Vote damn you

Unless it’s a statue of a sporting hero or retired politician, putting large sculptures into a public space has always been a high-risk. Usually the fuss is geared up by the media prodding readers to make an extreme response so they can report it back as news. Perfect storm. Even better new tech tools enable editors to come up with ‘surveys’ to check the racing pulse of the public sculpture loving public. Loosely worded and structured these often set out to net naysaying.

So nice to see that New Plymouth rallied to the idea of yet more Len Lyes in their backyard. When the first Wind wand was erected many New Plymouthites responded by sticking up their own versions in a gesture that was part cheek, part my-kid-could-do it. This time a cluster of half a dozen mini-me Wind wands was put to the test in a poll of just over 1,000 people by the local newspaper. Forty percent were positive about this specific project, another 18 percent were positive about public sculpture in general and neutral about the project, and another 10 percent neutral to positive. Just 32 percent were strongly opposed. Given that two out of the four voting categories (‘ I like it’ and ‘It’s ok’) were tilted with negative overtones (‘but I’d like to see something different’ and ‘or I don’t really care too much’) that would have to be a pass. Please feel free to move around the cabin.

Len Lye down: when good sculpture turns bad

Nobody said owning a whole lot of sculptures powered by analogue motors, that bounce and bend and shake in ways that engineering probably doesn’t totally understand, would be easy. And guess what, it’s not. Trilogy - the dramatic Len Lye Centre headliner - was taken down just before the new building opened last year after it took a chunk out of the wall. Disappointing, but reasonably enough it was passed over as a blip.

But last week, when the three-part monster was put into place again in the new custom-made gallery for large Len Lye sculptures and revved up, there were more problems. Word is that it had to be stopped before it shook itself off the ceiling. Whoops (again). And wouldn’t you know it, this was in the first week of the school holidays (#kidslovenoisysculpture). So, no going up the ramp while the place is being re-strengthened enough for Trilogy to do its thing again after years in storage.

Still, there’s a moment for everyone who felt the Len Lye Centre had taken over the Govett-Brewster. Because of the mess-up all visitors now have to enter the new complex via the discreet Govett-Brewster Art Gallery entrance rather than the architect’s ramp. We could get used to that. And while your at it get rid of the new wall behind the reception desk. Then it's straight ahead to the G-B and LLC and, if you want to do the ramp thing, turn left. 

Later: Trilogy was reinstalled on 12 October and is now fully functional  

Image: Trilogy, back in the day

Sleeping dogs

Len Lye’s had a rough spin in Wellington. Once famously a blade from Trilogy came loose mid spin and then there is Water Whirler, a sculpture that just refuses to keep on keeping on. Its woes are probably not so surprising when you take a look at its amazingly analogue mechanics as you can do at the moment. The ‘sculpture’ itself has vanished, presumably for repair, but as usual there is no information as to what has happened, how long it will be out of action or if indeed it is a dead duck. Given its unreliable history and the clumsy out of scale podium it has been lumbered with, a quick ok-this-one-didn’t-work acknowledgement and a decent burial might be the humane thing to do.

Images; top, the artwork formally known as Water whirler, bottom, the works.

On reflection

Sometime during the day, if you have a chance, spare a thought for the staff of the Govett Brewster Art Gallery and Len Lye Centre. Now the architectural community has finished congratulating itself, it’s becoming clear that what's been left is one of the most difficult spaces in the country to exhibit art in.

Unsurprisingly, the things that have so excited the architectural gatekeepers are the very things that make it difficult. Start with the mega statement of the cathedral-like entry with its columns and sloping floor. Once the wow factor has worn off, it’s a very large, very empty, very grey space. It does have potential of course and especially for commissioned projects by artists. Andrew Beck, by all accounts, made a great job of it in the last round, but there’s a limit to how often you can find keen young artists willing to make a splash on limited resources.

When you do get to the top of the grand hall to Len Lye’s large scale kinetic works, strangely given the hype in the planning stage, it's too small! The new Fountain IV all but brushes the roof and looks surprisingly cramped.

At the base of the long ramp of course is the far from obvious entrance to the Govett-Brewster  Art Gallery. The two large lower galleries are no more. As you move through it you can't help wondering how architects could leave this awkward space behind them as a piece of serious art gallery design. As an introduction to the gallery it's a tough call for any exhibition designer.

The staff at least has got a pleasant sunny cafe where they can dream about putting the place to rights. They certainly must be nervous at the thought of audience numbers dropping if a threatened admission charge comes into play next year. The New Plymouth City Council has somehow convinced itself and its public that the bright shiny facade (a magnet for selfies) will continue to make its newest facility a destination attraction. But the reality is that the selfie takers don’t get added into the all-important visitor numbers, for that you have to go inside. And look at the art.

By the numbers

2  the number of women currently showing at City Gallery Wellington

3   the number of books to be published by Te Papa Press in 2016

24  the number of policy statements setting out the principles for presenting Len Lye’s work at the Govett-Brewster

25  the number of Gordon Walters paintings currently on loan to the Auckland Art Gallery by the Chartwell Collection

29  the number of Trevor Moffitt paintings being sold as consecutive lots (one to 29) at Dunbar Sloane on 10 August

11   the number of years the Britten V1000, the star of Billy Apple’s latest exhibition at Christchurch Art Gallery, held the speed record at Ruapuna Raceway

30  the number of documents online relating to the Sarjeant Gallery’s extension and its funding

36   the number of works by Gordon Walters in the collections of the Auckland Art Gallery

100  the number of paintings by Gottfried Lindauer that the Auckland Art Gallery thinks are unaccounted for and possibly held in family collections

220  the amount in dollars needed to purchase Fiona Clark’s Artspace edition Book Shelf, Tikorangi

700  the cost in dollars of lighting a public sculpture (based on Neil Dawson’s Spires in Christchurch) for one year

12 cool things Kiwi (visual) artists have achieved in the past year

The other day a headline in the NZ Herald caught the attention: '12 cool things artists have achieved this year'. Of course when you clicked through the artists involved were musicians and not of the installation, photographic, painting or sculpture variety. So here’s a 12 cool things they have achieved in the past year.
 
Billy Apple at 80 finally got his long overdue survey show at the Auckland Art Gallery. Did that mean he'd then sit back and take it easy? Not a chance. Apple is always ticking off items on a list of shows and projects that stretches into the future as well as getting to most of the key art events in the city.
 
Ruth Buchanan turned artist/ curator in Berlin with a series of thoughtful and witty interventions into a private collection being exhibited at the Hamburger Bahnhof. In the overall project A-Z The Marzona Collection Buchanan made changes and additions to the sections J, L and K in the alphabet-based show.

Simon Denny has to be included. He had a very good year but who’d have thought that MoMA, having purchased his sculptures last year, would make another large purchase from his Venice show.  As they say, the first purchase is representation, but if they come back for more, it’s serious attention.

Lisa Reihana proved that history can pull crowds with her large-scale video installation in Pursuit of Venus [infected] based on nineteenth century wallpaper. It got her the Venice gig, it's in contention for the Walters Prize and already some significant art museums have shelled out big bucks to buy their very own copy of the work.
 
Michael Parekowhai certainly kept his cool over the last 12 months. And that despite the politicians of Hamilton and some vociferous people in Auckland ranting on about how his public sculptures were a waste of money no matter who pays for them. They'll be the same people in a few years doting on their grandkids playing in the waterfall of the Hamilton one and looking through the windows in the Auckland one.

Judy Millar who somehow manages to live in Europe and New Zealand at the same time also seems to be able to work at both a major and intimate scale. Not only did she produce the huge architectural scale sculpture The Model World at Te Uru, she also managed to illustrated a kids' pop-up book of the same name.

Dick Frizzell continues to be the whirlwind of New Zealand art marketing. He's always there in some media release or other weighing in on a contentious issue, launching a product or gifting works to this charity or that. Is this cool? Maybe not exactly, but it is impressive.

Len Lye continues to be the only artist in NZ ever to reach out from beyond the grave and continue to ghostwrite new works via a ouija board of governors. If that’s not cool, nothing is.

Li-Ming Hu used DIY cut-out masks and Vimeo to shift a few boundaries and crack us up at the same time. Her take on the team who ran Gambia Castle was a knowing mix of hilarity and edge.
 
Francis Upritchard’s exhibition at Monash University (MUMA) in Australia was a remarkable survey of her work from art school days to the present. Some of the museum based work of the early 2000s looks as fresh as the day it was made (and the poster is beautiful too). The exhibition is now showing at the City Gallery in Wellington. And Auckland, will it be showing in Auckland where all the people are? Er, no.

Fiona Connor has been based in LA for a while now and for the last year has been running her own apartment gallery featuring a strong showing of artists from New Zealand. Laurel Doody has now wound up its gallery phase but not before getting some serious critical attention in the city.

Luke Willis Thompson took a whole lot of people for a ride in New York City, well a walk in fact. His contribution to the New Museum’s 2015 Triennial was to invite visitors to step out into the city on a choreographed walk. Often unsettling, it continued Thompson’s investigation into cultural relationships, power and space.

Radical

Towards the top of the new Whitney Museum is a themed section of the permanent collection titled Free Radicals after the eponymous Len Lye film. The Lye work, famously scratched into black leader film, was of course on the programme. While Lye's title from the spurt of high energy expressed by uncharged molecules captured something of the spirit of fellow film makers Helen Levitt, Robert Breer and Mary Ellen Bute (among others), it sure didn’t sit well with the very staid paintings by Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keefe or George Bellows that hung nearby.
 
And if you want to know more about Lye, now is the perfect time. Roger Horrocks' definitive biography (out of print for 13 years) has just been revised and reprinted. Considering that Lye was brought up in a lighthouse, thrown out of Samoa for ‘going native’ and sailed to the UK under a false name with another man’s papers, it's incredible that there isn’t already a movie based on his early life (although in all fairness there was an opera). You can get a copy of the Horrocks book here at AUP.

Images: left, Len Lye's film Free radicals on exhibition at the Whitney Museum and right the long awaited reprint of Horrock's Len Lye biography

Post Len Lye

One of the great New Zealand fashion/artist combos for our money (Amour wind breaker) was when Workshop worked with John Reynolds. This time the reach is right into the grave with Lim Bowden’s Deadly Ponies taking on Len Lye. DP have looked at Lye’s Trade Tattoo from 1937 and Rainbow dance made a year earlier, ironically made for the Post Office Savings Bank - a little off brand for Deadly Ponies.  The new line of wallets, bags and scarf were produced to coincide with the opening of the Len Lye Centre. The fashion company says it has, “re-created the energy from Lye’s work” sadly something that didn’t happen with the latest iteration of Fountain. Bowden told Urbis magazine that one of his own favourite artist fashion designer combos is “Valentino’s recent collaboration with Canadian artist, Christi Belcourt. It is inspiring because neither of the participant’s work was diluted; only made more beautiful through working together”.

Images: left Len Lye and right Deadly Ponies

The way things Lye in New Plymouth

First, the good stuff. The entrance hall and sweeping lead-up to the galleries in the new Len Lye Centre are impressive. The sloping floor was a surprise but the height, the modulated walls reflecting the exterior forms and the tall narrow windows that reveal themselves as you ascend give the sense that you have entered a large and important building. But you quickly realise this splendid entrance over-promises given the limited additional spaces and how much of the building's space is taken up with transiting from one area to another. An ongoing problem with the Govett-Brewster was always the way every space made you feel you were always on the way to somewhere else. Strange then to find the Len Lye addition repeating this pattern. You also have to wonder how the long sloped ramp will impact on installation practices. It's like the Guggenheim on speed, and the complexity of that famous ramp as a working environment is very well known.

Then, for all the millions that have been spent, there is really only one classic four-walled gallery in the new building, and while it's somewhat larger, it's a similar square box to the one that used to adjoin the G-B. The other new gallery space used for the suite of Lye's Fountain works merges with the ramp and is only three sided. And while on the Fountain works you do have to wonder why the new large Fountain was even allowed to go on display. It clearly does not work. The rods do move, thanks to an electric motor but, unlike the smaller Fountains on display for comparison, there is no quivering response through the rods the feature that makes the original so lively and iconic. The over-sized scale is also a problem ironically making the new Fountain look rather stunted. It’s a major issue for the long-term members of the Len Lye Foundation as clearly no one associated with these projects feels they are in a position to stand up and make the call for art and aesthetics over engineering and pragmatism. 

And then there is the entrance to the old Govett-Brewster. Given the repeated assurances by the previous director and architect during the planning and build that the G-B would share its entrance with the LLC - 'Left to the Len Lye Centre, right to the Govett-Brewster' - the virtually hidden entrance to the G-B is inexcusable.  There's no reason it couldn't have been bigger apart from it taking attention away from the 'Temple' like entrance to the Lye sector. The G-B has also lost space in its ground floor galleries and functional requirements have further fragmented its overall flow. The staircase to the first level may have been amended into an art work by Billy Apple but it now looks comically truncated and painting the old spaces black has only served to make the old G-B spaces feel pinched and gloomy. 

Then, given the architectural effort put into building the Len Lye Centre, it makes no sense at all that the massive Trilogy can still only be shown in the G-B. Indeed Trilogy was slated to be in place for the opening but OTN understands Len Lye’s ghost, embarrassed by the thought of also dominating the G-B at the opening, made Trilogy go haywire so it had to be replaced with three very impressive works by et al. (Thanks Len). 

OK, it's early days, of course; the G-B will no doubt revert to white again, director Simon Rees will have more realistic installation schedules and the current Lye exhibits will be refreshed, but at the moment in New Plymouth’s visual arts culture, the Govett-Brewster is definitely no longer at the centre.
Image: standing in for Len Lye. et al. on borrowed time at the Govett-Brewster

Distance looks our way

You can’t beat the kick of going into a large exhibition space in an international art museum as important as the Pompidou to see a work by an artist you know and admire. This time it was Oscar Enberg in the sixth edition of Un Nouveau Festival titled Air de jeu that dug into the connections between art and games. But we're not talking about some dice and arcade cabinets showcase but games in the big sense. This one's got philosophers, dancers, writers and even OuLiPo and Alighiero Boetti all ‘playing and thinking’ as the Pompidou like to put it. Yes, Enberg is in very good company and also showing alongside another favourite of ours Jonathan Monk.  
Len Lye is in the building too and Peter Robinson’s interactive felt scatter piece has just closed. Then, still hanging in the sky above the square outside Piano & Rogers iconic building, is the ghost of Neil Dawson’s Globe the star of the 1989 Pompidou exhibition Magiciens de la terre 

All this NZ-in-Paris action comes just weeks after seeing Simon Denny knock them dead in Venice.  You’d have to lay a lot of this level of exposure on Creative NZ’s simple focus on success in its international funding. The fact is those Art fairs, exchange programmes, residencies, support for exhibiting off shore and bringing interested curators, writers and bureaucrats to NZ are all starting to make a real impact.

Image: in the foreground Oscar Enberg's work in the exhibition Air de jeu

Lye's sculpture dead in the water

It’s spring and the minds of local authorities throughout the country turn to maintenance. Here in Wellington public sculpture got a bit of a beating over winter. The spinning cubes of Leon van den Eijkel's Urban forest all but ground to a halt, Phil Dadson’s Akau Tangi was rarely all systems go, Phil Price’s Zephyrometer was literally blown out of the sky by lightning and the other pointy stick sculpture Len Lye’s Water Whirler doesn’t any more.

While Price is rebuilding Zephyrometer it’s probably time to call it quits on Water whirler and admit that Wellington's Lye is a no-go. The City Council has already repaired just about every component at some stage largely because of the effects of numbers 11 and 17 on the periodic table. Anyone who lives near the water in Wellington knows about salt corrosion, it’s probably what is slowing down the van den Eijkel and Dadson as well.

Anyway just do the math. WW was intended to run for 12 minutes nine times a day adding up to whirl action for around 655 hours a year. It has now been operating (theoretically) for nine years. Most marine engineers will tell you that a marine engine is best for the first 500 hours, so-so for the next 1,000 and after that….  And it's not a complete loss. The Ian Athfield base could come into its own as a diving board or somewhere to do a selfie with Wellington's harbour.

Images: top, figuring that Water Whirler is no longer functioning the base has become a popular picnic spot. Middle, Oriental Bay's Carter fountain being repaired and bottom, Kon Dimopoulos’s Pacific grass is given a spring steam clean.

One day in the New Plymouth Art in Public Places Trust boardroom

Trustee 1: …and then it whistled through the air almost decapitating the… (looks up) … sorry, are we all here?

Trustee 2: (looks around and counts) Yes, we seem to be.

T1: Excellent. Well it’s that time again. Two years have passed and again we are required by our Deed to invent ... I mean reconstruct, another of Len’s works. Yes, another public sculpture.

(There’s a shuffling of feet and several averted eyes).

T2: Come on everyone. We had a huge success with the big noisy one that went up and down hitting that ball ...

T1: Yes, and the very long one that writhes across the floor is well on the way.

T2: Not to mention Water whirler in Wellington. (looks down at briefing notes) Oh sorry. I see it says not to mention -Water whirler.

T1: This time what we need is something more visually commanding. Something that's more than just one unique single thing on its own moving this way and that by itself in isolation.

T2: How about a whole lot of unique things? You know, more than one.

T1: Brilliant.

T2: Like how about we make a Quadrilogy version of Trilogy, or even a Septilogy…that’s seven of them.

T3: I’ve got it. A Wind wand farm.

(several heads turn)

T4: Do you think Len Lye would have ever done something like that?

T1: Definitely.

T3: It could be a whole cluster of Wind wands bobbing their heads in sprightly dance.

T1: Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. What are we talking. 50? A 100?

T3: I reckon we could easily do six, as long as they’re kind of small.

And that is what they did

LATER: Initially we thought it was the Len Lye Trust proposing this wacky idea. But reading the article again, who exactly is going to do this thing is a bit of a mystery. We are assuming the Len Lye Trust is in there somewhere, the City Council probably, maybe the Govett-Brewster - all jumping the shark together?

Len, again

UK based Graphic Designer and Illustrator Kate Moross reaches out to Len Lye for All We Are’s video I Wear You (Just noticed this version is cutting off the side of the video. You can see it in its full glory here on YouTube)

Stamp of approval

For an artist who did so much to promote the British postal service it took a long time for Len Lye to get his own stamp but it has finally happened. Oddly, given the graphic nature of Lye’s work and the energy that has gone into promoting him in NZ, it’s not NZ that came up with the idea but the UK. There have been some New Zealand artists honored stamp-wise but the only ones we can think of off-hand are Rita Angus and Colin McCahon. Of course artists like Eileen Mayo, Mervyn Taylor and Leonard Mitchell designed many of our most well known stamps butt that’s a whole other thing. What distinguishes Lye in the stamp stakes is that even though he was not a painter he still got a stamp. Yes, painting rules in most countries although why we can feature 3D images of a rugby cup on a stamp and not have a go at a 3D art work is anyone’s guess #ingenuous.

(Another New Zealand-born artist whose work has been featured on a UK stamp is Ray Ching. His image of a black finch and a limestone fossil of Archaeopteryx, illustrating 'Darwin's theory', was included (26p) in the Royal Mail Millennium Stamps issue of 1999) - Thanks R

Images: Top to bottom, left to right, Len Lye 2014, Rita Angus 1983, Colin McCahon 1997 (you can buy a set here), Georgia O’Keefe 1996, Andy Warhol 2002 and Robert Indiana 1973

Whirled view

While we're on the subject of artists having their visions created beyond the grave (as per last week’s look at Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia), here's a sketch Len Lye made for Water Whirler. It's on show at the Drawing Center in NY and it was a surprise. From the drawing it’s very clear that Lye intended the sculpture to have a specific relationship to…er… the water. The real issue with Water Whirler as presented on Wellington's waterfront, it turns out, is the podium. It's not only over-designed for the simple motion of the work but, more importantly, it alienates Water Whirler from the very element with which it is meant to interact. No big surprise that these sketches are not included in the descriptive panel next to the sculpture.

Image: one of Len Lye’s Sketches for Water Whirler c.1960 in the Len Lye Foundation Collection at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

Drawing out Len

Len Lye is back in New York! Ok, a bunch of his drawings, films, a few paintings and some photographs are anyway. They're on at the Drawing Centre in Soho and reveal a somewhat different Len Lye from the one we usually see in NZ. Being shown alongside Lebbeus Woods certainly gives the Lye show a very helpful push. This visionary architect was obsessed by transformation and over forty years became a world builder rather than a building builder. 

The connections with Lye are compelling returning him to us as an idiosyncratic idea maker rather than the rather solemn modernist he has calcified into in NZ. Also on show are some fascinating drawings that acted as the basis for Wellington's Waterwhirler. This sculpture has had an unhappy life on the waterfront, but more of that some other time. The Lye exhibition was co-curated by Gregory Burke and Tyler Cann. The new Govett-Brewster director Simon Rees was on hand for the opening so all very NZ/NY. Maybe that should be NY/NP.

Image: The Lye brain at work back in 1938 in a drawing from the Len Lye collection at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery now on show at New York's Drawing Center

Move, move, move

Without our link to Len Lye it's hard to imagine that Wellington would have commissioned a bunch of kinetic sculptures. Auckland was a step ahead with Michio Ihara’s Wind Tree produced for the Auckland International Sculpture Symposium in 1971 and now installed in Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter. Ten years later they also purchased George Rickey’s Double-L Excentric Gyratory to coincide with Andrew Bogle’s exhibition Chance and Change. Today it's installed alongside the Gallery.

Commissioning kinetic sculpture is one thing though, and looking after them is something else entirely as Wellington is discovering. Leon Van Den Eijkel Urban forest has only rarely spun on all cylinders, Phil Dadson’s Akau Tangi is often a few spinners down and even though it's up and running again after a long break, Len Lye’s Water Whirler only gives out the ghost of its intended performance. 

Now one of the most successful (kinetically speaking) of Wellington's sculptures, Phil Price's Zephyrometer, has been dismantled for maintenance. Peering at the housing laid out on the ground though it looks as if the strain on the base has ripped at the sculpture’s skin. Who knows how long it will be down but the problem appears a little more serious than a quick clean and oil job.

Soon New Plymouth will have a whole museum devoted to kinetic sculpture with its Len Lye Centre. Kinetic sculpture in NZ has become a movement.

Images: top, Zephyrometer laid out for repair. Middle, damage to the housing and bottom, in case you have never seen the point of Zephyrometer, here it is.

Crowded house

Len Lye's Water whirler is working again but it seems to be struggling. The shaft seems to be out of alignment and the water patterns it forms now would have Len Lye shaking his head in sorrow.  Still, this is only one of the Wellington's public art works that could do with some love and attention. Two others are housed in Te Raukura, the wharewaka function centre on the Wellington waterfront between Te Papa and the City to Sea bridge. The waka Te Rerenga Kotare and Te Hononga.

Originally the two craft were to have their own house by the bridge but after a scrap with the boat club the whare was combined with a function centre and cafe. Although the space to display the waka was kind of cramped (it was too small to fit Te Aniwaniwa one of the original waka intended for it) and hard up against a wet bar, it was at least a discrete area. No longer.

Since the facility was opened in 2011, the cafe has developed an outside area complete with chairs, banners, signs and brewery branded beanbags. It makes a pleasant venue by the water but inevitably the next step has been to store all this paraphernalia right in there with the waka whenever the café is closed.

Amidst controversy the people of Waiwhetu refused to allow the waka Te Raukura (for which the building is named) to be housed in the wharewaka. Looking at how the waka display area has turned into a general storeroom, they were probably right.

Images: Te Raukura’s waka display now and then

Len of the North

Did no one else notice the spooky reference to Len Lye in this recent photo published in the Taranaki Daily News to show progress on the building of the Len Lye Centre? Does it support those critics who fret that Len Lye will swamp the Govett-Brewster brand or is it just a coincidental arrangement of two slabs of concrete in a tilt slab building? You be the judge.

As you can see from the pic, the back wall is under construction (this will not have the mirror surfaced stainless steel façade) and the beginnings of the theatre. Latest reports are that construction the building is on track and on budget, that track being an opening in mid-2015 and the budget under or equal to the $11.5 million that has been stumped up for the 'build and fit-out'.

Somewhat off track is the Govett-Brewster Foundation who are evidently growing increasingly frustrated over the of the shiny new LL Centre’s potential to swamp the Govett-Brewster’s brand and its role in NZ’s contemporary art culture. We understand they are holding back to give the new director time to get behind his desk but that an April deadline has been proposed to resolve outstanding issues.

In the meantime the Govett-Brewster and the Len Lye Foundation have sent an exhibition of Lye’s work (Len Lye Agiagiā) to the Mangere Art Centre leading the new trend for southern sharing in the suburbs of Auckland. If you want to go to the opening this Saturday you can get a bus from outside Artspace on K'Rd at 5.45pm, back at 8.15pm.

Art in adland: Len Lye

Len Lye was involved with quite a few ads in his time and in 1957 one of them almost won the New York Art Directors Award for best commercial. The one-minute spot was made for Chrysler and features very early (if not the first) examples of fast-paced intentional jump cuts. Thanks to his work with Lye on Rhythm McCann-Erickson ad agency producer James Manilla is known in the industry as the inventor of “squeeze advertising” the one frame shots that paved the way for subliminal advertising. The first ad acknowledged to use subliminal imagery (the words “Eat Popcorn”) was made later in the same year and is attributed to market researcher James Vicary.

The Lye ad Rhythm shows the making of a 1955 Plymouth using an existing Chrysler film Wishes on wheels. You can see a clip from it here including some of the images Lye used.

And the reason Lye didn’t get his Art Directors Award? Chrysler had found the film too abstract and felt that the ‘winking man’ image devalued their product so did not approve its screening. It was only discovered at the last minute (after Lye had been given the nod) that the ad had not in fact played and it was pulled from competition.

Sources: Roger Horrocks' biography of Len Lye, Motor Thrills magazine, McCann Erickson and the forwardlook discussion forums