Although he was not an
engineer, most of his lifetime Jean Tinguely dreamed about rotating wheels,
gears, belt transmissions, chain drives, levers, pulleys and other parts of discarded
machinery. But instead of constructing more and more efficient machines like
engineers do, Tinguely decided to put all his creative efforts to construct
machines without any efficiency and his only
aim was to draw forth astonishment and surprise of anyone who ever seen them.
Jean Tinguely was a swiss
sculptor who gained his international recognition in the early sixties as one of the pioneers of kinetic art. As
avantgarde artist, inspired with Dada tradition, Bauhaus, Kurt Schwitters and
Yves Klein he started to work extensively on large mechanisms made of discarded
metal objects and machine parts. Many of his sculpures from that era, which he
described as 'festivals of errors', were constructed to fall apart, explode or destroy
itself some other way.
Here you can see his famous 'Homage to New York' from 1960:
It is not a coincidence
that Tinguely was born in Switzerland, well known producer of precision
machines and highly sophisticated measuring devices. In that context it becomes
obvious that his artistic effort was resistance against industrial production,
non human rigidity of machines and their impact to the society and human
relations. He was a self proclaimed anarchist, fascinated with movement on an
abstract and metaphysical level in a Heraclitus manner:
»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.«
And last but not least, he
was the one who coined terms meta-matic and meta-mechanic to describe his
kinetic sculptures. That's why he deserves to be called as godfather of
metamechanics.
Tinguely's Cyclop
Tinguely was very critical
about the state of the art at the end of 20th century, especially regarding
museums, galleries and their establishment. He prefers to see his art on the
streets, parks and city squares. This attitude was the main reason that he
decided to finance the project of his life with his own money. At the end of
sixties he bought a parcel in a forest near Mille la Foret in France and
started to realize his idea of Art Total: to build a sculpture like gallery,
miraculous imaginary space where people could meet materialized visions of him
and his artistic friends.
With construction of
Cyclop Tinguely tried to merge his own vision with collaboration and push the
art closer to the world where it emerges. Most of the works were done with bare
hands and with a help of only four adherents: sculptor friends Bernhard Luginbühl and Rico Weber,
professional welder Seppi Imhof and his wife sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle.
Tinguely described the whole process as 'well organized absurd' and Cyclop
finally grown up as alive utopian monument of small group of enthusiasts who
were ready to sacrifice their money and 'best years of their life' to
materialize their dreams and share them with others.
Cyclop is almost 23 metres high and was built
from about 300 tons of scrap metal and machine parts amongst which you can find
a railway wagon, doors of treasury, ship chimney, parts of a bridge, giant
metal ear, steel balls and hundreds of wheels, connected with belt
transmissions which drives each other making devilish noise. Front facade is
covered with mosaic of mirrors reflecting nearby trees and on the top of his
head is a pool dedicated to Yves Klein.
Link to the documentary:
At the beginning of 21st century, the
myth about machines which will work instead of us showed the dark side of its face:
mass production alienated workers from their products, people around the globe
are loosing jobs because of automatization of production and with fast
development of communication technologies, machines also settled into our most
intimate relationships. Meetings and events grounded in common space with all
senses aware are withdrawing before virtuality. For younger generations there's
no more difference between presence of the other and his image on screen. Body
has a meaning only as an image.
Jean Tinguely was dreaming about machines
which are not efficient, useful and functional. He dreamed about machines on
different way than engineers of industrial revolutions. His kinetic sculptures
have no purpose, they just are, showing themselves in their movement with
undressed and crepitated mechanisms. When technics becomes aesthetic, mechanism
becomes a metaphor in infinite motion which has the power to engage us to
rethink our fascination with technology which becomes more and more efficient
and which defines our civilization for the last three centuries.
Jean Tinguely built his
total sculpture-machine-totem, expressing absurd beauty of technology in its
magnificent uselessness, until his sudden death in 1991. Henry Miller once
wrote, that after death he would like to reincarnate like a park where people
could play and find some peace. Similarly, Tinguely's Cyclop remains crepitated
monument alive in his movement and dedicated to all of those, who still dare to
imagine the world, where machines are
manifestations of boundless imagination of human spirit and not tools of
ruthless corporations which forces us to compete with machines in their
efficiency and entertain with them as they want us to.
