William Kentridge: Carnets d'Egypte

Carnets D'Egypte is William Kentridge's multimedia excavation of one of his favorite subjects: ancient Egypt. "Egypt has to be both believed and disbelieved at the same time," he proposes, explaining his attraction to its intermingling of myth and history in the era of the pharaohs; here, he approaches this intermingling, and attendant questions of orientalism, in works that draw on western traditions of depicting Egypt, by such artists as Carracci, Delacroix, Le Brun, Poussin and Degas. In a scrapbook dossier composed of charcoal and pen-and-ink drawings, collages, animated films and performance pieces, Kentridge investigates such mythically proportioned Egyptian roles as the scribe, the architect and the artist, often inserting himself into the dialogue as a visible presence. This beautifully made book, which includes a DVD with three films, affirms Kentridge at his eclectic and erudite best.