|

This Week’s Theme: David Krut Publications

David Krut began its publishing activities with a CD-ROM on William Kentridge in 1997 and in 1999 David Krut Publishing was approached to publish a series of monographs on South African artists who had a well-established career, but who had never a book published about their work. The TAXI-ART BOOKS SERIES were published together with an educational supplement with a focus on helping educators teach about artist in South Africa.

There was no resource material at that stage, so the TAXI-ART BOOKS SERIES became a standard reference for art teacher at high schools and tertiary intuitions. The taxi series was completed in 2009 with 15 books in the series.

Besides the TAXI-ART BOOKS the publications included books on William Kentridge, Gary Schneider, Johannes Phokela and Stephen Hobbs. The major series was the involvement with judge Albie Sacks in the publication of the two historic books about the new Constitution Court in Johannesburg, Light on a Hilland Art and Justice.

Here is a small sampling of some of the David Krut Publications that are available in store at The David Krut Bookstores:

Mapula: Embroidery and Empowerment in the Winterveld

R250

The Mapula Embroidery Project in the Winterveld is one of the most important community art projects in South Africa. In addition to generating an income for economically disadvantaged women, Mapula embroideries couple technical and visual artistry with topics that speak eloquently of public histories and women’s personal experiences.

Dazzling in colour and inventive in design, the embroideries also engage compellingly with social and political issues that have shaped the lives of their makers.

In Mapula: Embroidery and Empowerment in the Winterveld, Brenda Schmahmann discusses the complex circumstances that resulted in the founding of Mapula in 1991, when the Winterveld was part of the former ‘homeland’ of Bophuthatswana. She examines the backgrounds of project members, revealing how women’s experiences of disempowerment have been bound up with the politics of race and gender. This book offers invaluable insights into the anxieties and aspirations of females in a transforming society.

Mapula: Embroidery and Empowerment in the Winterveld is the most comprehensive study of Mapula to be published to date and the first book with an exclusive focus on a community embroidery project in South Africa.

Dis-Location / Re-Location: Exploring Alienation and Identity in South Africa

R250

Dis-Location / Re-Location: Exploring Alienation and Identity in South Africa is a lively series of essays which considers the themes raised by the provocative and critically acclaimed 2007/8 travelling exhibition Dis-Location / Re-Location by Leora Farber and the fashion design duo Strangelove. The exhibition drew together the stories of three generations of South African women in light of post-colonial and feminist theory. Included in the book are the gorgeous photographs by Michael Meyersfeld. The essays in the book are by Robyn Sassen, Ryan Bishop, Jillian Carman, Wandile Kasibe, Sandra Klopper, Bronwyn Law-Viljoen (the book’s editor), Richard Mendelsohn, Sally-Ann Murray, Jennifer Ord, Liese van der Watt and Wilhelm van Rensburg.

This book is a valuable addition to the ongoing debates about cultural assimilation, the politics of identity and race, and the relationship between art and political discourse.

William Kentridge Prints

R1500

Although William Kentridge is now well known for his films, drawings, and theatre productions, he began his artistic career learning etching at the Johannesburg Art Foundation under Bill Ainslie. He spent two years teaching printmaking at this Foundation and his earliest exhibitions featured his monotypes and etchings such as the Domestic Scenesseries.

William Kentridge Prints is the first book to focus specifically on Kentridge’s formidable print oeuvre, filling a gap in published work on the artist to date. It is also the first major publication on William Kentridge to be published in South Africa. The book includes over 180 works and presents the full range and complexity of Kentridge’s printmaking, from his linocuts of the 1970s to his recent sophisticated and distinctive Thinking Aloud drypoints created while he was working on his production of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute, which premiered in Brussels in April 2005.

David Krut began publishing William Kentridge editions in the 1990s and in 1997 compiled and edited a CD-ROM on the artist, the first publication on Kentridge to address the full range and complexity of his work. Krut compiled and edited the final print list for this book and contributed the Introduction, which gives a brief history of Kentridge’s projects and collaborations with printers.

The publication of this book coincides with a travelling exhibition that opened at the Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell College, Iowa in late 2004 and travels to other museums in the United States through 2007.

William Kentridge Prints includes a Foreword by Lesley Wright, Director of the Faulkner Gallery at Grinnell College, the Introduction for the original exhibition catalogue by Kay Wilson, Curator of the Faulconer Collection, and an essay by the award-winning poet, critic, and translator Susan Stewart, Professor of English at Princeton University. Stewart has published four books of poetry and several critical texts including The Open Studio: Essays on Art and Aesthetics (University of Chicago Press, January 2005).

In addition, the book includes a series of rare personal commentaries by Kentridge that give wonderful insight into the ideas and working methods of an obsessive and highly sophisticated printmaker.

For more on David Krut Publishing and Bookstore, click here and for more about William Kentridge and the other artists we collaborate with, click here.