Page 67 - Studio International - May 1970

8
Josef Albers
Fithograph 1942
60x 49 cm.
9
Richard P. Lohse
Systematically Arranged Rows of Colour in Th
Repeated Tones 1950/53 (again) has been making aleatory divisions of
150x 150 cm. surfaces since 1961 (notably his 40,000
10 Squares).
Julio Le Parc
Sequences Progressives 1959 (detail) Vasarely seems to believe that ideas receive
the seal of true modernity only when he
11
Morellet formulates them. This man, who has a genius
Tirets 1960
80x 80 cm. for confusion (he gives his works dates like
`1934-52', '1939-52', or '1947-62'), wantonly
12
Zdenck Sykara blemishes a career of honourable artistic
Programmed Architectural Surface 1969 Prague
endeavour through a combination of com-
placency and cult of the ego. The important
Rochereau, a train journey: these are his But what about Gabo, who mentions Kinetic- role he has played in French art, spreading a
sources of inspiration. But attentive as he is to ism expressly in his 1920 manifesto? Or number of Bauhaus and other Central
natural phenomena, he is afflicted with Depero with his motor-driven Plastic Complexes European ideas; his courageous share in the
blindness when it comes to painting. Take of 1915 ? Or Balla with his Light-Ballet of battle against the flood-tide of Tachism; his
axonometric perspective (which produces 1917 ? Or Moholy-Nagy with his dozens of incontestable successes in optical art, in
images that can be read as concave or as con- Space Modulators and his book Vision in Motion? which he has evolved innumerable superb
vex) : he readily sees it in a farmhouse window, Or the Bauhaus and its kinetic specialists ? Or optical deceits and assaults on the retina (as in
but not in the work of Albers who has been Albers with his Constellations? Or Leger with the Black and White series of the late 1950s) :
using it for thirty-five years, or in that of Klee. his Ballet Mécanique? Or Duchamp with his all this is obscured by his posturing and moral-
This enables him to leap fifty years in one optical machines ? Or Calder with his izing. His recent exhibition in Paris in which
bound and appear as the direct heir of the mobiles ? Or Bury, Agam and Soto in 1953 ? he developed, with great brio and in full
great Russians. 'I no longer found myself up And what of the twenty South Americans of colour, Albers's Vice Versa series and Kinetics
against a block, as Malevich did. Instead of the Medi group whose works appeared in the of 1942-45, would have been a success on its
coming to a void, I brought into painting same Realites Nouvelles show in 1952-53 in own merits had there not been this effort to
certain new concepts : motion and space-time. which Vasarely exhibited compositions which pass it off as a super-novelty and a 'mutation'
... The significance of my painting is perhaps were entirely static and formal? Vanished. in art history. Especially when all this is
that in it Malevich passes on his leading Obliterated. Relegated to the dustbin of history. accompanied by admonitions to the younger
position to another.' In passing, he invents the multiple- a concept generation. Helped for over twenty years by a
The sublime naivety, the sheer presumption of explicitly formulated by Moholy-Nagy thirty dynamic gallery of which he claims to be a
it! Forty years cast overboard, two genera- years ago (Abstract of an Artist, Wittenborn, co-founder, Vasarely now comes down from
tions sunk without trace! One rubs one's eyes New York). He discovers the unlimited motion his mountain like Zarathustra to castigate
and reads on. 'My profound kinetic works which Takis has already been producing in the world and its vanities: 'I must nevertheless
introduce two additional dimensions into the London for two years. He sketches out, in a point out the existence of an aggressive
plastic phenomenon: movement and time.... few bold strokes, his 'polychrome city' which opportunism in our circles... Kineticism is all
These are two considerable advances : one bears an uncanny resemblance to the 'poly- the rage, at the moment, in the avant garde;
may legitimately speak of the introduction chrome town' of Leger (Fonctions de la Peinture, each of the many artists who practise it
into painting of a fourth dimension.' And Gonthier, Paris, p. 124). He presents his own affirms that he is its inventor.'
later, in a text which dates from 1967: 'It is idea of puzzle art, combining an idea of But there is no need to get worried; there will
thirteen years now since I defined one of the Agam's (spectator handling, 1953) with one always be a few folding seats on the Guide's
most important mutations in visual art in our of Morellet's (Construction Game, 1957). It even near side. 'The generation which follows me
time, under the name of Kineticism. This muta- occurs to him to reveal to us computer paint- now has a relatively assured place (in the
tion was received with indifference. I am all the ing-which Sykara, in Prague, is already Foundation I am setting up at Gordes). It is
more gratified to note today how eager the next applying architecturally over areas of for them to occupy it, after having shown
generation is to lay claim to the invention.' thousands of square feet, while Morellet themselves worthy of it.'
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