The Albertinum is highlighting two films: “More Sweetly Play the Dance”, made in 2015, features a procession of silhouetted figures. Led by a flag-bearer and spurred on by the lively ebb and flow of brass band music, a motley cavalcade of very different individuals advances across a barren landscape.
The seemingly constant flow is broken by short and longer gaps and disrupted by figures occasionally moving in the opposite direction, sporadically slowing and quickening the pace. Kentridge’s composition suggests a history which, rather than proceeding in a straight line towards its destination, is complicated by repetitions, interruptions and twists.
Kentridge’s figures cross paths in this exhibition with Dresden’s “Fürstenzug”, the panegyric portrayal of Saxony’s ruling Wettin dynasty in the cortege stretching more than 100 metres along the outer wall of the former Stallhof. The sketches for this mural, drawn on a scale of 1:1, form part of the Kupferstich-Kabinett’s collection and were recently restored. In this presentation they engage in a dialogue with the film: here the march through the Saxon history books, there humanity on its arduous path through life.
The second film, “Oh To Believe In Another World” (2022), was commissioned to accompany the 10th Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975), composed by the Russian after Stalin’s death. During the Stalin era, Shostakovich’s life swerved to and fro between compliance and artistic self-assertion, and this symphony is widely regarded as a settling of scores with the dictator. Drawing on the composer’s life and music, Kentridge constructs an arc from the death of Lenin (1924) to the end of Stalin’s rule (1953). In “Oh To Believe In Another World” we meet “history in the form of a collage” (William Kentridge).
The next section of this display co-opts other items – drawings, props, photographs, collages – to convey an impression of how these two films were designed and implemented. There are also selected sculptures, tapestries, prints and kinetic objects which expand on the themes in the films, adding to the spectrum in form and content and offering a broader glimpse of the artist’s versatile output.
William Kentridge is one of the world’s most important contemporary artists. The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden are dedicating an extensive exhibition project to the internationally acclaimed artist to mark his 70th birthday with exhibitions at Albertinum, Kupferstich-Kabinett and Puppentheatersammlung.
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