Kinetic Art

An art technique, usually sculpture, that embraces movement as part of its idiom. This movement can be either mechanical, manual by hand, or by natural forces. Not limited to any style, Kinetic Artwas first documented in 1913 as an art form used by Dada artist, Marcel Duchamp, who positioned a rotating bicycle wheel on a stool and named it ‘sculpture’. Other 20th-century practitioners include Alexander Calder, Jean Tinguely, Victor Vasarely and Yaacov Agam and in 1955 an exhibition, ‘Le Mouvement,’ in Paris brought Kinetic Artto a wider public. Since the last quarter of the 20th century the involvement of computers and lasers has advanced this artistic movement. British practitioners include Kenneth Martin and his wife Mary Martin, Michael Kidner, Peter Logan, Len Lye, Peter Fluck and Brian Robbins. An exhibition organised by the Arts Council of Great Britain devoted to Kinetics was held at the Hayward Gallery in 1970.