Page 53 - Studio International - January 1969

Jean Tinguely's recent sculptures at the Dada proper). Beside him other 'assemblers' 1
Keith Vaughan Clematis on a dead tree 1966,
HANOVER GALLERY provide an excursion into can look like men who, ill at ease in some
oil on canvas, 40 x 36 in. (Marlborough Fine Art Ltd.)
the land of serious play. If we sometimes feel social situation, have to look it up in an 2
Jean Tinguely Matraque, iron, h. 29 in.
that the less serendipitous artworks of modern etiquette book, only to find that the only (Hanover Gallery)
technicians embody an implicit insult against possible advice is to feel at ease.
art (the trivial part of their work being pre- The acceptance of the actuality of the motor
sumed to correspond with the profound part of is most demonstrable in the more parlour-
artists—this idea riding in under the banners sized Bascule series, because in all of these the
of the New Media Fallacy), we ought to swell mass of the motor works as a counterweight
with delight at the spectacle of art fighting to the swinging part, causing the whole thing from the charm of the rusted surface and the
back. I am not assuming that thoughts like to rock on a cradle base. In other words, if more indulgent crinkling of the parts; the
these have anything to do with Tinguely's you wanted to erase the motor out of mis- feeling of literalness is induced by the pro-
motivation. But it really makes me happy to see guided purism, the object wouldn't rock any grammatic themes: in Ma plume a feather
these brilliant, humanistic toys at a time when more, and the rocking is even more essentially duster shakes, and a key rattles, like the noise
the junk of engineers' slack hours gets so much the thing. Humanistic anthropromorphism of a silent maid with her keys jangling; in
reverence. If they are so clever, why don't comes into play in these too, for the very Jojo a twelve-spoked wheel turns at the speed
they have enough imagination to synthesize principle of the bascule (as in bridges) is of a clock's second hand; and La chasse,
something like perfect roast duck with orange based on the way the elbow functions. In one which is the inside of a water closet, sounds
sauce instead of coloured paste-food (in 2001) ? of them, however, Tinguely the Human just like banging plumbing. Some may find
Technology is the recourse of the 'B' science Being intervenes as bluntly as Godard; it is this type of thing too punny.
student. Science, si; technology, no! called C.R.S.=S.S. I think the best I can do A number of drawings also appear in the
The sculptures themselves are made of what is is just repeat the title: show. All but one from 1968 look like real
nothing less than the detritus of technology— Aside from the large- and small-sized black- working drawings; the one made in 1968
busted saws, scraps too bent to use, unusably painted pieces, there is a group of small-sized looks slicker than that. Somehow they seem
rusted electrical and mechanical components, works which are of plain rusted metal. Where even less interesting than, say, Giacometti's.
and the kind of old motor you find in second- the others seem 'finished' and 'ideal', these Probably that is because here the art is only
hand shops. Picture one of those engineers at tend to be more (too much more?) pictur- in the real bump and the real grind.
his drawing board, under a flourescent lamp, esque and literal. The picturesqueness comes JOSEPH MASHECK
ordering what he needs from a slick catalogue,
and charging it all to a government depart-
ment, and you have a good idea of what this
is not. Jacques Tati is more like it.
I think Heinrich Wölffiin was right when he
said 'We judge every object by analogy with
our own body' (in Renaissance and Baroque);
the only difficulty is that some objects are
more deliberately anthropomorphic than
others. Here the pieces which are most
vividly so are the big ones which seem to move
with utterly human patterns of effort. In the
particularly grand Char No. 7, a great Calder-
esque arc of wood is raised and lowered by
machinery which moves with the disguised
urgency of a team of dancers shifting their
arms to support a moving load. Eos No. 3
makes what can only politely be called a huge
Dionysiac gesture, over and over again, when-
ever it is 'turned on' by pressing the pedal.
In all the works what could be called three
metaphysical ranks of material—the motor in
its banal reality, the mechanical parts in their
half-lyrical designed form, and the immaterial
motions which the thing makes—exist on the
same plane. Most of the pieces are painted
entirely black, which stresses this, but what I
want to emphasize is that the motor, most of
all (but even the material parts, compared
with the idealism of the motion as the work of
art) is in no way an embarassment. This fact,
and the unashamed, dance-like effort of the
machines, make for a really impressive ele-
gance, like a clumsy task performed politely
or some necessary but awkward thought grace-
fully expressed. Maybe Tinguely is the only
man practising anything like Dada today who
shows this real nobility (a quality which,
Duchamp stressed, was an essential part of
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