Page 59 - Studio International - January February 1975

representation of movement is primitive. the Salpétrière, where he was in contact torso, hips and thighs rotate
The vertical seams which scan the with Dr Albert Londe, Director of the rhythmically from a three-quarter to a
drawing's surface reproduce the effect of Photographic and Radiographic frontal position. The inevitable effect
the praxinoscope's juxtaposed mirrors Division.' A physiologist like Marey, produced by this illusion of movement is
which ripple at each juncture. Moreover, Londe developed a multiple-lens camera a second illusion of virtual volume or a
at the extreme right of the image is a for taking high-speed photographs of three-dimensional activity in space.
horseman turning toward the rear, nine or twelve successive poses. Thus Although the painting implies the same
indicating that Kupka was inspired by a Duchamp-Villon encountered the motion, it is not immediately legible.
convex image, or more exactly, an image physiological analysis of movement Attempting to suppress not only the
on a circular drum. He drew The before leaving the medical profession to baroque rhythms and chromatics but the
Horsemen in his studio on the rue de become a sculptor. His small sculpture third dimension, Kupka took each fluid
Caulaincourt. It is here that he met Song of 1908 shows the artist's first silhouette and translated it into a flat
Marcel Duchamp for the first time.' The explicit reference to high-speed rectilinear plane; the arbitrary colours
meeting was not particularly memorable, photography. William Agee has were similarly transformed into an even
at least from Kupka's point of view; he indicated that a series of Muybridge progression of hues inspired by the
was close to thirty, and Duchamp was in photographs of a 'seated figure slightly spectrum.
his teens. However Duchamp's life-long turning with arm raised' was the source Etienne-Jules Marey's
admiration for the older artist probably of inspiration for this sculpture". Agee chronophotographs are the obvious
dates from this time. notes that Duchamp-Villon turned to inspiration for these works. In contrast to
The Horsemen is a precocious but Muybridge 'to confirm his own Muybridge's single image studies taken
isolated experiment with motion in observation'. The truth of the matter was from several points of view, Marey's
Kupka's career. Although the technique that a real understanding of muscular chronophotographs, such as Sword
for recording movement seems based activity depended on these recent Thrust, show a compound image of
essentially on Reynaud's invention, the developments in photography. separate but interpenetrating movements,
subject probably has other sources. That same year Kupka's interest in all taken from the same viewpoint.
During the last three decades of the movement showed itself again, but in a Muybridge moved around his subjects.
nineteenth century, Eadweard quite different way. In 1908 Kupka Marey had his subjects revolve before
Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey had painted his wife's daughter Andrée his retina or lens. As the
revolutionized the understanding of holding a ball. Frustrated by the chronophotographs show, the trace
motion through their photographic realization that he could not depict the images between positions assume as much
studies of a horse's various gaits. The ball in rotational movement, he began to presence and substance as the figure
Paris art scene was particularly affected do diagrams of the child with the ball. itself, which conversely is
by these experiments.' From the mid- These studies of the gesture of throwing dematerialized in its kinetic progression.
187os on, illustrated books and and the elliptical trajectories of the ball in Thus Marey's invention levelled all
magazines appeared, lectures and the air, combined with scientific studies aspects of his subject to the status of
demonstrations were given, and of colour as the ball rotated through the virtual volumes.
documentation and instruments were spectrum, led to the series of 1911-12, Marey defined the objectives of
displayed at the Paris Musée des Arts et Disks of Newton, and finally to the Fugue chronophotography as follows : 'to
Métiers as early as 1883 and 1887. In for Two Colours of 1912. However, analyse movements by means of a series
view of the impact of these discoveries simultaneously, studies of the child's of instantaneous photographic images
and their large audience among artists, silhouette as it turned upon itself taken at very short and equidistant
Kupka could not have remained ignorant established the basis for another series intervals. In thus representing the
of them. of works of 1909-11 which depict successive attitudes and positions of an
Furthermore, in 1900, Dr Marey consecutive phases of movement in space animal for example, chronophotography
organized an exhibit of 'instruments and and time. These works, less abstract, and allows one to follow all the phases of its
images relative to the history of therefore less spectacular than the studies gaits and even to translate these into true
chronophotography' at the Paris leading to the Fugue, are close in form geometric diagrams . . . By passing a
World's Fair.' The stand included the and particularly in concept to Marcel series of analytical images before the
following items : photographs showing Duchamp's paintings of 1911. spectator's eyes, one reconstitutes the
the analysis of animal locomotion Between 1908 and 1911, Kupka worked appearance of movement itself.'"
according to the method of Muybridge; on two series which explicitly render Kupka spoke of movement in
figures in relief obtained by consecutive phases of movement in identical terms :12 `Movement is no more
chronophotography; multiple-lens space. The first theme, that of a woman than a series of different positions in
camera developed by Albert Londe; picking flowers, culminates in 1909 in a space . . . If we capture these positions
multiplication of images (I) partial series of large vibrant pastels. Within rhythmically, they may become a kind of
photographs (2) dissociation of images (3) this group, the earlier studies show a dance.' The underlying idea found
photographs of a band of film in compacted image of stiff, discrete consistently in Kupka's works of this
movement; photographs of points and silhouettes shuffling one into another at period and in his writings is a definition
lines on the body of a figure in motion; regular intervals. A pronounced blur of of movement as a pattern of consecutive
double action chronophotograph; horizontal strokes suggests the trajectory points in space, or moments in time. The
chronophotographic projectors; from one position to another. In the final concept of discontinuity emphasized by
Edison's kinetoscope of 1894; the versions, this evenly cadenced pattern of Marey is inherent to Kupka's
Lumière brothers' cinematograph. motion is loosened and dissolved into a interpretation. Duchamp's
Kupka exhibited at least one work at more ambiguous image. The understanding of Balla's painting, which
the Fair for which he won a gold medal." movements are slower and less discretely he describes in terms of 'successive
In keeping with his customary behaviour, defined. What becomes important static positions', evolves from an
he certainly visited the fair-grounds to is a rhythmic articulation of motion identical interpretation. No painting
inspect his own exhibit. His interest in fanning out from a central rotating axis illustrates this more explicitly than the
photography and the moving picture contained in the upright central figure. artist's Dulcinea of 1911. This 'portrait'
surely led him to visit Marey's pavilion. Kupka's second series, executed depicts five separate positions in space
During the early years of the twentieth between 1909 and 1911, depicts a woman and moments in time of the same woman.
century, he did little painting. He with one arm raised, the other on her hip. Rather than overlapping them, as Kupka
depended on book and newspaper Whereas the final oil version Planes by had done, Duchamp isolated each
illustrations for his livelihood. Around Colours appears as a static composition position along an arabesque-like path,
1908, when he resumed painting, the laid out across a flat vertical grid, a study meandering from left to right to left again.
subject of figures in motion reappeared of two preparatory pastels reveals an Visibly this is a sequential arrangement of
in his work. Simultaneously, an interest implicit kinetic dimension. These static images.
in high-speed photography emerged in working studies show the head and arms Somewhat later the same year,
the work of Raymond Duchamp-Villon, in several positions simultaneously. And Duchamp painted the Chess Players in
who, until 1898, was a medical student at as the upper limbs shift positions, the which for the first time he used a system >

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