Notes

An interest in optics and the construct of seeing informs William Kentridge’s experiments with stereoscopic vision, of which Table with Sparrow forms a part. Table with Sparrow translates the set of small photographic images inserted into a stereopticon, as seen in Kentridge’s earlier Double Vision (2007), into two large-scale drawings forming a diptych and was subsequently made into an editioned work by the artist.

A sense of contention and play is brought into the artist’s practice through the questioning of perception that Table with Sparrow proposes. It also harkens back to early experiments in binocular perception that found their way into the repertoire of popular entertainment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

After studying Political Science at Wits in the late 1970s William Kentridge studied the art of mime in Paris in the early 1980s. He now continually combines these interests in his art. His phenomenal drawing skills were sharpened while studying at the Johannesburg Art Foundation and, in the numerous stop-frame video animations of the 1990s and the large-scale installations of the early twenty-first century, he dramatically renders the effects of colonialism on the oppressed. Regularly mounting major exhibitions and dramatic productions, locally and internationally, he is the recipient of numerous local and international awards and is the true embodiment of Contemporary African Art.

Exhibited

Norval Foundation, Cape Town, William Kentridge: Why Should I Hesitate, Sculpture, 24 August 2019 to 27 July 2020, another impression from the edition exhibited.

Literature

Karel Nel and Owen Martin (2019) William Kentridge: Why Should I Hesitate, Sculpture, Cape Town: Norval Foundation, another impression from the edition illustrated in colour on pages 197, and 249.