The Lulu Plays

Arion Press announces The Lulu Plays with esteemed South African artist William Kentridge for September 2015. One of Arion’s most ambitious artist books, this limited edition contains 67 images by William Kentridge bound into the book. The text is the original telling of the Lulu story by playwright Frank Wedekind, which inspired the silent cinema classic Pandora’s Box and the Alban Berg opera Lulu.

Another four larger images, linoleum block prints, are available separately in a portfolio.

The images are derived from brush and ink drawings for projections for Kentridge’s 2015 production of Alban Berg’s opera Lulu, which was based on the two Wedekind plays from the turn of the century, Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box.  Following its acclaimed run at the Metropolitan Opera, Kentridge’s production opened in London November 9, 2016 at the English National Opera, and in Rome on May 17, 2017. 

Kentridge drew with brush and ink on dictionary pages. The definitions are in the background but the opening and closing words, in larger type, can be read. Often, after drawing, Kentridge moves the sheets, rearranging elements of the drawings so that they become collages and can resemble moving pictures. The appearance of the drawings on pages of the book is very different from the much larger versions in the opera set, where sometimes only a detail is used and images can be altered by the surfaces on which they are projected, as well as fractured or distorted by the planes and interfering elements of the scenery.