Notes Toward a Model Opera is a constellation of key pieces spanning 25 years of William Kentridgeʼs output, allowing viewers to understand the range and trajectory of both his artistic sensibility and humanistic concerns.

From seminal early films and drawings featuring the semi-autobiographical figure of Soho Eckstein, the catalogue moves on to encompass major recent multimedia installations, recent animations and paintings, and finally the titular project Notes Toward a Model Opera, a new work related to the particular aesthetics and ideals of socialist China.

This comprehensive overview offers a pathway to understanding his work particularly suited to the Chinese context and its unique experience of modernity.

Published on the occasion of Kentridge’s retrospective, Notes Toward a Model Opera at Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing, 27 June – 30 August 2015.