William Kentridge – Smoke, Ashes, Fable

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.