Germรกn Crespo Darias
Germรกn Crespo Darias 4th ESO
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He dont have many photos
Only one image is out of the margin
"The investigation of material, volume, and construction made it possible for us in 1918, in an artistic form, to begin to combine materials like iron and glass, the materials of modern Classicism, comparable in their severity with the marble of antiquity. In this way an opportunity emerges of uniting purely artistic forms with utilitarian intentions..." Vladimir Tatlin
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Summary KINETIC ART......................................................................................................................................5 Synopsis:..........................................................................................................................................5 HISTORY AND CONCEPTS..........................................................................................................6 Key Ideas:...................................................................................................................................6 Origins and early development...................................................................................................7 Édouard Manet:.....................................................................................................................9 Edgar Degas:.......................................................................................................................10 Claude Monet......................................................................................................................11 Auguste Rodin.....................................................................................................................12 20th century surrealism and early kinetic art.................................................................................12 Albert Gleizes.......................................................................................................................13 Jackson Pollock....................................................................................................................14 Max Bill................................................................................................................................15 Mobiles and sculpture...................................................................................................................15 Vladimir Tatlin.....................................................................................................................16 Alexander Rodchenko..........................................................................................................17 Alexander Calder..................................................................................................................18 Virtual movement..........................................................................................................................19 Materials and electricity.......................................................................................................20 Apparent movement and op art......................................................................................................21 Contemporary work.......................................................................................................................22 Concepts and Styles:......................................................................................................................22 The Legacy of Constructivism:................................................................................................22 The Legacy of Dada:................................................................................................................23 The Influence of Science:.........................................................................................................24 Later Developments.......................................................................................................................25 Important Art and Artists of Kinetic Art.............................................................................................28 Bicycle Wheel (1913)......................................................................................................30 Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave) (1920)................................................................31 Light Prop for an Electric Stage (Light Space Modulator) (1930)..................................33 Arc of Petals (1941).........................................................................................................35 Vega III (1957-59)...........................................................................................................37 CYSP 1 (1956).................................................................................................................38 Homage to New York (fragment) (1960).........................................................................40 Blaze (1964).....................................................................................................................42 Labyrinth (1963).............................................................................................................43 Introducer of the Kinetic and Op-art in Spain:..............................................................................45 Eusebio Sempere...........................................................................................................................45 Biography..................................................................................................................................46 Kinetic Art in Spain – Eusebio’s work......................................................................................48 Exhibitions...........................................................................................................................51 20/02/19
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Germรกn Crespo Darias Museums..............................................................................................................................51 Awards..................................................................................................................................52 Bibliography.......................................................................................................................................52
"The reality of our century is technology: the invention, construction and maintenance of machines. To be a user of machines is to be the spirit of this country. Machines have replaced the transcendental spiritualism of past eras." Lรกszlรณ Moholy-Nagy
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KINETIC ART Synopsis: Kinetic art is a manifestation of the fascination with motion which defines a whole swathe of modern art from Impressionism onwards. In presenting works of art which moved, or which gave the impression of movement - from mobile, mechanical sculptures to Op art paintings which seemed to rotate or vibrate in front of the eyes - Kinetic artists offered us some of the most quintessential expressions of modern art's concern with presenting rather than representing living reality. Tracing its origins to the Dada and Constructivist movements of the 1910s, Kinetic art grew into a lively avantgarde after the Second World War, especially following the genre-defining group exhibition Le Mouvement, held in Paris in 1955. The group was always defined by division, however, and after thriving for around a decade, interest in the style faded; however, its ideas were carried forward by subsequent
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generations of artists, and it continues to provide a rich source of creative concepts and technical effects up to the present day.
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HISTORY AND CONCEPTS Key Ideas: • In creating paintings, sculptures, and art environments which relied on the presentation of motion for effect, the Kinetic art movement was the first to offer works of art which extended in time as well as space. This was a revolutionary gesture: not only because it introduced an entirely new dimension into the viewing experience, but because it so effectively expressed the new fascination with the interrelationship of time and space which defined modern intellectual culture since the discoveries of Einstein.
• Kinetic artists often presented works of art which relied on mechanized movement,
or
which
otherwise
explored
the
drive
towards
mechanization and scientific knowledge which characterized modern society. Different artists expressed a different stance on this process, however: those more influenced by Constructivism felt that by embracing the machine, art could integrate itself with everyday life, taking on a newly central role in the Utopian societies of the future; artists more influenced by Dada utilized mechanical processes in an anarchic, satirical spirit, to comment on the potential enslavement of humankind by science, technology, and capitalist production.
• Many Kinetic artists were interested in analogies between machines and human bodies. Rather than regarding the two entities as radically different - one being soulless and functional, the other governed by intuition and insight - they used their art to imply that humans might be 20/02/19
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little more than irrational engines of conflicting lusts and urges, like dysfunctional machines. This idea has deep roots in Dada, but is also related to the mid-century concept of cybernetics.
Origins and early development In
its
focus
dynamism
of
on
capturing
the herir Realistic Manifesto; the same
its
subject-matter, year, Gabo completed his Kinetic
Kinetic Art expresses a foundational Construction, a free-standing metal concern of modern art in general, and rod set in motion by an electric motor many
critics
have
cited
Post- which articulates a delicate wave-
impressionist painters such as Seurat pattern in the air, the first work of as the first Kinetic artists. But the first modern art primarily concerned with examples of modern artworks which expressing
movement.
literally incorporate movement - or later,
Bauhaus
the
Ten
artist
years Lรกszlรณ
movable elements - date from the Moholy-Nagy used the term "kinetic" 1910s, and were created by artists again, to describe the mechanized working
in
the
Dadaist
and motion of his Light-Space Modulator
Constructivist traditions. Arguably the (1930), while other figures associated earliest work of Kinetic art is the with the Bauhaus, and with the postDadaist Marcel Duchamp's Bicycle Constructivist movement of Concrete Wheel (1913), which consists of a Art, produced work across the 1930swheel placed upside down on a stool; 40s which might now be called Kinetic this is also recognized as the first art. "readymade". In 1920, Constructivist artists
Naum
Gabo
and Antoine
Pevsner used the term "Kinetic art" in 20/02/19
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Accepting these early expressions of Other
works
featured
in
the
the concepts underpinning Kinetic art, Mouvement show relied on real rather it was not established as a coherent than implied movement. In some movement until 1955, when the group cases,
this
movement
could
be
exhibition Le Mouvement was held at initiated by air or touch, as in the case the Galerie Denise René in Paris. of Alexander Calder, whose mobiles, Central to this show was the work of including
Arc
of
Petals
(1941),
Hungarian artist and René Gallery co- combine graceful sculptural lines and founder
Victor
Vasarely,
whose biomorphic
shapes
Manifeste Jaune ('Yellow Manifesto'), responsiveness published
to
coincide
with
the movement
with
to
a
atmospheric
mimicking
the
natural
exhibition, became one of Kinetic art's behavior of organic forms in space. founding documents. Vasarely had Or, as was more often the case, the been trained in the traditions of the movement Bauhaus, and had spent many years Nicolas
could
be
Schöffer's
working in commercial design before incorporating
mechanized. interest
dynamism
turning to fine art, bringing with him Constructivist-inspired various
graphic techniques
into
in his
sculptures
which initially resulted in ever more complex
would inform his new approach, articulations of modelled space. But including
the
use
of
grid-like from
the
late
1940s
he
also
arrangements of black and white to introduced mechanized motion and suggest depth or motion. Vasarely's theories from cybernetics into his work quickly attracted followers, most work,
producing
"Spatiodynamic"
notably Bridget Riley, who would sculptures whose movements were make a comparable range of effects governed by environmental feedback. world-famous.
The strides made by artists to "lift the figures and scenery off the page and
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prove undeniably that art is not rigid" with the intention of being a realist. In (Calder,
1954)[4]
innovations
took
and
significant the same period, Auguste Rodin was
changes
in an artist whose early works spoke in
compositional style. Édouard Manet, support of the developing kinetic Edgar Degas, and Claude Monet movement in art. However, Auguste were the three artists of the 19th Rodin's
later
criticisms
of
the
century that initiated those changes in movement indirectly challenged the the Impressionist movement. Even abilities of Manet, Degas, and Monet, though
they
approaches
each to
took
unique claiming that it is impossible to exactly
incorporating capture a moment in time and give it
movement in their works, they did so the vitality that is seen in real life.
•
Édouard Manet:
Édouard Manet, Le Ballet Espagnol (1862). It is almost impossible to ascribe Manet's work to any one era or style of art. One of his works that is truly on the brink of a new style is Le Ballet Espagnol (1862). The figures' contours coincide with their gestures as a way to suggest depth in relation to one another and in relation to the setting. Manet also accentuates the lack of equilibrium in this work to project to the viewer that he or she is on the edge of a moment that is seconds away from passing. The blurred, hazy sense of color and shadow in this work similarly place the viewer in a fleeting moment. In 1863, Manet extended his study of movement on flat canvas with Le déjeuner sur l'herbe. The light, color, and composition are the same, but he adds a new structure to the background figures. The woman bending in the background is not completely scaled as if she were far away from 20/02/19
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the figures in the foreground. The lack of spacing is Manet's method of creating snapshot, near-invasive movement similar to his blurring of the foreground objects in Le Ballet Espagnol.
•
Edgar Degas:
Edgar Degas is believed to be the intellectual extension of Manet, but more radical for the impressionist community. Degas' subjects are the epitome of the impressionist era; he finds great inspiration in images of ballet dancers and horse races. His "modern subjects" never obscured his objective of creating moving art. In his 1860 piece Jeunes Spartiates s'exerçant à la lutte, he capitalizes on the classic impressionist nudes but expands on the overall concept. He places them in a flat landscape and gives them dramatic gestures, and for him this pointed to a new theme of "youth in movement". One of his most revolutionary works, L’Orchestre de l’Opéra (1868) interprets forms of definite movement and gives them multidimensional movement beyond the flatness of the canvas. He positions the orchestra directly in the viewer’s space, while the dancers completely fill the background. Degas is alluding to the Impressionist style of combining movement, but almost redefines it in a way that was seldom seen in the late 1800s. In the 1870s, Degas continues this trend through his love of one shot motion horseraces in such works as Voiture aux Courses (1872). It wasn’t until 1884 with Chevaux de Course that his attempt at creating dynamic art came to fruition. This work is part of a series of horse races and polo matches wherein the figures are well integrated into the 20/02/19
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landscape. The horses and their owners are depicted as if caught in a moment of intense deliberation, and then trotting away casually in other frames. The impressionist and overall artistic community were very impressed with this series, but were also shocked when they realized he based this series on actual photographs. Degas was not fazed by the criticisms of his integration of photography, and it actually inspired Monet to rely on similar technology.
•
Claude Monet
Degas and Monet's style was very similar in one way: both of them based their artistic interpretation on a direct "retinal impression" to create the feeling of variation and movement in their art. The subjects or images that were the foundation of their paintings came from an objective view of the world. As with Degas, many art historians consider that to be the subconscious effect photography had in that period of time. His 1860s works reflected many of the signs of movement that are visible in Degas' and Manet's work. By 1875, Monet's touch becomes very swift in his new series, beginning with Le Bâteau-Atelier sur la Seine. The landscape almost engulfs the whole canvas and has enough motion emanating from its inexact brushstrokes that the figures are a part of the motion. This painting along with Gare Saint-Lazare (1877-1878), proves to many art historians that Monet was redefining the style of the Impressionist era. Impressionism initially was defined by isolating color, light, and movement. In the late 1870s, Monet had pioneered a style that combined all three, while maintaining a focus on the popular subjects of 20/02/19
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the Impressionist era. Artists were often so struck by Monet's wispy brushstrokes that it was more than movement in his paintings, but a striking vibration.
•
Auguste Rodin
Auguste Rodin at first was very impressed by Monet's 'vibrating works' and Degas' unique understanding of spatial relationships. As an artist and an author of art reviews, Rodin published multiple works supporting this style. He claimed that Monet and Degas' work created the illusion "that art captures life through good modeling and movement". In 1881, when Rodin first sculpted and produced his own works of art, he rejected his earlier notions. Sculpting put Rodin into a predicament that he felt no philosopher nor anyone could ever solve; how can artists impart movement and dramatic motions from works so solid as sculptures? After this conundrum occurred to him, he published new articles that didn't attack men such as Manet, Monet, and Degas intentionally, but propagated his own theories that Impressionism is not about communicating movement but presenting it in static form.
20th century surrealism and early kinetic art The surrealist style of the 20th century created an easy transition into the style of kinetic art. All artists now explored subject matter that would not have been socially acceptable to depict artistically. Artists went beyond solely painting landscapes or historical events, and felt the need to delve into the mundane and the extreme to interpret new styles. With the support of artists 20/02/19
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such as Albert Gleizes, other avant-garde artists such as Jackson Pollock and Max Bill felt as if they had found new inspiration to discover oddities that became the focus of kinetic art.
• Albert Gleizes Gleizes was considered the ideal philosopher of the late 19th century and early 20th century arts in Europe, and more specifically France. His theories and treatises from 1912 on cubism gave him a renowned reputation in any artistic discussion. This reputation is what allowed him to act with considerable influence when supporting the plastic style or the rhythmic movement of art in the 1910s and 1920s. Gleizes published a theory on movement, which further articulated his theories on the psychological, artistic uses of movement in conjunction with the mentality that arises when considering movement. Gleizes asserted repeatedly in his publications that human creation implies the total renunciation of external sensation. That to him is what made art mobile when to many, including Rodin, it was rigidly and unflinchingly immobile. Gleizes first stressed the necessity for rhythm in art. To him, rhythm meant the visually pleasant coinciding of figures in a two-dimensional or three-dimensional space. Figures should be spaced mathematically, or systematically so that they appeared to interact with one another. Figures should also not have features that are too definite. They need to have shapes and compositions that are almost unclear, and from there the viewer can believe that the figures themselves are moving in that confined space. He wanted paintings, sculptures, and even the flat 20/02/19
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works of mid-19th-century artists to show how figures could impart on the viewer that there was great movement contained in a certain space. As a philosopher, Gleizes also studied the concept of artistic movement and how that appealed to the viewer. Gleizes updated his studies and publications through the 1930s, just as kinetic art was becoming popular.
• Jackson Pollock When Jackson Pollock created many of his famous works, the United States was already at the forefront of the kinetic art movement. The novel styles and methods he used to create his most famous pieces earned him the spot in the 1950s as the unchallenged leader of kinetic painters, his work was associated with Action painting coined by art critic Harold Rosenberg in the 1950s. Pollock had an unfettered desire to animate every aspect of his paintings. Pollock repeatedly said to himself, "I am in every painting". He used tools that most painters would never use, such as sticks, trowels, and knives. The shapes he created were what he thought was "beautiful, erratic objects". This style evolved into his drip technique. Pollock repeatedly took buckets of paint and paintbrushes and flicked them around until the canvas was covered with squiggly lines and jagged strokes. In the next phase of his work, Pollock tested his style with uncommon materials. He painted his first work with aluminum paint in 1947, titled Cathedral and from there he tried his first "splashes" to destroy the unity of the material itself. He believed wholeheartedly that he was liberating the materials and structure of art from their forced confinements, and that is how he arrived at the moving or kinetic art that always existed.
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• Max Bill Max Bill became an almost complete disciple of the kinetic movement in the 1930s. He believed that kinetic art should be executed from a purely mathematical perspective. To him, using mathematics principles and understandings were one of the few ways that you could create objective movement. This theory applied to every artwork he created and how he created it. Bronze, marble, copper, and brass were four of the materials he used in his sculptures. He also enjoyed tricking the viewer’s eye when he or she first approached one of his sculptures. In his Construction with Suspended Cube (1935-1936) he created a mobile sculpture that generally appears to have perfect symmetry, but once the viewer glances at it from a different angle, there are aspects of asymmetry.
Mobiles and sculpture Max Bill’s sculptures were only the beginning of the style of movement that kinetic explored. Tatlin, Rodchenko, and Calder especially took the stationary sculptures of the early 20th century and gave them the slightest freedom of motion. These three artists began with testing unpredictable movement, and from there tried to control the movement of their figures with technological
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enhancements. The term "mobile" comes from the ability to modify how gravity and other atmospheric conditions affect the artist’s work.
Although there is very little distinction between the styles of mobiles in kinetic art, there is one distinction that can be made. Mobiles are no longer considered mobiles when the spectator has control over their movement. This is one of the features of virtual movement. When the piece only moves under certain circumstances that are not natural, or when the spectator controls the movement even slightly, the figure operates under virtual movement.
Kinetic art principles have also influenced mosaic art. For instance, kineticinfluenced mosaic pieces often use clear distinctions between bright and dark tiles, with three-dimensional shape, to create apparent shadows and movement.
• Vladimir Tatlin Vladimir Tatlin is considered by many artists and art historians to be the first person to ever complete a mobile sculpture. The term mobile wasn't coined until Rodchenko's time, but is very applicable to Tatlin's work. His mobile is a series of suspended reliefs that only need a wall or a pedestal, and it would forever stay suspended. This early mobile, Contre-Reliefs Libérés Dans L'espace (1915) is judged as an incomplete work. It was a rhythm, much similar to the rhythmic styles of Pollock, that relied on the mathematical interlocking of planes that created a work freely suspended in air. 20/02/19
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Tatlin never felt that his art was an object or a product that needed a clear beginning or a clear end. He felt above anything that his work was an evolving process. Many artists whom he befriended considered the mobile truly complete in 1936, but he disagreed vehemently.
• Alexander Rodchenko Alexander Rodchenko, one of Tatlin’s friends who insisted his work was complete, continued the study of suspended mobiles and created what he deemed to be "non-objectivism". This style was a study less focused on mobiles than on canvas paintings and objects that were immoveable. It focuses on juxtaposing objects of different materials and textures as a way to spark new ideas in the mind of the viewer. By creating discontinuity with the work, the viewer assumed that the figure was moving off the canvas or the medium to which it was restricted. One of his canvas works titled Dance, an Objectless Composition (1915) embodies that desire to place items and shapes of different textures and materials together to create an image that drew in the viewer’s focus. However, by the 1920s and 1930s, Rodchenko found a way to incorporate his theories of non-objectivism in mobile study. His 1920 piece Hanging Construction is a wood mobile that hangs from any ceiling by a string and rotates naturally. This mobile sculpture has concentric circles that exist in several planes, but the entire sculpture only rotates horizontally and vertically.
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• Alexander Calder lexander Calder is an artist who many believe to have defined firmly and exactly the style of mobiles in kinetic art. Over years of studying his works, many critics allege that Calder was influenced by a wide variety of sources. Some claim that Chinese windbells were objects that closely resembled the shape and height of his earliest mobiles. Other art historians argue that the 1920s mobiles of Man Ray, including Shade (1920) had a direct influence on the growth of Calder’s art. When Calder first heard of these claims, he immediately admonished his critics. "I have never been and never will be a product of anything more than myself. My art is my own, why bother stating something about my art that isn’t true?" One of Calder’s first mobiles, Mobile (1938) was the work that "proved" to many art historians that Man Ray had an obvious influence on Calder’s style. Both Shade and Mobile have a single string attached to a wall or a structure that keeps it in the air. The two works have a crinkled feature that vibrates when air passes through it. Regardless of the obvious similarities, Calder’s style of mobiles created two types that are now referred to as the standard in kinetic art. There are object-mobiles and suspended mobiles. Object mobiles on supports come in a wide range of shapes and sizes, and can move in any way. Suspended mobiles were first made with colored glass and small wooden objects that hung on long threads. Object mobiles were a part of Calder’s emerging style of mobiles that were originally stationary sculptures.
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It can be argued, based on their similar shape and stance, that Calder’s earliest object mobiles have very little to do with kinetic art or moving art. By the 1960s, most art critics believed that Calder had perfected the style of object mobiles in such creations as the Cat Mobile (1966). In this piece, Calder allows the cat’s head and its tail to be subject to random motion, but its body is stationary. Calder did not start the trend in suspended mobiles, but he was the artist that became recognized for his apparent originality in mobile construction. One of his earliest suspended mobiles, McCausland Mobile (1933), is different from many other contemporary mobiles simply because of the shapes of the two objects. Most mobile artists such as Rodchenko and Tatlin would never have thought to use such shapes because they didn’t seem malleable or even remotely aerodynamic. Despite the fact that Calder did not divulge most of the methods he used when creating his work, he admitted that he used mathematical relationships to make them. He only said that he created a balanced mobile by using direct variation proportions of weight and distance. Calder’s formulas changed with every new mobile he made, so other artists could never precisely imitate the work.
Virtual movement By the 1940s, new styles of mobiles as well as many types of sculpture and paintings incorporated the control of the spectator. Artists such as Calder, Tatlin, and Rodchenko produced more art through the 1960s, but they were
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also competing against other artists who appealed to different audiences. When artists such as Victor Vasarely developed a number of the first features of virtual movement in their art, kinetic art faced heavy criticism. This criticism lingered for years until the 1960s, when kinetic art was in a dormant period.
• Materials and electricity Vasarely created many works that were considered to be interactive in the 1940s. One of his works Gordes/Cristal (1946) is a series of cubic figures that are also electrically powered. When he first showed these figures at fairs and art exhibitions, he invited people up to the cubic shapes to press the switch and start the color and light show. Virtual movement is a style of kinetic art that can be associated with mobiles, but from this style of movement there are two more specific distinctions of kinetic art.
Apparent movement and op art Apparent movement is a term ascribed to kinetic art that evolved only in the 1950s. Art historians believed that any type of kinetic art that was mobile independent of the viewer has apparent movement. This style includes works that range from Pollock’s drip technique all the way to 20/02/19
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Tatlin’s first mobile. By the 1960s, other art historians developed the phrase "op art" to refer to optical illusions and all optically stimulating art that was on canvas or stationary. This phrase often clashes with certain aspects of kinetic art that include mobiles that are generally stationary.[14][15]
In 1955, for the exhibition Mouvements at the Denise René gallery in Paris, Victor Vasarely and Pontus Hulten promoted in their "Yellow manifesto" some new kinetic expressions based on optical and luminous phenomenon as well as painting illusionism. The expression "kinetic art" in this modern form first appeared at the Museum für Gestaltung of Zürich in 1960, and found its major developments in the 1960s. In most European countries, it generally included the form of optical art that mainly makes use of optical illusions, such as op art, represented by Bridget Riley, as well as art based on movement represented by Yacov Agam, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Jesús Rafael Soto, Gregorio Vardanega, or Nicolas Schöffer. From 1961 to 1968, GRAV (Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel) founded by François Morellet, Julio Le Parc, Francisco Sobrino, Horacio Garcia Rossi, Yvaral, Joël Stein and Vera Molnár was a collective group of opto-kinetic artists. According to its 1963 manifesto, GRAV appealed to the direct participation of the public with an influence on its behavior, notably through the use of interactive labyrinths.
Contemporary work In November 2013, the MIT Museum opened 5000 Moving Parts, an exhibition of kinetic art, featuring the work of Arthur Ganson, Anne Lilly, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, John Douglas Powers, and Takis. The exhibition 20/02/19
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inaugurates a "year of kinetic art" at the Museum, featuring special programming related to the artform. Neo-kinetic[clarification needed] art has been popular in China where you can find interactive kinetic sculptures in many public places, including Wuhu International Sculpture Park and in Beijing.
Concepts and Styles: The Legacy of Constructivism: The Kinetic art movement emerged out of what was widely perceived as the decline of geometric abstraction in the post-1945 period. Due to its origins in Constructivism - and in associated movements and schools such as De Stijl and the Bauhaus - geometric abstraction had initially been associated with revolutionary attitudes to art and society. Its austere compositional lexicon of lines and flat planes, and its simplified color palette, seemed to express the rationalizing impetus of the modern world, and to promise a new, universally coherent artistic language, while the philosophy that grew up around it was concerned with the integration of art into everyday life, and focused on applied artforms such as architecture and ceramics. These ambitions faded across the middle decades of the twentieth century, however - in line with the ambitions of Utopian politics - and by the end of the Second World War geometric abstraction was increasingly perceived as a somewhat outmoded, drily academic style.
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The Kinetic art movement revitalized the tradition of geometric abstraction, utilizing mechanical or natural motion to establish new relationships between art and technology, and to forge new grammars of abstract composition which, it was once again felt, might transcend cultural and national boundaries. To that end, kineticism was introduced across several artistic media, including painting, drawing, and sculpture, and many Kinetic artists sought to work with ever newer and more public media in order to bring the style to a wide audience. Artists associated with a broadly Constructivist approach to Kinetic art include Naum Gabo, Lรกszlรณ Moholy-Nagy, Victor Vasarely, and Bridget Riley.
The Legacy of Dada: Kinetic art also drew heavily on the Dada movement, which had inspired some of the earliest works of modern art employing motion, such as Marcel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel (1913) and Roto-Reliefs (1935-65). The motivation for such works, and for the Kinetic artworks inspired by them, was not so much an interest in uniting art and technology as a desire to break with the conventional constraints of the static artwork. Instead of the viewer's experience of the artwork being determined by the artist in advance, Kinetic artists made the movement of the work - and the viewer's subjective perception of that movement - a vital and necessarily unpredictable element of their encounter with it.
The post-Dada element in Kinetic art is partly responsible for the skepticism of technology as an expression of cultural progress which defined elements of 20/02/19
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the movement. Jean Tinguely, one of the artists exhibiting at Le Mouvement in 1955, expressed this skepticism most forcefully with his self-destructing sculpture Homage to New York (1960), an unwieldy mechanical contraption designed to set itself on fire, and to disintegrate in a hail of sound and light. Other artists associated with Kinetic art, such as Alexander Calder, were influenced by post-Dada and Surrealist artists such as Joan Mirรณ, while Calder's interest in change, contingency, and biomorphic abstraction arguably place in the Dadaist wing of the movement.
The Influence of Science: The Constructivist tradition had always been inspired by a technological conception of life, and this was especially evident in the work of the Kinetic artists influenced by it, many of whom borrowed concepts from fields such as physics, optics, and cybernetics. Naum Gabo's Kinetic Construction (1920), arguably the prototype for all subsequent Kinetic art, was designed to express the concept of the "standing wave" - a type of wave-motion which creates the illusion of a static, curvilinear form - while the Op Art pioneer Victor Vasarely based his visual tricks on studies of the ocular perception of line and color. In broader terms, new conceptions of the relationship between time and space, established by the work of theoretical physicists such as Albert Einstein, provide the ambient cultural context for the fascination with movement evident in Kinetic art.
The interaction of science and Kinetic art was arguably most strikingly expressed by Nicholas Schรถffer's "Spatiodynamic" sculptures of the 1940s20/02/19
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50s, intelligent machines whose movements and physical activities would alter based on changes in their external environment. These works were influenced by the newly established field of cybernetics, which posited a series of analogies between human and artificial intelligence. As such, Schöffer's work pushed the integration of science into art to its logical conclusion, implying that human behavior itself might be no more than the expression of a mechanical process.
Later Developments The mid-1960s brought considerable acclaim to Kinetic works and artists. Julio Le Parc, a pioneer in interactive Kinetic art, was awarded the Grand Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale in 1966, and Nicolas Schöffer won the prize for sculpture in 1968; the Galerie Denise René celebrated ten years of Kinetic art in 1965 with a group show entitled Le Mouvement 2. But it was increasingly felt that Kinetic art had ceased to be aesthetically or politically radical, and was being steadily incorporated into the art establishment. Arguably, and ironically, the deathblow for Kinetic art was the huge popularity of The Responsive Eye, an exhibition focusing on the Op-Art wing of the movement, held at the The Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1965. The very definitiveness of this exhibition perhaps presented Kinetic art as something of a fait accompli, while some critics criticized the work on display as mere 'gadgetry', a collection of kitsch optical tricks whose only value was in momentarily titillating the eye.
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By this time, however, the pioneering generation of kinetic artists had already inspired a number of other artists and collective endeavors, whose work would help the ideas underpinning Kinetic art to survive the demise of the movement itself. In Paris, in the 1960s, the Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel (GRAV), inspired by Vasarely's ideas, created various immersive, multisensory sound-and-light environments, heralding a move towards the postKinetic Interactive Art of the following decades. In California, during the same period, the Light and Space Movement, also influenced by Kinetic art, as well as Minimalism and Conceptual Art, pursued the interest in organic movement and natural visual effects which had defined one wing of the Kinetic art movement.
A vast range of individual artists have employed movement in their work in one way or another since the 1960s, some of them influenced by Kinetic art, and almost all of them by the same principles that informed the movement. Rebecca Horn's sculptures often fuse elements of Dada, Fluxus, and Kinetic aesthetics; her Concert for Anarchy (1990) features a grand piano suspended upside down from the ceiling, from which, every few minutes, the keys are thrust out. The North-American artist Liliane Lijn - one of the first artists to incorporate text into kinetic sculpture, with her poem-cones of the 1960s combined kinetic sculpture with feminist mythography in the construction of her animatronic Conjunction of Opposites (1986). The playground slides, carousels, and interactive sculptures created since the 1990s by Carsten Hรถller owe little to Kinetic art directly, but the incorporation of bodily movement into the work is obviously vital to their effect.
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Important Art and Artists of Kinetic Art NAME
ARTIST
Bicycle Wheel (1913)
Marcel Duchamp
Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave) (1920)
Naum Gabo
Light Prop for an Electric Stage (Light Space Modulator) (1930)
Lรกszlรณ Moholy-Nagy
Arc of Petals (1941)
Alexander Calder
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NAME
ARTIST
Vega III (1957-59)
Victor Vasarely
CYSP 1 (1956)
Nicholas Schรถffer
Homage to New York (fragment) (1960)
Jean Tinguely
Blaze (1964)
Bridget Riley
Labyrinth (1963)
Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel
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Bicycle Wheel (1913)
Artist: Marcel Duchamp
Artwork description & Analysis: Bicycle Wheel is mainly famous as the first example of what Duchamp called his "readymades": artworks which literally constituted found, generally mass-produced objects, placed in galleries or other suitably suggestive contexts and presented as works of art. In this case, however, the work contains a movable element - the bicycle wheel - and has thus also been seen as the first example of Kinetic art.
Marcel Duchamp is primarily associated with the Dada movement, and Bicycle Wheel is most significant as an expression of that movement's revolutionary attitudes to the boundaries of the art object, and its scorn for established notions of artistic form and interpretation. What is important about the work in this sense is not its incorporation of motion into sculpture but what it is not: its rejection of the artisanal modes of construction and composition central to what Duchamp derided as "retinal art". However, for Duchamp, the movement of the bicycle wheel was also essential to the work's effect. "I enjoyed looking at it," he said, "just as I enjoyed looking at the flames dancing in a fireplace. It was like having a fireplace in my studio, the movement of the wheel reminded me of the movement of flames." The first viewers of Bicycle Wheel were also invited to spin the wheel, and Duchamp went on to make 20/02/19
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more obviously proto-Kinetic works such as his Rotary Glass Plates (Precision Optics) of 1920, and his Roto-Reliefs of 1935-65.
Although Bicycle Wheel was made outside the context of the Kinetic art movement, artists of the 1950s-60s looked back on it as a precursor, evidence of a tradition of Kinetic art extending across the twentieth century. The importance subsequently assigned to Duchamp's piece also reveals the significance of Dada as a - sometimes hidden - forerunner to Kinetic art. Though in many instances, Kinetic art expressed optimism regarding the relationship between technology and humanity, for some Kinetic artists, the rise of the machine signaled the demise of a vital human spirit, or the absence of any such spirit in the first place. The somewhat abject appearance of Bicycle Wheel, and the comic pointlessness of its freewheeling motion, predict this more satirical, socially critical aspect of Kinetic art.
Bicycle wheel on wooden stool - Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave) (1920)
Artist: Naum Gabo
Artwork description & Analysis: Naum Gabo's Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave) consists of a steel rod affixed to a wooden base, set in motion by an
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electric motor. The oscillations of the rod create the illusion of a static, curvilinear shape, a sculptural form generated entirely through movement, and arguably the first example of Kinetic art created in earnest.
The sculpture was constructed in war-torn, post-Revolutionary Moscow, where Russian artists such as Gabo were attempting to play their part in the construction of a new, Utopian society. As many of the workshops where he might have requisitioned materials were shut, Gabo used an old doorbell mechanism to power the piece. In conceptual terms, the work was meant to demonstrate the new artistic principles outlined in Gabo and his brother Antoine Pevsner's "Realistic Manifesto" (1920), the first document of modern art to speak of "kinetics" as an aspect of artistic form, announcing that "kinetic rhythms" should be "affirmed ... as the basic forms of our perception of real time". More specifically, Kinetic Construction was meant to demonstrate the principle of the "standing wave": the way that certain wave-forms move through space to create the illusion of a permanent, static presence. In both concept and context, then, this piece evokes the technological, politically radical world-view which underpinned the earliest, Constructivist-inspired works of Kinetic art.
Many Kinetic artists of the 1950s-60s revived the technological and utopian fervour of the Constructivist vanguard, making new attempts to integrate technology into art, and to establish a new, rational and scientific creative vocabulary fit for an internationalist culture. Gabo thus created a work which stands at the forefront of one part of the Kinetic art movement; at the same time, it is worth acknowleding that in its relative simplicity of form, Kinetic
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Construction is, as Gabo put it, more of an "explanation of the idea than a Kinetic sculpture itself".
Metal, painted wood and electrical mechanism - Tate, London
Light Prop for an Electric Stage (Light Space Modulator) (1930)
Artist: Lรกszlรณ Moholy-Nagy
Artwork description & Analysis: The Light-Space Modulator created by Hungarian artist Lรกszlรณ Moholy-Nagy between 1922 and 1930 is an early example of the complex, mechanically-powered Kinetic art that would become more common after the Second World War. The original version displayed in 1930 consisted of a large circular base supporting various interlocking, moving components: several metal rectangles designed to jerk around in irregular fashion; perforated metal discs which released a small black ball; and a glass spiral which rotated to create the illusion of a conical form. Central to the piece's effect were 130 integrated electric light bulbs, which shone through the construction to produce mesmeric interplays of light and shadow on the surrounding surfaces. The work was first shown as part of an exhibition by the Deutscher Werkbund ("German Association of Craftsmen") in Paris; the same year, Moholy-Nagy created a film based on the sculpture, Light Play Black-White-Grey, and used the word "kinetic" for the first time to describe his own practice.
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Born in Hungary to a Jewish family, in 1920 Moholy-Nagy emigrated to Germany, and by 1923 was teaching at the Bauhaus, then the most significant outpost of Constructivist principles in Northern Europe. MoholyNagy was partly responsible for establishing the technological, rationalist, politically radical approach to art associated with the school; working across a range of applied artforms, he focused on the integration of scientific principles into
creative
design,
and
the
establishment
of
new
compositional
vocabularies for art. The Light-Space Modulator exemplifies these ideas, many of which were expressed in his "Manifesto on the System of DynamicoConstructivist Forms", co-authored with Alfred Kemeny in 1922: "[w]e must put in the place of the static principle of classical art the dynamic principle of universal life. Stated practically: instead of static material construction [...] dynamic construction [...] must be evolved, in which the material is employed as the carrier of its forces."
Though influenced by Naum Gabo's kinetic constructions - and sketches for kinetic constructions - of the early 1920s, Light-Space Modulator represents a new level of conceptual and technical sophistication within Kinetic art. In this sense, and in terms of the date and location of its creation, it is an important transitional work, standing between the first pioneering efforts of artists such as Gabo and the ever-more complex mechanical constructions of post-1945 Kinetic artists in Western Europe and North America.
Steel, aluminum, glass, plexiglass, and colored lightbulbs - The Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University
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Arc of Petals (1941)
Artist: Alexander Calder
Artwork description & Analysis: Arc of Petals is one of many examples of the free-standing or hanging "mobiles" - so christened by Marcel Duchamp - for which the American sculptor Alexander Calder became famous. Looking somewhat like an inverted, suspended tree, the piece comprises a central spine of iron wire with various petal or leaf-like appendages budding off from it; these pieces are largest and most solid-seeming at the top, smallest and most tentative-seeming at the base. The movement of the piece in the breeze is intended to play with the readers' associations of heaviness and lightness, providing a counterintuitive, irregular pattern of motion. With works such as Arc of Petals, Calder defined an important and unique sub-genre of Kinetic aesthetics, one that was concerned with the movement and dynamism of nature rather than of the mechanized, urbanized world.
Calder came from a family of sculptors and painters, and before training as an artist took a degree in mechanical engineering, learning various technical processes which he would later put to use in his Kinetic art. In the late 1920s he moved briefly to Paris, where he befriended many of the prominent modern artists of the day; his construction of mobiles as art-objects commenced at the start of the following decade. Whereas early works in this medium rely on motorized or hand-cranked mechanisms to create pre
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-determined patterns of movements, by the time Arc of Petals was made, Calder was generally producing mobiles set in motion by passing air currents. Initially he used materials such as glass or pottery to create these pieces, but later works such Arc of Petals were constructed from pieces of hand-shaped aluminum, painted in solid reds, yellows, blues, blacks, and whites. In this case, we can see the influence of his painter friends Joan Mirรณ and Jean Arp in the biomorphic forms of the leaves, while a single aluminum petal left unpainted reminds the viewer of the weight and roughness of the compositional material.
Constructed with artisanal care and intended to be set in motion by natural forces, Calder's mobiles express quite a different aspect of Kinetic art to the futuristic, mechanical contraptions of other artists. The element of chance or contingency introduced into the viewer's encounter with the piece by its interaction with the atmosphere might be described as post-Dada, but there is also a lyrical engagement with nature evident in this effect, and in the graceful organic curves of the piece, while something of the aura of the fine-art object is imbued by Calder's hand-crafting process. In its interaction with the natural world, Calder's work predicts post-Kinetic developments such as Light Art.
Painted and unpainted sheet aluminum, iron wire, and copper rivets - Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy
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Vega III (1957-59)
Artist: Victor Vasarely
Artwork description & Analysis: Vega III, by the Hungarian-French artist and graphic designer Victor Vasarely, is an early example of what was later dubbed Op Art, a subcategory of Kinetic art which relies on the illusion of movement rather than actual movement - whether mechanical or natural - for effect. In an early example of a technique that would later become synonymous with his work, Vasarely uses a warped, black-and-white chequerboard pattern to create the illusion of convex and concave shapes within a flat picture-plane.
Vasarely had supported himself for several years as a successful commercial graphic designer before turning to painting after the Second World War, and many of the visual effects employed in his Op Art were first conceived with the advertising billboard in mind. In the early 1940s, with the curator Denise René, he co-founded the Gallerie Denise René on the outskirts of Paris, establishing it over the next few years as a hub of post-war developments in Kinetic and Op Art. Vasarely himself exhibited there from 1944 onwards, and the breakthrough group exhibition Le Mouvement, staged at the gallery in 1955, presented a clear and coherent survey of Kinetic art for the first time, placing Vasarely's work alongside that of predecessors such as Duchamp and Calder, and contemporaries such as Jesus Rafael Sotó and Jean Tinguely. The origins of Kinetic art, it seemed, extended back into the early twentieth century, while the style was currently in an exciting stage of growth. 20/02/19
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Vital to this impression, conveyed so successfully by the exhibition, was Vasarely's Manifeste Jaune or "Yellow Manifesto", published to coincide with the show, which sounded a new clarion call for abstract art in the wake of the Second World War, declaring that "pure form and pure color can signify the world".
Inspired by the Constructivist movement and the Bauhaus, Vasarely's mature work in a sense moved beyond Kinetic art before Kinetic art itself had even taken off as a style. In making the viewer's sense that the artwork was moving - rather than the actual movement of the artwork - vital to their engagement with it, Vasarely staged important new questions about the interplay of material form and subjective interpretation in defining the boundaries of the art object: movement could be a sensation entirely generated in the human brain, not necessarily dependent on any physical stimulus. Vasarely also brought a new, scientifically precise awareness of the physiological process of vision to Kinetic art, and inspired a generation of younger artists such as Bridget Riley.
Oil on canvas - Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
CYSP 1 (1956)
Artist: Nicholas Schรถffer
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Artwork description & Analysis: The title of CYSP 1, created by the FrenchHungarian artist Nicholas Schöffer, is an abbreviation of "Cybernetics" and "Spatiodynamics". Designed in conjunction with the Phillips electronics company, CYSP 1 was a construction of black steel and polychrome aluminum plates mounted on a base with four rollers. In this base was set an 'electronic brain' which used photo-electric cells and a microphone to record variations in the light intensity, color, and sound levels in the sculpture's surrounding environment. Variations in these atmospheric factors triggered different types of movement: when the sculpture recognized the color blue, for example, it would move forwards, retreat, or turn quickly. Designed partly for use on the stage, CYSP 1 was incorporated into a performance given by Maurice Béjart's ballet company at the Festival of the Avant-Garde in Marseilles in 1956.
Many of the earliest works of Kinetic art had utilized mechanical movement as the basis of their time-bound element, and since the late 1940s Schöffer himself had been creating what he called "spatiodynamic" sculptures, equipped with electric motors allowing remotely-controlled movement. But the integration of an environmentally responsive, unpredictable element into that movement was a major step forward for Kinetic art. Schöffer was familiar with the new field of "Cybernetics" defined in Norbert Weiner's 1948 book of that name, which proposed that the behavior of both humans and machines was based on "feedback loops" established with external environments. Not only did this theory provide a model for artificial intelligence, but it also proposed that the intelligence of humans was no different from that of machines, and that, theoretically, thinking life-forms could therefore be constructed. CYSP 1 represents perhaps the first concerted application of this theory to modern art, 20/02/19
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and thus signifies a radical advancement in the conceptual and technical scope of Kinetic art.
If Kinetic art was split between those who saw the machine as humankind's potential savior and those who saw it as the potential source of its ruin, SchÜffer's work from the 1950s onwards presents the more radical proposition that there is no clear distinction to draw between human and mechanical life in the first place. Through works such as CYSP 1, and more ambitious projects such as his Cybernetic Tower, installed in 1961 outside Liège Conference Centre, he used Kinetic art as the springboard for projects which blurred the boundaries between art and AI, ensuring the longevity and significance of the Kinetic art movement itself.
Painted steel and polychrome aluminum, rollers, electronic sensors and motor
Homage to New York (fragment) (1960)
Artist: Jean Tinguely
Artwork description & Analysis: Homage to New York was constructed over three weeks in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, with the assistance of several other artists and engineers including Robert Rauschenberg. On its first unveiling in March 1960, it set itself on fire and self-detonated over the course of a 27-minute display of noise and light (to the complete surprise of the assembled audience, and MOMA staff, who 20/02/19
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eventually called the fire brigade). 23 feet wide and 27 feet high, the sculpture itself was an assemblage of interlocking, mechanized found components, including pieces of scrap metal, wheels, bicycle horns, a piano, a bathtub, and a go-cart, all jutting out into space to create an entanglement of abstracted forms. The fragmented remains of the piece now form part of MOMA's permanent collection.
The Swiss artist Jean Tinguely represented the more anarchic wing of the post-1945 Kinetic art movement. Though his work was displayed alongside that of post-Constructivist compatriots such as Victor Vasarely at the genre defining 1955 show Le Mouvement, sculptural works with names such as Frigo Duchamp (1960) and Suzuki (Hiroshima) (1963) indicate the more Dadaish, socially polemical stance underlying Tinguely's output. He generally constructed
his
sculptures
and
machines
-
what
he
called
his
"metamechanical" works - from a bricolage of found objects; by setting them in motion, he performed witty visual commentaries on capitalism's tendency to generate endless, functionless production, often with destructive and violent side-effects. As a signatory of Pierre Restany's 1960 manifesto "Les Nouveaux RĂŠalistes", Tinguely associated himself with a broader movement in French art towards happenings, process-based activities, and works of found sculpture and collage which tore down the barriers between representation and reality, with politically-charged intent.
Homage to New York presents a different idea of the relationship between human life and mechanization than the optimistic, post-Constructivist visions of other Kinetic artists, and thus represents an important and unique contribution to the style. For Tinguely, the rampant drive towards 20/02/19
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mechanization evident in modern consumer culture was a path towards catastrophe and death. In this sense, his concerns mirror those of Gustav Metzger and the 1960s Auto-Destructive Art movement, as well as those of his peers in the French Nouveau RĂŠalisme movement, placing Kinetic art in a wider historical trajectory than that implied by its Constructivist heritage alone.
Mixed media including painted metal, wood, and rubber tires - Museum of Modern Art, New York
Blaze (1964)
Artist: Bridget Riley
Artwork description & Analysis: The zig-zagging black and white lines of Blaze create the illusion of a vortex burrowing down into the centre of the picture-plane. As the brain plays with the image, the concentric rings - like a psychedelic Dante's inferno - appear to shift back and forth, suggesting inward, revolving motion as they curve rhythmically around the center of the page. Although the image is monochromatic, prismatic colors also appear, as the eye attempts to focus on the piece. Blaze is a brilliantly executed example of the subcategory of Kinetic art known as Op Art.
Its creator, the London-born Bridget Riley, had worked through various styles, including versions of Impressionism and Pointillism, before embarking from around 1960 on the visually mesmeric prints and paintings for which she is 20/02/19
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now known. Blaze is an early and quintessential example of her mature style, a work which defines the best of the Op Art movement, which was showcased the following year in the enormously successful MOMA show The Responsive Eye. That exhibition, whose catalogue featured Riley's 1964 painting Current on its cover, shot the artist to worldwide fame, and today she remains the best-known of the post-war Kinetic artists (an even more significant achievement given that, along with others such as Liliane Lijn and Vera Molnรกr, she was one of only a few women associated with the movement).
Blaze has been interpreted in relation to the Precision Optics and Roto-Relief series of Marcel Duchamp, while the black-and-white color-palette and vortex-like form also suggest an affinity with the Vorticist painter and camouflage designer Edward Wadsworth. Riley's work has also been seen to convey a fascination with bodily and organic rhythms, and with landscape painting in the tradition of Seurat: indeed, more than any other figure, Riley has been concerned - as both artist and curator - to show the origins of Kinetic Art in the painting styles of the late-19th century. Her work thus shows the depth of Op Art's historical roots, and, for this reason and because of its sheer technical brilliance, represents a vital contribution to the genre.
Screen print on paper - Tate, London
Labyrinth (1963)
Artist: Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel
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Artwork description & Analysis: The Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel or GRAV, established in Paris in 1960, was made up of 11 Optic and Kinetic artists, including significant individual artists such as Julio Le Parc, Vera Molnรกr, Franรงois Morellet, Francisco Sabrino, and Jean-Pierre Yvaral (Victor Vasarely's son). For the Paris Biennale in 1963, GRAV constructed one of its various 1960s works known as "labyrinths", interactive mazes through which spectators were invited to walk, engaging en route with various effects of light-play and movement. The 1963 labyrinth involved light-sources placed behind perforated screens or arranged in sculptural shapes, wall-mounted reliefs, mobile bridges, and various other kinetic-sculptural elements arranged into twenty distinct environmental sections.
Influenced by Vasarely, artists such as the Argentinian Julio Le Parc - now perhaps the best-known of the GRAV artists - set about furthering his experiments in various respects. In integrating the effects of Kinetic art into walk-through environments, for example, the GRAV artists took the emphasis on viewer-engagement implicit in Vasarely's optical illusions one step further, literally inviting viewers into their artworks, and thereby encouraging highly subjective encounters with those works. The artists of GRAV, like the early pioneers of Kinetic art, also placed great emphasis on the potential social significance of their work, suggesting in their manifestos and critical statements - such as "Enough Mystification", published to coincide with the 1963 Biennale - that new forms of visual experience might herald new forms of collective cultural and social experience. By pooling their resources, and by placing emphasis on "research" rather than subjective inspiration, the group
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also emphasized the idea of collective intelligence over individual genius, another implicitly political gesture.
Though the activities of GRAV, like the Kinetic art movement in general, did not outlast the 1960s, their collective endeavors over that decade stand as one of the most significant monuments to the impact and widespread acceptance of ideas associated with Kinetic art during the 1950s-60s. Moreover, in moving from Kinetic to Interactive Art, the artists of GRAV predicted one of the many ways in which the ideas of Kinetic art would outlast the movement itself.
Temporary sculptural construction; mixed media
Introducer of the Kinetic and Op-art in Spain: Eusebio Sempere Eusebio Sempere (3 April 1923 – 10 April 1985) was a Spanish sculptor, painter and graphic artist whose abstract geometric works make him the most representative artist of the Kinetic art movement in Spain and one of Spain's foremost artists. His use of repetition of line and mastery of color to manipulate the way light plays on the surface give depth to his pictorial compositions.
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Biography Sempere was born in Onil, Alicante,
Nina
Spain. He began his studies at the
Kandinsky,
School of Fine Arts of San Carlos de
the painter's
Valencia where he studied painting,
widow,
drawing
Roberta
and
techniques.
various
Due
to
a
etching childhood
and
González,
disease he had almost no vision in
the daughter
his right eye.
of
sculptorEusebio Sempere
Julio González. In 1957 he made the In 1948 Sempere went to study in Paris, where he met Palazuelo and Chillida and other avant-garde artists such as Kandinsky and Klee. Here he
acquaintance of Martin Abel who worked with him years later to produce
limited
editions
of
his
serigraphs.[2]
came under the influence of Braque, and improved the screen printing
Returning to Spain in 1959, he
technique he used frequently in later
moved to Valencia, where art critic
years. In 1955, his work was noticed
Aguilera Cerní, editor of Arte vivo
by art critics at the Denise Rene
(The Living Art) magazine, introduced
Gallery and in 1956 he showed two
Sempere to the Group Parpalló, a
works at the Salon des Nouvelles
cultural movement not limited to the
Realites Paris. In this period he was
visual arts.[3] Formed in 1957, it
greatly
Vasarely’s
included artists such as Castellano,
theories of kinetic art. In Paris he also
Genovés, Navarro, Soria, Michavila,
met Hans Arp and was friends with
Andres Alfaro, Manolo Gil, Amadeo
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impressed
by
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Gabino, Isidoro Balaguer, and others striving
to
renew
the
cultural
Still exhibiting regularly at the Denise
landscape in Valencia. The group
Rene Gallery in Paris, he participated
published a magazine, called at first
in some notable public projects; the
Arte vivo and later Parpalló, and
best-known
began group exhibitions.
sculptures and carved railings at the Museo
examples
Esculturas
al
are Aire
the Libre
In 1964, Sempere was granted a
(Museum of Outdoor Sculpture) in
Ford Foundation fellowship which
Madrid. Sempere persuaded his artist
allowed him to travel to the United
friends,
States and put on an exhibition at the
Miró, and Chillida, to donate their
Bertha Schaefer Gallery, and to show
work, much of which is spectacular,
his work in the Spanish Pavilion at
especially his own cascade that
the World’s Fair in New York. In 1968
forms a centerpiece of the assembly.
Sempere participated in a seminar at
Sempere’s work in the gardens of the
the
the
Fundación Juan March (Juan March
Complutense University of Madrid on
Foundation) also in Madrid, next to
"Automatic
the concrete sculpture by Chillida, is
Computer
Centre
generation
of of
plastic
forms" where he created works using
including
Pablo
Serrano,
highly regarded as well.
computers. In 1969, he traveled again to the United States on a
In 1980 he won the Gold Medal for
fellowship and there used a computer
Merit in Fine Arts, awarded by the
to create original art, a technique that
Ministry of Culture in Madrid, and in
he would continue to experiment with
1983 he was awarded the Prince of
on his return to the University of
Asturias Prize for the Arts. He was
Madrid, where he became a pioneer
officially named a favorite son of the
of this innovation in Spain.[4]
city of Alicante and awarded an
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honorary doctorate by the University.
He died in April 1985 in Onil, Alicante, after a long illness.
Kinetic Art in Spain – Eusebio’s work Spain during the 60s was closed to the outer world, due to the political and cultural context, which provoked very interesting artistic and cultural reactions as showed by the group El Paso or Parpalló. However, it wasn’t isolated from currents such as the European kinetic art. Sempere, lacking the insecurity and hesitation, and after spacing out from the kinetic norm, he took a little of that current to Spain, which started a way that is still valid today.
Cuadro de Eusebio Sempere
With this, Sempere had to do a didactic function; he had to “explain” what this current of new and totally unknown, or misunderstood, art was about. The press from these years shows this situation and, in all of the interviews, the artistic current, this will occur all along the 60s and the 70s, and the fact of suddenly having to define himself as part of a label from which he was already far away seemed paradoxical.
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Germán Crespo Darias My art was called “kinetic” since it has some cinematographic character for its changing forms. This is a very new technique and it was the result of incorporating new elements to the always evolving painting. Some painters have introduced sand, sackclothes and thread wefts to their oils. I included the technique: light and movement in them.1
To the question: What is “op-art”? Sempere answered, in a short interview from El Noticiero Universal:
A derivation from Mondrian, to give movement to the droop of Mondrian; it is this movement that creates visual effects.
Sempere's work is defined by the abstraction of its elements, geometric repetition and linearity, all of which evolved into his synthesis of Op Art and constructivism with elements of kinetic art.
His personal contribution to the development of kinetic art is a series of abstract geometric constructions that demonstrate the perceptual effects of optical vibration and the illusion of motion. Light also plays an important role in his artistic work. Perhaps influenced by Levantine sources, Sempere uses it as the main element to organize his creations harmoniously. His paintings are considered as two-dimensional surfaces where the artist plays with visual elements—the light, the colors and tones—using perceptual and optical effects to create suggestive forms in repeating geometric shapes. 1
This fragment from an interview belongs to the paper “Pueblo”, from a 1st of February, the year is not specified, but it can be deduced that it belongs to his return to Spain and from his trip to USA in 1964. Sempere sent this bit of paper to his family.
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Sempere worked in many different media, from drawings, gouaches, oil paintings, and silk screen prints to sculptures of iron and stainless steel. Two of his works can be seen in the Museum of Outdoor Sculpture in Madrid, for which he created the rails, now painted blue, which suggest a curious moiré effect when walking beside them, and a mobile which he had loaned to the museum.
The Alicante Museum of Contemporary Art (Museo Alicantino de Arte Contemoraneo) contains the collection of 20th-century art donated by Sempere to the city in 1978. It is located in Alicante's oldest civil building, the Casa de la Asegurada, which dates to 1685. The nucleus of the collection contains works by major Spanish artists of the 1950s: Alfaro, Canogar, Chillida, Joan Castejón, Mompó, Saura, Tàpies, Zobel and Viola. Overall, it includes these and more than 500 pieces comprising paintings, sculptures, mixed media and lithographs by other great Spanish and foreign artists such as Dalí, Picasso, Millares, Serrano, Miró, Gris, Kandinsky, Chagall and Vasarely, and covering all stages of Sempere's own career.
Sempere's outdoor sculpture of metal rods at the Juan March Foundation in Madrid inspired two Spanish physicists to develop a new method for cancelling noise. Discussing the mechanics of sound attenuation over beers, they realized that the sculpture might reveal an optimum arrangement of materials that dampens noise not by absorbing it, but by interfering with the transmission of sound waves
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Exhibitions
Eusebio Sempere’s Exhibitions Date
Location
1949
Mateu Art Gallery, Valencia
1961
The Ateneo of Madrid
1972
Juana Mordót Gallery, Madrid
1975
Egam Gallery of Madrid
1980
-
1985
Banco de Bilbao
1998
IVAM2, Valencia
2018
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
Museums
• IVAM, Valencia • Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia • Modern Art Museum of Barcelona • Abstract Art Museum of Cuenca • Fogg Museum, Harvard University, USA • Museum of Modern Art MOMA, New York • Museum of Hamburg, Germany • Fundación Juan March, Madrid 2
Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno
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• MUA, Museum of the University of Alicante • Museum of Contemporary Art of Alicante (MACA)
Awards
➢ 1964 - Ford Fellowship International Institute of New York ➢ 1980 - Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts, Ministry of Culture, Madrid ➢ 1983 - Prince of Asturias Prize for the Arts ➢ 1983 - Prize Alfons Roig, Council of Valencia
Bibliography 1) https://www.theartstory.org/movement-kinetic-art.htm 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_art#Virtual_movement 3) http://www.eusebio-sempere.com/creative-process/alchemy-19591964/introducer-of-the-kinetic-and-op-art-in-spain/ 4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusebio_Sempere
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