Page 26 - Studio International - February 1967

Extreme left
Moholy-Nagy
Light-Space Modulator
1922-30
Steel and plexiglass
Coll.: Busch-Reisinger
Museum, Harvard University
Left
Moholy-Nagy
Study for Light-Space
Modulator 1923(?)
Ink
Photo: courtesy Sybil
Moholy-Nagy
Below
Alexander Calder
Retrospective exhibition,
Tate Gallery, London 1962

if they did not know Gabo at first, it was he, with so few the eye, either with black and white alternations or with
works, who defined a truly kinetic art in terms which, juxtaposed colours close in value, that contours lose their
almost half a century later, still applied. The greater part position and containment and boundaries appear to shift.
of movement in art today stems from the austere canons Such phenomena, used by Vasarely, Bridget Riley,
of Constructivism. Some artists, however, looked to Dada Tadasky, Apollonio, and, by now, innumerable others,
and the absurd. There was, as a result, some polarization are pseudo-kinetic. Cinétisme was the French word, which,
of styles; it is usually quite clear which is which. The though coming out of Greek, seems to have picked up
Constructivist wing worked with movement itself without something from the cinema on the way (possibly through
meaning; the Dadaist used imagery, suggestion, associa- the influence of Eggeling and Richter). There, too, the
tion, and ideas inherited from collage, with movement image is in fact still, and movement is an illusion supplied
used to underline, intensify, sometimes transform. by the brain; such a work is not truly kinetic. A kinetic
There are two areas bearing some relation to kinetic art, work, this writer believes, moves within itself, changing
but not of it, which are undefined and unclear: works the space relation of the parts; and this movement is a
dependent on the movement of or by the spectator; and dominant theme, not an incidental quality.
the use of optical phenomena which simulate movement. An artist is free to combine one means with another and
In the former the object is fixed and the relation between movement lends itself to alliances; thus Soto combines
its parts changes, through parallax, as the spectator moirage with actual movement and with parallax. The
moves his head or walks by (as in Agam's painting or the intrinsic qualities of certain substances or objects may,
moire effects of superimposed grids) ; or the object is still when moving, reveal themselves with special vividness, as
but movable and the spectator can transform it into an- with Haacke's cylinders of liquids or Medalla's foam or
other stationary position (as in Lygia Clark). In these it is Boriani's magnetized iron filings, or may be transformed
the spectator who is kinetic; he always has been. The as in Duchamp's discs.
latter concerns certain optical phenomena which so dazzle One of the most fruitful alliances is movement with light.