Page 37 - Studio International - October 1970

Kineticism takes on a very different role in
the work of Thomas Bayrle (born 1937) : that
of political expression. Bayrle's strictly stan-
dardized and impersonal 'mass pictures',
based on formal criteria and not on crude
Agit-Prop, make him perhaps the only
political artist in Germany who can really be
taken seriously. 'We all together make up the
Great Face,' he has said; and this idea led
him in 1966 to create a relief portrait of Mao
Tse-tung, nearly one-and-a-half metres high,
in which hundreds of painted human figures
swarm up and down in rows, mask each
other, and can be moved to form either the
face of Mao or a great red star. The transition
looks like a cell mutation seen under the
microscope. Where once the painter's brush
used to create a psychological interpretation,
now a mechanically propelled pattern of
human beings creates a political portrait.
Bayrle adds : 'The masses are brought to life
by the pattern; they consist of millions of
individuals who are dependent on each other.
The great ideas of the masses do not float over
the heads of the masses (as with Hitler) but
are created out of the individuals themselves
(Mao).' Bayrle has also portrayed the former
Federal Chancellor, Ludwig Erhard, with a
rotary jaw motion, pre-masticating some-
thing or other for his colleagues. ...
One foreign kinetic artist resident in Germany
is Karl Gerstner (born 1930), who lives in
Düsseldorf. His flickering light panels, con-
trolled by the spectator through a punched-
card system, have always been tremendously
popular with the public.
In conjuction with Zero—and Zero was the
beginning of a native German art after the
war—two galleries above all supported kinetic
art in the early years: the Galerie Schmela in
Dusseldorf and the now defunct Dato gallery
in Frankfurt. Now the Denise Rene-Hans
Meyer gallery in Krefeld (formerly the 'Op- 9 10
Gerhard von Graevenitz Caspar Tropp
Art Galerie' in Esslingen) and the Galerie Kinetic Object with Elipses 1970 Butterflies 1969
Reckermann in Cologne have made a Diameter 200 cm. in motion. This object is to be Eight hinged pairs of flaps, wood, painted inside, on
seen at the London exhibition steel wires 50 cm. high, spiral springs, electric lamp,
speciality of kinetic art and Constructivism. low-voltage current (colour slide)
11
The credit for recognizing kinetic art at an Gunter Weseler 12 & 13
early stage must go, among museums, to the Breath Objects Thomas Bayrle
Fur pelts and electric motors. From the exhibition Mao 1966
Haus Lange in Krefeld. And the Mat `Diisseldorfer Szene', at the Kunstmuseum, Lucerne, Oil on wood, electric motor. The pattern of human
publishing house, founded by Daniel Spoerri, 1969 figures moves up and down, changing the face of
Mao slowly into a red star, and vice versa
which in 1959 was the first to bring out
kinetic multiples in large editions (from Arp to
Soto), operated in Germany. In Germany, too,
works by Tinguely are to be seen in a number
of museums; Agam has designed a concert
hall; and Nicolas Schiffer has had his big
retrospective. And yet—there is no comparison
between all this and the reception that Ger-
many has afforded to Pop, Process and Con-
ceptual Art. The attempt in this article to
characterize subjective artists through a
personal style of reporting, and objective
artists through an impersonal one, is an
attempt to make it clear how much individual
achievement, and how little general back-
ground, there has been in Germany for the
development of kinetic art. q