The January 18 edition of the New Yorker (online for subscribers) has a superb, in-depth profile of South African artist William Kentridge by Calvin Tomkins.
Kentridge, who worked in drawing, print, film, theater production and direction, is best known for breathing life into his charcoal drawings through hypnotic animated films. They are poetic, personal stories as well as metaphors for the changing political times in which he lived. His parents were deeply involved in the anti-apartheid movement and Kentridge believed that the cultural isolation of that period allowed his art to form and flourish.
A major exhibition of his work will open at the Museum of Modern Art on February 24, followed by a premiere of Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera “The Nose,” directed and designed by Kentridge, at the Metropolitan Opera on March 5. Videos after the jump.
