Casspirs Full Of Love ,1989/2000
Provenance :
Exhibited : Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, William Kentridge: Why Should I Hesitate, Putting Drawings to Work, 24 August 2019 to 23 March 2020.
Literature : Dan Cameron, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and JM Coetzee (1999) William Kentridge, London: Phaidon Press, another impression from the edition illustrated on page 50.
Bronwyn Law-Viljoen (2006) William Kentridge Prints, Johannesburg: David Krut, page 36 and another impression from the edition illustrated on pages 18 and 37.
Sue Williamson (2009) South African Art Now, New York: Collins Design, another impression from the edition illustrated on page 51.
Judith Hacker (2010) William Kentridge: Trace, Prints from The Museum of Modern Art, New York: MoMa, another impression from the edition illustrated on page 23.
Sven Christian and Anne McIlleron (eds) (2019) William Kentridge: Why Should I Hesitate, Putting Drawings to Work, Cape Town: Zeitz MOCAA, another impression from the edition illustrated on page 222.
Notes : Kentridge opens the image of the casspir, the armoured vehicle used by the security forces against riots and demonstrations, to reveal decapitated heads arranged in its interior compartments. Kentridge had heard a message on state radio from a mother to her son in uniform 'from Mum, with casspirs full of love'. In Casspirs Full of Love, 1989, we seem to be looking down into this interior, but it also can be read as a failed ladder, a distorted emblem of progress, for Kentridge has scrawled NOT A STEP, the inscription we usually find on the top plank of a ladder, above the lowest divider of the casspir's compartments.1
1. Bronwyn Law-Viljoen (2006) William Kentridge Prints, Johannesburg: David Krut, page 18.
