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| Polifilo Giancarli and Odoardo Fialetti from Disegni Varii di Polifilo Zancarli before 1628 etching Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Polifilo Giancarli and Odoardo Fialetti from Disegni Varii di Polifilo Zancarli before 1628 etching Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Polifilo Giancarli and Odoardo Fialetti from Disegni Varii di Polifilo Zancarli before 1628 etching Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Polifilo Giancarli and Odoardo Fialetti from Disegni Varii di Polifilo Zancarli before 1628 etching Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"It is about the promiscuity of making. I hadn't thought of it in terms of the difference between bastardy and hybridity, but you're absolutely right. I'm always interested – well, not always – but I have a lot of space for inauthentic origins of work. That doesn't necessarily mean that some of the best work doesn't result from clear thinking and a good idea. There are works that I've done as a result of someone saying, 'Will you do an etching for this benefit event?' and I've thought, 'Oh my god, all right, I'll do something quickly!' Sometimes, those turn out to be the starting point of a really interesting project. At Venice, I was asked if I would do something for their fire screen. That started in bad faith. I'd agreed to it and then I thought, 'God, I really can't, it can only fail, it's of no interest.' But I'd said I would, so I gave myself two weeks to do it, and I did it really fast, I was still angry with myself for having agreed to it. Only at a certain point halfway through did I see that I was really interested. And it became a substantive project despite having an inauthentic origin. By inauthentic, I mean that it started with bad faith. I began with 'How do I do this?' and the sense that it was a work that needed to be done, rather than the sense that I was burning with a clear image of something I had to bring into the world. That's another way of rejecting the need for good beginnings."
– from That Which is Not Drawn by William Kentridge, in conversation with Rosalind C. Morris (Seagull Books, 2014)
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| Anonymous Venetian artist Horizontal panel with design of five hybrid figures fighting a lion ca. 1600-1650 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Anonymous Venetian artist Horizontal panel with design of five male figures fighting a dragon ca. 1600-1650 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Anonymous Venetian artist Horizontal panel with design of four male figures and fantastical creature ca. 1600-1650 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Anonymous Venetian artist Horizontal panel with design of four male figures fighting a lion ca. 1600-1650 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Anonymous Venetian artist Horizontal panel with design of male figure fighting a sphinx ca. 1600-1650 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"I think the activity of being an artist rather than, say, a philosopher, consists in trying to maintain a place – which one does as a matter of survival, not as a matter of theoretical argument – where it should be possible to find meaning, although not only through the process of rationality. I supposes what Freud does is use the most rigorous sort of rational means to excavate and arrive at the space that is fundamentally immune to rationality. . . . When I say it's not just a matter of choice or decision, I am also trying to understand that what made it necessary for me to be an artist was that need to establish meaning in the world in a manner that was not susceptible to the kind of cross-examination that a lawyer's family would give it."
– from That Which is Not Drawn by William Kentridge, in conversation with Rosalind C. Morris (Seagull Books, 2014)
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| Anonymous Venetian artist Horizontal panel with design of male figure, serpent, and fantastic female figure ca. 1600-1650 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Anonymous Venetian artist Horizontal panel with design of three male figures ca. 1600-1650 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Anonymous Venetian artist Horizontal panel with design of three male figures ca. 1600-1650 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Anonymous Venetian artist Horizontal panel with design of two male figures ca. 1600-1650 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Anonymous Venetian artist Horizontal panel with design of two male figures playing horns ca. 1600-1650 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |