ITALIAN KINETIC ART

Incastro fluttuante 33 (1965 )
by Franco Grignani

Contrary to appearances, Italy is a country and a culture that has always been open to radical modern ideas. How else can you explain the Renaissance, other than as a revolution in how we perceive and think? Italy effectively pioneered ideas—like perspective, proportion and illusionism—that completely revolutionized art and architecture and became accepted as classic.

This same openness to the radical was also evident in the 20th century. Rather than resting on the laurels of an illustrious past, Italian artists, filmmakers and designers embraced various forms of radical modernity.

The most famous example was the Futurist art movement of the 1910s, which sought to represent the dynamism of the “machine age,” and included the work of Filippo Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Balla.

Percorsi fluidi orizzontali (1962)
by Giovanni Anceschi

After WWII. there was also the Neorealist cinema movement. This included directors such as Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti and Federico Fellini, and focused on the lives of the poor—shooting movies on location, rather than in the studio.

But Italy was also intimately connected with a wide range of other radical art movements that were reactions to modernity. These included movements like Arte Povera (literally “poor art”), a politicized anti-art movement that sought to reflect modern life in all its energy and ugliness, and the Superarchitettura and Radical design movements that sought to create beauty in modern consumer items and living space.

Yet another radical Italian movement is now on display at the Sompo Japan Museum of Art. The “Kinetic Art” exhibition covers the period from 1958 to 1968 and looks at the Italian kinetic movement, a group of artists who embraced a number of minimalist, op-art and technical techniques to achieve their effects. The period covered by the exhibition was also a time when the Italian economy was booming on a wave of new design in automobiles, fashion, furniture and other items. Part of the success of Italy’s industries came from a daring, modernist design ethos that can be sampled here. The exhibition is the first in Japan to provide a comprehensive introduction to the movement, with a total of 90 works by 30 artists, both in 2-D and 3-D.

Strutturazione Cilindrica Virtuale (1963) by Giovanni Anceschi

As the name suggests, the key element in Italian kinetic art was movement. The methods varied from the literal to the psychological. There are machines with actual moving parts, like Giovanni Anceschi’s Virtual Cylindrical Structure (1963) or David Boriani’s revolving Ipercubo (1961) and other works employing geometric patterns that exploit quirks in how we perceive a sense of movement. The curving parallel lines and other patterns in Ennio Chiggio’s Linear Interference (1969) create psychedelic effects that need to be seen to be believed.

Another interest was artwork that reflected invisible forces, for example magnetism or various forms of radiation. Boriani’s Magnetic Surface (1959), uses moving magnets and iron fillings to create its effect. One of the most interesting flavors at the exhibition is a wonderful retro-futurism, redolent of the clichés of the 1960s, making the museum seem a little like a film set from a Bond movie or even Austin Powers—“Yeah, baby, yeah!”

C.B. Liddell
Metropolis
31st July, 2014