Animated Sculptures: Figuration and Movement

Leonardo. Vol. 15. No. 4. pp. 306-309, 1982 Printed in Great Britain 0024-094X/82/040306-04%03.00/0 Pergamon Press Ltd. ANIMATED SCULPTURES: FIGURATION AND MOVEMENT Jack Vanarsky” 1. Animated Sculptures If one takes the term ‘Kinetic Art’ in its broadest sense, my artwork can be described as part of the Kinetic Art movement, which implies the use of motion in visual art. In France, where I live, following the vogue of the 1960s, the definition of Kinetic Art came to embrace the idea of abstraction,geometricality and technology, associated with the work of artists such as Agam, Vasarely, Schoffer, Soto, etc. From the start, I have taken a different approach in my work. My first mobile objects, influenced by my earlier paintings, were puppet caricatures reminiscent of the work of Georg Grosz. At the same time (1967-1969) a number of artists, of which I was one, formed the group ‘Automat’ [I], whose name recalled the figurative automata of the 18th century. But the allusion stopped there. Figuration was more than just a starting point; it was a challenge. We did not want to fall into the trap of imitating the way living things and objects move in reality [2]. Today, I prefer to describe my works as ‘animated sculptures’. The word ‘animated’, in its accepted double sense of ‘moving’ and ‘alive’, corresponds well to the meaning of my work, and would fit other experiments and the works of other artists. Actually, I prefer to use the word to describe a type of artwork rather than a style or tendency. In 1968, while I was cutting out the pieces for making flat, silhouette puppets, the idea came to me of chopping up puppet bodies into a series of slices or lamellae, like slices of bread or sausage, and then making each lamella move so as to impart an undulating motion to the entire body. These lamellae are undoubtedly the most characteristic element of my work. They constitute the anatomy of my sculptures. They are made of wood, transparent acrylic, polyvinylchloride (PVC) or, preferably, Bakelite paper, a heat-resistant material that can be made very thin, produces very little friction between the lamellae and can be fashioned with great precision. The thin lamellae oscillate, some more than others, each one slightly out of phase with the next, and are driven by an electrical mechanism which is hidden from the viewer’s sight. The whole animated sculpture is enclosed in a wooden supporting box. In my static sculptures, particularly the large ones, there is a more marked displacement of the lamellae, superimposed like geological strata. In this way distortions and effects of spatial anamorphosisare produced. In immobile works,these breaks of continuity have a dynamizing effect, in contrast to the continuous oscillation of the lamellae in my animated works which produce a sense of rest. 2. Figuration, but not too much My sculptures are figurative. Their distortions and animation derive their meaning from the relationship between the sculptures and their model, between the representation of the object and the object represented. But the relationship is far ~ *Artist, 39 Sq. Dufourmantelle, 94700 Maisons Alfort, France. (Original text in French.) (Received 2 December 1981.) from clear-cut, because when movement is introduced the sculptures appear both more real and less real at one and the same time. This raises the question of the choice of subject. To make an object representing a moving object move may seem to be futile and superfluous, too imitative and aesthetically pointless, except if it does not move or try to move in the sameway; except if it takes the same liberties with reality as is done with form and colour in art; except if movement expresses something more than just the literal description of a gesture or action. I therefore represented motionless parts of the human body (like the skull) by abnormal motion (Fig. I); showed fists swaying, and faces and breasts in asymmetrical distortion (Fig. 2). In a series of hands in different positions, deliberate gestures are contradicted by undulating hesitations(Fig.3).A sculpted face, hand or torso that moves can still be perceived as smiling, contracting or dancing, even though, being...