William Kentridge Lilian Tone is a curator and art writer. Her published work includes articles, interviews and essays for exhibition catalogs and other publications. She is a curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art. Kate McCrickard, a leading expert on Kentridge’s work, was formerly Director of David Krut Projects in New York.

About artist

William Kentridge

Often drawing from socio-political conditions in post-apartheid South Africa, William Kentridge’s work takes on a form that is expressionist in nature.

William Kentridge was born in 1955 in Johannesburg, South Africa where he currently lives and works. Often drawing from socio-political conditions in post-apartheid South Africa, William Kentridge’s work takes on a form that is expressionist in nature. For Kentridge, the process of recording history is constructed from reconfigured fragments to arrive at a provisional understanding of the past—this act of recording, dismembering and reordering crosses over into an essential activity of the studio. His work spans a diverse range of artistic media such as drawing, performance, film, printmaking, sculpture and painting. Kentridge has also directed a number of acclaimed operas and theatrical productions.

Kentridge is the recipient of honorary doctorates from several universities including Yale and the University of London. In 2012 he presented the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard University. In 2013 he served as Humanitas Visiting Professor in Contemporary Art at Oxford University, and Distinguished Visiting Humanist at the University of Rochester, New York, and in 2015 he was appointed an Honorary Academician of the Royal Academy in London. In 2017 he received the Princesa de Asturias Award for the Arts, Spain, and in 2018, the Antonio Feltrinelli International Prize, Italy. Previous awards include the Kyoto Prize, Japan (2010), the Oskar Kokoschka Award, Vi...

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