- via Operawire
William Kentridge’s ”The Head and The Load,” currently playing in a two-week season at the Park Avenue Armory, opens with a still portrait.
Three people – two African women and an Italian man frame a stripped upright, teak-colored piano. The man seated on the floor wears a maroon Fez – the headdress of the Turkish military until 1927. The two women are both costumed in complimentary hues of teal and cream. Their hats attract architectural curiosity. The subtle color scheme of the tableau redolent of a Vermeer composition is a poignant alignment of symmetry, asymmetry and light. It is a congruent image of beauty and harmony presaging the aesthetic directives of Kentridge’s multi-media theatrical collage paying homage to the ignored contributions of Africans during the First World War. With his assembly of virtuosic co-creators and artists, Kentridge enlists our sympathies for the fallen African men and women through exquisite and disturbing tableaus of beauty. It is an achievement of a lifetime.
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