William Kentridge: In Praise of Shadows

Book Synopsis: Thirty-five years of South African artist William Kentridge's dynamic, cross-genre art, with essays by Ann McCoy, Zakes Mda, and Ed Schad, a conversation between the artist and Walter Murch, and an unpublished lecture by Kentridge.

This far-reaching book presents Kentridge's dynamic art practice, which originates in charcoal drawing and expands into intersections with film, sculpture, opera and theater performances, printmaking and many other mediums. The volume is organized chronologically and thematically, emphasizing Kentridge's destabilizing of South African and global narratives through openness to uncertainty, the generative power of the artist's studio and perpetual change, all as conditions for illuminating repressed and silenced voices in historical records.

An essay by curator Ed Schad is presented along with studio photography, archival material and illuminating illustrations of Kentridge's work, joining essays by globally recognized literary figures and thinkers Zakes Mda and Ann McCoy. Notably, the volume features a conversation between Kentridge and the famous film and sound editor Walter Murch, as well as a never-before-published lecture by the artist.

The work of William Kentridge (born 1955) has been seen in museums and galleries around the world since the 1990s, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Albertina Museum in Vienna, Musée du Louvre in Paris, Whitechapel Gallery in London, Louisiana Museum in Copenhagen, the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid, the Kunstmuseum in Basel and Zeitz MOCAA and the Norval Foundation in Cape Town. Opera productions include Mozart's The Magic Flute, Shostakovich's The Nose and Alban Berg's operas Lulu and Wozzeck. In 2016 Kentridge founded the Centre for Less Good Idea in Johannesburg, a space for responsive thinking and making through experimental, collaborative and cross-disciplinary art practices. The center hosts an ongoing program of workshops, public performances and mentorship activities.