Artbotics Artist Presentations: Jean Tinguely

Ellen Wetmore, email, 3-24-11

Include in your report:

• Format is Powerpoint presentation of 10 slides • 1 bibliography of at least 3 sources. • Must include a title page with your name and

contact information, & the date.• Artist biography basics: date born, education,

major exhibitions, projects, and publications • Report must include at least 5 examples of the

artists’ work with detailed descriptions of what the work is and what it does.

• For Bibliography & citations please use the MLA style, as outlined here: http://www.library.cornell.edu/resrch/citmanage/mla#web_page

• USE YOUR LIBRARY, use artist’s own web site, look for articles of shows they have been in searching via location and artist name.if they were in an institutional show, that site will have text and images from the show, use the artist’s gallery website.

Details make the stories better.• Birth date & place, and family information

– Spouses? Kids? Lovers? Did they learn art from their parents? Louise Bourgeois’ art was all about her mother.

• What Nationality? Race? Religion? Ethnicity? Did this affect their work like it did for Arschile Gorky or does for Fred Wilson? Painter Rosa Bonheur had to have a license from a doctor to wear pants which she required to work in the slaughterhouses where she studied her subjects.

• Education/training– Camille Claudel learned from August Rodin, how did this influence her style?

• History and philosophy of their art – How did their work develop over time? What was a germinal moment for them? What single

work “made” them as an artist? Why? Did they experiment with different ideas at different moments of their life? Why? Tell us the story

– Johannes Itten invented a new philosophy of color theory; Picasso’s Guernica defined him and was defined by his country’s war; Shepard Fairey is in the middle of a lawsuit about copyright over his work. What’s the story?

• Influences on their work & Historical context of their art: what else was going on at the time? War? Discrimination? Revolution? Zeitgeist? Was their art accepted as art? Did they move to Tahiti, abandon their wife and kids, take up with a 13 year old and transform their art?

Jean Tinguely Bio

• 1925: Born on May 22 in Fribourg. Mother and child move from Bulle to Basel in July 1925. 1931 – 1940: Schooling in Basel. 1941 – 1944: Apprenticeship as a decorator. (Avoids the war, Switzerland is neutral) 1944: Attends courses at the School of Arts and Crafts in Basel.

• Married Nikki de Saint Phalle 1971, met in 1955• Died in Bern, 1991

Jean Tinguely

Homage to New York• Homage to New York", "a self- destroying work of art conceived and built for

this occasion", opened at the Museum of Modern Art on March 17 1960 at 6.30pm; half an hour later only fragments of Tinguely's giant tableau of absurdist kinetic sculptures remained: wheels, rubber tyres and metal rods from "Suicide Carriage", a piano leg, a fan - and scores of preparatory black ink drawings.

Fragment from Homage to New York

Jean Tinguely (Swiss, 1925-1991)

• Early works include drawing machines - Then, in 1959, he begins work on his «Méta-Matics», motor-driven drawing machines that the user can operate to create automatically abstract works of art.

• Using everyday materials such as steel wire, tinplate and paint, in the early Fifties Tinguely creates moveable abstract constructions that can be set in motion by turning crank handles driven by a cogwheel mechanism.

Absurdist machines

KLAMAUK, 1979

Professional life with St.Phalle

St. Phalle sculpture Black Venus, 1963

LE Cyclop – la Tête, Tinguely & St. Phalle, modelFor a park based sculpture in France http://www.lecyclop.com/

Bibliography

• Wullschlager, Jackie. "Joyous Machines: Michael Landy and Jean Tinguely." Financial Times 3 Oct. 2009: 19

• http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/248/467

• http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=33838

• http://www.tinguely.ch/en/museum_sammlung