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Kentridge's Sleeper a unique working proof

6 Sep 2012

Kentridge drew on French dramatist Alfred Jarry’s play Ubu Roi, which premiered in 1896, to reflect on the revelations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Into the bloated form of the mad despot Ubu the body of a man has been inserted – asleep, naked and vulnerable.

While entirely different in form, the Sleepers are reminiscent of Goya’s The Sleep of Reason produces Monsters, his socio-political commentary on the vices of eighteenth-century Spain, where the artist is surrounded by demonic creatures. Produced in 1997 as the new constitution was coming into effect and the TRC hearings were exposing evidence of unlawful activity and gross human rights violations, Kentridge’s Sleepers consider the implications of those revelations and their impact on the bodies and psyches of South Africans.

The artist has described how he obtained texture in his large drawings by wheeling bicycles across the paper, hitting it with charcoal-impregnated silk rope and inviting children and cats to walk across it .¹ In the Sleeper prints a range of materials and objects were placed into the soft ground on the copper plate to create the extraordinary range of textures that add visual interest, evoke the passage of time and suggest the flaws and mutilations inscribed onto the human body.

Important South African & International Art, Furniture, Silver, Ceramics, Glass & Jewellery
including the Vivienne Linder Collection

Monday 8 October 2012
The Vineyard Hotel, Cape Town
Preview: Friday 5 to Sunday 7 October from 10am to 5pm
Enquiries: 021 683 6560/ 078 044 8185

Caption:
William Kentridge
Sleeper & Ubu
1977
R300 000 – 400 000

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¹ William Kentridge in William Kentridge Prints, David Krut Publishing, Johannesburg and Grinnell College, Iowa, 2006, page 66.