In 1990, the South African artist William Kentridge completed Arc/Procession: Develop, Catch Up, Even Surpass, a large drawing in charcoal and pastel created on eleven sheets of paper that together arch over an area of approximately 24.5...
moreIn 1990, the South African artist William Kentridge completed Arc/Procession: Develop, Catch Up, Even Surpass, a large drawing in charcoal and pastel created on eleven sheets of paper that together arch over an area of approximately 24.5 x 9 feet ( ). Typically installed high on a gallery wall, the shape of the work recalls the triumphal arches of the Roman Empire. Indeed, Kentridge may have had in mind a famous instance of triumphalist architecture, the rst-century Arch of Titus in Rome, which depicts the bearing away of the booty of imperial conquest, including a menorah and other spoils from the sack of Jerusalem. In an o en-cited theorization of the link between "documents of civilization" and "documents of barbarism, " Walter Benjamin implicitly evokes the same scene when he writes of "the triumphal procession [Triumphzug] in which the present rulers step over those who are lying prostrate" (256). Close in spirit to Benjamin's re ections on history, Kentridge's cryptic and decidedly non-triumphalist procession nonetheless involves not imperial booty, but rather the detritus of the dispossessed.
