Artbotics Artist Presentations: Jean Tinguely

Ellen Wetmore, email, date

Artist Presentations are 11-13 to 11-20

Include in your report:

• Format is Powerpoint presentation of 10 slides • 1 bibliography of at least 3 sources. • Must include a title page with your name and

contact information, & the date.• Artist biography basics: date born, education,

major exhibitions, projects, and publications • Report must include at least 5 examples of the

artists’ work with detailed descriptions of what the work is and what it does. Videos ok.

• For Bibliography & citations please use the MLA style, as outlined here: http://www.library.cornell.edu/resrch/citmanage/mla#web_page

• USE YOUR LIBRARY; use artist’s own web site: look for articles of shows they have been in. search via location and artist name. if they were in an institutional show, that website will have text and images from the show; use the artist’s gallery website for more info & images.

• How much does one of their works cost? How was it built? What materials? Who influenced their style and interests? Did they have an important mentor? Where did they grow up? Where did they work as an artist? Do they have a philosophy about their art?

• What city does the artist live in? the local paper will have articles reviewing their work.

• Please do not use an artist you saw here this term.

Details make the stories better.• Birth date & place, and family information

– Spouses? Kids? Lovers? Did they learn art from their parents? Louise Bourgeois’ art was all about her mother.

• What Nationality? Race? Religion? Ethnicity? Did this affect their work like it did for Arschile Gorky or does for Fred Wilson? Painter Rosa Bonheur had to have a license from a doctor to wear pants which she required to work in the slaughterhouses where she studied her subjects.

• Education/training– Camille Claudel learned from August Rodin, how did this influence her style?

• History and philosophy of their art – How did their work develop over time? What was a germinal moment for them? What single

work “made” them as an artist? Why? Did they experiment with different ideas at different moments of their life? Why? Tell us the story

– Johannes Itten invented a new philosophy of color theory; Picasso’s Guernica defined him and was defined by his country’s war; Shepard Fairey is in the middle of a lawsuit about copyright over his work. What’s the story?

• Influences on their work & Historical context of their art: what else was going on at the time? War? Discrimination? Revolution? Zeitgeist? Was their art accepted as art? Did they move to Tahiti, abandon their wife and kids, take up with a 13 year old and transform their art?

Jean Tinguely Bio• 1925: Born on May 22 in Fribourg, Switzerland. Mother and child move from Bulle to

Basel in July 1925. 1931 – 1940: Schooling in Basel. 1941 – 1944: Apprenticeship as a decorator. Avoids the war, as Switzerland is neutral; meets all the Dadaists who are hiding out in Switzerland. 1944: Attends courses at the School of Arts and Crafts in Basel, communist party member (illegal)

• Influenced by dada to make works that are anarchist, satirical• Philosophy: rather than being humanity's helpmate, the machine might become her

master; suggest that humans might be little more than irrational engines of conflicting lusts and urges, like a dysfunctional machine.

• Married Nikki de Saint Phalle 1971, met in 1956 while they were married to other people. Started collaborating right away. Moved in together 1960

• Works held in MOMA, Tinguely Museum in Basel, Tate, Art Institute, Chicago, Modern Art in Fukuoka, the Reina Sophia in Madrid.

• Died in Bern, 1991

Jean Tinguely

Homage to New York• Homage to New York", "a self- destroying work of art conceived and built for

this occasion", opened at the Museum of Modern Art on March 17 1960 at 6.30pm; half an hour later only fragments of Tinguely's giant tableau of absurdist kinetic sculptures remained: wheels, rubber tyres and metal rods from "Suicide Carriage", a piano leg, a fan - and scores of preparatory black ink drawings.

Fragment from Homage to New York

Jean Tinguely (Swiss, 1925-1991)

• Early works include drawing machines - Then, in 1959, he begins work on his «Méta-Matics», motor-driven drawing machines that the user can operate to create automatically abstract works of art.

• Using everyday materials such as steel wire, tinplate and paint, in the early Fifties Tinguely creates moveable abstract constructions that can be set in motion by turning crank handles driven by a cogwheel mechanism.

Absurdist machines

KLAMAUK, 1979

Professional life with St.Phalle

St. Phalle sculpture Black Venus, 1963

LE Cyclop – la Tête, Tinguely & St. Phalle, modelFor a park based sculpture in France http://www.lecyclop.com/

Bibliography• Wullschlager, Jackie. "Joyous Machines: Michael Landy

and Jean Tinguely." Financial Times 3 Oct. 2009: 19• Museum of Modern Art, Kaira Cabañas, Web,

November 20, 2008 <http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/248/467>

• Museum of Modern Art, http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=33838

• http://www.tinguely.ch/en/museum_sammlung• http://www.theartstory.org/movement-kinetic-art.htm• http://www.lecyclop.com/• http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/

tinguely_jean.html

• Web page:• This example includes the optional URL. All other examples below use the shorter citation format.• Cornell University Library. "Introduction to Research." Cornell University Library. Cornell University, 2009. Web. 19

June 2009 <http://www.library.cornell.edu/resrch/intro>.• Personal Web site:• If a work is untitled, you may use a genre label such as Home page, Introduction, etc.• Rule, Greg. Home page. Web. 16 Nov. 2008.• Entry in an online encyclopedia: • "Einstein, Albert." Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, 1999. Web. 27 Apr. 2009. • Article from a less familiar online reference book:• Nielsen, Jorgen S. "European Culture and Islam." Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World. Ed. Richard C. Martin.

New York: Macmillan Reference-Thomson/Gale, 2004. Web. 4 July 2009.• Article in an online periodical:• If pagination is unavailable or is not continuous, use n. pag. in place of the page numbers.• Chaplin, Heather. "Epidemic of Extravagance." Salon 19 Feb. 1999: n. pag. Web. 12 July 1999.• Article in a full-text journal accessed from a database:• Vargas, Jose Antonio. "The Face of Facebook." New Yorker 86.28 (2010): 54-63. Academic Search Premier. Web. 25

Jan. 2011.• Online book with print information: • Frost, Robert. North of Boston. 2nd ed. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1915. Google Books. Web. 30 June 2009.