After 1960, the Constructivist and Expressionist notions that art represented either the order of the outside world or the inner essence of the artist, withered under critical scrutiny. New artists such as Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely began to concentrate on technology...
[more]After 1960, the Constructivist and Expressionist notions that art represented either the order of the outside world or the inner essence of the artist, withered under critical scrutiny. New artists such as Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely began to concentrate on technology and urban society. His "kinetic" sculptures treat movement as an artistic element and celebrate chance and irregularity: "Life is movement. Everything transforms itself, everything modifies itself ceaselessly." In an era that loved straight lines, right angles, and efficient engineering, Tinguely captured the art world's imagination with his junk sculptures. Assembled from cast-off machine parts, scrap-yard cable, tape, and bone, the sculptures wobbled, warbled, churned, and clunked; because of their ready-made elements and Dadaist operations, the sculptures are often compared to the work of Marcel Duchamp.
Tinguely's kinetic sculptures emancipated the machine from its history of utility and remade it into an object of beauty and expression. In the 1950s, he created the "Meta-Matics," a series of interactive sculptures whose unpredictable movements are triggered by viewers. One sculpture draws colorful pictures when people insert felt-tipped markers into a pincer and push a button.
In the 1960s, his works lost their whimsy and playfulness, becoming dark metaphors for life in the industrial age -- instead of interacting with the pieces, viewers witnessed the machines perform and then self-destruct. "Homage to New York" (1960) inflated a weather balloon, released colored smoke, and operated a painting piano before offing itself in the courtyard of MoMA. "The Dissecting Machine" (1965) is a horrific assembly of mannequin appendages, toothed metal blades, and drill bits.
With each decade, the work became more apocalyptic; sculptures from the 1980s feature animal skeletons, found consumer objects, and unbearable noises. These later works capture the anxieties and horrors of modernity, prompting Werner Spies to describe Tinguely's art as a "requiem to the movements and stereotypes of the homme-machine."
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