Strauss & co - Wits Art Museum

WITS ARTS MUSEUM ENDOWMENT AUCTION 33 21 William Kentridge (b.1955) No title Drawing on found pages 90,5 x 180,5 cm 2012 Donated by the artist R1 200 000 – 1 600 000 This suite of playful ink drawings on book pages references Dancing with Dada , a collaborative performance work presented by Kentridge and Dada Masilo as part of Kentridge’s 2011 performance series, Refusing the Hour . In Dancing with Dada , Kentridge and Masilo grapple with changing notions about the linear construction of time. In this consideration of an ever-changing notion of time, these drawings simultaneously evoke Kentridge’s well-known hand-drawn animations as well as his ongoing use of theatrical performativity. The hinge between paired book pages becomes a subtle point of tension between the paired figures: one figure pulls, while the other pushes; one leans, while the other kneels; the figures collapse into an inky abstraction then shift back into focus becoming the fore and hind quarters of a horse. As the eye makes the leap from one pairing to the next, one may recall the experience of thumbing through a ‘flip-book’: the simple hand-held bound-paper construction that creates the illusion of motion and the passage of time.  PPS