The South African artist William Kentridge revealed how the personal was political at a press view of his solo show in London yesterday, 9 September. Featured at Marian Goodman Gallery (11 September-24 October) are powerful drawings and a video piece referring to the Cultural Revolution. Kentridge described being a 13-year-old in Jo’berg in 1968, when he dearly wished that he was five years older and in Paris, manning the barricades. Meanwhile, in Beijing and across China that year, students were waving little red books and denouncing their poor professors, he noted. Kentridge said he thought the video work might be censored when it was first shown in Beijing at the Ullens Center earlier this year as it was inspired by the agit-prop Model Operas beloved of Madame Mao. (She commissioned more than a dozen, starring ballet dancers en pointe waving rifles and lobbing grenades). But it was screened in a space on an upper floor and “censors don’t like to climb stairs” in China, Kentridge said, pleased his riff on revolutionary art as absurdist performance remained on view for the show’s duration.
