Page 38 - Studio International - July 1966

The language of kinetic sculpture

by Alfred Neumeyer

Many things flow together in the witch's sabbath of a sculpture is thus an aesthetic phenomenon that makes
kinetic sculpture show : perpetuum mobile, the dream of sense historically and biologically.
eternal motion; Pygmalion's desire, the dream of bring- Not only does it actively incorporate light and sound;
ing dead matter up to the rose flush of life; the Caliph's it also activates the relationship of object and space by
automata, the mocking motion of invisible mechanisms; changing the object's position and form. In short, kinetic
Golem, clayman with the spirit of ka and Homunculus, sculpture can create its own ambience and thus change
into whom creation breathes the breath of the living. the spectator's experience and response. It draws motion
Artist, artisan, artifex have made these things of art, itself with a sort of linear script into space, or it makes
artfulness and mockery. Some move imperceptibly like movement a symbol of mechanical or biological forces.
sea anemones, others compose and recompose in unfore- I call it 'creative experimentation', because kinetic
seeable actions like minuscule stellar catastrophies. Some sculptors are form-explorers, if they are not satirists like
clash, some crash. Some swing, swirl, twist, others rotate, Tinguely and Kramer. The range goes from rational
circle, rise, and fall. Most of them are dependent on in- construction with material and immaterial substances
visible motors or on a motion-giving thrust and all of (matter, light, sound) to frantic motion and collapse.
them eventually return to the stillness of matter. A Our sensory experiences of kinetic sculptures can either
rustling, lungless laughter as from the star-shaped body be expanded as once fire-works and fountains expanded
of Odradek, Kafka's creature-invention, seems to emerge creative delight in musicians and poets, or they can be
from kinetic objects. Their existence is intentionally or mockingly contracted as the flea circus mocks the people
inadvertently an ironical one. With the disappearance of of the country fair. Kinetic art is impersonal and does not
likeness-sculpture, shape-sculpture took over. Moveable permit association with the world of human nature, be-
likeness-sculpture can, at best, become an automaton, but cause it is free from definable thought and feeling. It
shape-sculpture, free from likeness, can be imagined as expresses man, the maker of things, extracting from the
changing in position and form. It seems understandable forces of nature values of expressiveness, and it operates
that man, in cohabitation with machinery, would finally these forces in free play.
wish to examine mechanical motion for its formal possi-
bilities, just as he has explored colour, free from its Peter Selz, in his thoughtful introduction to the catalogue
function in life and nature. The appearance of kinetic of the University of California kinetic sculpture exhibi-

Jean Tinguely
MK III 1964
Iron, machine belts,
and motors
36 1/2 x 82 1/2 in.
Museum of Fine Arts,
Houston