Leonardo

On My Recent Figurative Kinetic PaintingsAuthor(s): John GoodyearSource: Leonardo, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Spring, 1983), pp. 115-116Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1574796 .

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Leonardo, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 115-116. 1983 Printed in Great Britain

0024-094X/83$3.00+0.00 Pergamon Press Ltd.

ON MY RECENT FIGURATIVE KINETIC PAINTINGS

John Goodyear*

In 1977, after 10 years as a sculptor, I began making kinetic paintings again. The simplest canvas and wood constructions of 1965 became the structural model for the new work. A wooden grid suspended from above in front of a painted canvas serves to partially block the image behind it. When the grid is set in motion, gliding back and forth in front of the image, different aspects of the image appear sequentially.

The image is plotted into four 'zones' repeating across the canvas, and the grid obscures one zone at a time making possible an animation of the image-almost a cinematic effect without built-in lighting, lenses or motors. (Motors came into the larger works in 1979.)

The works were done in black and white to differentiate them from the highly colored pieces of the early 1960s [ 1]. The colored works had been more complex and multi-layered, creating a 3- dimensional field of shifting chance color relationships. The new black and white pieces of the 1970s began to isolate and define ways of seeing discrete shapes move around on the canvas. This 'virtual' motion could make elements move up and down, diagonally, and even back, into an imagined space, through a simple lateral movement of the grid. These investigations were carried out in a non-figurative manner on canvases measuring 90 , 90 cm. 'Four negatives' (Fig. 1) suggested subject matter, although none had been intended. The shift to figurative works, 'The Blow' (Fig. 2) and 'Beckoning', in 1979, constitute a move toward representing small events. A

hammer strikes a blow at a block of something which fragments, regroups itself and is struck again. The hand beckoning was given a central portion which does not move and an index finger which does. This event functioned as a continuity. (The mechanism shows off cyclic events rather than progressive

Fig. I. 'Foul Negatives', acrylic on canvas and wood, 90 x 90 x 15 cm. 1978. Sequences A (top left). B (bottom left), C (top right) and D (bottom right).

(Photo: Joseph Crilley)

*Artist, R.D.2, Lambertville, NJ 08530, U.S.A. (Received 15 June 1981)

Fig. 2. 'The Blow', acrylic on canvas and wood. 90 x 90 x 15 cm. 1978. Two sequences shown. (Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Kaufman. Newton.

Mass., U.S.A.)

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John Goodyear

ones.) The hand was mistaken by some viewers for a rabbit with a large moving ear. This kind of mistake in identification was caused by the large scale required by separating alternating motifs into zones. On the positive side, the possibility arose that subjects (or objects) could transform themselves by adding or deleting clues to their identification. At this point, a larger format seemed to be required.

A final hand-gesture painting of the same size was completed early in 1979. The aim of the pointing index finger changed angle in a repetitive motion. This was meant to suggest the gesture signifying 'shame on you'. Both pieces depend on movement to create the meanings 'come here' and 'shame'. In this sense the works are closer to dance than to painting.

A trip to Europe in the Spring of 1979 brought me to the Louvre where I was struck with the 'frozen' motion of many old master paintings. It is as though these works were taken by imaginary cameras, stopping time at the apex of an event. How curiously the arch of doorway, a tree trunk can echo the momentary position of an arm or leg! The stationary is set into visual undulation with the moveable; the moveable is trapped into a timeless quietude.

A commission from Educational Testing Services in Princeton, New Jersey, Summer 1979, for a large work suggested Piero Della Francesca's mural depicting 'The Story of the True Cross'. Re-named 'The Test' or 'The Test of the True Cross', this subject provided action and a verbal pun on the name of the patron institution. A lot of narrative detail is included: the man, Judas, put into the well by the Queen of Sheba until he reveals the location of the three crosses (this, itself is a kind of test); the 'testing out' of the crosses over the body of a young man who magically comes to life when the true cross is raised over him [2]. Details of this story are dealt with in such a schematic way that many viewers see nothing more than a series of flashing, criss-crossing lines. The story, almost more than Piero's visual statement, provided a construct for a particular kind of motion in this work. Three times the size of the earlier works, 'The Test' is 2.7 m long. A motor installed in the ceiling activates the grid, keeping the crosses moving and the body of the young man rising from the dead.

Six other works of this dimension were completed in 1980 [3]. All are motorized and deal with subjects borrowed from masterpieces in art history. The paintings have to be lighted carefully; lighting has to achieve an even illumination and a minimum of sharp shadows. The works function best from a fairly distant vantage point. At a distance the grid 'falls into' the canvas and the moving image is most inexplicable. From a close vantage point the works function best in being viewed from an angle. In this viewing, the spaces between the grids close up and the image is oddly squeezed up to the frontal surface of the grid. From across a room the pieces are all the more read as normal paintings. Where the viewer may expect an absolute stillness, there is a bright little dance.

Massaccio's 'Tribute Money' is famed for its multiple portrayal of St. Peter and the Roman Tax Collector-its sequential, narrative effect. This subject was very appropriate for a kinetic composition (Fig. 3) in which figures can mysteriously disappear to reappear in another location. In my 'Death of Socrates', renamed 'Falling Out', Socrates actually dies and falls off his bed. There is a completion of an act so long on the verge of happening. As a kind of retribution to David and the history of art for making his viewers wait, this action is now completed repeatedly. 'Christ Driving the Traders from the Temple' was chosen because of strong action potential, but also because El Greco dealt with this subject at least four times, refining and clarifying his ideas. The four works do not constitute a sequence, but they do establish a repetition with variation which interact in one's memory.

The most modern masterpiece chosen was Manet's 'Dejeuner sur l'herbe', or 'Lunching Out'. The subject is interesting since it

Fig. 3. 'Paying Up', acrylic on canvas and wood, motorized, 90 x 270x 15 cm, 1980. Sequences A (top), B (upper middle), C (lower middle) and D

(bottom). (Photo: Joseph Crilley)

was originally borrowed from an engraving after Raphael, 'The Judgement of Paris'. According to H. W. Janson, Raphael had earlier borrowed the composition from a detail of a Roman Sarcophagus [4]. This heritage of borrowing and re-doing suggested trying a version of Velasquez's 'The Maids of Honor', a work which had also been vigorously transfigured by Picasso [5]. My version is curvilinear. Figures are changing position; the artist pictured on the left pops in and out from behind his canvas. Velasquez, with his mirror games and his reversals of front and back, would I think, like this treatment.

Repetitive movement achieved in these kinetic paintings may be augmented by reverberations in one's memory of various other 'versions'. Indeed, the flashing changes occurring in the compositions are like flashes of memory. The schematic simplicity, the spatial ambiguity, the phasing in and out of visual elements, all this can be read, I think, as a kind of metaphor for images released from the subconscious. As in memory, detail is gone, one is free to see these archetypal constructs in motion, to see actions completed and repeated.

References

1. C. Belz, 'The Optic-Kinetic Constructions of John Goodyear', Arts and Architecture 81, 31 (October, 1964).

2. L. Venturi, Piero Della Francesca, Editions d'Art (Geneva: Albert Skira, 1954) pp. 78-81.

3. J. Marter, Kinetic Paintings of John Goodyear (Trenton, N.J.: New Jersey State Museum, 1980).

4. H. W. Janson, History of 'Art (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice- Hall, 1966) p. 15.

5. W. Rubin, Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1980) pp. 430, 431, 437.

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