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Jane Taylor’s William Kentridge: Being Led by the Nose explores William Kentridge’s 2010 production of The Nose for the New York Metropolitan Opera. Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1928 opera is based on Nikolai Gogol’s satire (1836) of the same name in which the nose of Collegiate Assessor Kovalev abandons him and succeeds him in rank. Taylor argues that the theme at the heart of The Nose is the internal contradiction of the divided self, and that this can be seen as an allegory for William Kentridge’s mode of art-making. The dialectical relationship between parts of the self drives Taylor’s project in content and form, and the style of writing itself performs the main thrust of the argument. By deliberately employing her writing to mirror Kentridge’s mode of working, Taylor creates not only an insightful critical study of Kentridge’s creative process, but a sophisticated piece of performative writing as well.
In her first chapter titled “Nasal Passages,” Taylor discusses the prehistories of the production, including the life of Shostakovich and Kentridge’s position as a political artist in South Africa. She explores the ambiguities and contradictions that characterize art under a totalitarian regime: most significantly, that double-speak is necessary to survive and that consistent identity is almost an impossibility. Taylor goes on to explore how Kentridge’s oeuvre investigates this problem, as well as how he strategically employs internal division in his process. In the second chapter, “Nose Bleeds,” she describes the range of media, images, and ideas that emerged while making The Nose. In the third chapter, “A Special Theory of Relativity,” Taylor explores issues...