Homage to New York | |
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Artist | Jean Tinguely |
Year | 1960 |
Homage to New York was a 1960 kinetic artwork and performance by Jean Tinguely.
Homage to New York was a kinetic artwork composed of found mechanical parts including multiple bicycle wheels, a weather balloon, a piano, a radio, an American flag, a bassinet, and a toilet, all painted white. In its first and only performance in the New York Museum of Modern Art sculpture garden on March 17, 1960, the machine whirred to life with the sounds and smells of its mechanical motion. The sculpture was split into sections that would activate at different times, slowly turning the overall sculpture until, in its climax, the machine would destroy itself. In one section, the piano played while glass bottles dropped from above, shattering and releasing noxious odors. A youth go-kart scurried in front of the sculpture. [1]
In February 1960, Museum of Modern Art curator for painting and sculpture Peter Selz commissioned artist Jean Tinguely to make a self-destructing machine to perform in the museum's sculpture garden. Tinguely found its components among scraps, junk, garbage dumps, and shops in New Jersey and New York City. [1]
Tinguely intended for the work to reflect the excess and overabundance of modern living. Christina Chau described it as a "spectacle of abundance, from abundance" that produced nothing besides "motion". [1]
Alexander Calder was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobiles that embrace chance in their aesthetic, his static "stabiles", and his monumental public sculptures. Calder preferred not to analyze his work, saying, "Theories may be all very well for the artist himself, but they shouldn't be broadcast to other people."
Niki de Saint Phalle was a French-American sculptor, painter, filmmaker, and author of colorful hand-illustrated books. Widely noted as one of the few female monumental sculptors, Saint Phalle was also known for her social commitment and work.
Daniel Spoerri is a Swiss artist and writer born in Romania. Spoerri is best known for his "snare-pictures," a type of assemblage or object art, in which he captures a group of objects, such as the remains of meals eaten by individuals, including the plates, silverware and glasses, all of which are fixed to the table or board, which is then displayed on a wall. He also is widely acclaimed for his book, Topographie Anécdotée* du Hasard, a literary analog to his snare-pictures, in which he mapped all the objects located on his table at a particular moment, describing each with his personal recollections evoked by the object.
Kinetic art is art from any medium that contains movement perceivable by the viewer or that depends on motion for its effects. Canvas paintings that extend the viewer's perspective of the artwork and incorporate multidimensional movement are the earliest examples of kinetic art. More pertinently speaking, kinetic art is a term that today most often refers to three-dimensional sculptures and figures such as mobiles that move naturally or are machine operated. The moving parts are generally powered by wind, a motor or the observer. Kinetic art encompasses a wide variety of overlapping techniques and styles.
Panayiotis Vassilakis, also known as Takis, was a self-taught Greek artist known for his kinetic sculptures. He exhibited his artworks in Europe and the United States. Popular in France, his works can be found in public locations in and around Paris, as well as at the Athens-based Takis Foundation Research Center for the Arts and Sciences.
Neo-Dada was a movement with audio, visual and literary manifestations that had similarities in method or intent with earlier Dada artwork. It sought to close the gap between art and daily life, and was a combination of playfulness, iconoclasm, and appropriation. In the United States the term was popularized by Barbara Rose in the 1960s and refers primarily, although not exclusively, to work created in that and the preceding decade. There was also an international dimension to the movement, particularly in Japan and in Europe, serving as the foundation of Fluxus, Pop Art and Nouveau réalisme.
Arman was a French-born American artist. Born Armand Fernandez in Nice, France, Arman was a painter who moved from using objects for the ink or paint traces they leave to using them as the artworks themselves. He is best known for his Accumulations and destruction/recomposition of objects.
An addressograph is an address labeler and labeling system.
Events from the year 1960 in art.
Auto-destructive art (ADA) is a form of art invented by Gustav Metzger, an artist born in Bavaria who moved to Britain in 1939. Taking place after World War II, Metzger wanted to showcase the destruction created from the war through his artwork. This movement took place in England and was launched by Metzger in 1959. This term was invented in the early 1960s and put into circulation by his article "Machine, Auto-Creative and Auto-Destructive Art" in the summer 1962 issue of the journal Ark.
Robotic art is any artwork that employs some form of robotic or automated technology. There are many branches of robotic art, one of which is robotic installation art, a type of installation art that is programmed to respond to viewer interactions, by means of computers, sensors and actuators. The future behavior of such installations can therefore be altered by input from either the artist or the participant, which differentiates these artworks from other types of kinetic art.
Jean Tinguely was a Swiss sculptor best known for his kinetic art sculptural machines that extended the Dada tradition into the later part of the 20th century. Tinguely's art satirized automation and the technological overproduction of material goods.
Karl Gunnar Vougt Pontus Hultén was a Swedish art collector and museum director. Pontus Hultén is regarded as one of the most distinguished museum professionals of the twentieth century. He was the pioneering former head of the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm and in the 1970s he was invited to participate in the creation of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, where he was the first director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne (MNAM) in 1974–1981.
The Museum Tinguely is an art museum in Basel, Switzerland that contains a permanent exhibition of the works of Swiss painter and sculptor Jean Tinguely. Located in the Solitudepark by the Rhine, the museum was designed by the Ticinese architect Mario Botta and opened on 3 October 1996.
Žilvinas Kempinas is a contemporary visual artist. He lives and works in New York City.
Feliza Bursztyn was a Colombian sculptor.
In the mid-1950s Jean Tinguely began production of a series of generative works titled Métamatics: machines that produced art works. With this series of works Tinguely not only problematised the introduction of the robotic machine as interface in our society, but also questioned the role of the artist, the art work and the viewer. Metamechanics, in relation to art history, describes the kinetic sculpture machines of Jean Tinguely. It is also applied to, and may have its origins in, earlier work of the Dada art movement.
Chaos I is a kinetic artwork by Swiss artist Jean Tinguely located inside The Commons, which is downtown Columbus, Indiana, United States. The work was commissioned by J. Irwin Miller, his wife Xenia Miller, and E. Celementine Tangeman in late 1971 for The Commons, an enclosed public space designed by Cesar Pelli. The artwork is often simply called Chaos and is occasionally referred to as Chaos No.1.
Modern sculpture is generally considered to have begun with the work of Auguste Rodin, who is seen as the progenitor of modern sculpture. While Rodin did not set out to rebel against the past, he created a new way of building his works. He "dissolved the hard outline of contemporary Neo-Greek academicism, and thereby created a vital synthesis of opacity and transparency, volume and void". Along with a few other artists in the late 19th century who experimented with new artistic visions in sculpture like Edgar Degas and Paul Gauguin, Rodin invented a radical new approach in the creation of sculpture. Modern sculpture, along with all modern art, "arose as part of Western society's attempt to come to terms with the urban, industrial and secular society that emerged during the nineteenth century".
Peter Howard Selz was a German-born American art historian and museum director and curator who specialized in German Expressionism.