SAN FRANCISCO—"One of the reasons for drawing is to make visible things that we know but don’t normally see, " says William Kentridge, the 53-year-old South African artist admired for his charcoal animations that merge political and personal imagery into Surrealist narratives. His films, drawings, theater models and sculptures from the past three decades are on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, from March 14 through May 31. Included in the show is the artist’s video projection based on "The Nose," an 1836 Gogol short story, in which a man wakes up to discover that his nose has disappeared. "When he finds it, it’s a higher rank than he is and won’t speak to him," says Kentridge, whose adaptation explores the terrors of hierarchy in early 20th-century Russia. In March 2010 — during the exhibition’s run at New York’s Museum of Modern Art — Kentridge will stage Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1930 operatic treatment of the Gogol tale across town at the Metropolitan Opera.

"Nosy Business" originally appeared in the March 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's March 2009 Table of Contents.