Friday afternoon I saw just about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. We went to The Modern, Ft. Worth’s modern art museum, to see William Kentridge’s “Five Themes” exhibit. Ed had already seen this show at SFMOMA, and raved about it. He came back with a book and an audio CD and tried to explain it, but it was hard for me to grasp. Hopefully the ability to use links and videos here will help me do a better job. Although I know the videos can’t really do it justice, and I really wish this exhibit was traveling to more cities.

First, Ed was absolutely right that this show was right up my alley. Wonderful charcoal drawings with a scientific element? Check. Video? Check. Animation? Check. Unique music? Check. Humor? Check. Robotics? Check. Bird images? Check.

So what is it? Well, mostly film installations that include animations done in charcoal or chalk sometimes on a single piece of paper (i.e. he modifies the drawings in place by erasing and redrawing), and sometimes the paper is book pages, and sometimes there is some live action with the animation, and sometimes the live action is Kentridge himself, and sometimes the animation is projected into a puppet-show sized theater, and sometimes the theater has mechanical “actors” made out of paper and erector set pieces and drafting instruments that come out and perform some actions that they have been programmed to perform. And but also many of the very large drawings used for the animations are displayed on the walls, and everything is set to music composed by Philip Miller, and sometimes there are as many as 10 of these films being shown surround-like in one room, but it all works so well together that you (I) stand there for forty-five minutes looking around, jaw agape. Oh, and some sculpture.

In addition, there is an animated charcoal film that is projected from the ceiling as a ring and it spins, and the drawings are distorted but the whole mess is reflected up onto a mirror-like cylinder in the center of the ring, and on the cyclinder the drawings are not distorted, and they move around the cylinder and tell the story of the 1935 Abyssinian war, and the whole effect is as beautiful as it is technically astounding.

We did not allow enough time for this exhibit, and at 5 o’clock Ed found me and told me the museum was closing. I hadn’t seen everything, so I spent another 15 minutes or so dodging docents (one of whom saw me but pretended he didn’t; he was the one who told me earlier in response to my questions that the exhibit came with its own technicians who were hidden in a room to fix things when they broke down). Eventually though a younger security guard told me sternly that the museum was closed, and we left. The exhibit is there a few more weeks though, and I plan to go back.

Two of the best pieces in this exhibit were derived from opera stagings Kentridge has done. The miniature theaters included films created for a production of The Magic Flute in Brussels, and the room with lots of projections in it that I couldn’t stop looking at was from an upcoming production of The Nose for the Metropoliton Opera.

New York Times article about Kentridge
William Kentridge’s “Five Themes” exhibit