William Kentridge: Lexicon

Lexicon is a facsimile cloth edition of an antiquarian Latin-Greek dictionary embelled by the internationally celebrated South African artist William Kentridge (born 1954). In reproducing the work, this beautifully designed artist’s book mischievously pits the model of the flipbook against the fragility of the antiquarian original. Flipping its pages animates Kentridge’s lively, frenetic drawings into a continuously morphing image that transforms from a cat to a coffee pot over the course of the book’s 160 pages. Based on a disintegrating sculpture, this book reflects the artist’s interest in the instability of objecthood.