l'univers tinguely

Jean Tinguely was a great fan of car racing. He was particularly fascinated by Formula 1 races. His friend, Jo Siffert, a native of Fribourg, as was Tinguely, introduced him to the racing circuit. Siffert also dealt with old racing cars, and the Lotus, that stood since the early 1970s in Tinguely’s house in Neyruz, was acquired from him.

From the early 1970s on, Tinguely took an active part in the Basel Fasnacht with the «Kuttlebutzer». On many occasions he designed the costumes for his clique and fabricated the masks with his assistants and Fasnacht friends. In 1976, he decorated the masks of the «Stadtindianer» with feathers. Some of them were incorporated in 1988 in his «Avant-Garde».

«HON – A Cathedral» was produced in 1966 at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Together with Niki de Saint Phalle and Per Olof Ultvedt, Tinguely constructed a walk-in sculpture in the shape of a lying woman; a cinema was installed in her left leg and a viewing platform in her belly. The sculpture was destroyed at the closeure of the exhibition.

Tinguely’s sculptures are mobile. His machine sculptures are usually fuelled by electric motors. The movements are often simple; central to his work is the constantly changing composition. Tinguely is one of the main representatives of kinetic art. «The only imaginable static (stability) is life itself, is evolution – is movement.» (Jean Tinguely, Düsseldorf, March 1959)

«Art is total, as it can be 'made' equally out of stone and oil, wood and iron, air and energy, gouache and canvas, and situations – of fantasy and stubbornness, of boredom, of scurrility, of rage, of intelligence, of glue and wire, or else out of opposition or with a camera.» (National Zeitung, Basel, 13 October 1967; quoted from: Jean Tinguely, texts by Claudia Jolles, photos by Leonardo Bezzola, 1989; p. 18)

Tinguely’s earliest sculptures and reliefs, made from 1954 on in Paris, were shaped out of iron wire. Cog wheels, fashioned out of wire and turning slowly, set in motion the white elements fixed on their axes. A mobile image is thus created.

Jean Tinguely was enormously fascinated by the automobile. In the 1950s, he constructed a sports car with a friend of his; later, he drove his Ferraris with passion. However, he was always conscious of the danger involved – thus his sculpture with the sobriquet «Viva Ferrari» is in fact entitled «Schreckenskarette» (Wagon of Terror)

Death plays an important role in Tinguely’s late work. Thus, for his exhibition in Moscow in 1990, he built his «Safari de la Mort Moscovite» – a vehicle that would suit any rider of the Apocalypse.

Tinguely’s machine sculptures are usually fuelled by electric motors. In his early years he often resorted to second-hand motors recuperated from washing machines and cars on scrap heaps, or else the 110 volt Lilliput motors with their distinctively shaped box. Later, he acquired new motors, often from a firm in Bienne (Switzerland).

It was only towards the end of the 1950s that Tinguely made use of a welding machine. Before that period, he soldered his metal constructions. He was never interested in real welding as taught in manuals, and his weld joints were supposed to be left rough and non-smoothened. He always soldered with electrodes and never made use of more developed welding techniques.

The scrap, that Tinguely used for his sculptures, was recuperated from scrap heaps in and around Paris. Tinguely, so to speak, never made use of new materials but resorted always to iron scrap, detritus and found materials.

Happening is an art form that started to develop towards the end of the 1950s. For Tinguely, this was a theatrical form he often used in his machine sculptures that would self destruct during an happening.

Hazard plays a great part in Tinguely’s works. The drawing machines produce abstract sketches whose parameters are partly determined by the machine, though their colouring and its intensity are influenced by the spectator. Details are the product of hazard.

Tinguely very often writes or rather draws letters to convey information not only in writing but just as much in the form of drawing, gouache, collage. He sends letters to his friends worldwide – men a well as women – that constitute so to speak an international archive of his activities.

Interaction between the machine-sculptures and the onlooker (or even art-user) is a necessity in order that art may be experienced, may become reality. The drawing machines are the very embodiment of this triad between artist, sculpture and art-user, and their coming together alone enables the creation of a drawing with the assistance of the machine.

Tinguely was always attracted to water as an element that enlarged his sculptures, extended their frontiers, multiplying the movements of his machine and executing an aerial drawing.