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  Drawing Modern: Works from the Agnes Gund Collection > Highlights of the Exhibition > William Kentridge (South African, born 1955) Vitrine-Flipbook Drawings, 1999 (total of 26)
 
 
William Kentridge (South African, 1955)
Vitrine-Flipbook Drawings, 1999
Charcoal, gouache, watercolor, crayon, total of 26.
72 x 86-3/4 inches
Overall: each sheet: 167 x 240 cm.

William Kentridge (South African, born 1955)
Vitrine-Flipbook Drawings, 1999 (total of 26)

William Kentridge’s animated films are based on his charcoal drawings. On film, he records in separate frames the thousands of erasures and changes he makes to a single sheet of paper as his drawings evolve. The palimpsest effect and the ghost images that permeate the paper because of this technique strongly affect the films in both form and content. Through their interactions—often dream-like and expressionistic—with the landscape and environment, Kentridge’s characters reflect the issues of exploitation, racism, and power that have plagued the artist’s native South Africa.

These sheets were made for a flipbook published in 1999—a format that allows the viewer to experience a sequence of drawings in a way similar to the artist’s films. Drawn on a textbook of Catalan grammar, the sequence shows a naked figure isolated in a pool looking down at a floating hat; he reaches down for it, puts it on, and faces us frontally. He then metamorphoses into a figure dressed in a pinstriped suit. The hat slowly moves down the man’s body and consumes him, transforming finally into a telephone that floats on the water, representing an Everyman affected by the desires and strictures of a postindustrial world.

Page 6 of 8 | On the next page: Roy Lichtenstein (American, 1923–1997)
Study for “Artist’s Studio with Model,” 1974