Kinetic Art

Kinetic Art

Artistic Movements, Periods and Styles in 5 points

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Kinetic Art

• Kinetic art is art that incorporates movement. The word “kinetic” comes from the Greek “kinesis,” which means “movement.” And although it is an art that has been practiced since the second decade of the twentieth century, it boomed in the 50s and 60s.
• When we talk about movement, it can be real or apparent. There are works of kinetic art that seem to move or have a certain type of movement, and others that really move. Apparent movement takes place when the viewer moves and changes his point of view. These works can also be categorized under the heading of optical art (op-art). What we have to keep in mind is that not all optical art is kinetic; not all op-art works have apparent movement as the protagonist, as they can look for another type of optical effect.
• One of the attractive and provocative characteristics of this type of art is that the work transforms itself. Just as art in general transforms our view of reality, here reality often transforms the work. The movement of some works is produced by an internal mechanism, but in many others this movement depends on external phenomena such as the force of the wind or water; or depends on the participation of the spectator: they have to activate a lever, exert some force, or turn on the mechanism.
• This last characteristic leads us to a new reflection: we can say that art in general needs the viewer’s gaze to “complete” itself. Something very interesting about kinetic art is that it often needs the viewers (that they change their point of view or trigger the actual movement of the work), but it needs them “really” and not from a theoretical or conceptual point of view.
• Being a simple, entertaining type of art, “close” to the viewer, kinetic art has become an art that gets along wonderfully with public spaces. The work we have chosen to illustrate this publication is in a museum, but one can find Calder’s mobiles in a square, on a sidewalk or in an airport.

Representative Artists: Alexander Calder, Víctor Vasarely, Jean Tinguely, Julio Le Parc, Jesús Rafael Soto, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Gyula Kosice.

Image: Untitled (1976). Mobile by Alexander Calder at the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Recommended links:

When does Modern Art Start?

Postmodern Art.

Movements and Styles: Dada.

Photography: the Pictures Generation.

Andy Warhol and The Factory.

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