In the same month as the Museum of Modern Art event, one of Lye’s tangibles was being exhibited in Europe as part of the first major international survey of kinetic art. Although the works assembled for the exhibition were extremely various, the packaging of them as a movement — as an avant-garde — attracted large amounts of publicity, pushing the European interest in kinetic art to a new level and lending valuable support to Lye’s attempt to get his work noticed in the hope of finding sponsors. The name of the exhibition was ‘Bewogen Beweging’, a complex wordplay exploiting different meanings of ‘move’. One possible translation into English was ‘motivated movement’ but most reviewers preferred ‘The Movement Movement’,1 a term said to have first been used by Hans Richter. The exhibition, curated by Pontus Hulten, opened on March 10 1961 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. It toured over the next two years to the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Louisiana Museum near Copenhagen, and the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
Planning for the exhibition had begun in 1957 centred round a small but significant range of European artists who had been working in this area, including Tinguely, Takis, Pol Bury, Nicolas Schöffer, and groups such as Zero in Düsseldorf and the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel in Paris. In its final form ‘Bewogen Beweging’ was remarkably comprehensive with 74 artists represented from around the world. Kineticism was presented as a logical outgrowth of modernism and as the art most relevant to today’s science and technology. Billy Kluver, a Bell Laboratories scientist as well as a sculptor, tracked down 20 American artists (although very little of their work would have been categorised by Lye as kinetic). Lye was represented by a 7-foot ‘Fountain’ and by several films. Newspapers described the exhibition as ‘bizarre’ and the police ordered an enigmatic work by Robert Muller (a bicycle resembling a home trainer with a ‘widow’s veil’ covering the seat) to be removed because they saw it as ‘obscene and shocking to decency’.2 The public turned out in record numbers, evidence that kineticism was one form of modern art that could achieve popular success. Although the exhibition emphasised the work of Alexander Calder and Jean Tinguely, Newsweek illustrated its report with a photograph of ‘Fountain’, commenting that its ‘variable, sinuous motion makes one of the show’s loveliest images’.3 And at least five newspapers published photographs of Lye’s work.
The critical response to this show initiated the kinds of arguments that would accompany most exhibitions of kinetic art over the next decade. Some critics worried about whether this was really art or merely a gimmick. Others hailed it as a populist victory, a rebellion against austere forms of abstract painting. In the 1960s art was branching out in a number of new directions — pop, op (optical), kinetic, and conceptual. These tendencies tended to be jumbled together and seen as evidence that a ‘new generation’ had emerged, which was characterised as the space age or television generation. The new artists were contrasted with the previous generation as ‘more playful’, ‘more optimistic’, ‘more technological’, etc. One of the ironies of this debate was the fact that Lye, now 60, actually belonged to their parents’ generation. Granted, some of the critics who remained suspicious of the new art (such as the reviewers of Artforum) did recognise the special qualities of his work.
In general, American critics and artists tended to see kinetic art as a European tendency, a challenge to their home-grown forms of modernism. Clement Greenberg was particularly worried about the threat to what he regarded as the great tradition in American art: ‘In the spring of 1962 there came the sudden collapse, market-wise and publicity-wise, of abstract expressionism as a collective manifestation. The fall of that year saw the equally sudden triumph of pop art…. Assemblage art came along almost simultaneously, and now optical art and kinetic art have appeared, to swell the reaction against abstract expressionism.’4 Other critics and artists were reluctant to ally themselves with science and technology, or with the related European tradition of Constructivism. Paradoxically, op art and kinetic art also came to be associated in the later 1960s with the anti-rationality of the counter-culture. The fact that hippies might see the new art as psychedelic was another reason for serious critics to regard it with suspicion.
These controversies helped to attract public interest, and so it was fortunate for Lye that he had just recently returned to kinetic sculpture. It was one of the few times in his career when he found himself close to the charmed circle of art-world fashion. Yet his position was a complex one, because he could not fully identify with either the American or the European mainstream. His attitude to high-tech forms of European art resembled the classic jazz attitude: ‘It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.’ In the United States kinetic art tended to be associated with Alexander Calder, an artist three years older than Lye who also used the term ‘composing motion’.5 Calder had been exhibiting ‘mobiles’ since 1932, and Lye greatly enjoyed and respected his work but felt that ultimately it grew out of a different sense of movement. Although Calder was trained as an engineer and made use of hand-cranks and electric motors in his early constructions, his best-known work was set in motion by wind currents. The movement of its brightly coloured cut-out shapes connected by wires was gentle and somewhat random. In contrast Lye’s sculpture was machine-powered, it often moved rhythmically at high speed, and it played with the sense of space by creating after-images and complex patterns of light. In those and other respects his work was more closely related to the film medium than Calder’s. One of Lye’s main reasons for adopting the term ‘tangibles’ was to distinguish his work from ‘mobiles’.
Among contemporary European artists Lye was most interested in Takis and Tinguely because they used motors, though he knew their approach to art was different from his. Tinguely he enjoyed because his scrap-metal art made so much fun of technology — ‘a fantastic anarchic dadaistic marvellous freedom loving guy who shakes the rafters’.6 Howard Wise exhibited work by both these artists. Although Lye was sceptical about some of Wise’s enthusiasms, he was impressed by the dealer’s solid commitment to kinetic art. A dealer specialising in this field had to be determined, because, in addition to the tricky art politics, machine art was expensive to make, awkward to market, and difficult to maintain in working order. By August 1961 Wise was so enthusiastic about Lye’s work that he asked if he could represent him exclusively. Lye replied by letter: ‘You’re the best agent I could ever get…. It’s your attitude of first for the artist’s work for the artist’s sake.’ Wise then wrote to Leo Castelli who gave his consent. Because Castelli was a friend Wise reimbursed him for the $500 advance he had paid to Lye and also for the money he had contributed to the event at the Museum of Modern Art. Ann Lye recalls: ‘Len got on well with Howard, he liked him a lot. Len wouldn’t kowtow to anybody, he treated everyone exactly the same. Rather than him going into Howard’s game, he felt that Howard was in his game. That was very much the relationship.’7 Clement Greenberg had a somewhat more guarded opinion. He agreed that Wise did the best he could for Lye, but felt that Wise ‘was “advanced” in his gallery in too dogmatic a way, too mechanical a way. Over the long run Len would have fared better maybe elsewhere. But this is only a surmise. [And] Len’s lack of drive had to have something — a lot — to do with the way the world treated his art.’8
Lye’s work was included in group shows at the Wise Gallery in July 1962 and January 1964. The latter show, ‘On The Move’, was a particularly impressive survey of kinetic art by seventeen artists including Agam, Pol Bury, Alexander Calder, George Rickey, José de Rivera, Takis, and Jean Tinguely. Lye was represented by a 7-foot version of ‘Fountain’ and a large new sculpture which became the most talked-about item in the show. This was ‘Loop’, which consisted of a 22-foot strip of polished steel. The oval loop rested on a flat base which concealed electromagnets, timers, and other equipment. The magnets would suddenly tug at the loop then release it, causing the steel band to lurch sideways then spring upwards, eventually striking a ball suspended from the ceiling. The work looked simple — a loop and a ball — but produced the most complex effects. The movement of the loop was unpredictable, wobbling from side to side like a fat stomach, shivering like a jelly, or bouncing violently. Photographs with a long exposure time produced dramatic patterns and became a popular image for reviews and posters. Viewers would wait expectantly for the loop to hit the ball, producing a variety of percussion sounds. Lye attached special importance to the sound aspect and demonstrated it for the New Yorker who described ‘Loop’ as one of the most beautiful kinetic works to date: ‘“Listen” [said Len]. He pushed down on top of the ring, released it, and as the steel sprang into motion, rapped it smartly with the flat of his hand. A clear fluctuating tone rang out. He tapped it with a cigarette lighter, and a different tone joined the first. “We’ll get these in parks and gardens, and have tapes of the sound they make playing along with them — have them dancing to their own music, you know.”’9
Although Wise’s ‘On The Move’ show was a critical success for Lye there had been a huge struggle behind the scenes which typified the practical problems involved in kinetic sculpture. Four days after the opening Lye wrote a record of what had happened:
Howard has given up giving me money as he’s not selling anything and I owe him $2000 — but he has my ‘Fountain’ as equity. When I heard he was satisfied to just show my old ‘Fountain’ in the group show, I wanted to make something new. So I showed him ‘Loop’. He took a look and liked it, and said go ahead and make it, but not to exceed the $500 which I had quoted. Well, in the end, the job cost $440 for the mechanic’s work hours, $60 for steel, $60 for five weldings, $75 for five goes at getting the right magnet wound, $200 for technical wiring of transformers, rectifiers, condensers, timers, etc. Ann sprang in with some extra money to enable me not to have to ask Howard for it. When we were five days off from the opening date I saw that the ‘Loop’ was not only going to work, but also saw that the steel could be thicker and higher, and two magnets would be better than one. We went out to the steel warehouse for sprung steel, and then tried to find welders and so on. After working all night we had everything ready. The ‘Loop’ was set up in the gallery all ready for the show when — guess what — it conked out! So opening night came and went, but everyone was satisfied because, if the ‘Loop’ was pushed by hand — which everyone seemed to like trying — it would roll back and forth on its own, in perpetual motion style. Next day, Friday, we worked at the magnet mechanism and got it fixed by five p.m. O.K. Saturday it worked, now comes Monday and I hope it will continue to behave …
Lye and Wise had kept their cool up to this point but now the artist got into a fierce argument with the dealer over the price of ‘Loop’. Lye insisted that it had to be the most expensive work in the show, $5000 more than the $30,000 price of José de Rivera’s large ‘steel serpent’. In his words: ‘Howard hit the roof. He said it was his job to fix prices. He knew the market. He was out to get the most he could. Too high a price would kill any sale possibility. And lots of other telling points. I replied, too bad. It would only sell to one in a million who liked kinetic art plus having lots of coin, and unless I sold one work a year [in that way] it was impossible to [finance] others. It was the only way I could operate. He could not finance me, nor could Ann.’
The conversation ended in a state of war with Wise refusing to pay the last $100 of his $500 advance, and Lye determined to pull ‘Loop’ out of the show. (‘And, who knows, I’ll put it on my grave in memoriam to art galleries!’) But next morning Wise phoned and said, ‘Len, I couldn’t sleep all night thinking how great the “Loop” was. I’ve decided to let you have the $100, plus whatever your debts are, and put the price at $35,000 for it. O.K.?’ Lye was not ready to make peace but he did agree to leave his work in the show. At the end of the three-week season ‘Loop’ remained unsold but Lye and his dealer were back on friendly terms. The price of ‘Loop’ was later dropped to $20,000, but the tensions remained — Lye continued to be known as a wilful artist whose attitude to the art market sometimes made no sense at all to potential customers or to his dealer. But he desperately wanted money to finance large-scale works. He felt he had already paid his dues, albeit in a different medium. Creatively he was at his peak and his reputation as a sculptor was growing steadily, but it was anyone’s guess whether buyers and sponsors would come along in time for him to be able to realise his most ambitious ideas.