Page 37 - Studio International - April 1974

(Left)
Nucleus 1949
Painted wood and nickel alloy, 20 cm high
(Top right)
A glass-shaped star 1964
Plexiglas, 15 cm high
(Bottom right)
Function of curves 1939
58 x 102 CM

said that his work, structured in space and Once Vantongerloo had overcome the idea
in plane, represents a series of solutions which that the classical scheme of the human body was
succeed each other as a chain of pictorial logic, the supreme theme of sculpture, and that the
and although his work is entirely logical it object in general was the supreme theme of
remains at the same time part of an open painting, he began to explore the properties and
thinking system. His research had little to do functions of lines and points in plane, of cubic
with Cubism, out of which came Mondrian and and spheroid bodies in space. His first break-
Malevich, nor with the expressive liberation of through was in sculpture; he was the only artist
form and colour found in Kandinsky's work. He before 1920 to project his newly-won freedom
stripped art of outside meaning, he applied in three dimensions.
mathematical formulae without disguise as the The thinking which led to this is clearly
organizing principle and as titles of the works. shown in the early drawings up to 1917, which
For example: Construction based on the transform the human body into a framework of
equilateral hyperbola, xy=k, a sculpture of 1929; linear relationships - the reduction operated by
2 geometry. Geometry became the only means of
or Composition y= x^2/2 , a painting of 1931.
visualizing what he called 'le sens des rapports
This approach was considered at that time equilibres'. This is perfectly realized in two of
alien to art, and met a total lack of understanding his sculptures : Spherical Construction 1917
from the public and distrust from fellow artists, (Construction dans la Sphère) anticipated the
who feared that someone was out to destroy the sculpture of open and closed volume and
creative aura with which (in their mind) the flowing rhythm (Jean Arp approached the same
artist should be identified, they resented the idea with his wooden Dada reliefs in a freer,
introduction of rational arguments. playful way); Interrelation of Masses 1919
Vantongerloo tried to explain: 'To speak of (Rapport des Volumes) is on the other hand a key
reducing art to mathematics is to express piece of sculpture based on tectonic rhythm.
oneself poorly; instead we must say : to arrive Related to this second type of sculpture are the
at an artistic expression by geometric forms. We elementary three-dimensional constructions
speak of a mathematician as we speak of a made of slats, expressing bold and complicated
painter, a sculptor, a musician, etc. But is the symmetries, reminiscent of Mondrian's
thing that the mathematician seeks, finds and concept of an 'asymmetric equilibrium'. These
states, in the form of an equation, merely constructions Vantongerloo carried on until the
mathematics ? Has mathematics discovered the thirties. We find similarities to the Primary
laws of creation, or has it merely served to Structures of recent years, but his
formulate and record ideas ? It is the same in art. elementarism is always the outcome of a strict
Geometry serves to formulate the relations of a set of combinatory rules, that is to reach a
new crystal, a creation, a composition.' maximum of rhythmic and proportional values
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