"Jean Tinguely's art is built around the idea of the wheel. The wheel's circular movement is in its continuity an eternal repetition. But it is also an eternal renewal.. .In practical machines the goal is to reduce irregularities as much as possible. Tinguely seeks the opposite. He seeks mechanical disorder. The cogs in his wheels are made as to constantly produce inconsistent chance ridden movement. His connections lack al1 precision except that of chance, his wheels have kept their character as symbols for an eternal transformation. They are chance in function. They are a new and original formulation of Marcel Duchamp's idea to use chance intentionally.. .These new creatures of the art world live in an enviable freedom. They stand outside al1 laws and are not bound by systems. This art exemplifies pure anarchy when it is most beautiful. It is an art which is thoroughly revolutionary, thoroughly dynamic, freer than we could ourselves ever hope to become.. .It is a piece of pure existence, forever changing, that doesn't need to mean or hint at something just as a flower or a rat doesn't have to mean.. But one is mistaken to believe that their artistic message is innocent or harmless. It is, actually, loaded with a freedom like a bomb with trotyl. It is a small latent attack against all established order, it is a symbol for an enormous freedom and should scare all righteous thinkers if they could understand its power. It is a symbol for an absolute, dizzying and unbelievable freedom. It personifies a freedom which otherwise would not exist, and therein lies its value. These machines are more anti-machines than machines.. .Military technology and scientific knowledge is constantly a direct threat against Our individual existence.. .Already with Dada we saw a clear skepticism against the technological world. Duchamp's ready-made, the artwork chosen from mass reproduction, contains much irony against machines, and gets its potency not until it is paradoxically freed from its function. As I see it, [Tinguely's work] it represents one of the most conscious expressions for a new type of modem art.. .This art is an anti-social expression. One has to attack machines in their own territory [my italics].. .The weapon of Tinguely's machines is irony."
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"Den staUforetridande friheten eiler orn Rorelse i konsten och Tinguely's Metamekanik" ("Vicarious Freedom: or Movement in Art and Tinguely's Metamatics") Kasark #2 (October 1955)' pp.26-31; As quoted in: Andersson, Patrik Lars. Euro-pop: the mechanical bride stripped bare in Stockholm, even. (2001). p. 50
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Jean Tinguely
Jean Tinguely (22 May 1925 – 30 August 1991) was a Swiss painter and sculptor, married to . He is best known for his sculptural machines or kinetic art, in the Dada tradition; known officially as metamechanics. Tinguely's art satirized the mindless overproduction of material goods in advanced industrial society.
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