The exhibition presents new works on paper by renowned South African artist William Kentridge (b. 1955), inspired during the writing of his Norton Lectures, which he delivered at Harvard University in 2012. In more than 75 linocut prints based on ink sketches and printed on dictionary and encyclopedia pages, Kentridge revisits a familiar personal iconography, including coffee pots, typewriters, cats, trees, nudes and other imagery, exploring a thematic repertoire that has appeared in art and stage productions throughout his long career. The prints, which shift from identifiable subject matter to deconstructed images of abstract marks, form juxtapositions with the underlying text that suggest skepticism about the creative process and knowledge construction. 

Together with charcoal drawing, printmaking forms the core of Kentridge’s studio practice. Since the 1970s he has made over 300 prints utilizing a range of techniques, including etching, drypoint, engraving, silkscreen, lithography, and linocut. Unlike the act of drawing, in which the artist’s engagement with the support is mediated only through the hand and eye, the act of printmaking involves the surprising intrusion of an outside force—the mechanical act that creates the print, not only reversing the drawn image, but also potentially introducing unexpected changes. As Kentridge explained in 2010, “at the other side of the press is a version of your drawing that is different to the marks originally made. A separation, as if some other hand had made the print.”

In 2012, Kentridge held the prestigious Charles Eliot Norton lectureship at Harvard University. In the lectures entitled Six Drawing Lessons, the artist likened his drawing for a print to a “hypothesis,” and the printing press to “a primitive machine for logic.” Rather than follow a predetermined course, the roles played by chance and failure are recurring themes in Kentridge’s discussion of his studio practice. If the result (the “proof,” in both senses of the world) “does not hold out,” he explained, “the proposition must be altered, the plate reworked, sent back through the rollers to reveal a new proof.” Inspired by these lectures, the works in William Kentridge: Universal Archive began as drawings in India ink, executed using both what the artist calls a “good brush” as well as a “bad brush,” one with damaged bristles that produced less controlled marks. Together with his printing team, Kentridge then translated the drawings into linocuts, a technique capable of capturing the fluidity of line in a manner similar to that of drawing. In the resulting prints, trees birds, coffee pots and cats—each brought to life by thick, calligraphic lines—gambol over pages plucked from Encyclopedia Britannica and the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. The juxtapositions of image and text produces encounters that range from the playful to the melancholy, and which challenge the primacy of traditional (and now perhaps outdated) forms of creating and storing knowledge.

William Kentridge: Universal Archive is organized for tour by the Gund Gallery at Kenyon College and is made possible, in part, by contributions from Alva Greenberg '74, the Gund Gallery Board of Directors and Ohio Arts Council. Funding for the exhibition at Fairfield University is provided in part by the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Foundation. Venü magazine is the exclusive media sponsor of the 2017-2018 season in the Fairfield University Art Museum's Walsh Gallery.

Students in Professor Jo Yarrington's Introduction to Printmaking (SA 14), Spring 2018, used William Kentridge and the exhibition William Kentridge: Universal Archive at the Walsh Gallery, as an inspiration for their final projects. Please enjoy the selection of their works below.