Page 40 - Studio International - July 1966

Motion is a means of obtaining the multiplicity through which the
image is transformed and that multiplicity consists in a variation
of the relationships which define the structure in both time and
space.
If 'variations of relationships' are the content of kinetic
sculpture, then it parallels music with its variation of
sounds, and Gauguin's belief that we have entered the
`musical stage' of art is verified anew.
The 'programming of the visual message' has, however,-
also had to count on the one who receives the message and
here—according to Boriani— 'the theory of information,
the Gestalt theory', etc., are called upon for further explor-
ation of the subject-object relation.
The very opposite point to such rationalization is taken
by the Belgian Pol Bury, whose imperceptibly-moving
tentacles of wood and iron suggest the sluggish life at the
dawn of consciousness:
. . . they are endowed with a quality of slowness, they finally
achieve a real or fictional liberty, a liberty acting on its own
account and for its own pleasure.
Here kinetic sculpture becomes biomorphical sculpture,
as initially suggested in the work of Jean Arp. This bio-
Ken Lye Flip: 7 ft 4 in. diameter in motion morphic expressiveness is further interpreted by Hans
Flip and two twisters, 'Trilogy' 1965 Twisters: each 8 ft x 6 ft in motion
Stainless steel, motorized and programmed Howard Wise Gallery, New York Haacke, maker of wave motions between plexiglass :
Make something indeterminate, which always looks different, the
shape of which cannot be predicted precisely.
Gianni Colombo, the author of pulsating shingles and
rotating colour discs, points out that the observation of
kinetic sculpture asks for a different type of aesthetic
comprehension, namely :
Passing from more sensory to logical comprehension
or:
This transformation from a spectator public to a technician
public, is one of the objectives to which our work constantly aspires.
The 'technician public' is apparently one which wishes
to increase aesthetic pleasure by understanding the causes
of motions and their interactions. Yet Ken Lye, maker of
some of the most startling, glittering and crashing motion-
images, has raised an essential problem of the new type of
perception in saying :
. . . only the static work of art can hold the emotional mark of its
creator in one instantaneously perceived image . . .
With the entry of motion into shaped figures 'the instan-
taneously perceived image' as the equivalent of a specific
emotion has disappeared. A novel type of perception and
Above feeling has entered. Harry Kramer, the Paul Klee-like
Pol Bury humourist of the group, certainly thinks so :
Eighty rectangles on twenty
inclined planes 1964 Every one of these works is a frozen emotional experience for the
Wood purpose of emotional evocation.
x 191 x 9+ in. Here the exorcized individuality of the artist is coming in
Collection : Mr and Mrs Peter
A. Silverman, Toronto again by the back door of what we may call mechanical
irony.
Right In reading these statements of the individual makers of
Harry Kramer kinetic sculpture, it becomes clear that there exists a wide
Rainer's chair 1965
Iron wire and motors range of possibilities from 'romantic' self-expression to
40 5/8 x 17 3/8 x 15 3/8 in. objective construction. In responding to such widening of
Albert Loeb Gallery, creative expression by kinesis, the temporary spectator is
New York
challenged to widen his own range of emotional-visual
experience. q