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Much of Kentridge’s work of the late 1980s satirised political idealism. His first animated
film, Johannesburg the Second Greatest City after Paris 1989 (Tate T07482), refers to South
Africa’s status in relation to the developed countries of Western Europe which colonised it
and on which its (white) culture had been based. Its title refers to the hierarchy of cultural
value with which white South Africans of Kentridge’s generation were educated. Casspirs Full
of Love (Tate P11838), a large print made in the same year, depicts a structure resembling a
shelved box containing seven severed heads. This print refers ironically to the state of
emergency prevailing in South Africa at the time, under which the security forces had the right
to detain suspects without warrant or trial, leading to many state-sanctioned murders. In
South Africa’s turbulent political climate of the late 1980s (just before the system of apartheid
was dismantled), the pathetic manner in which Selassie held onto power had obvious
resonance for Kentridge. Familiar with the social satire of William Hogarth (1697-1764),
whose work he had emulated with his own parable of Industry and Idleness in 1986-7
(Hogarth’s original is dated 1747), Kentridge brought this treatment to the current South
African situation. Like Johannesburg..., Arc/Procession exposes the effects of ‘superior’
colonial culture on the landscape of South Africa which it has exploited, referred to in the
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/kentridge-arc-procession-develop-catch-up-even-surpass-t07668 1/2
26/08/2023, 09:08 ‘Arc/Procession: Develop, Catch Up, Even Surpass‘, William Kentridge, 1990 | Tate
small section of desolate industrial wasteland on the left side of the drawing to which the
procession is advancing. Contemporary barbed wire and a battered empty can on the left
side of the drawing provide a counter to the older iron railings and sharply pointed iron stakes
on the right. The figures proceed in the opposite direction to the title words resulting in a
cancellation of the possibility of progress. The drawing is a satire on the classical triumphal
arch, originally built by the Romans to commemorate military victories and adopted by
European leaders in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Kentridge has said: ‘I’m
essentially interested in an art which is political but which allows an ambiguous politics, an art
which encompasses as many ambiguities and contradictions as there are.’ (Quoted in William
Kentridge 1998, p.164.) Drawings of processions of dispossessed Africans in the landscape
were used in the making of Johannesburg.... Recently Kentridge returned to the theme of the
procession with a film Shadow Procession 1999 and a sculptural installation, comprising a
series of little bronze figures, titled Procession 2000 (The National Gallery of Canada,
Ottawa).
Further reading:
Neal Benezra, Staci Boris, Dan Cameron, William Kentridge, exhibition catalogue, Museum of
Contemporary Art, Chicago, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York 2001, p.18,
reproduced (colour) pp.82-3
Dan Cameron, Carolyn Cristov-Barkagiev, J.M. Coetzee, William Kentridge, London 1999,
p.46, reproduced (colour) p.47
Carolyn Cristov-Barkagiev, William Kentridge, exhibition catalogue, Palais des Beaux-Arts,
Brussels 1998, reproduced p.163
Elizabeth Manchester
January 2002
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