William Kentridge: Smoke, Ashes, Fable

by Margaret K. Koerner (Author, Contributor), Benjamin H. D. Buchloh (Contributor), Joseph Leo Koerner (Contributor), Harmon Siegel (Contributor)

South African artist William Kentridge (b. 1955) has become famous for his time-lapse animation movies and installations, as well as his activities as an opera and theater director. This book offers a unique selection of Kentridge’s work curated for Sint-Janshospitaal in Bruges — at 800 years one of Europe’s oldest surviving hospital buildings — organized around the themes of trauma, healing, and compassion. The book features an introduction by Margaret K. Koerner, and also includes essays by diverse distinguished contributors: Benjamin H. D. Buchloh considers Kentridge’s alternate reception of the historical avant-garde from a perspective of exile; Joseph Leo Koerner explores the artist’s work as a self-styled process of "working through" in which the past simultaneously disfigures and redeems; and Harmon Siegel examines Kentridge’s approach to film history.