Art That Moves: The Work of Len Lye

(2009)

by Roger Horrocks, author of the best-selling and critically acclaimed 2001 Len Lye: A biography, makes a powerful case for the artist's originality and the relevance of his ideas today.

Art That Moves: The Work of Len Lye, 1st generation, london

One of the most original artists to have emerged from New Zealand, Len Lye (1901-1980) had a passion for movement from an early age. This fascination shaped his urgent and pioneering films and kinetic sculptures and contributed to his remarkable work in painting, photography and writing.

Lye had a big idea - that movement could be the basis for a completely new kind of art - and he devoted much of his life to it. "Kinetic art is the first new category of art since pre-history," he boldly claimed in 1964. What did he mean by this? And how does his work in film and sculpture bear it out? Roger Horrocks, author of the best-selling and critically acclaimed 2001 Len Lye: A biography, makes a powerful case for the artist's originality and the relevance of his ideas today.

Lye's big idea illuminates not only his own work but the mystery of movement in all forms of art - from dance to film - and in our own lives. Here Horrocks traces these connections and tells us much that is new about Lye, including behind-the-scenes information about how the artist dreamed up and applied his new methods of film-making and created his kinetic sculptures. He also covers the remarkable story of how Lye's unfinished projects are being built in New Zealand today and the controversy this has sometimes aroused.

Appropriately for a book about movement, Art that Moves includes a DVD with four of Lye's best films and some superb footage (directed by Shirley Horrocks) of his sculpture in action. It also contains a new eighteen-minute film directed by Roger Horrocks, a dramatic portrait of Lye in his early years. In this superbly illustrated book and DVD, Lye's art and ideas move again, alert and alive.

Roger Horrocks, who worked as Len Lye's assistant during the last year of the artist's life, is considered the leading commentator on his life and work. His biography of the artist was a finalist in the 2002 Montana New Zealand Book Awards and praised both for its depth of research and its lively, accessible style. Horrocks has also edited or co-edited three books of Lye’s writings and a book of essays about the artist published by the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Now an emeritus professor, Roger Horrocks was the founder and for many years head of the Department of Film, Television and Media Studies at the University of Auckland. He has been involved in many aspects of film and television and in 2004 was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) for his contributions to those industries and to media education. He is a director of Point of View Productions with his wife, Shirley Horrocks, an award-winning film-maker. Shirley produced the film Art that Moves and directed the striking footage of Lye’s sculpture on the DVD.

Source: Auckland University Press

ISBN-10: 186940422X

ISBN-13: 978-1869404222

Art That Moves: The Work of Len Lye, 1st generation, londonArt That Moves: The Work of Len Lye, 1st generation, london

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Len Lye (2009) co-edited by the curator Tyler Cann and the writer, critic and poet Prof. Wystan Curnow is a tribute to one of New Zealand’s most internationally acclaimed artists is the most comprehensive visual presentation of Len Lye’s art to date.

Over 1,000 new photographs were created and hundreds of them selected for this image-rich publication, presenting the full range of Len Lye’s work, from drawings and paintings right through to his photograms and kinetic experimentations. (Govett-Brewster)

Len Lye: A biography (2001) by Roger Horrock tells for the first time the story of an extraordinary New Zealander, a brilliant artist with an international career who never lost the informality, the energy, the independence of spirit of his South Pacific origins. Len Lye began as an unsettled working-class kid with limited prospects and became a leading modernist artist in London and New York. Roger Horrocks's exhaustive study of Lye has taken many years and is based on interviews with many of those close to the artist as well as on voluminous documentary sources. (Govett-Brewster Art Gallery)

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Len Lye (1901-1980) was an experimental film-maker, poet, painter, kinetic sculptor, eccentric and ebullient personality. Len Lye was one of the few filmmakers working in inter-war Britain to have established an international reputation in experimental filmmaking. Though his British oeuvre was by no means limited to the making of abstract films, this was the area that most interested Len Lye and he has sometimes been viewed as the only genuine avant-garde filmmaker of this period. (screenonline)

Swinging the Lambeth Walk (1939) - The four-minute, hand-painted Dufaycolor film with a colour accompaniment by Len Lye, matches visual motifs to musical instruments: diagonals introduce piano phrases, circles express drum beats, wavy horizontals represent guitars licks, vertical lines map base parts, etc. Primary red, blue and deep green colour fields are rendered frameless by upwardly cascading kite shapes, luminous tapered stripes, and batik-like patterns. (Senses of Cinema)

Rhythm (1957) was intended as a publicity film for Chrysler, Len Lye used rapid editing to speed up the assembly of a car, and synchronized it to African drum music. Chrysler was horrified by the music and suspicious of the way a worker was shown winking at the camera. (centre for art tapes)

Free Radicals (1958) - In arguably his greatest film, Len Lye reduced the medium to its most basic elements – light in darkness – by scratching designs on black film. His scratches were as energetic as lightning in the night sky. He used a variety of scribers ranging from dental tools to an ancient Native American arrow-head, and synchronized the images to traditional African music ("a field tape of the Bagirmi tribe"). (centre for art tapes)

Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967) was a German abstract animator, filmmaker, and painter. He made over 50 short animated films, and painted c. 800 canvases, many of which are in museums, galleries and collections worldwide. (Wikipedia)

Addictive TV was formed in 1992. The UK DJ/producers and audiovisual artists are the team behind Optronica - the visual music and VJ festival held at the NFT and British Film Institute IMAX in London, UK. In 2006, in the international publication DJMag annual poll, Addictive TV were voted #1 VJs in the world for a second time (the first being in 2004 in the magazine's first ever VJ poll alongside their Top 100 DJ poll). In 2009, they created official remixes of Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire for film company Pathe and Vin Diesel movie Fast & Furious for Universal as alternative trailers. (Wikipedia)

Audio.Visual - On Visual Music and Related Media (2009) by Cornelia Lund and Holger Lund (Eds.) is divided into two sections: the first deals with the academic discussion on the subject of visual music; the second introduces contemporary paradigms of audio-visual praxis in brief presentations and contextualises them. Apart from being a guide in the historical sense, this new volume provides theoretical approaches to understanding and making visual music. (Fluctuating Images)

Proud Creative was formed in June 2005 as a creatively led multidisciplinary design studio based in London. Their goal is to create work that makes their clients and everyone at the studio proud. It's the reason for their name. (Proud Creative)

Simple Harmonic Motion study #5d (2011) by Mehmet Akten is an ongoing research and series of projects exploring the nature of complex patterns created from the interaction of multilayered rhythms. This version was designed for and shown at Ron Arads Curtain Call at the Roundhouse. This ultra wide video is mapped around the 18m wide, 8m tall cylindrical display made from 5,600 silicon rods, allowing the audience to view from inside and outside. (Mehmet Akten)

Optical Poetry (2004) by Dr. William Moritz is the long-awaited, definitive biography of Oskar Fischinger. The result of over 30 years of research on this visionary abstract filmmaker and painter. In addition to Moritz's comprehensive biography, it includes numerous photographs in colour and black and white (many never before published), statements by Oskar Fischinger about his films, a newly created extensive filmography, and a selected bibliography. (John Libbey Publishing)

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Art That Moves: The Work of Len Lye

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