| PUBLIC PROGRAMS :::: Podcasts
William Kentridge
2006 McBean Distinguished Lecturer
25 January 2006, 7:30pm
Download the video podcast of Kentridge's talk (1hr 27min.) either in a browser window here or via iTunes here.
Known internationally for his drawings, animated films, sculptures, installations, and stage work, South African artist William Kentridge, the 2006 McBean Distinguished Lecturer at SFAI, explores the history and post-apartheid political transformations of his native South Africa.
San Francisco Art Institute is pleased to name South African artist William Kentridge as the 2006 McBean Distinguished Lecturer. Kentridge will deliver a public lecture on January 25, 2006 at 7:30pm in the Lecture Hall at SFAI's 800 Chestnut Street Campus. In conjunction, an exhibition of Kentridge's films, WEIGHING...and WANTING (1998) and Ubu Tells the Truth (1997), will be on view in SFAI's Walter and McBean Galleries from January 25 to March 25, 2006. An opening reception will take place January 25 from 5:30 to 7:30pm preceding the lecture.
Known internationally for his drawings, animated films, sculptures, installations, and stage work, Kentridge explores the history and post-apartheid political transformations of his native South Africa. Through his films—made by a process of constant modifications via erasures to charcoal drawings that are photographed in sequence and then projected as an animated picture—Kentridge goes beyond South African politics and ultimately addresses the human condition by exposing the nature of memory, emotion, and social conflict. Kentridge's works propose an incisive investigation to the way identities are forged and provide insights into changing notions of history and belonging.
Bill Berkson, the former head of SFAI's Visiting Artist Lecture Series, conceived of inviting Kentridge to the Art Institute as a McBean Lecturer after seeing his work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). "I had seen Kentridge's work a few years before at Document X; for me it was the discovery of the show," says Berkson. "His recent work continues to have technological invention, graphic power, and red hot subject matter; but it isn't limited by one political aspect. This is quite a rare opportunity having Kentridge come to the Art Institute as a McBean Distinguished Lecturer."
Born in Johannesburg in 1955, Kentridge continues to live and work there. His work first began gaining art world notoriety when in 1997 he was included in Documenta X in Kassel, Germany as well as in the Johannesburg and Havana Biennials. His first American solo exhibitions were at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego and the Drawing Center, New York in 1998. Kentridge graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand majoring in politics and African studies in 1976; he also studied at the Johannesburg Art Foundation where he later taught printmaking.
|
|
|
|
2006 McBean Distinguished Lecturer: William Kentridge
In Kentridge’s WEIGHING…and WANTING, Soho Eckstein, a recurring fictional character who first appeared in Kentridge's work in 1989, is a white South African industrialist who has benefited from the apartheid and is now struggling to find his way—publicly and personally—in the new political climate. With the Johannesburg landscape as backdrop, Eckstein is torn between his desires on the one hand and a sense of ethics and responsibility on the other. His own internal landscape is represented by the brain scans he endures, which bring to light the story of his failed love affair.
Politics become more overt in Kentridge’s Ubu Tells the Truth. Based on Alfred Jarry’s 1896 Ubu Roi, a satire about a corrupt and cowardly character, Ubu Tells the Truth was first conceived as a puppet play and originally done in collaboration with the Handspring Puppet Company of Johannesburg. The film is characterized by violent episodes and an explosive soundtrack, inspired in part by testimony given during the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the South African government in 1995 to investigate human rights abuses during the apartheid era.
"Kentridge's McBean Lectureship and exhibition continues SFAI's long history of fostering the essential discussions about art and society," says President Chris Bratton. "Next year is the Institute's 135th anniversary; and, for generations, the Institute has been the center of an international creative community of students, artists, scholars, and leaders whose work and ideas have not only changed San Francisco and the region, but also the cultural life of the United States as a whole. Today, we continue to be a laboratory for investigating new forms, technologies, and, most important, new ideas."
|
|
