William Kentridge, Drawing for the opera The Magic Flute, 2004–5; Collection of the artist, courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York; © 2008 William Kentridge; photo: John Hodgkiss, courtesy the artist.

This production uses all that was learned in creating Preparing the Flute, plus it adds six mechanical animatronic figures that come into view at appropriate times. The figures are capable of moving in several ways and at times they appear to sing or to interact with the animation on the scrim behind them. Near the production's finale a character that looks something like a Luxo table lamp, interacts with a dancing rhino. The rhino manages to propel itself up and over the lamp at one point while doing a midair somersault. While that is going on the computer controlled lamp turns around and seems to watch the rhino's performance.

While the rhino's performance is whimsical, other imagery is quite disturbing included two animated figures smashing a human skull to bits. The soundtrack accompanying this 22-minute work includes recordings made in Namibia and music by Philip Miler, a composer Kentridge works with frequently.

The underlying theme of the evils of colonialism reappears in the forth and most unusual work in the exhibition. Kentridge says What Will Come (has already come), 2007, refers to Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. The work attracted large crowds, but it is not the animated horrors of the Fascist Italian soldiers (a biplane dropping bombs, Negroes hanging from trees, etc.) that fascinates; it is the unusual presentation of distorted looking animation. The video projector points straight down from the ceiling and projects distorted (warped or elongated) images onto a flat round projection screen (called a planar surface in the gallery label). These distorted images are hard to make out, but when viewed in the cylinder shaped mirror that is placed upright on the flat round tabletop screen, the images are reconstituted and appear normal. I can find no explanation on how he draws distorted images that will appear normal in the mirror, but this visual trick is a showstopper. The gallery label says the work suggests "the cyclical nature of history and its potential for distortion."

Drawing for the film Sobriety, Obesity & Growing Old [Soho and Mrs. Eckstein in Pool], 1991; Collection of the artist; © 2008 William Kentridge; photo: John Hodgkiss, courtesy the artist.

Other Works
The Kentridge exhibit includes other themes that have engaged him over the past three decades. There is much more to see including over a dozen more animated films plus drawings, prints, sculptures, and books. The show in San Francisco filled about 10 extremely large galleries with high ceilings. Also, to make the exhibit more important, the artist presented lectures and evenings where his early opera work was performed.

The artist was born in 1955 and raised in South Africa. After graduating with a BA in politics and African studies he earning a diploma in fine arts. Then he traveled to Paris to study mime and theater. He worked with theater companies as a TV director and actor (1975 -'91). He began to establish his reputation as an artist around 1980 with series of etchings and monotypes. His first animated work dates from 1989. Since then he has had work shown in dozens of art galleries and museums around the world. It has been a long slow journey for Kentridge to get to the point where the long established art museums of the world are interested in honoring him with a major traveling retrospective.

Staging large traveling shows is an expensive undertaking due to fees the public is generally unaware of (framing works, building shipping crates, shipping fees, and the costs of insurance, publicity, printing, research and a lot of other charges). While museum can expect to make money and get tremendous amounts of publicity for blockbuster exhibits of King Tut treasurers or Van Gogh paintings, they are taking risks on less well-known artists, including Kentridge. Thankfully the Koret Foundation, the National Endowment of the Arts and other sponsors helped to make this show possible.

The show is traveling to eight museums in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East. After SF it went to the Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth, Texas, July 11-Sept. 27, 2009. After that it will be seen at The Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, Nov. 7-Jan. 17, 2010; The Museum of Modern Art, NYC, Feb. 28 -May 17; the Jeu de Paume, Paris, July 5 - Sept. 26; the Albertina in Vienna, Oct. 30-Jan. 30, 2011; the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, March 5 -May 29 and the Stedejlijk Museum, Amsterdam, July 7-Oct. 2. Curators from the SF MOMA and the Norton Museum organized the exhibition. A large, well-illustrated book about the show with a DVD included is available.

It is quite possible that 2009 will be recognized as a turning point in animation history, the year major art museums finally honored animation as a great art form. I hope readers of this article will be able to see one or several of the shows mentioned.

Karl Cohen is president of ASIFA-SF and teaches animation history at SF State University. He is the author of Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted Animators, as well as hundreds of articles about animation, many published by AWN.