Notes

Cambio, Dogana and Pensione comprise a set of three lithographs printed in an edition of forty, of which this is number twenty. Like Kentridge’s series of etchings titled Sleeping on Glass, six (1999), they were created by the chine collé or India proof method. This involves simultaneously printing on and mounting a thin sheet of paper onto a sturdier backing paper. In this case, Kentridge has used double pages from an old Baedecker Guide to Italy stuck onto a backing of white wove paper, with the result that every print is unique. Below the lithograph image on each print the title words, in capital letters, have been added by hand in blue crayon. Cambio depicts a man’s naked upper body emerging from a pool of water. His hatted head is bowed in profile towards a megaphone on stilts, also in the water, which faces him. Additional blue lines join the man and the megaphone at his head and stomach levels and extend from each to the corner of the printed text of the Baedecker page. Strokes of turquoise watercolour have been painted in the area around the title to denote water. The image is printed over Baedecker pages headed ‘Milan’. Dogana is printed onto pages titled ‘Venice’. It depicts a pair of artist’s drawing easels standing in an empty landscape. They are nearly identical, one on each side of the spread double page. Pensione depicts a suited man and his shadow. He appears in full on the left side of the image, printed over a page headed ‘Bologna’. A dark shadowy version of his body is printed on the right side of the image over a page headed ‘Ferrara’.

Tate. (2017) William Kentridge: Cambio, Dogana and Pensione [Online], Available: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/kentridge-cambio-p78560 [19 July 2017].