Anemic Cinema (1926) by Marcel Duchamp
"This characteristically dada film by Marcel Duchamp consists of a series of visual and verbal puns with nonsense phrases inscribed around rotating spiral patterns, creating an almost hypnotic effect. Silent.
Anemic Cinema (various versions were made in 1920, 1923 and, finally, in 1926). Essentially a film by Duchamp with help from Man Ray. Calvin Tomkins: 'Duchamp used the initial payment on his inheritance to make a film and to go into the art business. The film, shot in Man Ray's studio with the help of cinematographer Marc Allégret, was a seven-minute animation of nine punning phrases by Rrose Sélavy. These had been pasted, letter by letter, in a spiral pattern on round black discs that were then glued to phonograph records; the slowly revolving texts alternate with shots of Duchamp's Discs Bearing Spirals, ten abstract designs whose turning makes them appear to move backward and forward in an erotic rhythm. The little film, which Duchamp called Anemic Cinema, had its premiere that August at a private screening room in Paris.'"
(UbuWeb)
Marcel Duchamp (1926). "Anémic Cinéma", 7 minutes, B&W.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Four Interrupted Carparks Video/Digital insertions, Madrid, 2009
"Four carparks in Madrid are interrupted with a geometric primitive. Modeling, compositing, rendering and editing performed with Blender for Linux."
(Julian Oliver)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Op Art: starkem Interesse am Objektiven und dem wissenschaftlichen Experiment
"Zu Beginn der 1960er Jahre entsteht mit Op Art und Kinetik eine Kunst mit starkem Interesse am Objektiven und dem wissenschaftlichen Experiment. Fasziniert von den physikalischen Gesetzen des Lichts und der Optik verschreibt sich eine ganze Generation der Untersuchung visueller Phänomene und Wahrnehmungsprinzipien. Die Täuschungsmöglichkeiten des Auges auslotend, setzen Künstler wie Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley, François Morellet, Julio Le Parc oder Gianni Colombo auf die gezielte Irritation. Mit großformatigen Bildern, Objekten und Environments bringen sie aber nicht nur das Auge des Betrachters in Bewegung. Sie lassen den Besucher in Farbe versinken, im Spiegel ins Unendliche stürzen oder bieten ihm poetische Lichtspiele. Die Interaktion zwischen Werk und Betrachter gipfelt in Installationen, die letztlich nicht nur physikalische Wirkungen in Form von Nachbildern, Farbvibrationen oder dem Flimmern von Licht entfalten, sondern auf das gesamte Bewusstsein wirken."
(Martina Weinhart, 2007)
Fig. 1 Op-Art Ausstellung, Frankfurt, 2007
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Line Versus Color: Comparing Early Bridget Riley and Verner Panton
"For as much as I appreciate Panton and Riley, their approaches are hard to reconcile. Panton was a master colourist, and he mined the optical power of subtle changes in hues, shades and values. But foremost, he was a designer, and he approached colour from the perspective of function. 'Using colours is like life,' he wrote in Notes on Colour. 'One must have a goal. The goal can be almost anything - also make the most awful colour combinations.' And he writes elsewhere, 'Choosing colours should not be a gamble. It should be a conscious decision. Colours have a meaning and function.'"
(Grant Wiggins)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Felice Varini at Osaka Securities Exchange Building
"If we approach the painting of Felice Varini with the aim of describing it, in its fundamental components, the most productive concepts - in particular those of 'vantage point', 'focus' and 'framing' - all closely related to the vocabulary of photography. If we begin with the device Varini employs in each of his artworks, the differences between painting and photography are, effectively, reduced to a minimum. The artist's work, concentrating on the problem of falsehood of images in relation to the truth of perception, makes use of photography, going so far as to equate it with painting in the strategies of constitution and unmasking of iconic status. The roots of photography - the 'machine à dessiner' and the camera obscura - closely connect it to the tools of the painter. Photography demonstrates the functioning of perspective as a construct based on the fixed gaze and monocular vision, thus radicalizing the theme of painting as illusion: 'in the window and in the photograph the framed world seems to inscribe and represent itself in an immediate manner' (1)."
(Roberta Mazzola)
1). Johannes Meinhardt, La realtà dell'illusione estetica. Le 'trappole visive' di Felice Varini, Lugano, Edizioni Studio Dabbeni, 1999, p. 29. The definition machine à dessiner dates back to France in the 17th century. On the forerunners of the camera, see: Heinrich Schwarz, Arte e fotografia, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 1991.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
