William Kentridge is internationally recognized for his film, drawing, sculpture, animation, and performance. His work addresses colonialism and apartheid through powerful allegorical imagery. Kentridge gathers and transforms materials—texts, drawings, scraps of paper, sound, and myriad other media—in order to generate ideas and discover meaning. “Do the work,” he says, “then see what it is that you have made.”

The stop-motion animated film Tango for Page Turning is part of Kentridge’s acclaimed multimedia chamber opera Refuse the Hour. Conceived in collaboration with composer Philip Miller and choreographer Dada Masilo, the opera and related works explore the metaphysical implications of standardized world time, Einstein’s theory of relativity, black holes, and string theory. 

The film opens with the tattered cover of an antiquated chemistry book. Across its turning pages, animated figures, including those of Kentridge and Masilo, splatters of ink, symbols, words and fleeting phrases dance to a stuttering score—a jumble of sung lyrics from Le Spectre de la Rose by 19th-century French composer Hector Berlioz. The film appears to tremble, breathe, speed up, and slow down, reminding us of Kentridge’s painstaking animation process, and the unstable, subjective nature of time. 

Purchase with the Art Acquisition Endowment Fund in partnership with the New Media Arts Consortium, a collaboration of the art museums at Bowdoin College, Brandeis University, Colby College, Middlebury College, Mount Holyoke College, and Skidmore College