Lot 29
  • 29

Jean Tinguely

Estimate
200,000 - 300,000 GBP
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Description

  • Jean Tinguely
  • Meta-Malevich
  • signed and dated 54 on the side
  • painted metal elements on painted wooden box with wooden pulleys, rubber belt, metal fixtures and electric motor
  • 61.2 by 49 by 16 cm. 24 1/8 by 19 1/4 by 6 1/4 in.

Provenance

Galerie Arnaud, Paris

Private Collection, Luxembourg

Collection P. Wurth, Brussels 

Galerie Beyeler, Basel

Galerie Renée Ziegler, Zurich (acquired from the above in 1984)

Galerie Ziegler SA, Zurich (acquired from the above in 2009)

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2013

Exhibited

Paris, Galerie Arnaud, Automates, Sculptures et Reliefs mécaniques de Tinguely, 1954 

Turin, Promotrice delle Belle Arti, Jean Tinguely 1954-1987, November 1987 - January 1988

Zurich, Galerie Renée Ziegler, Jubiläumsausstellung (30 Jahre Galerie), 1989

Aarau, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Equilibre, September - November 1993, p. 176, illustrated

Zurich, Haus für Konstruktive und Konkrete Kunst; Neuchâtel, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire; and Frankfurt, Kunstverein Frankfurt, Regel und Abweichung, Schweiz Konstruktiv 1960-1997, October 1997 - November 1998

Basel, Museum Jean Tinguely, Jean le Jeune, September 2002 - March 2003

Klagenfurt, Stadtgalerie Klagenfurt, Jean Tinguely, June - September 2003, p. 34, illustrated 

Solothurn, Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Les Livres de Vie: Eva Aeppli und ihre Künstlerfreunde, August - November 2006

Hamburg, Kunsthalle Hamburger, Ikone der Moderne: Das Schwarze Quadrat, March - June 2007

Liverpool, Tate Liverpool, Joyous Machines: Michael Landy and Jean Tinguely, October 2009 - January 2010, p. 138 (text)

Zurich, Galerie Ziegler SA, Hommage an Jean Tinguely (1925-1991), Maschinen 1955 - 1991, 2011

Literature

Christina Bischofberger, Jean Tinguely: Catalogue Raisonné 1954-68, Zurich 1982, p. 22, no. 13, illustrated

Condition

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although it fails to demonstrate the three-dimensional quality of the work. Condition: This work is in very good and working condition. Please refer to the department for a professional condition report.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Catalogue Note

“Everything moves. Immobility does not exist. Do not be dominated by antiquated notions of time. Forget hours, minutes, seconds. Don’t resist metamorphosis. Live in time…”

Jean Tinguely quoted in: Exh. Cat., Venice, Palazzo Grassi, Jean Tinguely 1954-1987, 1987, p. 56.

Created in the seminal year of 1954, Meta-Malevich is an exceptional example of Jean Tinguely’s artistic scrutiny of the evolving bond between man and machinery. Executed in a restrained monochrome palette of white elements on a black background, Tinguely drew from the formal language of modernist abstraction, reinvigorating the familiar forms of early twentieth-century masterpieces with a kinetic energy that goes beyond the illusion of optical effects and instantiates the artwork’s animate nature within space. As part of a small yet iconic series of works created predominantly between 1954 and 1955, Meta-Malevich pays whimsical homage to Tinguely’s revolutionary artistic forebears from a standpoint that wavers between ecstatic inspiration and iconoclastic playfulness.

The monotone white lines and circles of Meta-Malevich recall the simplified grids of Piet Mondrian and proponents of the De Stijl movement. In their conquest for abstract clarity and the development of ‘Neo-Plasticism’, conceived two decades before the creation of this work, Mondrian’s idiosyncratic grids would find fame through their structured monumentality and their enduring presence of careful balance. Here Tinguely maintains some of the pure elements of art – namely, unaltered colour and simple geometric shapes – and transports these elements into a system of ever shifting movement, disrupting pictorial stability in favour of playfully unsettled relations.

This sense of mechanised movement is foreshadowed somewhat by the hanging mobiles of Alexander Calder initiated in the 1930s, which utilised a similar palette. Calder mapped a trajectory for technical development that was emulated by Tinguely who would move from the manual to the electrically operated. But whilst the free isolated elements of Calder’s mobiles rotated with an emphatically organic sense of rhythm, Tinguely pursued randomness and a lack of sequence in mechanically moving elements. What interested the artist most, which is most perfectly perceptible in Meta-Malevich, was the ability of the image to constantly modify itself. Here Tinguely used asynchronous gears moving at different speeds so that the configuration of shapes would only repeat themselves at immeasurable intervals, if ever at all.

Despite Tinguely’s ‘meta-mechanical’ pieces claiming an evident affinity with Mondrian and Calder, the overriding reference here is made to Russian Suprematist Kazimir Malevich with whose work an intense visual and verbal parallel is drawn, almost to the extent of pastiche. Malevich’s Suprematist abstractions found their logical goal in the calculated balance of discrete coloured forms in order to create a monumentally spiritualistic effect. Here, such strident utopianism is torn apart, infusing those forms that stood for the eternal, with a sense of ephemerality through their interminable mechanical transit.

Meta-Malevich provides a spirited example of Tinguely’s energised iconoclastic tendencies, and his dalliances with notions of ‘anti-art’. Indeed he was keen to accept classification as neo-Dadaist. Admittedly he was fascinated by the idea of throwing a grenade at the Mona Lisa, even making detailed plans that he was too deterred by the threat of prison to ever carry out. Of course, much like the Futurists, an aggressive fascination with the mechanical processes of modern life was what drove Tinguely to pursue new territory with his amalgamation of art and mechanics. This drive is typified in his adoration of motor racing, which he saw as a balletic embodiment of his core artistic concerns. As noted by Pontus Hultén “in this sport, man and machine are tested to their limit. A motor race is an irrational, sometimes absurd event in which anything can happen; to attempt the impossible is one of the rules of the game” (Pontus Hultén, A Magic Stronger than Death, London 1987, p. 29). Like motorcars racing on a conceptual track, Tinguely’s select forms in Meta-Malevich run in incongruous and competing rhythms, with an isolated dynamism that re-chartered the expectations of art history.