Page 53 - Studio International - June 1969

are actually in motion. Yet as the eye becomes is perhaps the very contrast between the non- 1 21 cylinders resting on a platform 1969
lulled into a sense of false security it is liable subjective appearance and the extremely Copper
to be startled by a sudden spurt of completely subjective behaviour of these new sculptures 50 x 50 x 21 cm
Photo Claude Gaspari
unheralded movement, as one single unit which makes them even more poetically 2
spins off on its own in a fiercely rhythmic disturbing than those earlier works. The most 848 stems in a cylinder 1969
dance or knocks sharply against a neighbour, astonishing of all the sculptures on show in the Brass and iron
35 x 25 x 20 cm
setting off a whole chain reaction. present exhibition is the simplest of all: a Photo Claude Gaspari
An English critic noted with apparent regret, circle balanced on a triangle. But the 5-ft 3
recently, that since the early 60s Pol Bury diameter stainless steel circle is swaying, with 14 small balls resting on a cube 1968 (in motion)
Stainless steel
`has reverted to bulky and more traditional subliminal slowness, from side to side, on the 38 x 30 x 30 cm
sculptural forms'. It seems to me, on the con- point of its smaller triangle. The apparent Photo Claude Gaspari
trary, that the unique kind of morphological defiance of the laws of gravity is all the more 4 120 balls on an inclined plane 1968
constructivism which Pol Bury began to seductive for being so insidious. Brass
develop in 1962 has been given added authen- Andre Breton once wrote that 'beauty will be 135 x 66 x 43 cm
Photo Claude Gaspari
ticity by the use of tenser, simpler forms and convulsive or will be nothing' (la beauté sera All courtesy Galerie Maeght
more rigorously geometrical interacting units: convulsive ou ne sera pas'). Pol Bury has shown,
never have solids been less bulky on geo- with his sculptures, that convulsive beauty
metrical forms employed less traditionally. It can be as slow as a shudder.
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