THE MACHINE
[AS SEEN AT THE END OF THE MECHANICAL AGE]
K. G. Pontus Hultén
K. G. Pontus Hultén: THE MACHINE [AS SEEN AT THE END OF THE MECHANICAL AGE]. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1968. First edition. Quarto. Hinged and riveted metal sheets with embossed screen-printed cover. 218 pp. 240 black and white illustrations. The aluminum, embossed screen-printed hinged covers were printed using the same process to produce license plates. Interior unmarked and very clean. Metal edges worn, rear panel scratched, spine and edges showing some mild oxidation [all as usual], but a very good copy of this classic MoMA edition.
8.55 x 9.5 book with 218 pages and 240 black and white examples of machine-inspired art. Words fail me here: this is an incredible book-as-object that encompasses artwork from the beginning of the industrail revolution through the sixties, with a focus on the artists inspiration, interaction, acceptance and rejection of the machine aesthetic.
Artists whose work was included in this landmark 1968 show and catalog include Giacomo Balla, Hans Bellmer, Umberto Boccioni, Alexander Calder, Giorgio de Chirico, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Lyone l Feininger, R. Buckminster Fuller, Naum Gabo, Alberto Giacometti. Rube Goldberg, George Grosz, Hannah Hoch, Edward kienholz, Paul Klee, Jacques henri lartige, Fernand Leger, Wyndham Lewis, El Lissitzky, Rene Magritte, Kasimir Malevich, Man Ray, Winsor McKay, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Liubov Popova, Robert Rauschenberg, Oskar Schlemmer, Kurt Schwitters, Vladimir Tatlin, and many, many others.
“Technology today is undergoing a critical transition. We are surrounded by outward manifestations of the culmination of the mechanical age. Nevertheless, the mechanical machine—which can most easily be defined as an imitation of our muscles—is losing its dominating position among the tools of mankind. Its reign is being threatened by the growing importance of electronic and chemical devices—which imitate the processes of the brain and nervous system.
“This exhibition is not intended to provide an illustrated history of the machine throughout the ages but to present a selection of works that represent artists' comments on aspects of the mechanical world. Such statements by artists have been particularly numerous in our own century, perhaps because we are now far enough removed in time from the early development of the mechanical age to be able to see some of the problems and realize some of the implications.
“Although we tend to think of machines primarily in terms of their practical use, historically they have frequently been regarded as toys, marvels, or symbols. Since the beginning of the mechanical age and the time of the Industrial Revolution, some have looked to machines to bring about progress toward Utopia, while others have feared them as the enemies and potential destroyers of humanistic values.
“Leading artists of our time have held attitudes toward the machine ranging from idolatry to deep pessimism. They have used machines as metaphors through which to comment upon society, or have welcomed them as providing new technical means of expression.
“Many artists today are working closely with engineers in collaborative efforts that may have significance far beyond that of merely producing new kinds of art for our delight. It is obvious that the decisions that will shape our society in the future will be arrived at and carried out through technology. Hopefully, these decisions will be based on the same criteria of respect for individual human capacities, freedom, and responsibility that prevail in art.” — K. G. Pontus Hultén
This is a very cool book.
“The story of how artists of this century have looked upon in attitudes ranging from devotion and even idolatry to deepest pessimism and despair is the subject of an exhibition of more than 200 works of art and related objects on view at The Museum of Modern Art from November 27 through February 9. The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age was directed by K. G, Pontus Hultén, Director of Moderna Museet, Stockholm, who is also the author of the accompanying catalog bound in tin-can steel.
“Since the beginning of the mechanical age, some people have looked to machines to bring about progress toward Utopia; others have feared them as the enemies of humanistic values, leading only to destruction, Mr. Hultén observes. Most of these contradictory ideas persist, in one form or another, in the 20th century and find their reflection in art. This is evidenced in the exhibition in the works of art varying in character from the conventional mediums of painting, sculpture, drawings, prints, photographs and films to motorized constructions and computer graphics.
“Also included are two kinds of functional mechanisms - the automobile and the camera. Many works enlist the participation of the spectator, such as Jean Tinguely's Metamatic No. 8, an art-producing machine with which visitors can make their own water- colors, and his Rotozaza, which ridicules the practical side of the producing machine and the economics of overproduction by eating up its own output - balls - when the visitor tosses them back into the machine.
“Other works selected include paintings of speeding automobiles by the Futurists, Duchamp's The Bride, described as a well-oiled machine running on "love gasoline," and Picabia's mocking machine portraits. The influential model of I920 for a Monument for the Third International by the Russian Constructivist Tatlin has been reconstructed in the Museum Garden. The Dadaists' ironic and frequently poetic use of machine forms, Klee's early foreshadowing of the Surrealist fear of machines in the Twittering Machine, Giacometti's The Captured Hand, and Moholy-Nagy's Light Space Modulator for the Bauhaus are among the works gathered for the exhibition as well as examples of Léger's romantic attitude to the machine and the Purists' interest in the superficial beauty of machine form.
“Nine recent works, produced by the collaboration of artists and engineers for a competition sponsored by E.A.T, for the Museum, include the three prizewinners: a construction of red dust activated by the sound of heart beats; a mechanical fountain; and a cybernatic sculpture.
“Two kinds of machines - the automobile and the camera - are represented by actual examples: a Bugatti Royale (1931) one of only seven ever manufactured; the Boot Hill Express created by fitting a Chrysler engine into the glass body of an antique horse-drawn hearse; a racing car hung on the wall; Buckminster Fuller's revolutionary Dymaxion Car No. 2 (1933) recently re-discovered; and the Lumlfere Brothers' Cingmatographe (1895) which will be shown with some of the earliest Lumiere films. Stills from Chaplin's "Modern Times" and films by Léger and Moholy-Nagy are shown continuously.
"The car and the camera are machines with which many people feel a strong emotional tie, as intimate extensions of their bodies. The car not only fulfills a practical purpose but has become a symbol, a focus for our fantasies, our hopes and our fears.
“The camera, together with some photographs and films, was chosen because it is a picture-making, mechano-chemical device, which has provided the basis for much of our way of seeing and is therefore particularly appropriate in an art exhibition," Mr. Hultén points out.
“The title of the show relates to the fact that technology today is undergoing a critical transition. "We are surrounded by the outward manifestations of the culmination of the mechanical age. Yet, at the same time, the mechanical machine - which can most easily be defined as an imitation of our muscles - is losing its dominating position among the tools of mankind; while electronic and chemical devices - which imitate the processes of the brain and the nervous system - are becoming increasingly important...,
"By the year 2,000, technology will undoubtedly have made such advances that our environment will be as different from that of today as our present world differs from ancient Egypt. What role will art play in this change? Human life shares with art the qualities of being a unique, continuous and unrepeatable experience. Clearly if we believe in either life or art, we must assume complete domination over machines, subject them to our will, and direct them so that they may serve life in the most efficient way - taking as our criterion the totality of human life on this planet. In planning for such a world, in helping to bring it into being, artists are more important than politicians, and even than technicians."
“Some historical precedents illustrating earlier artists' attitudes toward the mechanical age are included in the exhibition: a woodcut of a cogwheel-operated cart by Dürer, 17th and l8th century Italian and French representations of machines as people; 19th century English caricatures; Winslow Homer's childhood drawing of a Rocket Ship (I849), and Daumier's lithograph of Nadar Elevating Photography to the Heights of Art (I852).
“In the beginning of this century, the Italian Futurists hoped that through machines the whole world could be changed. Their view, however, remained rather superficial, Mr. Hultén notes; they enjoyed polished metals, bright colors, the noise of machines, and the heady sensations of speed and power, as seen in the speeding automobile series by Balla (I9I2-I3). Boccioni's States of Mind series Mr. Hultfin calls an exception to the general Inability of the Futurists to reach a deeper understanding of what machines represented in people's emotional lives.
“Key works by the late Marcel Duchamp in the exhibition Include the Coffee Grinder, the beginning of his physical, poetic, aesthetic or ironic references to the machine, two versions of the famous Nude Descending the Stairs, The Bride, and a replica made under his direction of his great "love machine" - The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (the "Large Glass"). Another side of Duchamp's activity is represented by several of his optical devices which, like his "readymades," radically altered concepts of what constitutes a work of art.
“Duchamp and Picabla were close friends and their encounter was one of the most fruitful in all of modern art. For both men, all existing modes of art seemed inadequate. Central to their thinking were Ideas about the machine and its erotic significance. In an Interview In Duchamp's studio In New York during his second visit to America In 1915 Picabla said: "Almost Immediately upon coming to America It flashed on me that the genius of the modern world Is In machinery and that through machinery art ought to find a most vivid expression." Among the group of works from his machinist period (1915-22) shown are his mocking machine portraits of Alfred Stieglitz and Marie Laurencin, his Girl Born Without a Mother, and Amorous Parade, as well as a I924 stage model.
“Plcabia took his Ideas to Zurich where the Dada movement was flourishing. The attitude of the Dadaists toward the machine varied widely: In Cologne Ernst and Baargeld used mechanical forms for poetic purposes; In Hanover Schwitters took a related position, but In Berlin Heartfield and Grosz abandoned their Initial Dada skepticism for an almost unlimited admiration for constructivism and machine art.
“The greatest work of the Russian Constructlvlst Tatlln, the model for a Monument for Third International, a fusion Into one structure of architecture and sculpture with motorized elements, has been reconstructed In the Museum Garden. Tatlln's theories that the most aesthetic forms are the most economical and that the artist must respect the use of materials and the logical structure that arises out of them, influenced theater, film, architecture, furniture design, posters, and typography. Work by other Constructlvlsts includes stage designs by El Llssltzky, Popova, and Vesnln.
“Tatlln's "machine art" attracted a wide following In Germany among such artists as Grosz and Moholy-Nagy, The Bauhaus, which built Its program on Tatlln's Ideas, reflected a generally optimistic view toward machines, but the original Ideas soon became diffused in a belief In the possibilities that technology offered for the artist's use and the desirability of applying principles of good design to manufactured articles.
“The Purists, like the Russian Constructlvlsts, wished to unify all the arts In the service of society and recognized that modern society must be Increasingly dependent on technology. But they and Léger based their machine aesthetics on admiration for the clarity, precision, and elegance of machine forms. The Surrealists, such as Victor Brauner or Matta, on the other hand, feared and distrusted machines and either depicted them as enemies of nature or explored their erotic Implications, as In Hans Bellmer's Machine-Gunneress In a State of Grace.
“Mr. Hultén says that the rise of fascism, World War II, and the explosion of the atomic bomb further contributed to disillusionment with technology and man's rationality. When after the war a new Constructivism arose, most of what Tatlln and his followers had tried to achieve in relating technology to life was lost. Since the mid-fifties, artists like Munarl and Tlnguely have devoted themselves to an attempt to establish better relations with technology. "Standing astonished and enchanted amid a world of machines, these artists are determined not to allow themselves to be duped by them. Their art expresses an optimistic view toward man, the creator of machines, rather than toward technology as such. They lead us to believe that In the future we may be able to achieve other, more worthy relations with machines. Not technology, but our misuse of It, Is to blame for our present predicament." [Museum of Modern Art Press Release, Wednesday, November 27, I968]