I'm DJing tomorrow:
9am - noon PST, Sunday, May 24
KALX Berkeley 90.7fm
I remember that the first time I saw South African artist William Kentridge's animated piece Tide Table at SFMOMA it brought me to tears with its powerful contrast between the dark charcoal lines Kentridge uses to illustrate the aftermath of colonialism in Africa and the gorgeous music from that continent he uses as score. I had a sneaking suspicion the work in the museum's current William Kentridge: Five Themes exhibition would break my heart all over again, so I put off seeing the show until last Sunday, very close to when it closes on May 31. I shouldn't have been so worried. Yes, there are some hard things to see in the show as Kentridge unapologetically grapples with a host of difficult political issues, but there are also many moments of sheer beauty. I gasped with pleasure at the surreal image of teeming ants transformed into a constellation of stars by reversing black for white in one video, in a room full of other films similarly inspired by the whimsical genius of Georges Méliès. Another gallery is devoted to Kentridge's designs for the upcoming Metropolitan Opera production of Shostakovich's opera based on Gogol's story The Nose, and they thrillingly synthesize shadowy figures marching across a white scrim, elements of Russian constructivism, and quotes by Nikolai Bukharin from the 1938 trial that led to his execution. That room was instantly my favorite part of the entire exhibition, but the section that displays Kentridge's work on Mozart's The Magic Flute is also breathtaking, the way it features a rotating presentation of projections (some on miniature working sets!) soundtracked by the opera's transcendent music. I had not realized how deeply Kentridge has integrated his work with theater, and I am now totally kicking myself for sleeping on the production of Monteverdi's The Return of Ulysses that was staged at Theater Artaud earlier this spring in conjunction with the SFMOMA show. Hideous Sunday, however, can tell you all about it.