William Kentridge - Contemporary Art Part II New York Tuesday, November 8, 2011 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Marian Goodman Gallery, New York

  • Exhibited

    New York, Marian Goodman Gallery, Zeno Writing, November 8, 2002 - January 4, 2003 (another example exhibited)
    New York, MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), William Kentridge: Five Themes, February 24- May 17, 2010 (another example exhibited)

  • Catalogue Essay

    The 2003 Film Learning the Flute was visual preparation for William Kentridge’s famous production of Mozart’s Zauberflote (The Magic Flute), which premiered in 2005 at the Royal Opera House in Belgium. The film is iconic Kentridge, using his famous, alluring charcoal drawings on paper and stop-motion animation to alluring effect. As the artist describes, "I needed to try to find a language for the production, as a way of making sense of the opera as a whole. I had the idea of a blackboard as sketchpad, on which ideas could be tested. The blackboard as object remains. The film is projected onto a blackboard; it becomes the screen, but in the end I did not use it for the drawings themselves. The images tested out on the blackboard range from the Egyptian (particularly the falcon but also the sphinx in the cage); to the Napoleonic – slightly after Mozart’s time but referring to Schinkel’s great designs for the opera. There is diagrammatic Baroque stage machinery. The 20th century has a look-in through Man Ray’s perfect Masonic objects (the eye on the arm of a metronome).”

284

Learning the Flute

2003
Dry-erase blackboard, easel and DVD.
The projector is mounted at a height of 108 inches from the floor and should be approximately 104 inches from the blackboard. However, installation dimensions may be variable.
This work is from an edition of eight and is accompanied by installation instructions.

Estimate
$200,000 - 300,000 

Sold for $194,500

Contemporary Art Part II

8 November 2011
New York