Month: January 2015

Key Themes

            “So-called immobile objects exist only in movement. Immobile, certain, and permanent things, ideas, works and beliefs change, transform, and disintegrate. Immobile objects are snapshots of a movement whose existence we refuse to accept, because we ourselves are only an instant in the great movement. Movement is the only static, final, permanent, and certain thing. Static means transformation. Let us be static together with movement. Move statically! Be static! Be movement! Believe in movement’s static quality. Believe in change. Do not hold onto anything. Change! Do not pinpoint anything! Everything about us is movement. Everything around us is change. Believe in movement’s static quality. Be static,” as stated by Jean Tinguely.

Kinetic art was an important revival to the tradition of Constructivism. Parts of the movement also revived utopian optimism, the potential for art to spread into new areas of everyday life, and to embrace technology appropriated to the modern world.

The kinetic art movement also borrowed much from Dada, and parts of it were skeptical about the potential of technology to improve human life. Jean Tinguely expressed a more anarchic, satirical attitude to machines and movement. Tinguely suggested that rather than being humanity’s helpmate, the machine might become her master.

Annotated Bibliography

Books:

Jean Tinguely: a magic stronger than death / Pontus Hulten

Robert Rauschenberg, Jean Tinguely: collaborations / director and exhibition curator: Ronland Wetzel

Websites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Tinguely

http://www.tinguely.ch/en/museum_sammlung/jean_tinguely.html

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/jean-tinguely-2046

http://www.tinguely-jean.com/

http://www.artnet.com/artists/jean-tinguely/

http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=5882

http://theculturetrip.com/europe/switzerland/articles/the-art-of-destruction-jean-tinguely-and-dadaism-/

http://www.theartstory.org/movement-kinetic-art.htm