Notes

‘The idea of presenting the studio as the world crept into European art history from the seventeenth century onwards, investigated famously by Velasquez, Vermeer, and Courbet. Hans Namuth filmed Jackson Pollock pouring and arcing paint. Picasso drew centaurs in the air with a flashlight for his ‘light drawings’, and Matisse’s poised brush was captured before it touched paper – all examples of the creative act as subject.’¹

‘In the late 1970s I made a series of drawings in which the mise-en-scene was a three-walled pit. Then I tried to get away from this by having a single horizon line in the set of monoprints that followed. I understood that I was stuck in these two kinds of representations of space. I realised it was possible to construct space and lighting at will, not trapped by Renaissance perspective and lighting.’² The present lot is one variation on the theme. It depicts Pyramus and Thisbe, hero and heroine of a Babylonian love story, a pair of ill-fated lovers in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The story tells of their plight of being able to communicate only through a crack in the wall between their houses. In Kentridge’s monoprint, a type of easel becomes the ‘wall’.

‘These monoprints take their cue from two factors. The total blackness of the plate with printer’s ink on it – the monoprint equivalent of a white sheet of paper – and the size of my thumb, which decided both the fleshiness of the figures drawn and the scale they would be: a thumbprint equalled the size of buttocks, a baby finger equalled breasts. This was supplemented by tissue paper, cotton buds and an occasional matchstick. The prints began as an investigation into what would be the minimum one would have to remove from the inked surface of the plate to reveal the space and the figures. The simple three walls of a theatrical space became the given format of all the images, with minor variations of the viewers looking over the top (Goya’s bullfights were certainly in my mind). The prints were also determined by the drying rate of the ink, and had to be completed in a day.³

1. Kate McCrickard (2012) William Kentridge, Johannesburg: David Krut, page 61.
2. William Kentridge, quoted in Dan Cameron (et al) (1999) William Kentridge, London: Phaidon, page 17.
3. Bronwyn Law-Viljoen (2006) William Kentridge Prints, Johannesburg: David Krut, page 24.

Exhibited

The Market Theatre Gallery, Johannesburg, William Kentridge, 4 November to 1 December 1979, the artist's first solo exhibition, the Pit Series exhibited.

Literature

Bettie Lambrecht (1979) 'Prisoners of Each Other', Beeld, 10 November, the present lot mentioned.

Erica Emdon (1979) 'From the Courtyard', Financial Mail, 23 November, the present lot mentioned.

David Krut (2006) William Kentridge Prints, Johannesburg: David Krut, works from the same series illustrated on pages 24 and 25.

Kate McCrickard (2012) William Kentridge, London: Tate, another work from the same series illustrated on page 62.