Artist Research: Kinetic Art

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What is Kinetic Art? - CharacteristicsIn visual art, the term kinetic art, derived from the Greek word kinesis, refers to works that incorporate real or apparent movement. It explores how things look when they move, so in its widest definition, kinetic art embraces a huge number of different art forms, as well as media types and styles. Thus, for instance, it may include cinematic and animation art, happenings and other types of performance art such as mime, clockwork/ clocktower figurines, stroboscopic or light-related artworks (Lumino Kinetic art), land art or any artifact that disappears (snowman) or undergoes a process of visual change, robotic art, motion graphics and other artworks created with new media technologies. It also incorporates Op art paintings, drawings and prints, whose 'motion' is merely an optical illusion. The most famous works of Kinetic art, however, are various types of hand-powered or motor-powered sculpture byJean Tinguely, and mobiles invented by Alexander Calder, whose movement is caused by air currents. 

History and DevelopmentAlthough Futurism should be credited with the conceptual introduction of motion into art, the actual word 'kinetic' was first applied to the visual arts by the brothers Antoine Pevsner (1884-1962) and Naum Gabo (1890-1977) in their Realistic Manifesto (1920), which annunciated the ideals ofConstructivism. One of Gabo's earliest works, Kinetic Sculpture (Standing Wave) (1919-20, Tate, London), was an electrically powered strip of wire which oscillated rapidly from side to side, creating the illusion of solid matter and thus simulating the replacement of volume by space. He was joined by Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956) who turned away from painting to create a range of suspended geometric-shaped plywood objects, such as Hanging Construction No 12 (1919, George Costakis Collection). These works showed how mass could dissolve into subtle effects of movement and light. Meanwhile, at theBauhaus design school in Germany, the Hungarian designer Laszlo Moholy-Nagy was producing his Light-Space-Modulator (1922-30, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University) and other works involving mechanical movement, and in New York (1920), Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) - having already created crude prototypes like Bicycle Wheel (1913, George Pompidou Centre) - was also investigating movement with his Rotative Plaques (Rotary Glass Plate and Rotary Demisphere) in collaboration with Man Ray. 

Alexander Calder: Mobiles and StabilesFollowing the theoretical foresight of the Futurists, Gabo's vibrating wire, Rodchenko's suspended plywood and Duchamp's junk art, Alexander Calder (1898-1976) made motion the core of his aesthetics. Influenced by lateSurrealism, and 20th century painters such as the Dutchman Piet Mondrian and the Spaniard Joan Miro, the engineer-trained Calder created a world of weightless linear sculptures (mobiles and stabiles), moving, turning and dancing on air. Indeed, for almost two decades he was the leading exponent of moving sculpture. 

1950s GrowthThe 1950s witnessed a new interest in artistic motion, as evidenced by the Le Mouvement exhibition in 1955 at the Rene Gallery, Paris, which showcased works by established names like Calder and Duchamp plus newcomers like the Israeli artist Yaacov Agam (b.1928) (the pioneer of spectator participation art), the Belgian painter and designer Pol Bury (1922-2005), the Venezuelan experimental artist Jesus Rafael Soto (1923-2005), the Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely (1925-91) and the Hungarian painter Victor Vasarely (1906-97). Other kinetic artists coming to the fore included the Greek sculptor Takis (Panayotis Vassilakis) (b.1925), and the Hungarian-born constructivist Nicolas Schoffer (1912-92). 

Golden Age (1960-75)Kinetic art flourished throughout the period (c.1960-1975). In 1960, Jean Tinguely produced his extraordinary self-destructing sculpture Homage to New York (1960, Museum of Modern Art, New York). In 1961, a major international art museum review of kinetic art entitled "Movement in Art" showed to huge audiences throughout Europe. In 1964, the Rene Gallery held Le Mouvement IIexhibition in Paris, while in 1965, "The Responsive Eye", a major Kinetic and Op Art show was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Kinetic art also enjoyed significant success at the Venice Biennale, the Sao Paulo Biennale and the Paris Biennale during the 60s. To maintain its momentum, the movement borrowed from the early modernists and also from contemporary styles, materials and high-tech media. New variants were formed, including Lumino Kinetic art and Optical Art.

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Synopsis

Kinetic art - art that depends on movement for its effects - has its origins in the Dadaist andConstructivist movements that emerged in the 1910s. It flourished into a lively avant-garde trend following the landmark exhibition Le Mouvement at Galerie Denise Rene in Paris in 1955, after which it attracted a wide international following. At its heart were artists who were fascinated by the possibilities of movement in art - its potential to create new and more interactive relationships with the viewer and new visual experiences. It inspired new kinds of art that went beyond the boundaries of the traditional, handcrafted, static object, encouraging the idea that the beauty of an object could be the product of optical illusions or mechanical movement. But the group was split between those such as Jean Tinguely, who were interested in employing actual movement, and those such as Victor Vasarely, who were interested in optical effects and the illusion of movement and went on to be more closely associated with the Op art movement. Kinetic art thrived for a decade and achieved considerable prominence. But Op art proved almost too successful in capturing the public's imagination, while Kinetic art eventually began to be seen as a stale and accepted genre. By the mid-1960s, these developments led to a decline in artists' interest in movement.  

Optical Art: http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/

Kinetic art marked an important revival of the tradition of Constructivism, or Constructive art, that had been a presence in modern art since the 1910s. Parts of the movement also revived its utopian optimism, talking once again of the potential for art to spread into new areas of everyday life and to embrace technology in ways appropriate to the modern world.
But the movement also borrowed much from Dada, and in this respect parts of it were highly skeptical about the potential of technology to improve human life. Artists who were inspired by Dada, such as Jean Tinguely, used their work to express a more anarchic, satirical attitude to machines and movement. They suggested that rather than being humanity's helpmate, the machine might become her master.
Although ostensibly fascinated by machines, some Kinetic artists developed a profound interest in analogies between machines and human bodies. Rather than regarding machines and human bodies as radically different - one being soulless and functional, the other being governed by the sensitive, rational mind - they used their art to suggest that humans might be little more than irrational engines of conflicting lusts and urges, like a dysfunctional machine. This idea has deep roots in Dada, and betrays Kinetic art's debt to that earlier movement.