How to display motion and move the image. Kunsthalle Prague summarizes Kinetismus – ČT24 – Czech Television
The curators divided the exhibition into four free sections: cinematography, kinetic, cybernetic and computer art, while the exhibits from this or that section are freely mixed with each other and the chronological lines do not follow. This achieves the unity of the idea of the whole concept over strict classification, boxing, at the same time thanks to which there are interesting interactions and jumps. And also to associations and unexpected connections.
Kinetics as an artistic direction can be defined relatively easily, it is possible to label any work of art (regardless of what medium is used to create it) that contains movement, in any form – but one that can be captured by the eye. But problems and questions arise immediately.
How to move an act descending stairs
For example, whether to include the early attempts of French Impressionists, such as Edgar Degas, Claude Monet and Édouard Manet, who emphasized the movement of individual characters on the screen. These attempts were later – although he originally sympathized with them – criticized by sculptor Auguste Rodin, saying that “it is impossible to accurately capture any movement in time and give it liveliness, we see in the real world.”
The family would certainly be opposed by both Marcel Duchamp, who shocked New York in 1913 with his oil The Act Descending the Stairs (1912), and František Kupka, who, as his four-year-old exhibition at the Prague Castle Riding Hall showed around 1909. They both did the same: by phasing out the movement of the characters. With this trick, they actually got a kinetic element into the “static” image.
Not to mention the great lovers and singers of movement, Italian futuristics, such as the oils of Umberto Boccioni or Giacomo Bally, are a beautiful example of a successful attempt to capture movement in the static image in which it is. The Prague exhibition does not go that far.
To make film a new art
The first section of the exhibition is devoted to cinematography. The futuristic manifesto on the 1913 film says: “Film is an autonomous art and should never copy theater. It needs to be liberated and it should be used to create multi-expressive symphonies in which reality is randomly put together.
Unfortunately, only a few of the films made by futurist brothers Bruno Corra and Arnald Ginna in 1911 and 1912 have survived, so we can only hope that they have fulfilled the premise that futuristic film is a combination of painting, sculpture, plastic dynamics, liberated word, formed sounds, architecture. and synthetic theater.
An anemic movie?
Hans Richter, a German artist, filmmaker and theorist, was intrinsically connected to the experiment and the avant-garde – this former supporter of expressionism and the Munich group Der Blaue Reiter
Richter, though his three-and-a-half-minute Rhythmus 21 (in which we see various geometric shapes in constant motion, approaching and losing, while – as with other pioneers of “abstract” film – we can only guess and, most importantly, admire how all this, literally “on their knees” they managed to create) considered the first abstract film ever, but this is not the case, ten years ahead of the aforementioned futurists and also the German artist Walter Ruttmann, who made the ten-minute Lichtspiel Opus 1 in 1920.
We see in it various, not just geometric shapes in various interactions, sometimes reminiscent of the act. Ruttmann’s later “opuses”, namely II to IV, also run in Kunstahlle. She was clearly aware of the revolutionary quality of her films, but he also declared at the time: “Natural art does not naturally focus on today’s visitors.”
We will see two works in Prague from the work of the truly unclassifiable and untamed artist Marcel Duchamp, especially the eight-minute film Anémic cinéma (1926). By its very name, Duchamp seemed to suggest that the film as such – and its kind – should be taken with a grain of salt, but, as is the rule with Duchamp-seducers, a work that at first glance seemed to shout “I’m just a prank, entertainment, joke “, it hides far deeper layers and statements, with which the author skillfully works.
And so it is in the “anemic” film, in which we see nineteen rotating discs, some with spiral motifs, others carry French sentences. There are both different phrases and the illusion of a whirlwind sinking somewhere else.
Films by Otakar Vávra and Tony Conrad
It is also worth mentioning the 19-minute film by American photographer and filmmaker Man Ray Emak Baki from 1926, subtitled “Cinema Poem”. Man Ray, known as the discoverer of “rayograms”, applied this technique in film, as well as double exposure, blurring and the like. It is interesting that the viewer sees not only various, often transformed objects, but also live actors and also Picasso’s sculptures.
The classics at the exhibition include the German photographer and filmmaker László Moholy-Nagy and his six-minute Lichtspiel Schwarz-Weiss-Grau (1930) and the Swedish painter and filmmaker Viking Eggeling, who shot in 1921–1924. eight-minute Symphonii diagonale and which was influenced in his work both by the theories of the pioneer of abstract painting Vasil Kandinsky and by the teachings of the philosopher Henri Bergson.
Not to mention the domestic deposit: a two-minute film by the couple Irena and Karel Dodalová Fantasie érotique (1936), in which concentrically and otherwise conceived colored circles can rotate differently and the viewer can freely associate in the intentions of the title. In addition, the exhibition offers a four-minute film by Otakar Vávra, Light Penetrates Darkness from 1930.
In addition to the current examples, the curators also selected the important film The Flicker (1966) by the American experimenter, filmmaker, musician and collaborator of The Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol Tony Conrad. A half-hour flickering of the sound screen accompanied by sound can transfer to another perception. However, people prone to epilepsy should avoid this part.
Due to the nature of the exhibits from the Kunsthalle, the forgotten genius of not only abstract animated films, but also many other disciplines, the American outsider Harry Smith (1923–1991) certainly did not fall into place.
Sir, come play
In the kinetic exhibition, the section’s curators managed to blend the idea of the exhibition beautifully with its location: a set of four light-kinetic sculptures One Hundred Years of Electricity by Zdeněk Pešánek from 1932–1936 Unfortunately, the buildings were not installed, only models of these truly pioneering works have been preserved – not only did Pešánek probably be the first to use neon, he also creatively worked with other industrial, ie “non-artistic” elements.
After all, their names are also “non-artistic”: Ampère’s right-hand rule, the principle of the electric motor, the principle of the transformer and the growth of electricity production in Prague in the years 1890–1936. Pešánek, who is still insufficiently appreciated in our country, is also represented by two larger sculptures – on the Lying Torso and the Male and Female Torso (both 1936) he again worked with then not common materials: light bulbs, neon tubes, synthetic resin, and therefore light.
Italian linoineux 222 by Italian Nino Calos from 1966, when three wheels rotate behind cut-outs in plexiglass, is constantly changing, and patterns that can actually be watched for hours are constantly changing. The Dreamachine of the Canadian artist and writer Brion Gysin from 1960 is based on a similar principle.
It should be added, however, that Gysin (who also collaborated with William Burroughs and Ian Sommerville) did not intend to create a work of art, but a tool that, by causing flashes of light, generates certain brainwaves and subsequently resulted in visual hallucinations, not LSD-like. And just like with Harry Smith, the experimental films they were making together would certainly not fit in Prague.