In times when thoughts of money are paramount for many, I wonder whether there is still a place for art created in the spirit of creation rather than art created for profit. In that light, I was recently fortunate to attend screenings of two documentaries about the creations of the Swiss kinetic sculptor, Jean Tinguely. Tinguely spent twenty years in the forests of Fontainebleau collaborating with his wife, the artist Nikki de Saint Phalle, and a coterie of sculptors and welders, creating a magical Cyclops, a giant seventy-five foot high head. This was not art as Product in the Warholian sense, or as more currently promoted by the artist/financial wizard, Damien Hirst. This was self indulgent, donation dependent, creative, unsaleable art. The head itself was donated to and accepted by the government of France and is currently overseen by a private foundation. Tinguely’s giant rusted structure rose in the forest, true to the intent of its creator; it was art for art’s own sake. The head is replete with interior references to the work of other artists like Kurt Schwitters, Marcel Duchamp and Louise Nevelson, and it is filled with inclusions by Tinguely, Saint Phalle, Larry Rivers, Arman, Rico Weber, Giovanni Posdeta and Robert Rauschenberg.
Today, Tinguely’s rusted and rough satire stands true as a comment on the overproduction of material goods in our consumer driven society. This monolith in the forest reminds us that art can be other than the slick, manufactured look favored by a plurality of contemporary mid level galleries and art purchasers. Perhaps, even more appropriate to the theme of art as business, Tinguely’s large construction, “Homage to New York,” was assembled in 1960 with the intent of self-destructing in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art. Its explosion and eventual burning was a variation on a theme for this artist who created a series of sculptures in the 1950’s that spewed forth abstract paintings when viewers inserted a coin into the appropriate slot. In Tinguely’s own words, "art is a form of manifest revolt, total and complete....We're against all forms of force which aggregate and crystallize an authority that oppresses people...we oppose all forms of force emanating from a managing, centralizing political poser." I am not sure if today's materialistically driven art world retains the possibility of arts as a revolutionary statement of ideals.
