William Kentridge with the Shostakovich No.10 collaged lithographs in his studio.
William Kentridge working on portrait proofs in his studio.
Final layout of the Portraits for Shostakovich in William Kentridge's studio.
Screen grab from Oh To Believe in Another World showing how the lithographs were used in the performance.
The Lucerne Symphony Orchestra in Switzerland commissioned William Kentridge to make a film to accompany the live performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op.93 in June 2022. The film is titled Oh To Believe in Another World.
“The central characters of the film are Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin; Shostakovich and his student Elmira Nazirova (about which there are different theories regarding her relationship with Shostakovich and the 10th Symphony and whether her name is embedded into some of the key signatures of the symphony); Mayakovsky and his lover Lily Brik. These characters appear as puppets, but are also performed by actors inside of puppets. The form is one of collage, and the larger proposition is that one needs to understand history as a form of collage. The artistic medium is a way of thinking about the historical events.
The story of Shostakovich and his complicated relationship to the state in the Soviet Union, from its early days just after the 1917 revolution, all the way through to Stalin’s death in 1953, provides the material for thinking visually about the trajectory that Shostakovich had to follow, from the early days of the Soviet Union to the writing of the symphony.
This is a retrospective look at the four decades of the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and 50s, from the perspective of 1953 when both Stalin died and the first performance of the symphony was presented. In the 1920s there was the death of Lenin; in the 1930s the suicide of Mayakovsky; in the 1940s, the assassination of Trotsky; in the 1950s the death of Stalin – and here we are, almost 70 years later. The report that remains of these decades is in the music of Shostakovich, the one who against expectation got away, and survived.” William Kentridge 2022
Watch William Kentridge discussing Oh to Believe in Another World
New Editions from The Artists' Press
Artists A - L (listed by surname)
Artists M - X (listed by surname)
Title: Portraits for Shostakovich Symphony No.10 in E Minor, Opus 93 (I)
Medium: Multiple colour lithograph, collage and chine collé in nine panels adhered to cotton fabric, presented in a clamshell box
Size: 165.4 x 111.5 cm
Edition size: 20
Price: US $ 35 000 (excl.VAT)
Title: Portraits for Shostakovich Symphony No.10 in E Minor, Opus 93 (II)
Medium: Multiple colour lithograph, collage and chine collé in nine panels adhered to cotton fabric presented in a clamshell box
Size: 165.4 x 111.5 cm
Edition size: 20
Price: US $ 35 000 (excl.VAT)
Title: Portraits for Shostakovich Symphony No.10 in E Minor, Opus 93 (III)
Medium: Multiple colour lithograph, collage and chine collé in nine panels adhered to cotton fabric presented in a clamshell box
Size: 165.4 x 111.5 cm
Edition size: 20
Price: US $ 35 000 (excl.VAT)
Title: Portraits for Shostakovich Symphony No.10 in E Minor, Opus 93 (IV)
Medium: Multiple colour lithograph, collage and chine collé in nine panels adhered to cotton fabric presented in a clamshell box
Size: 165.4 x 111.5 cm
Edition size: 20
Price: US $ 35 000 (excl.VAT)
Title: Vladimir L: I
Medium: Five colour lithograph and collage with staining
Paper size: 57 x 40 cm
Image size: 57 x 40 cm
Edition size: 20
Price: US $ 5 000 (excl.VAT)
Title: Vladimir L: II
Medium: Seven colour lithograph and collage with staining
Paper size: 57 x 40 cm
Image size: 43.5 x 32.5 cm
Edition size: 20
Price: US $ 5 000 (excl.VAT)
Title: Vladimir L: III
Medium: Seven colour lithograph and collage
Paper size: 57 x 40 cm
Image size: 47.2 x 25.2 cm
Edition size: 20
Price: US $ 5 000 (excl.VAT)
Title: Lily: I
Medium: Five colour lithograph and collage
Paper size: 57 x 40 cm
Image size: 43 x 29 cm
Edition size: 20
Price: US $ 5 000 (excl.VAT)
Title: Lily: II
Medium: Four colour lithograph and collage with staining
Paper size: 57 x 40 cm
Image size: 43 x 37 cm
Edition size: 20
Price: US $ 5 000 (excl.VAT)
Title: Vladimir M: I
Medium: Five colour lithograph and collage with staining
Paper size: 57 x 40 cm
Image size: 48.2 x 25 cm
Edition size: 20
Price: US $ 5 000 (excl.VAT)
Title: Vladimir M: II
Medium: Five colour lithograph and collage
Paper size: 57 x 40 cm
Image size: 47 x 37.4 cm
Edition size: 20
Price: US $ 5 000 (excl.VAT)
Title: Politburo
Medium: Four colour lithograph and collage with staining
Paper size: 57 x 40 cm
Image size: 48.2 x 32 cm
Edition size: 20
Price: US $ 5 000 (excl.VAT)
Title: Elmira: I
Medium: Five colour chine collé lithograph with staining
Paper size: 57 x 40 cm
Image size: 46.8 x 30 cm
Edition size: 20
Price: US $ 5 000 (excl.VAT)
Title: Elmira: II
Medium: Five colour lithograph and collage
Paper size: 57 x 40 cm
Image size: 43.5 x 32.5 cm
Edition size: 20
Price: US $ 5 000 (excl.VAT)
Title: Trotsky: I
Medium: Seven colour chine collé lithograph
Paper size: 57 x 40 cm
Image size: 46.8 x 30 cm
Edition size: 20
Price: US $ 5 000 (excl.VAT)
Title: Trotsky: II
Medium: Seven colour chine collé lithograph
Paper size: 57 x 40 cm
Image size: 48.8 x 27.5 cm
Edition size: 20
Price: US $ 5 000 (excl.VAT)
Title: Trotsky: III
Medium: Six colour lithograph and collage with staining
Paper size: 57 x 40 cm
Image size: 48.2 x 32 cm
Edition size: 20
Price: US $ 5 000 (excl.VAT)
Kentridge drew 36 portraits of Soviet intellectuals, politicians and members of the cultural avant garde as part of his reflection on Shostakovich’s work. Key figures appear in multiple iterations. Known for breaking new musical ground in experimenting with contrast and ambivalent tonalities, Shostakovich composed music under the pressure of Soviet controls on art. In its experimentation, his 10th Symphony violated many of these restrictions and was only made public once Stalin died. Kentridge is interested the Soviet project as an expression of a failed utopia. Utopian ideals are necessary to release intellect, ideas and energy. The characters in the film were all participants in the politics and culture of their time and embody the simultaneous hope in revolutionary ideals and the disillusionment of their failure in the lived world.
The print collaboration process began with taking grained film (which has a surface texture similar to a litho stone) and drawing and painting materials to Kentridge at his Johannesburg studio where he drew each colour on a separate film, working from collages that he had made. The grained film drawings were exposed onto aluminium printing plates and were then printed by hand at The Artists’ Press. To build up the black tones, two different plates were used, a warm black and a cold black. Some of the prints have as many as seven colours, which means that Kentridge drew seven different separations for them, and they have gone through the press seven times. Once printed, each print was torn down by hand into its individual collage pieces. We used templates to do this to get the exact same tear that Kentridge had made. Some of the prints were stained with watercolour paint by hand. Using grids, the pieces were carefully assembled into the faces and then adhered to the base sheet.
William Kentridge Print and Artists' Book Archive of work done in collaboration with The Artists' Press.
Oh To Believe in Another World article in Wanted Magazine by James Sey