A

Natural

History

of

William

Kentridge’s

Studio

Editor’s Note: The following text is a chapter titled “Lapis Lazuli” that has been excerpted with permission and adapted from A Natural History of the Studio (2026) by William Kentridge, published by Grove Press and available online and in bookstores. The book gathers the Slade Lectures delivered by Kentridge in 2024 at the University of Oxford.

Some years ago, two friends gave me a block of watercolour, pure lapis lazuli from Afghanistan. Lapis lazuli is a precious pigment used sparingly in Renaissance painting, now more generally replaced by French ultramarine. But there is an intense blueness in lapis, a colour coming off the paper towards you that is unmatched by any synthetic colour. In projections and photography and printing, this blue always loses its power.

I don’t use colour in my drawings. But I painted some squares and circles to see the colour I was given. I was caught, wanting to devour the blue and not knowing how to bring it into anything I was drawing. While waiting to solve what I should do with the blue, I started painting texts and phrases with it. I have a notebook in which I write down phrases or sentences I have come across, which, through their idiosyncrasy, or particularities, feel they need to be held, put into a painting of words to be used later.

GOD’S OPINION IS UNKNOWN, a Setswana proverb.

WEIGH ALL TEARS, a line from a poem by Czesław Miłosz.

YOU WILL BE DREAMT BY A JACKAL.