Page 25 - Studio International - June 1965

Pol Bury

4

atom as defined by Epicurus and made explicit by
Lucretius in the famous Book 11 of his De Rerum Natura:
'Atoms. in their fall through space. swerve a little so
that their precise motion is neither predictable nor the
result of rigid law·. This c!inamen principiorum, from
which Epicurus deduced the creation of matter
(' ... an imperceptible "swerve" to cause the collisions
which lead to the formation of things and worlds').
deplored as an archaic aberration by Bergson, finds
itself suddenly made not only respectable but revolu­
tionary by the theorists of the nuclear age-Heisenberg
and his 'indeterminacy principle', and, more recently
still. the postulation by Karl von Weizsacker and others
of a gigantic c!inamen applicable to the motion of the
stars within the galaxies ...
If Pop Art, at its best, is an overt expression of the
contemptuous boredom of a generation with the pre­
tensions of contemporary Western civilisation, Bury's
'sculpture' is. on the contrary, intrinsically the art of our
time, the very symbol of our yearning for contact with
other worlds and other dimensions of space.
Simultaneously, Bury demonstrates the frailty of the
basis upon which our structures of reality are built:

the process which he calls 'cinematisation' and which
he applies to photographs-of people. objects, scenes­
and to reproductions of paintings, involves cutting
circles (sometimes concentric, sometimes separate) out
of them and then pasting them back just slightly awry
1
9 balls on 5 balls planes 1964 so that the Eiffel Tower, an Ingres nude, a Gothic
Wood
100 x 20 x 45 cm. cathedral, acquire the alarming new dimensions of a
Albright-Knox Museum. world in slow but inexorable transformation.
Buffalo. N.Y.
Lord Kelvin invoked Lucretius' clinamen when he
2 proposed his 'kinetic theory of matter'. For Bury, as
44 branches of hammered copper
on black panel 1 9 6 3 for Lord Kelvin's contemporary Alfred Jarry, that
Copper on wood concept signifies the very principle of creation, of
69 x 52 x 14 cm.
Lefebre Gallery. New York reality as the exception rather than the rule. Jarry's
3 invented science of pataphysics was specifically
Detail of 2 ,n movement intended 'to study the laws governing exceptions', and
4 in this sense Bury's work, his 'mobile planes·, 'punctua­
9 balls on a sloping plane 1 964 tions·. 'multi planes', 'erectile' and 'retractile entities· and
Wood
100 x 66 x 40 cm. 'cinematisations', are pure demonstrations of that
Collection: Mr. & Mrs. 'science which comprehends all other sciences·. ■
John Le Febre. New York
239