In 1989, the year he made his grim work of heads stored in a cupboard, the almost life-sized dry point etching Casspirs Full of Love, William Kentridge’s sole exposure in New York had been in a modest group show. But the artist who today is acknowledged as a major international art star was already recognized as one of the top artists in his own country.
A bachelor’s degree in Politics and African Studies from the University of Witwatersrand (1976), acting and directing work with the Junction Avenue Theatre Company from the mid-seventies, and studies in drawing and printmaking at the Johannesburg Art Foundation, an open art school for students of all races, had all combined to influence Kentridge’s future art production.
Today he is known for a prodigious body of work, for his masterful drawings and bronzes, but particularly for richly complex animated films and theatrical productions. The latter include operas. All of his work deals with complex themes and stories drawn not only from international literature but also from journalistic stories featured in global news media as well as the artist’s own experience. This combination of sources results in rich, multifaceted work that illuminates and cuts to the heart of social issues in South Africa.
In Casspirs Full of Love a tall cupboard, or set of shelves, is packed with decapitated heads, pushed in at uneasy angles. The sources for Kentridge’s drawings of heads were figures by Giotto, copied by the artist from the originals in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, beetroot heads by British sculptor Tony Cragg, and heads of South Africans in protest photos in the press.
Running down the side of the etching is the odd title, in cursive copperplate script. Casspirs, outsized steel army tanks often used in black townships in times of civil unrest, were also used on borders between African nations, particularly where Namibia and Angola meet. In the 1980s this is where the South African Defence Force was battling Angolan and Cuban troops in the name of keeping communism out of Africa. Atrocities committed by the SADF against the local populations were legion.
Kentridge took the title of his piece from a music request program popular at the time, called Forces Favourites, which encouraged listeners to dedicate songs to sons in the SADF. Kentridge was struck by the incongruous dedication by one mother who asked that a song be played for her soldier son with “casspirs full of love.”
The idea of associating love with an army tank designed for destruction, the severed heads drawn from classic and contemporary sources, the fine quality of the drawing, all come together to make a powerful print that is vintage Kentridge.
Casspirs Full of Love 1989
Etching
148.6 x 81.2 cm (image size)
167 x 94 cm (paper size)
Collection: Johannesburg Art Gallery
Image courtesy of the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
© William Kentridge