Jean Tinguely:
Méta-Malevich Series (15 pieces), 1954

   

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Méta-Kandinsky I (Wundermaschine), 1956
   

"... 'meta-mechanical paintings', reliefs of a kind, in which simple geometrical shapes painted in the primary colours move about slowly in front of a surface. (. . .) It is theoretically possible to calculate the periodicity of the reliefs. One of them, for instance, ought to repeat the same configuration after about a year, if it ran continuously. But the couplings slip a bit; as a result, the shapes might reach the same position already after two months, or it might not happen for hundreds of years."

Hultén, 1955, p. 26.

Cf. also: Gerhard von Graevenitz (early nineteenseventies): Panels with rotating strips.

Assignment (Algorithmic Art): Make computer simulations of the Méta-Malevitch's and Méta-Kandinsky's, and integrate them in a Méta-Tinguely-program. Make sure the program is based on an explicit mathematical model. Describe and motivate the model in an accompanying essay.
    

Compositions with Movement:
Alexander Calder's "Mobiles à Moteur".

Calder (...) says that during a visit to Mondrian's studio, in the rue du Départ in Paris, he received a vision of a new art form (...). Mondrian's studio was an extraordinary room, with small, movable red, blue and yellow rectangles on the white walls, and a large, red, cylindrical gramophone in the middle of the floor (..). Calder writes: "... the light coming from two facing windows met in the room, and I thought how beautiful it would have been if everything had started to move, but Mondrian didn't like the idea." (...)

 Hultén 1955, p. 19. [Cf. also: Calder, 1937.]

Calder did not heed Mondriaan's advice, and developed a form of "kinetic constructivism" in his "Mobiles à moteur" (1931): different elementary shapes: line, spiral, circle, ball; different elementary colors and black/white/grey; different elementary movements: rotation, pendulum, virtual translation; rotation-axis in the picture-plane or orthogonal to it.

Calder describes one of these works as follows:

 – Dimensions: 2 x 2.50 m.

 – Frame, 8 cm., neutral red.

 – The two white balls rotate at a high speed.

 – The black spiral rotates at a lower speed and appears to be constantly climbing.

 – The tin disc turns even more slowly, the two black lines appear to be constantly climbing.

 – The black pendulum, which is 40 cm. in diameter, climbs to 45 degrees on each side with 25 strokes a minute and swings outside the frame.

Mechanical Chance

Jean Tinguely's earliest kinetic works, discussed above, are based on painterly examples. (Méta-Malevitch, Méta-Kandinsky, Méta-Herbin). The elements of these "kinetic paintings" are simultaneously rotated with different speeds; this creates an infinite variety of possible configurations.

Tinguely's next step is the construction of machines which are no longer concerned with painting, but with movement per se. These "moving sculptures" consist of motors, wheels, belts, cogs, and crank-shafts. Their movements are irregular because of the machine's imperfections. This irregularity has nothing in common with the unpredictability of Calder's mobiles à main: it is not organic but anti-mechanic: jerking, jamming, jittering epicycles of periodic rotations and translations. [slippen, haperen, stokken] (Rubato: Gustav Leonhart, Thelonious Monk.)

"Tinguely discovered an almost inexhaustible source — a mechanism whose goal was not precision but anti-precision, the mechanics of chance." [Pontus Hultén 1975, p. 8.]

"In machines intended for practical use the engineer tries to reduce the irregularities as much as possible. Tinguely is after the exact opposite. His objective is mechanical disorder. His cog-wheels are so constructed that they jump the cogs continually, jam, and start turning again, unpredictably. (. . .) The same movement can appear ten times in succession and then, apparently, never be repeated again. This creates an unusually acute sense of time." [Hultén 1955, p. 26.]

"Le mot "asynchrone", dit Tinguely, tu peux l'écrire mais en petit. C'était plutôt un défaut mais j'ai découvert que la création était là, la combinaison infinie: ce n'était plus calculable." [Conil Lacoste 1989, p. 33.]

In the "Schéma des Dispositifs", Tinguely gives an inventory of his techniques. The construction of chance by means of imperfections is a recurring theme in this text.

Les Courroies en cuir [le peaux des les les Vaches - Veaux  tire coupé en ficelles au kilomètre ...... ] Glisse bien = distributeur du HASARd (...) Les Courroies Trapezoidales  Glisse aussi (...)       1953     le "META" est LA mais "le Jolie" Meta-MECANIQUE c'est l'ENGENAGE "Libre" & hésitant –  en fil de fer tousjour "en panne" permanent   Stabilité du Hasard.   (...) la "FAbricAtioN" du HASARd & de l'IRRéGulaRité VARiAble }  le MetA d'Abord       le "CHAOS" stable

[Tinguely: "Schéma des Dispositifs". In: Conil Lacoste, 1989, pp. 27-31.]

"Tinguely (...) uses an old-fashioned technology in his machines. He likes ordinary, conventional motors (...). As yet, with the exception of the components from radio-sets used in his sculptures around 1962, he has never employed electronics or other more up-to-date techniques." [ Pontus Hultén 1975, p. 307.]

"There was nothing new in the idea of deliberately introducing chance as an element in art. (. . .) In Tinguely's case, however, it was no longer a matter of the role of chance in the act of creation, nor of a static display of something that had come about by chance, but of chance in action." [Pontus Hultén 1975, p. 8.]

"With their unrepeatable and unique movements and sequences, Tinguely's machines exist in an enviable freedom. Their vitality, spontaneity, and lyricism bring to us ecstatic moments of life divorced entirely from moral precept or inhibition, from good and evil, right and wrong, beautiful or ugly. His machines are a piece of pure existence, eternally changeable, and they do not have to mean anything or refer to anything. But one is mistaken to believe that their artistic message is innocent or harmless. They subvert the established order and convey a sense of anarchy and individual liberation which would otherwise not exist." [Hultèn 1965, pp. 13/14.]

 

"Métamatic and Métaméchanique – In the work of Jean Tinguely (Swiss, 1925 – ), machines programmed electronically to act with antimechanical unpredictability, jerking erraticly, sometimes scribbling on rolls of paper. Tinguely was influenced by Klee, Miró and Duchamp. His most famous work was Homage to New York, 1960, an assemblage including an old piano, a pram, a meteorological balloon, and various machine parts; it self-destructed with pyrotechnics before a crowd; its remnants now at the Museum of Modern Art, NY. See automata, Dada and Surrealism."

[From: Artlex.com]

Exam question: This text from Artlex.com contains one very bad mistake. Discuss it.

Pamphlet released in 150.000 copies from an airplane above Düsseldorf, March 14, 1959. A more extensive manifesto along the same lines was presented in Tinguely's lecture "Art, Machines and Motion" at the Cyclo-matic Evening, ICA, London, November 12, 1959.

[Cf. Pontus Hultén, 1975, pp. 77, 114-119, 327; Hulten 1987, p.67.]

Essay topic: Analyse Tinguely's pamphlet. For instance: investigate connections with Bergson's psychology of time; with Wittgenstein's statement that "living in eternity is living in the present" (Tractatus); with Duchamp's "aesthetics of indifference" (cf. Pyrrho and other Stoics); and with Tinguely's art.

   Automatic painting.

In 1959, Tinguely's Metamatics become autonomous painters themselves. We devote a separate page to this pioneering work in automatic image generation.

   Uselessness.

Tinguely's machines were often interpreted as demonstrating "uselessness", but they didn't seem to mind. Around 1964, their behaviour tends to get less cheerful and more predictable. Mechanical, regular motions. Sisyphus-labor, joyless sex. Cf: Pontus Hultén 1975, p. 278.

Assignment:

Make a computer simulation of Calder's kinetic work (both periods: "mobiles à moteur" and "mobiles à main").

Make a computer simulation Tinguely's work (both periods: "Méta-Malevich" and "fabrication du hasard")

Write an essay about what you did and why.

Results sofar:

Erik Borra (Mobiles à Moteur and Méta-Malevitch)

"From Leonardo to Calder" (Thematic description of an overview exhibit)

Chronologie der kinetischen Kunst im 20. Jahrhundert.

Alexander Calder: "Mobiles." In: Myfanwy Evans (ed.): The Painter's Object, Gerold Howe, London, 1937.

Michel Conil Lacoste: Tinguely. L'Énergétique de l'Insolence. Vol. I. Paris: Éditions de la Différence, 1989.

Karl G. Hultén: Den Ställföreträdande Friheten eller Om Rörelse i Konsten och Tinguelys Metamekanik. (Substitute Freedom or On Movement in Art and Tinguely's Meta-mechanics.) Special issue of Kasark, October 1955. (English translation in: Pontus Hultén, 1975.)

K.G. Hultèn: "Jean Tinguely." In: Jean Cassou, K.G. Hultèn, Sam Hunter & Nicolas Schöffer:
"Two Kinetic Sculptors: Nicolas Schöffer and Jean Tinguely." New York: October House / Jewish Museum, 1965.

Pontus Hulten: Jean Tinguely. A Magic Stronger than Death. New York: Abbeville Press, 1987.

K.G. Pontus Hultén: Tinguely. 'Méta'. London: Thames and Hudson, 1975.

Jean-Louis Prat: L' Art en Mouvement. Fondation Maeght, 1992

Jean-Paul Sartre: "Les Mobiles de Calder," Carré, 1946. [OnLine with an English translation.]

Jean Tinguely: Radio Conversation, Radio Télévision Belge, Brussels, 13 December 1982. [In: Hulten 1987, p. 350.]