Jean Tinguely’s machines in Milan | EUROtoday

Die drei großen Fehlurteile zu den Skulpturen Jean Tinguelys lauten: Der Schweizer Dinosaurier habe vollkommen anachronistische Macho-Monumentalmaschinen aus Stahl zusammengeschweißt; das viele Altmetall habe bis zuletzt nur einer simplen Ikonographie des Schrotts im Sinne einer überlebten Arte Povera oder – noch schlimmer – seiner Leidenschaft für schnelle Rennwagen gedient, und Tinguelys Werk habe, drittens, als Möchtegern-Uhrmacherbastelei von Großskulpturen keinerlei philosophischen Überbau.

All diese Mären widerlegt eine fulminante Ausstellung im monumentalen Hangar Bicocca in Mailand, die erste große Retrospektive in Italien, die Werke aus allen Schaffensphasen zeigt. In der ehemaligen Fabrikhalle, in deren stützenfreien und kathedralhohen Inneren einst Lokomotiven gefertigt wurden, stehen nun drei Dutzend kleine wie große Maschinen, ein leichtfüßiges Ballett des Industriezeitalters, transformiert in Kunst. Ballett deshalb, weil die Kuratoren Lucia Pesapane und Camille Morineau die überwiegend sich noch bewegenden Maschinen nicht alle auf einmal krachen und rumpeln lassen wollten, vielmehr über den Zeitraum von 45 Minuten hinweg fein choreographiert eine nach der anderen anspringen lässt.

Such a choreography would have appealed to Tinguely, who noticed himself because the conductor of a machine orchestra to which he granted intensive autonomy. And to counter the prejudices briefly with arguments from the present: Tinguely and his first spouse Eva Aeppli created extraordinarily delicate and delicate automata from 1951 to 1960; Especially since 1971 he had cooperated with Niki de Saint Phalle on an equal footing, which didn’t cease even after the divorce, as evidenced by the beneficiant donation of many works by Saint Phalle to the Tinguely Museum in Basel, which was established primarily at her instigation after his loss of life in 1991. Like Plato’s spherical individuals, a lot of his sculptures can be incomplete with out the participation of each. The group of six “Baluba” figures from the Nineteen Sixties symbolize the fragile nature of Tinguely’s work, embodying the wrestle for independence of the Congolese Bantu with the standard metallic parts of Tinguely, but in addition central elements of his spouse Niki de’s oeuvre with kids’s toys and vivid yellow plastic fowl heads Saint Phalle included.

The accusation of a scrap collector of Arte Povera can also be rapidly refuted: At first look, the greater than 5 meter excessive work “Pit Stop” with its falling aside Renault racing automotive elements and “Schreckenskarette – Viva Ferrari” really appear like adrenaline-filled “Transformer” sculptures of Formula 1. But it’s a snapshot of a nasty collision, particularly since it’s Tinguely’s solely set up with an built-in video, which exhibits the pilot Alain Prost in giant measurement in fast paced pictures on the best aspect of the wall.

Despite his enthusiasm for quick autos, Tinguely would by no means have uncritically celebrated the pace. On the opposite: since he witnessed a tragedy with twenty deaths on the Le Mans automotive race in 1955, he was traumatized and, from this key expertise onwards, he all the time related racing with loss of life and vanitas . Every sculpture constituted of automotive elements since then has been an try to beat this psychological barrier or at the very least push the boundaries of his personal fearful limitations. Especially the monodimensional welding collectively and not using a superstructure is rapidly relegated to the realm of legend: the 2 teams “Philosophers” and “Eight Philosophers” are exhibited within the corridor, together with Rousseau, Engels, Kropotkin, the artwork historian Jacob Burckhardt, but in addition historic Greek and at the moment widespread French thinkers rely. Anyone who would not get a smile from the grasp philosophers who’ve been pushed out of scrap steel and revived (“Plato in Action”, “Democritus in Need”) would not have a coronary heart; Nevertheless, their traits are instantly recognizable and exactly portrayed. The artist dealt intensively with the respective writings of the thinkers; till the very finish, as his mom had suggested him as a baby, he slept on and over books – even below the pillow.

After all, virtually all of his sculptures not solely have humor, additionally they have a constant art-historical depth. It will not be with out purpose that Tinguely is likely one of the most necessary artists of the twentieth century. On the left wall, guests to the corridor are greeted by a direct confrontation with the French artist group from 1929 within the work of the identical title “Cercle et carré-éclates”. Circles and squares, really ensures of symmetry and proof of exact geometry, right here, nevertheless, kind an imperfect, oscillating giant circle, which additionally creates numerous noise. Since the Nineteen Sixties, he has been storming museums with these machines, which allowed him “to be poetic – and in turn to set them free,” as he as soon as outlined his work. However, its noisy and oil-smeared equipment all the time remained an anti-museum.

Tinguely is taken into account one of the crucial necessary kineticists: he transfers his curiosity in motion and modes of visible notion into machines, which in flip trigger kinesis to have its personal legal guidelines. Some partially destroy themselves by means of put on and tear and alter, others create new machines and thus develop into artists themselves. His “Méta-Matic” drawing machine, which can be utilized for a chip, creates new originals again and again, relying on how near the paper you place the felt-tip pen in it, and is due to this fact artistically lively himself.

He bundles these most poetically in “Requiem pour une feuille morte”, the place enormous gears and a hopeless tangle of transmission belts, wherein one appears to be like for Charlie Chaplin from “Modern Times” who received below the gears someplace, have been designed only for this function , a tiny white painted leaf, the autumnally wilted one from the title, into an virtually imperceptibly mild rocking movement. Not solely this anti-capitalist turning of effort and impact on its head, but in addition the humor of the second that means of the title in French, as a colloquial time period for Burgundy bottles, enhance the poetic impact. What is most placing, nevertheless, is the distinction of the black machine elements in opposition to the intense white background, in order that the work seems both like an Indonesian shadow theater – a second machine made of sunshine and shadow behind it – or just like the Delaunays’ Orphism, staggered in a number of layers one after the opposite and executed three-dimensionally in iron, wherein lyrical wheels and shapes additionally flip.

He beloved the Baroque and particularly the Middle Ages with its changeable winged altars and transferring tales, regardless that he beloved the just about dozen lamp and light-weight chain installations similar to “Café Kyoto” or “Mercédès”, which glow mysteriously with their colourful lights within the darkness of the corridor , Japanese-inspired, there are additionally figurative elements and deer antlers within the garlands and light-weight solitaires, which instantly remind anybody with an affinity for the Middle Ages of Dürer’s Lüsterweibchen, a pasticcio of antler shovel and caryatid.

Tinguely solely needed to set himself other than the colourful pop artwork – since 1965 and the work “Ios II” he has painted virtually all of his sculpture elements black. On the opposite hand, within the “La Vittoria” marketing campaign in 1970, he triggered “his” creative motion of the Nouveau Réalisme to go up in flames within the type of a phallus in entrance of the cathedral in Milan. A separate room is devoted to the efficiency, immortalized on movie and naturally scandalous in Catholic Milan, but in addition harking back to the machine-loving metropolis’s nice love for Tinguely.

His afterlife was removed from over. The Swiss Fischli/Weiss additionally referred to Tinguely. Your legendary movie “The Course of Things” as a life metaphor, a perpetual movement machine made up of collapsing, burning and but nonetheless rolling kinetic sculptures, is unthinkable with out it. As proof of this, all you must do is see the ten-meter-long “Machine Bar” within the hangar with twelve Kunstkammer kinesis sculptures. A inexperienced loden hat is lifted mechanically, and anybody who thinks of William Tell and the governor Gessler is a rogue; A plastic toy clown with a bell in its spherical stomach swings on the ground, making a sound. The noticed wood toy canine ​​of childhood dachshunds, head and tail wiggling, throughout this machine catwalk. The machine is just absolutely human the place it performs.

Jean Tinguely. At the Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, Milan; till February 2, 2025. Catalog will observe in November.