Jean Tinguely's works bring together notions waste, play and art

The temporal structure of toys has much in common with the time of waste, or waste-time. Here’s a bit of Agamben on toys: “The toy is a materialization of the historicity contained in objects, extracting it by means of a particular manipulation. While the value and meaning of the antique object and the document are functions of their age – that is, of the making present and rendering tangible a relatively remote past – the toy, dismembering and distorting the past or miniaturizing the present – playing as much on diachrony as on synchrony – makes present and rendering tangible human temporality in itself, the pure differential margin between the ‘once’ and the ‘no longer’” (1993: 71–72). We find a reprise of this line of enquiry in a later work, Profanations, which gives Agamben occasion to approach the problem of the sacred. Agamben defines sacred or religious objects as those that belong to the gods alone, removed from the “free use and commerce of men.”   Profanation describes the practice of taking what is sacred and allowing it to pass across a threshold into human use.  To profane an object is thus to reverse the sacrificial process that removes an object from use, it neutralizes and collapses the spaces that separate human and sacred activity.  For Agamben, the division between the sacred and the profane is the basic requirement for religious activity, “there is no religion without separation … [it is] not what unites men and gods but what ensures they remain distinct” (2007: 74, 75). The division of objects according to their place in time is precisely how waste is constructed, manufacturing and manufactered by a certain kind of time. Waste objects also depend upon the “differential margin between the ‘once’ and the ‘no longer’” and become distinct by their seperation from human use. Somehow, toys, relics, and waste share this temporal structure – distinct from yet intimately structured by a time of separation.

Go to NYArt Beat for the top ten list of artist couples….

Nous avons eu la chance de passer une très belle fin de semaine à Bâle, en grande partie grâce à Nicole, l’amie de Céline, qui nous a prêté son appartement.

Ce qui nous a permis de découvrir la ville et un de ses artistes originaux, Jean Tinguely, qui se décrivait comme “un inventeur de machines qui ne servent à rien”. Ce qui ne l’empêcha pas d’en construire certaines très imposantes.

Le lendemain, nous sommes allés visiter la vieille ville, avec ses maisons qui semblent aplaties les unes contre les autres pour pouvoir les insérer toutes dans l’enceinte de la ville, dont il reste un bout de muraille ça et là.

Mais comme toute bonne ville européenne, l’hôtel de ville dénote la culture très présente ici aussi. Par contre, la ville n’a pas inclus les emblèmes des cantons francophones, même si Céline m’assure que Bâle est une des villes les plus ouvertes et les plus bilingues de Suisse. Et selon Céline, ça pourrait s’expliquer du fait que l’hôtel de ville date de 1501, 3 siècles avant l’entrée de Genève (début 19è siècle) et probablement des autres cantons francophones dans la Confédération helvétique. Mais rien n’a été fait pour corriger cette situation lors de la réfection du bâtiment…

Et j’en ai profité pour prendre un peu de soleil, assez rare en hiver et encore plus à Genève…

Jean Tinguely’s Black Knight from 1964 is a mechanized kinetic sculpture made from scraps of black metal. Two curved metal bars with curling ends are joined together and attached to a square base, forming the backbone and support of the sculpture. Jutting off from the twisted spine are wires and bars, convoluted and looking like sickly limbs. A large circle is attached to the top of the spine, fastened by two screws close together and near the edge, its heaviness and means of connection lending it an unbalanced sense of asymmetry. This asymmetry spreads throughout the helter-skelter structure, causing the entire mass to appear as nothing more than a junkyard tangle.

That impression, however, vanishes when the mechanized sculpture is activated. The motors click on and the sculpture whirls to life, revealing how all of the jumbled parts work together to create cohesive motion, and how they are not random but deliberately placed, each with its own importance. The large circle turns clockwise. Behind it two flat metal brackets twirl like insect wings. Cutting across the sculpture transversely, a long wire moves through a hole in a jutting bracket. From that long wire, connected by a bracket twisted into shape by the clumsy force of the hand, dangles a gear-like disk from another wire, which sways from the extended movement of the original long wire, rising and falling as the wire is pulled and pushed through the hole in the bracket. Attached to a small black motor toward the middle of the sculpture is a crank-like metal bar, bend like an elbow. It is attached to a long, thick, straight bar that thrusts back and forth through the loop of a large eye screw sticking out off the curved spine. The metals of the two parts grate against each other as the bar rocks forward and backward through the stationary loop.

The sculpture has an anthropomorphic appearance, created by the spine-like supports and limb-like metal bars. Its title adds to these human associations. Called Black Knight, one can easily imagine a gyrating warrior clad in black armor moving towards them. The large rotating circle held out in front of the spiny figure looks like a shield, while the thick bar that passes through the eye screw looks like a penetrating lance. Or if not a human, perhaps the knight is a war robot, a killing machine.

One thing is certain: a sense of violence is pervasive. The harsh black metal with its perverse twisting and thrusting motion is suggestive not only of mechanized violence, but bodily and sexual violence. The turning circular shield threatens to crush us like a steamroller while the erect rod passes through the circle of the eye screw with a jarring sense of penetration. Both masculine and feminine sexual identities are represented, the former by the straight rods and wires, and the latter by the circles which the rods and wires push through and pull out of. The knight seems to be raping the damsel.

Tracing the art historical lineage of Black Knight, an obligatory nod must be made to Alexander Calder. Tinguely’s use of sculpture in motion as well as his spindly wires and curving geometric shapes are reminiscent of the mobile sculptures by Calder, and while Tinguely is surely indebted to him for the role he played in inspiring kineticism, I believe Tinguely pays more tribute to the legacy of Duchamp. Black Knight shares a striking resemblance with Duchamp’s The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even) from 1915-23, both in their mechanized aesthetics and theme of sexual violence and tension.

Like Black Knight and much in the tradition of Duchamp’s techniques, The Large Glass is made from odd scrap materials: found objects taken from everyday life, including metal foil and wire. It features mechanical elements, most noticeably the so-called “chocolate grinder” on the bottom pane, whose series of gears and rods hold the implied motion of rotation and friction within their static lines. In The Large Glass there is a suspended physics, much like that found in the stationary Black Knight.

Both The Large Glass and Black Knight deal with sexual violence and frustration. The two panes of The Large Glass, accord to Duchamp, hold a bride apart from her suitors. As in Black Knight, both the male and the female are expressed (the bride in the upper pane and the bachelors in the lower), but while they meet in Tinguely’s sculpture and are allowed to grind against one another, in The Large Glass they are forever separated. This separation permeates the Glass with a sense of sexual frustration; one can imagine the little robotic-looking bachelors turning around and around, the wheels and gears of their “chocolate grinder” working away, but never bringing them closer to their bride. And maybe it is a good thing that the bachelors will never reach the bride, because Duchamp, via his title, has promised us that when they do they will strip her bare. Their sexual frustration will be relieved through rape. Tinguely literalizes the inert, yet suggested, forces of sexual violence and frustration in The Large Glass through his penetrating rods and wires. Interestingly, even the two titles are alike in their violent appropriation of romantic ideals. Duchamp’s Glass presents the romantic bachelor, who is supposed to become the loving husband, waiting for the bride with devious plans in store, while Tinguely presents the chivalrous knight, clad in black matte armor instead of gleaming white, who rapes the damsel instead of rescuing her.

Duchamp and Tinguely’s work also share a Dadaist critique of rationality. The Dada artists rebelled against the calculated, mathematical endeavors of modernized culture, those that had resulted in the horrors of the First World War, in favor for the chaotic, random, and irrational, epitomized by the strange composition of The Large Glass. Tinguely, himself living in the post-World War II world, took up the Dadaists’ mockery of technology and rationality through his useless machines with their violent movements.

Tinguely is considered a neo-Dadaist because of this critique of rationality as well as his attack on the idea of the authority and genius of the author, seen in his use of use of machines made of found scrap metal to make abstract drawings and paintings, called Metamatics. While Black Knight is not a Metamatic, its found object aesthetic downplays the authorial and creative role of the artist and situates it within the Dadaist critique of authorship.

In the tradition of the neo-avant-garde, Tinguely borrowed elements from the avant-garde artists who came before him, like Duchamp, but took the elements in a new direction. According to Bazon Brock, the achievement of neo-avant-garde artists, such as Tinguely, was their ability to look back through the timeline of art history and recognize elements of old styles “that could not have been perceived before their work began to exercise its effect.”  Tinguely appropriated the use of everyday found objects and other themes and aesthetics from the historical avant-garde, but also literalized that which the historical avant-garde merely suggested. Duchamp himself created a few kinetic sculptures, such as Rotary Demisphere from 1925, but his efforts focused more on optical experiences rather than mechanized motion of sculpture, which is implied, although never realized, in The Large Glass. Tinguely fused the motion of Duchamp’s kinetic visual experiments with the suggested mechanical motion found within the Glass while also literalizing the Glass’s mechanization of sexual frustration. He brought to life the sexual tension and violence implicit in The Large Glass that is only fully realized after time has allowed to “exercise its effect” upon the viewer, in thise case: Tinguely.

Yesterday Sunday I was at the Paul Gugelmann Museum in Schönenwerd. Mr Gugelmann is a Swiss artist who makes kind of moving maschines. In his early creating phases he made just confusing maschines with a lot of different materials from bicycles, steam-engines and so on. Especially this art reminds me of Jean Tinguely. Later he created a great deal of metal sculptures which symbolize something. There is e. g. the ship of the devil, a construction of peace and war, a king as a marionette and so on. His art is like a mirror of the society and fun to look at because each peace is moving. Movement is like the red threat in his work. There is no big movement, just slight movements. The wings of pigeons are fluttering or the head and arms of the king are moving. Another red thread is the noise, the rattling and beating of his little figures. Most I liked the sculptur of the hierarchy in a factory. On the top is the boss who is angry and hits the departement chief. This one goes down to beat his assistent who hits the next in the hierarchy. The last person in that chain finally kicks the dog.

Je me suis lancé dans une série de représentations du Cyclop’ de Jean Tinguely, auquel j’ai déjà fait référence sur ces pages dans un post précédent sur dans la bouche du cyclope et qui rappelle l’histoire de cet anti-musée du sculpteur Suisse.

Ainsi, à gauche une aquarelle format carte postale (10cmx15cm) augmentée de touches d’encres argentée et dorée qui réhaussent le côté énigmatique de la statue.

Sur la droite un tout petit format (10cmx10cm) qui décrit le wagon du cyclope, un wagon similaire à ceux de l’opération nuit et brouillard même si selon les indications que j’ai reçues il s’agit juste d’un wagon de même format et de la même époque mais qui n’aurait pas servi à la déportation. Le wagon est là comme un élément essentiel de cet anti-musée, qui montre l’illogisme du monde, son caractère surréaliste.

A un meurtre surréaliste, un monument impossible, impensable semble répondre. Ceci n’est pas sans nous rappeler le mythe de Sisyphe que nous avons décrit précédemment également. Il existe enfin une dernière représentation de l’absurde (non représentée ici), à savoir cette machine infernale à faire rouler des billes d’acier dans tous les sens et qui ne sert absolument à rien, elle aussi témoin de l’absurdité du monde (toujours dans le format 10cmx10cm).

Le Cyclope (ou Cyclop) de Jean Tinguely (photo de gauche, photo par l’antimusée) est une sculpture monumentale de l’artiste Suisse et de son épouse, la sculptrice franco-américaine Niki de Saint Phalle.

Il s’agit d’une statue de 22 mètres de haut, de 300 tonnes d’acier et qui est en fait l’œuvre collective de 15 artistes internationaux dont Niki de St Phalle, César, Arman, etc. Débutée en 1969, sa construction a pris plus de 10 ans et son achèvement 10 ans supplémentaires.

La sculpture surtout n’est pas un monument figé, mais un ‘anti-musée’, un musée de la vie, en perpétuel mouvement, en perpétuel changement.

De la bouche du cyclope jaillit de l’eau, à intervalle régulier une machine infernale se met en branle afin de faire circuler d’énormes billes d’acier.

Cette machine est un symbole du mouvement erratique et illogique du monde. La machine bouge, mais son but est incompréhensible. Dans la tête du cyclope on trouve aussi une pièce de théâtre absurde avec un (faux) marteau qui enfonce une bouteille dans une table de façon répétitive et infinie.

Et enfin, les milliers de morceaux de verre collés sur la structure de la statue par Niki de St Phalle, reflètent la lumière dans sa diversité sans cesse renouvelée.

Il ne s’agit donc pas d’une statue au sens étymologique du terme (personne insensible) mais bien d’un anti-musée, de l’anti-thèse d’un monde figé sur son passé.

J’ai inséré les différentes phases de cette mini aquarelle [10cmx10cm] qui montre les visiteurs de la statue (car elle se visite, ce qui ajoute encore à son caractère vivant), dans la gueule du cyclope.

Le Cylcop(e) est visible dans la forêt de Milly la Forêt, près de Fontainebleau. Le nombre de visiteurs est limité pour ne pas détériorer la statue et pour des raisons de sécurité. Elle n’est pas ouverte toute l’année : voir les accès et les horaires sur le lien ci-dessous sur le site Art Public.

• Anti-artist fits nicely in museum (New York Times)
• Monster in the Forest (2005) 57min. DVD, buy it from Amazon
• Le Cyclope de Milly la Forêt (77)

Ja, das Tinguely-Museum …

Uns hat es sehr gut gefallen.

“Dieses Museum ist anders: Hier rattert, quietscht, kracht und pufft es. Bunter Schrott rotiert, Lampen in allen Farben blinken. Lebendigkeit, Lachen, Staunen, Entdecken an einem Ort, der die Sinne in Bewegung setzt und an dem die Kunst zum Betrachter kommt. Ein Museum, das bei Kindern und Erwachsenen gleichermassen die Lust auf Erleben, Spiel und Nachdenken über Kunst weckt.”

Wenn man sich die Arbeiten anschaut, hat Tinguely ja sein Leben lang nur Maschinen gebaut. Als Kinder Wasserräder am Bach, als Dekorateur bei Globus, als Künstler.

Und doch sind es so unterschiedliche Maschinen:
poetische und fragile, lustige, bedrohliche, gruselige, schaurige, sinnlose, nützliche … (nützliche? na ja, er nennt eine so)
Maschinen mit Musik, mit Beleuchtung, zum Automatischen Zeichnen….

Und natürlich seine Brunnenskulpturen , die liebe ich ja schon immer .

Aber auch seine fabigen Zeichnungen gefallen mir schon lange…

es tinguelet!