Bruno Munari: Macchina Inutile

Munari’s Useless Machines are made of painted cardboard and held together with silk threads.

“The elements of a useless machine, by contrast, all rotate upon and within themselves without touching. They are geometric in origin and exploit the two sides of their rotating elements to create chromatic variations. The public often asks how this idea came to me. This is my response: in 1933 the first abstract paintings were made in Italy; they were nothing more than geometric forms painted in a realistic manner. Morandi, it was said, made abstract pictures using bottles and vases as a formal pretext. In fact, the subject of a picture by Morandi is not the bottles but the painting captured in those spaces. So, it didn’t matter whether he painted bottles or triangles – it was all the same – and the painting was born from the formal and chromatic relationship between the elements that made up the work”

– Pg 40, Useless Machines, Far vedere l’airia, Bruno Munari, Air Made Visible, A Visual Reader on Bruno Munari.

The Progression of Masks – Mapping Comparisons

Masks have evolved from being tangible in early cultures to something intangible in contemporary culture. Social uses differ in present context as compared to earlier context of time. A representation of this could be drawn from the structure of the tree of life, which laid is roots in Dogon culture and African cosmology.

Action: Mobile installation

---

For this part of a project, I’d like to make a mobil installation to represent the cosmos but could still map out the comparisons between the tangible and intangible. If there are space constraints, I would probably document the process and the installation which would be housed at a bigger space via video. It would be an added bonus if I can find a special site – making the work very site specific.

Objects in Orbit by Chrissie Macdonald Collaboration with Andrew Rae.
Detroit Gallery, Stockholm, 2011

This installation has a constant object that ‘revolves’ around different elements. Instead of making it literally revolve/orbit the constant object is placed in different environments.

---

Mobiles made from everyday objects by Hanna Sandin

The simplicity and elegance of the mobiles are quite an irony to the everyday objects that were used to make them. The artist has a gift of curating these objects, placing them together to create a visual symphony. From this I learn that balance is an important element for a mobile installation. It is pretty much a floating sculpture and the manipulation of air space is important. Mobiles are constantly moving so there are multiplicities when viewing the art work.

Dali’s Mustache by Salvador Dalí, Philippe Halsman

With 101 Life magazine covers to his credit, Philippe Halsman (1906-1979) was one of the leading portrait photographers of his time. In addition to his distinguished career in photojournalism, Halsman was one of the great pioneers of experimental photography, motivated by a profound desire to push this youngest of art forms toward new frontiers by using innovative and unorthodox photographic techniques. One of Halsman’s favorite subjects was Salvador Dali, the glittering and controversial painter and theorist with whom the photographer shared a unique friendship and extraordinary professional collaboration that spanned over thirty years. Whenever Dali imagined a photograph so strange that its production seemed impossible, Halsman tried to find the solution, and invariably succeeded. As Halsman explains in his postface, Dali’s Mustache is the fruit of this marriage of the minds. The jointly conceived and seemingly nonsensical questions and answers reveal the gleeful humor and assumed cynicism for which Dali is famous, while the marvelous and inspired images of Dali’s mustache brilliantly display Halsman’s consumate skill and extraordinary inventiveness as a photographer. This combination of wit, absurdity, and the off-handedly profound is irresistible and has contributed to the enduring fascination inspired by this unique photographic interview, which has become a cult classic and valuable collector’s item since its original publication in 1954. The present volume faithfully reproduces the first edition and will introduce a new generation to the irreverent humor and imaginative genius of two great artists. – Goodreads Takeaway: These photographs by Philippe Halsman of Dali captures the very essence of the artist. Dali is almost distinguishable via his famous mustache, it is as if his mustache is a manifestation of himself. Like what I have read in E.H Gombrich’s essay, masks could stand for “crude distinctions, the deviations from the norm which mark a person off  from others.” which is exactly what Dali’s mustache is. It epitomises him. The last work which is of a mobile does not need Dali’s face but just representations of his face. It also supports what I read in Gombrich’s essay about the displacement of facial features, no matter how we rearrange them, they still are distinguishable.