William Kentridge is internationally recognised for his drawings, films, and theatre and opera productions. His method combines drawing, writing, film, performance, music and theatre to create works of art based on politics, science, literature and history while maintaining a space for contradiction and uncertainty. (...) William Kentridge: "More Sweetly Play the Dance" installation which is part of the collection of Fundació Sorigué, will be shown at the Museo Picasso Málaga as an Invited Work from 21 November to 27 April next year.

Watching William Kentridge’s film Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot is like being submerged inside his mind, inside the coffee pot maybe. There’s so much going on both visually and intellectually that there’s no room at all for a viewer’s own feeble thoughts. Superficially, the film is a look inside the South African artist’s studio and an invitation to watch him work. Over four-and-a-half hours and nine themed episodes you see him making his familiar expressive drawings in charcoal and ink, but this studio is also a stage; there’s dance, puppetry, dips into history, astronomy, philosophy. ‘I wanted to try and make something that was not a documentary and that wasn’t fiction,’ he says, and he has. It’s utterly absorbing – and also funny.

The ever-productive South African artist William Kentridge used the focused isolation of COVID-19 lockdown wisely. In March 2020, he started imagining the project that would result, four years later, in a nine-part series about the artist’s studio. Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot was recently released on the subscriber service MUBI. It’s a bit astonishing that Kentridge could sustain this claustrophobic focus on the studio through all nine roughly 30-minute segments. But then again, this is an artist who has spent his career cracking open the quotidian acts of mark-making to tap into deeper frequencies of philosophical thought — only Kentridge, for instance, can summon from a scribble of charcoal or some torn paper bits an image of a horse that then somehow embodies all horses, from Pegasus to Napoleon’s Marengo. In the series, Kentridge endlessly circles the studio, mumbling about the absurdities of an art practice. He often talks to a double of himself, a seamlessly inserted video doppelganger. The two Williamses sit at a table, look at work, discuss life, aging, art, myth, the human body, and family memories.

At the height of the Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020, people all over the world were stuck by themselves (and with themselves), thinking over hard existential questions. Inside his Johannesburg studio, the South African artist William Kentridge took it a step further—making a film series in which two versions of Kentridge discuss philosophical topics and argue with each other about misremembered childhood occurrences. At times, a third Kentridge drops in to play peacemaker or explain something to the camera. Made over the span of two years and now streaming on Mubi, the nine-episode Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot (2022) combines humour and seriousness through dialogue (and monologue), animation, drawing, music and performance. A Dada-esque love letter to the studio and art-making, the series is delightfully optimistic. It is also exactly what one might expect from Kentridge in lockdown.

South African artist William Kentridge teams up with global film distributor and streaming platform MUBI to release his nine-episode film series Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot. Shot in Kentridge’s Johannesburg studio during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, the series draws inspiration from Charlie Chaplin, Dziga Vertov, and the innovative spirit of early cinema. Through a collection of distinct yet interconnected vignettes, it explores themes of humor, philosophy, politics, and artistic freedom—showcasing the resilience of creativity amidst isolation. ‘I wanted to make the films in the same way I would create a drawing,’ Kentridge explains in an interview with designboom, ‘without a script, following the impulse, letting the process unfold naturally.’ Following special previews at the Toronto International Film Festival and the BFI London Film Festival, and a presentation at the Arsenale Institute for the Politics of Representation during the 2024 Venice Biennale, the series will be available on MUBI starting October 18, 2024.

Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF) is delighted to present "A Shadow of a Shadow" from 28 September to 8 December 2024, a comprehensive survey of 17 performances by William Kentridge spanning from the late 1980s to the present. Kentridge’s first major solo exhibition in the Middle East showcases a wide range of his work, from his interpretations of King Ubu—the outrageous protagonist from Alfred Jarry’s play Ubu Roi [King Ubu] (1896)—to Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute (1791) alongside Kentridge’s original production The Head and the Load (2018) about Africa and Africans during World War I. Visitors will encounter a variety of objects and artworks produced for the development and presentation of Kentridge’s performance projects, including drawings, stage backdrops, animations, puppets, props, costumes and installations inspired by theatrical illusions.

Two in one, that’s what the Aix-en-Provence Festival is offering this year. Twice the pleasure; "The Great Yes, The Great No" is a lot, but it’s good. Relocated to LUMA Arles (from July 07 to 10, 2024), the chamber opera created by William Kentridge takes advantage of the artist’s skills as a visual artist to offer not only a lyrical performance, but also a vast exhibition, all in two of the venues of the Parc des Ateliers in Arles. The exhibition, entitled Je n attends plus (I don’t wait any longer), features several variations on a powerful theme: the failure of twentieth-century utopias and the roles played by artists in this context.

Several of the Luma's shows have the feel of a blockbuster, but perhaps none more so than William Kentridge’s "Je n’attends plus" (I Am Not Waiting Any Longer). This exhibition is an accompaniment to the South African artist’s new opera, "The Great Yes, The Great No", debuted at Luma Arles earlier this month, which puts a fantastical twist on a true story: that of a voyage from nearby Marseilles to Martinique in 1941, taken by artists and thinkers—Wifredo Lam and André Breton among them—looking to escape the ravages of war. Kentridge’s reimagining places other avant-garde artists, such as Frida Kahlo, pioneers of the anti-colonial Négritude movement, such as Aimé Cesare and the Nardal sisters, and other important figures of the time on this journey—their faces appearing as cardboard masks. "I Am Not Waiting Any Longer" takes visitors to the heart of his process: there are research materials, such as photographs taken on the actual crossing; cardboard masks scattered across a wall; and intricate maquettes of the set.

William Kentridge’s hyped "The Great Yes, The Great No" opened in Arles on Sunday as part of the Aix-en-Provence Festival [...] His installation work is intricate and theatrical, multi-layered and profound. [...] "The Great Yes, The Great No" is a work in progress. The fundamental idea, for all its complexity, is engaging. Intellectual exiles travelled aboard the Capitaine Paul-Lemerle from Marseille to Martinique in 1941, fleeing Vichy France. They included Surrealist André Breton, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, communist novelist Victor Serge, Cuban artist Wifredo Lam and author Anna Seghers. Kentridge has mythical afterworld ferryman Charon captain the ship and tosses in anticolonialist figureheads such as Aimé and Suzanne Césaire, sisters Jane and Paulette Nardal and Frantz Fanon.

Until January 12, William Kentridge presents "Je n'attends plus" at Mécanique Générale in Arles. This abundant and generous exhibition accompanies and extends "The Great Yes, The Great No", his new world creation presented from July 7 to 10, 2024 at the Parc des Ateliers as part of a partnership between Luma Arles and the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence. "Je n'attends plus" takes up half of the space at the Mécanique Générale shared with the exhibition "Quand les images apprennent à parler" by Fondation A pour Les Rencontres Arles 2024.

With calls for divestiture and charges of apartheid in Gaza dominating global news, marking the 30th anniversary of South Africa’s first democratic election is timely. [...] To commemorate 30 years since this milestone, Three Decades of Democracy: South African Works on Paper at the High Museum of Art is literally and figuratively a sidebar, located in a sliver of a gallery in the Wieland Pavilion. The first step in the curatorial process of such an installation would typically be a search in the High’s collection database for South African art. The result was a selection of works by eight Black and White artists — all men. [ ...] The most famous artist in the exhibition — at least to American and European visitors — is William Kentridge. His Dancing Woman from Zeno at 4am is one of nine etchings he created to accompany a signature shadow puppet play and film Zeno Writing (whether the High owns the other eight etchings is unclear). The project draws parallels between the final years of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the South African post-apartheid regime.

In March 2009, when Strauss & Co held its inaugural live auction of important South African art in Johannesburg, the catalogue included two works on paper by the acclaimed contemporary artist William Kentridge. Both works found eager buyers. [...] The nine works on paper by Kentridge in Strauss & Co’s forthcoming Online Day Sale and live virtual Evening Sale, scheduled for 28 May 2024, endorses this reputation. Leading the offering are two high-value drawings from outstanding international projects produced at the turn of the millennium, as well as an important etching by Kentridge made in 1997.