William Kentridge

"Over the last 35 years, printmaking has been close to the center of the work I have done. Prints have never been a side journey or in the margins. When I started art school, painting on canvas was the norm and was what I spent my days doing, and I was miserable at it. Both miserable psychologically—trying to do it—and very bad at it. So it was an enormous relief (and pleasure) to suddenly discover the medium of etching. This was a medium in which it was legitimate to use no color, to work monochromatically. And having started etching I could move forward into drawing, specifically into drawing in charcoal, which I began a few years later as an extension of printmaking There have also been many projects that have ended up as either a piece of theater or an animated film which have their origins in printmaking."
Excerpted from William Kentridge: Trace.

FORTHCOMING & NEW RELEASES

A UNIVERSAL ARCHIVE: WILLIAM KENTRIDGE AS PRINTMAKER
Foreword by Roger Malbert. Text by Rosalind Krauss. Interview by Kate McCrickard.
HAYWARD PUBLISHING
ISBN: 9781853323010 | US $30.00
Pub Date: 3/31/2013
Active | In stock

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: THE REFUSAL OF TIME
EDITIONS XAVIER BARRAL
ISBN: 9782365110075 | US $125.00
Pub Date: 2/28/2013
Active | In stock

PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: NO, IT IS
FOURTHWALL BOOKS
ISBN: 9780987042903 | US $65.00
Pub Date: 8/31/2013
Forthcoming

ACTIVE BACKLIST

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE & GERHARD MARX: FIRE WALKER
FOURTHWALL BOOKS
ISBN: 9780986985027 | US $50.00
Pub Date: 3/31/2012
Active | In stock

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: LEXICON
A.S.A.P.
ISBN: 9780979764240 | US $40.00
Pub Date: 6/30/2011
Active | In stock

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: CARNETS D'EGYPTE
Text by William Kentridge. Afterword by Marie-Laure Bernadac.
ÉDITIONS DILECTA/ÉDITIONS DU MUSéE DU LOUVRE
ISBN: 9782916275857 | US $32.00
Pub Date: 2/28/2011
Active | In stock

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: TRACE
Text by Judith B. Hecker, William Kentridge.
THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK
ISBN: 9780870707797 | US $29.95
Pub Date: 4/30/2010
Active | Awaiting stock

OUT OF PRINT LISTING

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: REPEAT-FROM THE BEGINNING
Text by William Kentridge, Francesca Pasini, Jane Taylor, Angela Vettese.
CHARTA/FONDAZIONE BEVILACQUA LA MASA
ISBN: 9788881587100 | US $34.95
Pub Date: 3/1/2009
Out of Print | Not available

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: BLACK BOX/CHAMBRE NOIRE
Essays by Maria-Christina Villase“or and William Kentridge.
GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM
ISBN: 9780892073399 | US $45.00
Pub Date: 1/1/2006
Out of print | Not available

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: THINKING ALOUD
Artwork by William Kentridge. Contributions by Angela Breidbach.
WALTHER KöNIG, KöLN
ISBN: 9783883759081 | US $45.00
Pub Date: 3/15/2005
Out of print | Not available

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: WEIGHING...AND WANTING
Essay by Leah Ollman. Introduction by Hugh M. Davies.
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SAN DIEGO
ISBN: 9780934418584 | US $25.00
Pub Date: 7/2/2001
Out of print | Not available

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE
Artwork by William Kentridge. Text by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev.
SOCIETE DES EXPOSITIONS DU PALAIS DES BEAUX-ARTS DE BRUXELLES
ISBN: 9789074816090 | US $39.00
Pub Date: 4/2/1999
Out of print | Not available

William Kentridge

"When I started art school, painting on canvas was the norm and was what I spent my days doing, and I was miserable at it. Both miserable psychologically—trying to do it—and very bad at it. So it was an enormous relief (and pleasure) to suddenly discover the medium of etching. "

William Kentridge

Featured etching is "Untitled (Man with Megaphone Cluster)," 1998, from William Kentridge: Trace.

William Kentridge: No, It Is

Published by Fourthwall Books

No, It Is contains 280 new drawings by William Kentridge (born 1955), selected from a series of approximately 500 drawings made over a three-month period toward the end of 2012. Combining a series of flipbook sequences, it includes self-portraits of the artist sitting down and standing up, contorting himself or dancing; text-based series; geometric blocks of color; and calligraphic renderings of trees that verge on abstraction. As with the artist’s previous book works, all of the drawings are executed on the pages of antiquarian publications, from manuals on photography and electricity, dictionaries and guides to polishing leather to Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. Satisfyingly chunky at 560 pages, and limited to an edition of only 800 copies, No, It Is is the largest flipbook-style publication that Kentridge has yet undertaken.

A Universal Archive: William Kentridge as Printmaker

Foreword by Roger Malbert. Text by Rosalind Krauss. Interview by Kate McCrickard.
Published by Hayward Publishing

South African artist William Kentridge (born 1955) is internationally acclaimed for his drawings, films, and theatre and opera productions. He is also an innovative and prolific printmaker--of etchings, engravings, aquatints, silkscreens, linocuts and lithographs--often experimenting with challenging formats and combinations of printing techniques to create highly worked, intensely atmospheric imagery. His prints range in scale from intimate etchings and drypoints to linocuts on rice paper and canvas measuring over eight feet high and are reproduced on a variety of materials, a tactile approach which is echoed in the design and production of this volume. This unique and beautifully presented book includes almost 100 prints from 1988 to the present, with a stress on experimental, collaborative and serial works. Kentridge’s distinctive use of light and shadow and silhouettes, his concern with memory and perspective, and his absorption in literary texts are all strongly in evidence throughout this book, which provides new insights into the working methods of this prolific artist.

William Kentridge: The Refusal of Time

Introduction by William Kentridge. Text by Peter Galison, William Kentridge, Catherine Meyburgh, Philip Miller.
Published by Editions Xavier Barral

William Kentridge’s recent work is situated on the border between art and science: by examining our perception and understanding of time, he reconsiders the creative process. A work in progress in the truest sense, The Refusal of Time continues and deepens the polymorphic, dreamlike, political and humanist body of work developed by Kentridge from his very earliest days as an artist. An installation with performance elements, The Refusal of Time was conceived by Kentridge and science historian Peter Galison for Documenta 13, and realized in collaboration with video filmmaker Catherine Meyburgh and composer Philip Miller, both of whom worked with Kentridge and Galison for a year. Time in its various manifestations--narrative, fragmented, slowed down and speeded up; distortions of space-time; simultaneity--is explored through various media, including dance, film, music and spoken word. The book itself is a work of art; it includes sketches and notebooks, all the texts read during the performance, pictures from the rehearsals and workshop as well as highlights of the show, interviews and drawings created specially for it by Kentridge.

William Kentridge & Gerhard Marx: Fire Walker

Edited by Oliver Barstow, Bronwyn Law-Viljoen. Introduction by Bronwyn Law-Viljoen. Text by Alexandra Dodd, Mpho Matsipa, Zen Marie, Jonathan Cane, Mark Gevisser. Interviews by Oliver Barstow. Photographs by John Hodgkiss, Ben Law-Viljoen, Alistair McLachlan.
Published by Fourthwall Books

In 2009, William Kentridge and Gerhard Marx were commissioned to make a public sculpture for the city of Johannesburg, on the occasion of the 2010 Soccer World Cup. Their sculpture was based on Kentridge’s drawing of a woman street vendor--known colloquially in Johannesburg as a fire walker--carrying a burning brazier on her head. “Fire Walker” thus stands for the ordinary citizen, whose survival depends on his or her ability to negotiate contested urban terrain. The 36-feet-high figure was installed at the foot of the Queen Elizabeth Bridge, on a site formerly used by street traders and taxi washers. This volume documents the commission and also includes two photo essays on street vendors and old city monuments.

William Kentridge: Lexicon

Published by A.S.A.P.

Lexicon is a facsimile cloth edition of an antiquarian Latin-Greek dictionary which the internationally celebrated South African artist William Kentridge (born 1954) has embellished with black ink drawings of what might seem at first to be animal silhouettes. In reproducing the work (which is uncollected elsewhere), this beautifully designed artist's book mischievously pits the model of the flipbook against the fragility of the antiquarian original, and flipping its pages animates Kentridge's lively, spiky drawings into a continuously morphing image that transforms from a cat to a coffee pot over the course of the book's 160 pages. This image is based on a disintegrating sculpture that reflects the artist's interest in the instability of objecthood. Lexiconis accompanied by a DVD containing a short film in which Kentridge flips the pages himself.

William Kentridge: Carnets D'Egypte

Text by William Kentridge. Afterword by Marie-Laure Bernadac.
Published by Éditions Dilecta/Éditions du Musée du Louvre

Carnets D'Egypte is William Kentridge's multimedia excavation of one of his favorite subjects: ancient Egypt. "Egypt has to be both believed and disbelieved at the same time," he proposes, explaining his attraction to its intermingling of myth and history in the era of the pharaohs; here, he approaches this intermingling, and attendant questions of orientalism, in works that draw on western traditions of depicting Egypt, by such artists as Carracci, Delacroix, Le Brun, Poussin and Degas. In a scrapbook dossier composed of charcoal and pen-and-ink drawings, collages, animated films and performance pieces, Kentridge investigates such mythically proportioned Egyptian roles as the scribe, the architect and the artist, often inserting himself into the dialogue as a visible presence. This beautifully made book, which includes a DVD with three films, affirms Kentridge at his eclectic and erudite best.

William Kentridge: Trace

Prints from The Museum of Modern Art

Text by Judith B. Hecker, William Kentridge.
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York

William Kentridge's art brings together drawing, film animation, sculpture and performance. He also applies his astonishing draftsmanship to the techniques of printmaking, including etching, screenprinting, lithography and linoleum cut. In fact printmaking has always been essential to his work, from his earliest forays into artmaking in the 1970s to his recent operas. “Printmaking has been not just an edge to or a side journey from the work that I've been making over the last 30 years or so,” the artist has said, “but is very much a key to it.” Kentridge's love of the printed image extends to books, and he often draws and prints on unbound pages from encyclopedias, ledgers and the like. In Trace, both a catalogue of prints from the Museum's collection and an artist's book, Kentridge uses translucent pages interspersed throughout the book to respond to his prints reproduced beneath them, in a dialogue between past and present. The book also includes a lecture by Kentridge on printmaking, illuminating its relevance to his broader practice.

William Kentridge: Repeat-from the Beginning

Text by William Kentridge, Francesca Pasini, Jane Taylor, Angela Vettese.
Published by Charta/Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa

In the summer of 2008, South African artist William Kentridge debuted his production of Claudio Monteverdi's opera, The Return of Ulysses, at Venice's Teatro La Fenice. In addition to designing many of the opera's sets and props, Kentridge created a new video, which was projected prior to the performance. This volume is primarily composed of stills from that video, in which Kentridge translates themes central to Monteverdi's portrayal of Homer's classic protagonist--human brotherhood, chance and love--into his trademark hand-drawn animation.
Since the 1990s, Kentridge has maintained a multimedia practice, producing and often combining drawings, films and theater. Since 1992, he has collaborated with the Handspring Puppet Company. During the late 1970s and 1980s, he produced posters, drawings and theater pieces in opposition to South African apartheid.

William Kentridge: Black Box/Chambre Noire

Essays by Maria-Christina Villase“or and William Kentridge.
Published by Guggenheim Museum

In the course of designing his recent production of Mozart's The Magic Flute, artist and animated filmmaker William Kentridge created a mechanized theater maquette. When he saw the miniature stage's potential as sculpture, projection site, and installation, he began to imagine Black Box, the freestanding structure whose development and installation are documented here. A movement-filled, visually charged piece, it is peopled with two-dimensional mechanical figures, completed with scenic elements and lit by flickering video. A digital projector displays animated films created from Kentridge's charcoal drawings and sculptures. Kentridge considers his title term in three senses: a "black box" theater, a "chambre noire" as it relates to photography, and a "black box" flight data recorder, as used in airline disasters. The clandestine fourth reference may be to his ongoing exploration of German history and its convergence with South African history through Namibia, a former German colony that came under South African control prior to gaining its independence. Black Box evokes all that, and the joyful mechanics of pre-cinematic visual spectacles, magic lanterns, the camera obscura and the zoetrope. A unique and richly layered meditation on the act of seeing, on vision and experience, and on the nature of knowledge itself.

William Kentridge: Thinking Aloud

Artwork by William Kentridge. Contributions by Angela Breidbach.
Published by Walther König, Köln

William Kentridge combines political content with an individualistic mythology; photographed drawings, framed and re-photographed, serve as material for his animated films. The dialogue between Kentridge and Angela Breidbach in Thinking Aloud ranges from the development of central perspective in artistic space to contemporary film.

William Kentridge: Weighing...And Wanting

Essay by Leah Ollman. Introduction by Hugh M. Davies.
Published by Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

South African artist William Kentridge makes drawings that he erases, alters, or augments, all the while filming them to bring the drawings to life. William Kentridge: Weighing... and Wanting focuses on the the artist's 1998 film of the same name, and the drawings he used to make the film. Weighing... and Wanting is one of Kentridge's most personal films, and its poignancy is expressed through the intimacy of the large-scale color reproductions of the charcoal drawings. Over 80 film stills are reproduced in the catalogue, enabling the reader to follow the film sequence. An insightful essay on the drawings and film, and biographic information about William Kentridge completes the catalogue.

William Kentridge

Artwork by William Kentridge. Text by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev.
Published by Societe des Expositions du Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles