William Kentridge’s Triumphs and Laments: The Challenges and Pleasures of Collaboration

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay traces the artistic collaborations between William Kentridge and two Johannesburg-based printmaking studios: Artist Proof Studio (APS) and the David Krut Print Workshop (DKW). It is intentionally descriptive, in order to document the process of collaboration between the artist and master printers in the making of a series of composite prints based on Kentridge’s 2016 Tiber River frieze, Triumphs and Laments. Although video documentation exists of the rehearsals of Kentridge’s performance works, little attention has been paid to the nature of his collaborations in the making of his prints. Whereas artists will often make a plate and then leave the printing entirely up to the master printers, in this instance, the technical and aesthetic complexity of each of the ten prints in the Triumphs and Laments series required intensive interaction between artist and printer. Although the two studios have different missions—APS trains and educates printmakers and DKW prints the work of the gallery’s artists—both are committed to the creative processes involved in artistic collaboration. The premise that printmaking is a collaborative medium is thus confirmed. Finally, all of the prints’ subjects are taken from different sections of the frieze, but the content of each echoes Kentridge’s assertion that “it’s not just to say history is problematic and complicated, but that inside one person’s triumph is someone else’s disaster” (in Triumphs and Laments: William Kentridge. Edited by Carlos Basualdo. Cologne: Walter Koenig, 2018, 51).