From the show “William Kentridge: Universal Archive,’’ at the Lamont Gallery, at Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, N.H., Jan. 11-March 9. The gallery says:
Renowned South African artist William Kentridge shares new work inspired during the writing of his Norton Lectures at Harvard in 2012. In this expanding series, a familiar personal iconography is revisited - coffee pots, typewriters, cats, trees, nudes and other imagery; an intimate thematic repertoire appearing in art and stage productions throughout the artist’s career. Meticulously based on ink sketches, over 75 linocut prints shift from identifiable subject matter to deconstructed images of abstract marks.’’
Phillips Exeter is one of the two most famous American prep schools, the other being its great rival, Phillips Academy, in Andover, Mass. The first is usually just called “Exeter,’’ the second “Andover’’.
The two schools were founded by the Phillips family, Andover by Samuel Phillips, Jr., in 1778, and Exeter by his uncle John Phillips, in 1781. The two schools are 37 miles apart and share similar seals and mottoes as well. The novel A Separate Peace was inspired by writer John Knowles’s days as a student at Exeter in the 1940s.
