William Kentridge “Weighing… and Wanting”
Museum of Biblical Art
This event has ended.
Like the biblical figure King Belshazzar, artist William Kentridge dreamed of words appearing on a wall, which led him to a period of re-evaluation in his life. Embracing the vision, he created Weighing… and Wanting, a filmed series of deeply personal pastel, gouache, and charcoal drawings reinterpreting the well-known story from the fifth chapter of the Book of Daniel.
Babylonian King Belshazzar, while seated at a great feast, envisioned a hand inscribing on his palace wall the words Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin – numbered, weighed, divided. Daniel, a Jewish exile who interpreted the vision, informed the terrified king that the God of the Israelites had numbered the days of Belshazzar’s reign; had weighed the king on a scale and judged him to be wanting; and his kingdom would be divided between the Persians and the Medes. Belshazzar was killed that very night and his realm taken over. The story stresses the importance of living a life rightly before the consequences of one’s misdeeds become unalterable, before judgment is passed.
The timelessness of this biblical passage’s warning informs Kentridge’s work. A white South African artist whose work is, nevertheless, steeped in the trauma of Apartheid, Kentridge uses recurring characters and landscapes in his oft-explored personal mythology. In this work, his signature dreamlike images of comfort, sentimentality, and destruction form a modern approach to an age-old question. His “In whose lap do I lie” echoes Daniel’s admonishment of Belshazzar for not honoring God “who holds in his hand your life and all your ways” (Daniel 5:23).
[Image: William Kentridge “(Still from) Weighing… and Wanting” (1997-8) 35mm animated film with sound, transferred to video and laser disc, colour. Run time: 6 minutes 20 seconds. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris]
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Schedule
from June 14, 2013 to September 29, 2013