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EXCLUSIVE: Ida Applebroog discusses her life as an “image scavenger” in her New York studio, while working on her “Photogenetics” series—a blend of photography, sculpture, painting and digital media.

Ida Applebroog propels her paintings and drawings into the realm of installation by arranging and stacking canvases in space, exploding the frame-by-frame logic of comic-book and film narrative into three-dimensional environments. Strong themes in her work include gender and sexual identity, power struggles, and the pernicious role of mass media in desensitizing the public to violence.

Ida Applebroog is featured in the Season 3 (2005) episode Power of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera & Sound: Mead Hunt and Merce Williams. Editor: Mary Ann Toman . Artwork Courtesy: Ida Applebroog.

The above video is excerpted from the Season 5 episode Compassion, premiering on Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 10pm (ET) on PBS (check local listings). Compassion features three artists — William Kentridge, Doris Salcedo, and Carrie Mae Weems — whose works explore conscience and the possibility of understanding and reconciling past and present, while exposing injustice and expressing tolerance for others.

Who is William Kentridge and what does he have to say about compassion?

William Kentridge was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1955, where he lives and works. Having witnessed first-hand one of the twentieth century’s most contentious struggles—the dissolution of apartheid—Kentridge brings the ambiguity and subtlety of personal experience to public subjects most often framed in narrowly defined terms. Using film, drawing, sculpture, animation, and performance, he transmutes sobering political events into powerful poetic allegories. In a now-signature technique, he photographs his charcoal drawings and paper collages over time, recording scenes as they evolve. Working without a script or storyboard, he plots out each animated film, preserving every addition and erasure. Aware of myriad ways in which we construct the world by looking, Kentridge uses stereoscopic viewers and creates optical illusions with anamorphic projection to extend his drawings-in-time into three dimensions.

On the subject of compassion in art, Kentridge says about his own drawing practice (in the forthcoming Season 5 book):

In the activity of making work, there’s a sense that if you spend a day or two days drawing an object or an image there’s a sympathy towards that object embodied in the human labor of making the drawing. For me, there is something in the dedication to the image, whether it’s Géricault painting guillotined heads or another shocking image. There’s something about the hours of physically studying those heads and painting them that becomes a compassionate act even though you can tell that the artist is very cold-bloodedly and ghoulishly looking at disaster or using other people’s pain as raw material for the work.

That’s what every artist does—use other people’s pain as well as his own—as raw material. So there is—if not a vampirishness—certainly an appropriation of other people’s distress in the activity of being a writer or an artist. But there is also something in the activity of both—contemplating, depicting, and spending the time with it—which I hope as an artist redeems the activity from one of simple exploitation and abuse.

What happens in Kentridge’s segment in Compassion this October?

While filmed in 2008-09, the Compassion episode surveys works and themes that Kentridge has developed over the past twenty years, exemplified by the artist’s poetic narratives that draw upon the texture of current events and the sweep of history. “South Africa is very much part of the work,” says the Johannesburg-based artist, but asks “how does one find a way of not necessarily illustrating the society that one lives in, but allowing what happens there to be part of the work, part of the vocabulary, part of the raw material that is dealt with?” Shooting without a predetermined script when developing the charcoal drawings for his animated films—such as Sobriety, Obesity, and Growing Old (1991)—Kentridge’s experimental method demonstrates “thinking with one’s hands” and proposes an “understanding of the world as process rather than as fact.”

Through the twin characters of Soho Eckstein and Felix Teitelbaum, the artist explores aspects of autobiography, the subconscious, as well as his own Jewish identity in the context of apartheid. In what Kentridge terms a “self-portrait in the third person,” Soho and Felix play out the complex roles of Jews in South Africa—as both benefactors and liberators—in dream-like scenarios to which the artist himself is inescapably linked. “If you work conscientiously and hard at it, and there is something inside you that is of interest, that is what will come out,” says the artist, “You yourself will be the film; the film will always be you.”

No stranger to grand political allegories, Kentridge’s segment in Compassion showcases his passion for lyrical opera. In the opening scene, Kentridge is shown working in his Johannesburg studio with the soprano Nokrismesi Skota and pianist Philip Miller on a video projection for the fire screen at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Italy. Employing the unconventional technique of recording the singer’s rendition of Giacomo Puccini’s aria “O mio babbino caro (Oh my dear papa)“ from Gianni Schicchi (1918) through a cellular phone, Kentridge is able to achieve an antique sound through twenty-first century technology. Later on, Kentridge himself is a performer in an eight channel video installation titled I am not me, the horse is not mine (2008) at the Sydney Biennial in Australia. A preparatory work for a production of Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera The Nose (1930)—based on the satirical short story by Russian author Nikolai Gogol (1836)—at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Kentridge synthesizes live-action performance with pre-recorded video, music, text, archival imagery, and the artist’s own signature animation technique. Seen tossing and catching pieces of paper with a video projection of himself, Kentridge’s uncanny multimedia feat directs the viewer’s attention to an analysis of the mechanics of illusion.

“I’m interested in machines that tell you what it is to look. That make you aware of the process of seeing, make you aware of what do you do when you construct the world by looking at it,” explains the artist. This is in evidence in What Will Come (has already come) (2007), a series of anamorphic films projected onto circular tabletops, with a mirrored cylinder at the center, onto which the distorted image is reconstituted and made intelligible. Viewing “looking and seeing” as metaphors for “thinking and understanding,” Kentridge’s works underscore “the agency we have, whether we like it or not, to make sense of the world.

William Kentridge. Drawing for "WEIGHING…and WANTING," 1997. Charcoal, poster paint and pastel on paper, 47 1/4 x 63 inches. Copyright and courtesy of William Kentridge and Marian Goodman Gallery.

What else has William Kentridge done?

William Kentridge attended the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (1973–76), Johannesburg Art Foundation (1976–78), and studied mime and theater at L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, Paris (1981–82). Kentridge has had major exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2009); Philadelphia Museum of Art (2008); Moderna Museet, Stockholm, (2007); and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2004), among others. He has also participated in Prospect.1 New Orleans (2008); the Sydney Biennale (1996, 2008); and Documenta (1997, 2002). His opera and theater works, often produced in collaboration with Handspring Puppet Company, have appeared at Brooklyn Academy of Music (2007); Standard Bank National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, South Africa (1992, 1996, 1998); and Festival d’Avignon, France (1995, 1996). His production of Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera, The Nose, will premiere at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in conjunction with a retrospective organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010).

Where can I see more of his work between now and the Art21 premiere this October?

William Kentridge is represented by Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris. His touring retrospective — Five Themes — will be on view at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas from July 12 - September 27, 2009 before traveling to the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida in November. His work can also be seen in the exhibition The Puppet Show through September 13 at the Frye Museum of Art in Seattle (along with fellow Art21 artists Louise Bourgeois, Pierre Huyghe, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman, Laurie Simmons, Kiki Smith, and Kara Walker) and in the exhibition Parades and Processions: Here comes everybody at Parasol unit in London through July 24 (along with fellow Art21 artists Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler).

What’s your take on William Kentridge’s inclusion in Season 5?

Tell us what you think by leaving a comment below!

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EXCLUSIVE: Richard Tuttle discusses his philosophical relationship to art and life in his New Mexico studio.

Richard Tuttle commonly refers to his art as drawing rather than sculpture, emphasizing the diminutive scale and idea-based nature of his work. He subverts the conventions of modernist sculptural practice by creating small, eccentrically playful objects in decidedly humble materials. Influences on his work include calligraphy, architecture, and poetry.

Richard Tuttle is featured in the Season 3 (2005) episode Structures of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller and Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera & Sound: Bob Elfstrom and Ray Day. Editor: Jenny Chiurco. Artwork Courtesy: Richard Tuttle.

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EXCLUSIVE: Artist Josiah McElheny discusses the intentionally problematic nature of beauty and seduction in his “Total Reflective Abstraction” (2004) installation, on view at Donald Young Gallery in Chicago, as well as works by fellow artists and architectural masterpieces such as Renaissance palaces.

Josiah McElheny creates finely crafted, handmade glass objects that he combines with photographs, text, and museological displays to evoke notions of meaning and memory. McElheny’s work takes as its subject the object, idea, and social nexus of glass. Influenced by the writings of Jorge Luis Borges, McElheny’s work often takes the form of historical fictions. Part of McElheny’s fascination with storytelling is that glassmaking is part of an oral tradition handed down generation to generation, artisan to artisan. Sculptural models of Modernist ideals, these totally reflective environments are both elegant seductions as well as parables of the vices of utopian aspirations.

Josiah McElheny is featured in the Season 3 (2005) episode Memory of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller and Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera & Sound: Kurt Branstetter, Joel Shapiro, and Tom Bergin. Editor: Jenny Chiurco. Artwork Courtesy: Josiah McElheny. Special Thanks: Donald Young Gallery, Chicago.

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EXCLUSIVE: In his Berlin studio, Arturo Herrera discusses his relationship to creating abstract collages and images. Herrera takes the process of abstraction a step further by photographing fragments of his collages, such as in the work “Untitled” (2005), a series of 80 black and white photographs. He submerges the undeveloped film in hot and cold water, coffee, and tea, creating unpredictable results when printed. Editing the photos into a grid of images, Herrera creates a work that‘s greater than it‘s individual parts.

For Arturo Herrera, abstraction is a language rooted in the practice of assembling and composing fragments. Herrera collects illustrated books, comics, and paint-by-number paintings, cutting and splicing them into new forms. He also creates his own source material by fragmenting drawings, watercolors, and shapes made by applying paint directly from the tube. Herrera collages all of these elements together, pasting them together to create a new whole.

Arturo Herrera is featured in the Season 3 (2005) episode Play of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller and Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera & Sound: Terry Doe and Leigh Crisp. Editor: Jenny Chiurco. Artwork Courtesy: Arturo Herrera.

• Krzysztof Wodiczko is the sole artist representing Poland at this summer’s Venice Biennale. The striking video installation of milky windows depicts the shadows of immigrant workers as they take on the daily tasks and routines of life, conversing in various languages. Above is a ScribeMedia video interview with the Season 3 artist.

• Elements of Photography opened this past weekend at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.  The exhibition focuses on two fundamental elements of nature inherent to the medium: light and water.  The “naturalists” in the show include artists Luisa Lambri, Walead Beshty, Adam Ekberg, Hiroshi Sugimoto (Season 3), and others.  Through October 4.

• The Stenersen Museum in Oslo opens an intriguing show this week that explores the many dimensions of gender-based violence. Off the Beaten Path: Violence, Women, and Art is curated by Randy Rosenberg of Art Works For Change.  Several of the 17 participating artists include Marina Abramovic, Laylah Ali (Season 3), Louise Bourgeois (Season 2), Icelandic Love Corporation, and Lucy Orta. Through August 9.

• Ongoing at LACMA is Classical Frieze, an exhibit of recent films and photographs by Eleanor Antin (Season 2).  The works on display mimic the ancient world by way of  19th-century neo-classical paintings. Through September 14th.

• White Noise opens this week at James Cohan Gallery. The group show features works that exist at the intersection of visual art, music and sound, exploring “how sound can obliterate as well as elevate; how silence can involve both absence and presence.” Some of the artists include Laurie Anderson (Season 1), Joseph Beuys, Martha Colburn, Rodney Graham, Chris Hanson and Hendrika Sonnenberg, Christian Marclay, and Raymond Pettibon (Season 2). June 18-August 12.

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EXCLUSIVE: Artist Laylah Ali and graphic designer Nicole Parente work together in the designer’s home office in Cambridge, MA. The artist’s hand-drawn notes are transformed into precise digital illustrations otherwise impossible without a computer.

Laylah Ali creates gouache-on-paper paintings that take her many months to complete. Ali meticulously plots out in advance every aspect of her work, from subject matter to choice of color, achieving a high level of emotional tension in her paintings as a result of juxtaposing brightly colored scenes with dark, often violent subject matter. In style, her paintings resemble comic-book serials, but they also contain stylistic references to hieroglyphics and American folk-art traditions.

Laylah Ali is featured in the Season 3 (2005) episode Power of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Dowling. Camera & Sound: Ken Willinger and Bob Freeman. Editor: Jenny Chiurco. Artwork Courtesy: Laylah Ali. Special Thanks: Nicole Parente.

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EXCLUSIVE: Master Printer Craig Zammiello and artist Ellen Gallagher discuss their working relationship during the process of creating “DeLuxe” (2004–05), a suite of 60 individual works employing both traditional and non-traditional printmaking techniques.

Repetition and revision are central to Ellen Gallagher’s treatment of advertisements appropriated from popular magazines. Initially, Gallagher was drawn to the wig advertisements because of their grid-like structure. Later she realized that it was the accompanying language that attracted her, and she began to bring these ‘narratives’ into her paintings—making them function through the characters of the advertisements as a kind of chart of lost worlds. Upon closer inspection, googly eyes, reconfigured wigs, tongues, and lips of minstrel caricatures multiply in detail. Although her work has often been interpreted as an examination of race, Gallagher also suggests a more formal reading- from afar the work appears abstract and minimal, and employs grids as both structure and metaphors for experience.

Ellen Gallagher is featured in the Season 3 (2005) episode Play of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Catherine Tatge. Camera & Sound: Mead Hunt and Mark Mandler. Editor: Mary Ann Toman. Artwork Courtesy: Ellen Gallagher. Special Thanks: Craig Zammiello of Two Palms Press, New York.

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EXCLUSIVE: Artist Ida Applebroog leads a tour of her personal collection of thrift store and auction finds, in her home and studio in upstate New York.

Ida Applebroog propels her paintings and drawings into the realm of installation by arranging and stacking canvases in space, exploding the frame-by-frame logic of comic-book and film narrative into three-dimensional environments. Strong themes in her work include gender and sexual identity, power struggles, and the pernicious role of mass media in desensitizing the public to violence.

Ida Applebroog is featured in the Season 3 (2005) episode Power of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera & Sound: Mead Hunt and Merce Williams. Editor: Jenny Chiurco. Artwork Courtesy: Ida Applebroog.

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EXCLUSIVE: Watch artist Josiah McElheny and assistant Martha Friedman transform clear hand-blown glass objects into mirrored surfaces in his Brooklyn, NY studio.

Josiah McElheny creates finely crafted, handmade glass objects that he combines with photographs, text, and museological displays to evoke notions of meaning and memory. McElheny’s work takes as its subject the object, idea, and social nexus of glass. Influenced by the writings of Jorge Luis Borges, McElheny’s work often takes the form of historical fictions. Part of McElheny’s fascination with storytelling is that glassmaking is part of an oral tradition handed down generation to generation, artisan to artisan. Sculptural models of Modernist ideals, these totally reflective environments are both elegant seductions as well as parables of the vices of utopian aspirations.

Josiah McElheny is featured in the Season 3 (2005) episode Memory of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller and Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera & Sound: Joel Shapiro and Tom Bergin. Editor: Jenny Chiurco. Artwork Courtesy: Josiah McElheny. Special Thanks: Martha Friedman.