Artist: William Kentridge (South African, b. 1955)

Title: Typewriter

Audio: 

Date: 2003

Dimensions: 30 1/2″ x 36 11/16″

Location in Library: First floor

Media: Sugarlift aquatint, works on paper

Owner: The Brooklyn College Library Collection. Purchased with The Dormitory Authority of New York Art Acquisition Funds. © William Kentridge

Description:

The typewriter in this print is full of quirky character; the old-fashioned keys, typebars, and levers twitch with motion and life, even in the absence of a typist.

William Kentridge infuses many of his works with this kind of vitality, and he often combines them to make stop-motion animations, or “drawings for projection.” Though the resulting films are sequences of still images, they burst with energy, especially when he is addressing politically charged subjects such as apartheid.

Related Websites
– William Kentridge at MoMA
– William Kentridge at New Museum
– “Why the Art World Is So Drawn to William Kentridge” from New York Magazine

–William Kentridge’s Charcoal Drawings Animate Africa’s History of Colonial Resistance