charcoal on paper

Artwork date: 1991
Signature details: accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist

(1)

75 x 90 cm; framed size: 85 x 100 x 4.5 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, Cape Town.

Acquired directly from the artist.

Notes:

This intensely expressive charcoal drawing is one of 18 drawings William Kentridge produced as a still for his 1991 animated film Mine – the third in a series of short stop-motion films titled Drawings for Projection, which is included in numerous world-renowned collections such as the Tate in London, the Smithsonian in Washington DC, the Art Institute of Chicago, The Broad Museum in Los Angeles and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh.

In Mine, Kentridge draws a parallel between the exploitation of natural resources of the land and the colonial legacy of human labour abuse and injustice. Each drawing in the film presents a single scene, which Kentridge continuously alters through a process of erasing and redrawing, photographing each stage of their revolution to create ‘movement’ in the film.

The significance of this particular drawing is that it introduces the claustrophobic ‘nether world’ – the concealed and isolated sleeping bunker – of the mineworkers (as opposed to mining magnate Soho's ‘upper world’ of comfort and luxury) early on in the film. Thus, setting the stage for the stark juxtaposing of two different socio-economic realities – a critical reference to South African politics pre-democracy. As the narrative unfolds, the setting of the drawing is presented again. This time a mine cart discards its contents onto the figure in left view, cementing him to the floor, concreting his arms and leaving him helpless and motionless – a poignant rendering which is the final scene of this powerful drawing. Its inherent meaning direct and politically fierce.

The setting of this drawing cites an early photograph which captures the way workers were housed in concrete bunks on South Africa’s gold mines, featured in A People’s History of South Africa. Gold and Workers, 1886-1924 (published in 1981) by social historian Luli Callinicos. Interestingly, Kentridge even retained the overhead lights in his reworking of this image.

The early drawings from Kentridge’s films, like this one, are extremely scarce, highly sought-after, and rarely become available to the market. In 2017, Aspire Art sold another drawing from Mine; Soho with Coffee Plunger and Cup for just over R5,456,640, setting a record price for a drawing by Kentridge in South Africa at the time.

Marelize van Zyl