Page 44 - Studio International - October 1972

(Left to right) Ryan Flex-wing aircraft, BAC/ Aerospatiale Concorde 002
associations being reinforced by the fact that the contact with the elements as a cyclist. The safety, or their feasibility, might enrich our
pilot had no forward view and that the race was a sensitivity of light aircraft and gliders to air musées imaginaires, our aeronautical zoos, our
closed-circuit affair. Everything was dedicated currents renders them a fascinating intermediary heavenly bestiaries, with an entire gallimaufry
to pure speed for speed's sake, to l'art pour l'art. between pneumatics (inflatables) and a kinetic of those fantastic configurations abandoned by
It afforded a useful reminder of how much art which is at once environmental, the evolutionary mainstream: ornithopters,
romanticism Futurism borrowed from participative and real. canards, box-kites, quadruplanes, contraptions
Symbolism, merely shifting it from realms of One may fear that the halcyon days of aviation like Horatio Phillips's 20-wing 'Venetian Blind'
mental sublimity to a no less fancifully aesthetics are gone, so long have light aircraft and the 1908 Kimball machine, which replaced
conceived machine future. been eclipsed by the cut-throat requirements of wings by a forest of 16 vertically-placed
actual or potential war and the escalating propellers, autogyros, pressure airships, Sir
complications of airliner technology. Only too Hiram Maxim's steam-driven craft and the
long gone and beyond recall may seem those Langley Aerodrome (both of which so very
days of grandly fanciful designs, when butterfly nearly flew); not to mention subtler oddities like
aircraft built by rule of thumb hedgehopped twin-boom and asymmetrical types, the Dornier
Savoia-Marchetti SM79, 1943
slowly and almost safely, for their expanse of Whale, the Blackburn Rhino, and the Flying
Aircraft possess their own internal wood, wire and animal glue could often cushion Flea. q
movements, and today's airline passengers are the shock of a slow, shallow-angle crash landing.
often startled by the very emphatic movements As late as 1920 passengers in the Westland
of aircraft wings. On pioneer craft, external Four-Seater Limousine landed at whim in a field
control cables moved to warp the wings, and on in the Dorset Hills, so as to pick mushrooms
the many de Havilland Tiger Moths, now still before continuing their journey."
Fiat BR20, 1943
flying after forty years, the continuous rippling It's doubtful whether the contradiction
of fabric, the sensations of open cockpits and between aeronautics and aesthetics need
manually operated controls, together with the continue so acute as to seem more separate than
aircraft's lively responsiveness to the ambient they are. The slow revival of interest in
1GUITTON, J., Aesthetic Aspects of Ship and Yacht
air, provide a sensuous experience of physical ballooning, the imminent return of airships, the
Design, Adlard Coles, 1971
energies. This is intensified in the case of gliders, first faltering hops of man-powered machines, 'MUNsON, KENNETH, Flying Boats and Seaplanes Since
which, sailing on the whim of winds and and the hovercraft, bid fair to revive, between 1910, Blandford, 1971
'GREEN, WILLIAM, War Planes of the Second World
thermal currents, indulge an interaction of them, that joyride aesthetic towards which art,
War: Volume Seven, Bombers and Reconnaissance
human and natural forces. The parallelism with through inflatables, kinetics, chance, Aircraft, Australia to France (Part One),
aleatory art is all the more interesting in that all participation, and a general relish of the circus, MacDonald, 1967
4TISDALL, CAROLINE, Peter Hide, in The Guardian,
the options of flight, route and aerobatics open seems, in its turn, increasingly open. Our friends
12.10.1971
up a range of exhilaration which all the the investors in objets d'art will observe how well 5BALLARD, J. G., The Wind from Nowhere, Berkley
Cagesque knob-twiddling of transistors cannot the aircraft type fits the definition of the Medallion Books, 1961
provide. Simultaneously, the participative multiple, and how many aircraft one can buy for 6VEALE, S. E., Guide to Flying, Temple Press Ltd.,
1942
element leaves space and scope for an experience the price of a modish modern master. As it is, 'HADDOW, G. W., AND GROSZ, PETER M., The German
which is as naturally aesthetic as any your aeroplane enthusiast, with his photographs Giants, Putnam, 1962
contemplation of landscapes and skies. Pioneer and technical data, often indulges his aesthetic 'sPENDER, sTEPHEN, The Landscape Near an
Aerodrome, in Collected Poems: 1928-1953, Random
aircraft were braced with piano wire and they sensibilities in distinctly conceptual-art style. House, 1955
sang as they flew, like Aoelian harps. In the The veteran aircraft collections at Biggleswade, 9ABT, LAWRENCE EDWIN, AND BELLAK, LEOPOLD, eds.,
Projective Psychology, Knopf, 19510, Grove Press,
Lilienthal gliders of the late nineties, the pilot Southend, Staverton and elsewhere already have 1959
stood, or rather hung, vertically, in a hole in the a public for their fascinating mixture of "LEWIs, PETER, The British Bomber Since 1914,
wings, his head above them, his waist below, industrial archaeology and poetry. It's Putnam Aero Publishers, 1967
and he steered by swinging his body one way or fascinating to imagine how 'repro' aircraft, 11LUKINS, A. H., and RUSSELL, D. A., The Book of
Westland Aircraft, Harborough Publishing Co.
the other. Thus he was as intimately in discreetly using new materials to enhance their Aircraft (Technical) Publications, 1944
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