3rd Sep, 2020 20:00
Modern & Contemporary Art
133
William Kentridge (South Africa 1955-)
Dancer Twice (dark)
charcoal and pastel on paper
Artwork date: 1996
Signature details: signed and dated bottom right
Sold for R1,251,800
Estimated at R950,000 - R1,200,000
charcoal and pastel on paper
Artwork date: 1996
Signature details: signed and dated bottom right
(1)
71.5 x 51.5 cm
Notes:
Drawing is central to William Kentridge’s practice. His celebrated suite of films is, after all, entitled Drawings for Projection, acknowledging that their gestation lies in the act of drawing. As a medium, drawing is a process allowing for thinking, experimentation, sequential development and the presentation of different points of view. This suite of works provides insights into how Kentridge develops his ideas through processes of drawing and related printmaking. As the artist puts it: “What does it mean to say that something is a drawing – as opposed to a fundamentally different form, such as a photograph? First of all, arriving at the image is a process, not a frozen instant. Drawing for me is about fluidity. There may be a vague sense of what you’re going to draw but things occur during the process that may modify, consolidate or shed doubts on what you know. So drawing is a testing of ideas; a slow-motion version of thought. It does not arrive instantly like a photograph. The uncertain and imprecise way of constructing a drawing is sometimes a model of how to construct meaning. What ends in clarity does not begin that way”. Amongst his drawings, Dancer Twice is unique for its sublime beauty free of the pain and anguish associated with so many of his drawings for projection. Here a dancer with an apparently effortless surge of expressive energy, leaps forward, the folds of her diaphanous tunic gracefully animating the action.Dance and dancers recur throughout Kentridge’s oeuvre. More Sweetly Play the Dance (2015), takes the form of a tragic procession; Notes for a Model Opera (2015), with dancer Dada Masilo, comments on the manipulation of art for propagandistic purposes while the monumental frieze flanking the Tiber, Triumphs and Laments: A Project for Rome (2016) incorporated two troupes of dancers advancing towards one another. But none matches the charming celebration of life in this lovely early work, Dancer Twice.
Emma Bedford
Sources:
[i] ‘Interview: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev in conversation with William Kentridge’ in Cameron, D., Christov-Bakargiev, C. and Coetzee, J. M. (1999) William Kentridge. New York: Phaidon Press Inc., p. 8.
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Auction: Modern & Contemporary Art, 3rd Sep, 2020
This Spring, Aspire Art Auctions broke new ground with a fresh, yet considered selection of artworks that is demographically more representative and reflects the spirit of current times. With a strong focus on South Africa, the sale also proudly represented artists from 10 African countries (Benin, DRC, Ghana, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Sudan, Togo, Uganda and Zimbabwe) and international artists from Europe, the UK and USA.
A great highlight was Edoardo Villa’s monumental steel sculpture titled Traverse from 1957 which achieved R4,893,400 – an auction record for the artist. Other exceptional offerings included works by Gerard Sekoto, George Pemba, Peter Clarke and Nicholas Hlobo.
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