Important South African & International Art, Furniture, Decorative Arts & Jewellery

Live Auction, 13 October 2014

Cape & Colonial Silver & Furniture, International & South African Art Day Sale
  • William Kentridge; Forswearing Bad Company, from the Industry and Idleness series


Lot Estimate
ZAR 28 000 - 34 000

About this Item

South African 1955-
Forswearing Bad Company, from the Industry and Idleness series

dated 1986 and inscribed with the title in the plate; signed, dated '87, numbered 21/30 in pencil in the margin, and impressed with the Caversham Press chop mark

hard ground etching, aquatint and drypoint
image size: 33 by 28,5cm

Notes

"I worked on a series of prints based on William Hogarth's work [...] Industry and Idleness, this time set in Johannesburg. Hogarth's moral fable shows the industrious apprentice marrying his boss's daughter and ending up as Lord Mayor of London, whilst the idle apprentice falls prey to vice (he gambles in the churchyard) and ends up hanged at Tyburn. In the South Africa of the 1980s this moral equivalent did not seem to hold, and my series shows the industrious man still doomed by circumstances beyond him - in this case his class and his race - while someone in a different position, of different colour and privilege, ends up wealthy and successful despite his idleness [...]"

William Kentridge Prints, David Krut Publishing, Johannesburg, 2006, page 30

Literature

Bronwyn Law-Viljoen (ed). (2006) William Kentridge Prints, Johannesburg: David Krut Publishing. Illustrated on page 30.

Warren Siebrits, (2002) States of Emergence: South Africa 1960-1990, Johannesburg: Warren Siebrits Modern and Contemporary Art. Illustrated.

Michael Sittenfeld (ed). (2001) William Kentridge. Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art; New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art in association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers. Illustrated on page 77.

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