Helene Love-Allotey
Head of Department
Lot 7*,AR
William Kentridge(born 1955)Untitled (Two Drawings from Weighing and Wanting), 1997-98 33 x 40cm (13 x 15 3/4in) each.
15 November 2022, 14:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street£30,000 - £50,000
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William Kentridge (born 1955)
Untitled (Two Drawings from Weighing and Wanting), 1997-98
each signed 'KENTRIDGE' (lower left and lower right)
charcoal and pastel on cut and torn paper, adhered to mat board by the artist
33 x 40cm (13 x 15 3/4in) each.
each signed 'KENTRIDGE' (lower left and lower right)
charcoal and pastel on cut and torn paper, adhered to mat board by the artist
33 x 40cm (13 x 15 3/4in) each.
Footnotes
Provenance
Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa;
Private Collection, New York;
Acquired from the above by the current owner.
Literature
Hugh Davies and William Kentridge, William Kentridge: Weighing...and Wanting, (San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, 2000), pp.36-37 (illustrated).
The drawings and the film that comprise WEIGHING ... and WANTING, all dated 1997, center around Kentridge's character Soho Eckstein, a broad-shouldered, white South African industrialist whose self-assured place in the world has been dismantled by the ascendancy of the African National Congress and condemnation of apartheid. Eckstein's story is related through his personal meditations on a failed love affair, the Johannesburg landscape which stands as a silent witness to the atrocities of the apartheid era, and his own internal psychic landscape, represented by images of MRI brain scans. The title of the exhibition refers to a biblical episode in which a disembodied hand appears before King Belshazzar of Babylon and writes a message on the wall. It reads, "You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting, for you have not humbled your heart before God, so your kingdom has come to an end."
The present lot is reproduced in black and white in the catalogue for WEIGHING...and WANTING, which accompanied the exhibition of the same title (28 January - 12 April 1998). This exhibition travelled to seven other venues in North America.
