Rosalind Krauss curates October Files volume on William Kentridge

The MIT Press has published a new volume in the October Files series dedicated to William Kentridge, edited by renowned art historian Rosalind Krauss. The book collects essays by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Maria Gough, Andreas Huyssen, Joseph Leo Koerner, and Rosalind Morris, offering a transdisciplinary overview of the South African artist's prolific work. It opens with an interview by Christov-Bakargiev, where Kentridge discusses drawing as a fluid, processual model for thought and meaning-making. Krauss's critical framework centers on the concept of the palimpsest, connecting Kentridge to Goya, Grosz, Max Beckmann, and Daumier. She argues that his charcoal drawings reinvent the medium, defending its specificity against attacks on materiality. The volume also examines works such as 'History of the main complaint' (1996) and 'The refusal of time' (2012), with Huyssen linking the latter to the ghost of apartheid. Kentridge's insistence on early film techniques and collective experience characterizes his later works. Published in 2017, the 208-page book costs $50.