Footnotes for the Panther

In June of 2010, William Kentridge asked Denis Hirson to join him in a public conversation at the opening of Cinq Thèmes, the artist’s retrospective exhibition at the Jeu du Paume in Paris. So fruitful was this event that the two decided to have further conversations, public and private, whenever the time and the occasion seemed right. Nine engagements followed, allowing them to explore at great length the many issues and themes arising from Kentridge’s work. These conversations, in which a writer and an artist grapple with the enormous complexities of making art, grow out of a friendship that stretches back to the 1980s and that is deeply entwined in the fortunes of the city where they both grew up and the country that is the wellspring of their work.