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Zeno Writing

Print
2002 (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

The work of white South African artist William Kentridge is rooted in his opposition to apartheid. In 2002 he made a series of prints based on the novel Confessions of Zeno (1923), by Italo Svevo. One of the earliest novels to be written as if from the psychiatrist’s couch, Confessions of Zeno manifests the guilt-ridden soul that Kentridge explores in earlier works addressing the apartheid regime. The novel centres on a middle-class businessman in Trieste in the years immediately before the First World War, reduced to bankruptcy when he goes into business with his feckless brother-in-law. This impending disaster echoes the wider political one, although much of the narrative revolves around the households of Zeno and his wife’s family.

In Kentridge’s series the ‘confessions’, which take the form of abstract but calligraphic lines, trail over the surface of the things described: bowler-hatted puppets (businessmen perhaps?) and weird megaphone-like instruments confront one another in empty landscapes; a lion stalks the bars of its cage. In this scene the furniture itself seems to have come alive, suggesting the powerful position that our homes and our domestic possessions hold in our lives.


Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleZeno Writing (series title)
Materials and techniques
Photogravure etching and drypoint on paper
Brief description
William Kentridge: plate from the suite 'Zeno Writing', 2002, based on the book 'Confessions of Zeno' by Italo Svevo. Photogravure, etching and drypoint
Physical description
Scene in a room or on a stage? Three chairs and a small table. Chairs not square on the floor and two of them appear to have two legs off the floor; the legs of the third curved in a lively way. What appear to be ropes or strings hanging in loops over the front of the 'stage' and other lines drawn over the chairs, suggest writing over the main image, this enhanced by the linear patterns made by three candelabra suspended from the ceiling of the room.
Dimensions
  • Sheet height: 50.4cm
  • Sheet width: 65.5cm
  • Printed surface height: 35.2cm
  • Printed surface width: 48.6cm
Production typeLimited edition
Copy number
23/30
Marks and inscriptions
  • 'WKentridge' (Signed in pencil below image to the right)
  • '23/30' (Inscribed in pencil below the image to the left)
Credit line
Purchased through the Julie and Robert Breckman Print Fund
Production
A talk on photogravure given by Randy Hemminghaus, master printer, at Witwatersrand University c.2002, to a group of local artists, inspired Kentridge to use the technique as the basis for the 'Zeno Writing' suite.

Reason For Production: Retail
Subjects depicted
Place depicted
Literary referenceConfessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo
Summary
The work of white South African artist William Kentridge is rooted in his opposition to apartheid. In 2002 he made a series of prints based on the novel Confessions of Zeno (1923), by Italo Svevo. One of the earliest novels to be written as if from the psychiatrist’s couch, Confessions of Zeno manifests the guilt-ridden soul that Kentridge explores in earlier works addressing the apartheid regime. The novel centres on a middle-class businessman in Trieste in the years immediately before the First World War, reduced to bankruptcy when he goes into business with his feckless brother-in-law. This impending disaster echoes the wider political one, although much of the narrative revolves around the households of Zeno and his wife’s family.

In Kentridge’s series the ‘confessions’, which take the form of abstract but calligraphic lines, trail over the surface of the things described: bowler-hatted puppets (businessmen perhaps?) and weird megaphone-like instruments confront one another in empty landscapes; a lion stalks the bars of its cage. In this scene the furniture itself seems to have come alive, suggesting the powerful position that our homes and our domestic possessions hold in our lives.
Collection
Accession number
E.133-2005

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Record createdJanuary 4, 2006
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