MALINA : [...] In 1954 with Arno, I had an exhibition of the mesh collages which they called transparent, transparencies, transparent painting - you can see through the mesh. And, also, I had the first exhibition with the superimposed layers of mesh with the fringes on it, with the movement. It was after that exhibition then that I started researching ways for accentuating the lines and that's where light started. So it must have been 1954. Well, once I started working with light, it really became evident that one could do something with real movement. And the first series of what I called " tableaux mobiles " was made with on-and-off lights. You can make quite interesting pictures which have a certain liveliness, but it's rather brisk and sharp ; I don't think I went into that as much as one perhaps might. It is perhaps possible to create aesthetically satisfying....
POPPER : Picture where attention is drawn to various parts of it, certain intervals which you predetermine. And I suppose you would have to do some more experiments there.
MALINA : You remember the one I called " Jazz ". This one had 11 lights in it, and in front of each light was a form of some kind. And these lights , I think three of them, were on for 6 seconds, off for 6 seconds, the other eight were on a second roughly, and off a second. And, since the little devices that make the lights go on and off are not very exact, you had an element of randomness introduced into the sequence [...] So the pattern is different. Now, mathematically, this number of lights gives 2 to the 11th power number of possible combinations, which I think is 2056. Now, they don's follow each other in any sequence, it's purely random, but it does have a rhythm.
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Frank J. Malina
"Jazz", 1955
Kinetic Painting
50 cm x 77 cm
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POPPER : There is a cycle ?
MALINA : Well, it's not a cycle ; you never know which arrangement is coming next, you don't know when the 2056 will be seen -- over what period of time -- because some of them repeat themselves, they may not.
POPPER : In a different order.
MALINA : In a different order. So it's really a random process. Now It does have a certain basic rhythm, primarily those lights go on a second, a second off, and so if you listen to music with a rhythm that is not too far off from the rhythm of the picture, the brain will make a correlation between the rhythm of the music and the rhythm of the picture . It is quite interesting.
POPPER : Yes, it's quite interesting -- a definite rhythm given by the composer and a definite rhythm given mechanically in the picture. But, you could make it at the time wanted ?
MALINA : Well, I think if one wanted, one could make this on purpose. In other words, you could arrange the circuit, say if the music did not change its rhythm too much, but say if it was a dance music -- say the rhythm is pretty constant for dancing - then you could make a picture to correspond to the rhythm of that dance piece. If you had a record of music, you could make an exact correspondence with the rhythm with the on-off lights ; and if you had many of them, well then you could get a picture which was very much similar to the music, at least in the rhythm pattern.
POPPER : Well, there are two questions I've got -- I don't know if you'll answer them immediately or if they'll come later. But, the first one is : Why are people really so much concerned whether the same picture will repeat itself or not. I've very often heard it said in front of any kind of kinetic picture -- will it repeat itself or not, are there indefinite possibilities, what is the cycle and so on. And the second question is a totally different one, it goes back to the music question . As you know, there are many opinions whether you could really match chromatic scale with a music scale ; in other words, if you can have an octave which corresponds to a range of colors. And the second is whether you have a whole series of musical phrases, which would correspond to a mood, and would that mood correspond to a color -- so if you get a blue color, it will correspond to a whole series of notes and not just to one note, one tone. These are two problems which we can perhaps discuss.
MALINA : Yes, we can perhaps discuss this later on. Certainly, in this type of mobile kinetic painting in which you have the on-off lights, the only correspondence is essentially with the rhythm ; although, I suppose, one could imagine that you had a piece of music which had a title - - for example something about " moon " so that you might have a lot of moons in the picture, crescent moons, full moons, why not ? But this would be purely if the music is called like that -- moonlight or something - and you have an association which may have no significance at all.
POPPER : Yes, well maybe we'll come back to this some other time. In any case, on with the chronology.
MALINA : Then, I had an exhibition of the pictures with light, without movement and with light with the on-off lights - - at Colette Allendi, which I think was about 1955 or 1956. And after that exhibition, I started wondering if one could not arrive at some scheme, at some system, some instrument with which you could create a picture on a screen which would have continuous movement, rather than the on-off type of movement. And after considerable working, I finally arrived at this system of having the lights, then in front of the lights, a moving element of some kind, in the simplest system, a rotating, transparent disc on which one could paint, and in front of this the stator which is a transparent plane on which one can paint, and finally in front of the stator, a diffusing screen of translucent material, something like a television screen, on which you finally see a picture made up of the light passing through the disc, a rotor, through the stator plane and falling on this diffusing screen.
POPPER : This screen, does it correspond to the wire mesh ? Or did the wire mesh have another purpose in your previous pictures ?
MALINA : Well, before, you could see through the wire mesh.
POPPER : You could, and there was a unifying element in the wire mesh ?
MALINA : The wire mesh was a part of the picture where the diffusing screen in the pictures with the continuous movement, is merely a place on which the light falls and makes itself visible. It's neutral.
POPPER : While the wire mesh takes part.
MALINA : Yes, at the first stage, I had a wire mesh in front of the diffusing screen, as a matter of fact this adds a certain texture to the picture you see. In the latter ones, I've left the mesh off ; actually the mesh does absorb a bit of light.
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POPPER : Yes, well, the first question will be connected with the end of discussion we had on the technical aspect of your art, when we were taking it in chronological order ; and I think we stopped in 1957. It's after that exhibition of Colette Allendi, you said, that there was an elaboration of light, of rotating disk, rotor, and so on. Now, I find by looking through your list of exhibitions that it would probably be useful to detail these things, to see how the development was between 57' and 62'. Let's try to think if there were still different stages.
MALINA : Well, I think the main thing is roughly between 1956 and 57' and the present. I have worked essentially with the same basic system -- that is, lights, rotor, stator, and diffusing screen. Now, in the first phase, almost all were made with a single rotor, in other words the picture size was kept to a size in which a single rotor provided the movement within the composition. I think that the first one I made with 2 rotors was the one that was in the exhibition of the " Comparaisons " that won the Valenci prize -- perhaps it was 58'. Yes, 1958. And in this period also I must say I went through phases of tackling different kinds of compositions, and I would say some figurative and the other abstract, and that the abstract would go from geometrical abstract to lyrical and biological abstract. I think I mentioned to you that I find if I am working on something that is highly geometrical, when I finish it, I have a very strong reaction, and I will do something very different and not geometrical.
POPPER : The reaction is against the imposition of the human spirit as we just called it -- the human mind -- in the sort of going back to forms which you see in nature, which you know exists in nature.
MALINA : Well, I think geometrical forms exist in nature, too. After all, triangles, circles exist [...] Well, I think there is a reaction against the highly rigid, disciplined aspects of geometrical landscapes as compared to something that is much freer and looser. And I know I have heard some of the people criticizing the pictures, saying that I wasn't a constructionist, that it really wasn't geometrical abstract, or that I was too tachist. I've heard people say that it was tachist.
POPPER : But you find that in nature tachism exists very much.
MALINA : I think the tachist technique certainly reflects to me some kind of landscapes that exist in microscopes and so forth. The interesting thing is that if you look at the rotor and the stator, in almost all cases, they're highly geometrical, but when the light is going through the rotor and the stator and is falling on the screen, very often they will take on a tachist or a lyrical abstract nature. I know in one particular picture which looks very limpid, and sort of sensuous, curvy, the stator and the rotor are highly geometric. It's very, very peculiar.
POPPER : And the result is, of course, that you get a feeling that is closer to nature but also to human aspirations, because were are talking about biological forms. These biological forms are reflected by this mechanical device automatically.
MALINA : Well, I must say that in this period there were certain types of subject matters that I specially was intrigued with - part with the space exploration aspect of this, orbits.
POPPER : What images strike you, did strike you the most, in this cosmic research ?
Is it just photographs which you saw or is it the actual machines which were used, or is it a sort of representation of physical phenomena ?
MALINA : One aspect, I would say -- those dealing with constellations or nebulae -- that comes directly from photographic information. But, when you come to things like orbits, I'd never seen an orbit of a satellite, I'd never seen a photograph of an orbit of a satellite. This is purely something that is by theoretical prediction ; we know it must be in orbit because it comes back around the earth, and we know roughly it's a circle, or more elliptical. So in many of these paintings, the elliptical orbit appears. Now the movement within the orbit is very easy to do with this system. I mean, you can give the feeling of something orbiting. Now the idea of stars and constellations -- nebulae -- are known essentially by photographs and telescopes. Of course, one can look in the sky and see the Milky Way and things like that, although this only a portion of it.
POPPER : Because I was wondering how much it wall actually photographic eye which was looking, and how much you were looking yourself.
MALINA : I think it's very important to distinguish that even though you are looking at photographs, then forget the photographs and make something, you use your own inventive powers to incorporate the basic form you saw.
POPPER : Well, this brings us to a question automatically which I was going to put to you later. And that is the question of the titles of the pictures, which are very often from the physical research work or form cosmic research or astronautics in general, and also at what stage do you put the title, because this is an interesting question to ask an artist.
MALINA : Well, actually, I think in most cases, I have a conception of something I want to do which determines the title. Now, for something that's highly geometrical -- for example, one is called " Mobile Mosaic " -- Its a formal title ; actually, I had in mind making a lot of little pieces of mosaic which would have a movement in them. Or, I call some, say, " Geometry 1 " where I had in mind a geometrical picture, and I just call it " Geometry 1, 2, 3 " and so forth. Now, no doubt, there are some times when you start on a picture and it doesn't go well ; and it may change, as you work it, you know it, a picture may take on its own life, and sometimes it may take you away from where you thought you were going. And then, of course, if I may have a certain kind of subject in mind, and was taken away somewhere else, I may end up with some other subject which I have let grow, and then given that a title which is appropriate for that subject matter.
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Frank J. Malina
"Mobile Mosaic", 1959
Système Lumidyne
avec tubes fluorescents
81 x 62 cm
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POPPER : Another question. I just simply want to know what the applications of all these techniques were. In other words, the realizations, but I don't think you ever use these things in any practical way, although there was the question of the Electro-Lumidyne Company where you wanted to have some practical application of it. Well, maybe at the same time, you can make a summing up of these main periods, just these main developments which we discussed in previous talks.
MALINA : Well, from the practical point of view, there's the practical possibility of using this for publicity - this is rather obvious. A certain number of publicity objects actually using this system were made, although it has never developed on a larger scale. It's possible that it will in the future. It seems difficult to predict. On principle, I see no objection to applied arts. It seems to me it's like pure and applied mathematics. Applied art is also a human activity, whether it's used as a basis to attract attention to inform somebody of something, it depends what you're informing about, and this is an aesthetic, not an aesthetic, but an ethical question to be determined. I think that also no doubt that from applied work, one frequently gets leads and ideas of how to work with things one might call " beaux-arts ".
POPPER : In other words, when you make a picture, you don't necessarily think about its application -- but an application is possible.
MALINA : I think one reason some artists tend to feel that they will not do any commercial art is because they then feel they will not be able to do the other, but I think the controlling factor is how much time you have to devote to it. In other words, if you have to make your living by doing commercial art, I am sure you have very little time and energy left to do " beaux-arts ". So, that's the problem -- whether or not you can still salvage enough time for doing things that don't have a commercial application.
POPPER : The reproduction process can be put into the hands of somebody else ?
MALINA : Oh, yes !
POPPER : Now, the summing up ... The big periods, during the first 8 years - from 53' on.
MALINA : Well, I would say the first real phase was an attempt to convey ideas and conceptions in the world of science in pictorial form, essentially along intellectual lines; or by representation of objects from that kind of a world. By using traditional materials -- oil paints, pastels, and so forth. Then came a sort of dissatisfaction with this and a break from the flat surface to the use of materials such as wire, string mesh, to make constructions, and put in the pictorial form. Then came the discovery -- a personal discovery, not a new discovery -- of the fringes made by 2 layers of mesh, which moves when the observer moves, which was a very short period of work. Then, the introduction of light within the picture, then the phase of transparent painting with light, then movement with discontinuous on-off type of lights, then continuous movement with the systems, the rotor, the stator, diffusing screen. And then, within each of these, to some extent, a searching for ways of expressing subject matter, either in the scientific conceptions of the universe we have today, or of manifestations of such things as space flight, aircraft flight, and of the modern world around us.
POPPER : Frank, of course, your intent to introduce sound is quite recent ?
MALINA : I don't think at this stage we'll go into it too much. I must say at the present time, I am completely in the dark about the way to go about it. It is now possible to convert ranges of sound into movement, how to do that and how to do it aesthetically, I don't understand.
POPPER : Maybe, we will have time to talk about disciples, collaborators or any direct influences you have.
MALINA : I would like to say that I started working with kinetic painting really on my own, which perhaps may be a criticism. I was unaware, I had never seen even a color argon, as far as I can remember. And I was not aware of the work that had been done in America along these lines. I did not see the picture that was in the Museum of Modern Art until about 4 or 5 years, after I had already started working. For me, it was a personal evolution, direction, and development, uninfluenced by anything else I had seen. Now, as far as collaborators are concerned, one person I' d like to mention is an electronic engineer named Johnny Wilmer with whom I worked in trying to develop systems of continuous movement, who was very helpful.
[Break in the tape]
MALINA : We were speaking of disciples or collaborators that have worked with me in this kinetic art field. Nino Calos of Italy has worked very much both with me and himself. He had an exhibition in Paris, in 1962, I believe. Vick Gray from New Zealand has worked quite a lot, mainly with the decorative and publicity elements in mind. Reggie Weston has done some work also. And there's a young man named Reggie Gadney who is now at Cambridge University who has also done some work.
POPPER : Well, these are your closest collaborators ?
MALINA : These are the closest collaborators.
POPPER : I was wondering also whether there are any parallel researches -- we talked about Shoffer once, we know also about Moholy-Nagy who was doing some experiments a long time ago, in the 1930's I think. But you did not know about that ?
MALINA : I didn't know about that.
POPPER : You know about Munari, I think.
MALINA : I know about Munari. That's something -- well, he also worked mainly with polarized light, I think. I think Agam has done a certain amount of work with projection of light through wooden board with holes of different kinds.
POPPER : Is it moving this light ?
MALINA : No, the light is not moving. It's not a moving system.
POPPER : And in Munari's case ?
MALINA : Well, it's a projection system in which it's not the movement so much as it is that you can change the composition and the colors.
POPPER : Is that similar to the apparatus I saw one before here from --
MALINA : From Santiago, Chile. The show was 2 Chileans -- Joel and a collaborator of his have developed what is called an abstratoscope, which is the use of polarized light to project onto a wall or onto a movie screen a picture which is constantly changing in color and in forms. And then, of course, in America, there's Wilford and there are others, which I think you have from the literature we have.
POPPER : Yes I have some notes on that. And I think there was also a man named Mack at the exhibition in Amsterdam and Stockholm - I don't know if you have these people in mind.
MALINA : No, I don't know his work. There are many people working perhaps with movement but not with light.
POPPER : I was wondering if there was anybody else with light, but probably there is nobody else whom we know about.
MALINA : There is a Swedish fellow by the name of Olsen, who makes constructions of glass which have incorporated Polaroid in them in the slabs of glass, and they are static with movement in the sense that when the observer moves there is a change within the composition that you see in the glass structure.
POPPER : That comes under the category of Agam and so forth, and Soto.
MALINA : And Soto.
POPPER : As a matter of fact, I must look into the South American side of it, because there's quite a bit of Plexiglas.
MALINA : Yes, quite a bit. In this Latin American exposition, there were a number of people working with it.
POPPER : We can move on to the next point. I would just put a short question to you -- I think you said previously you don't like the word " mechanical ". You say that the movement is give visually in the picture. Now, that is a very fair description, but I don't think it's a complete description. It doesn't satisfy me completely. Couldn't you think of saying that it transforms mechanical movement into something visually.
MALINA : You see, the reason I object the use of the word " mechanical " is that conceptually there is now a reaction against the mechanistic attitudes for life, and I think Tingerly represents this sarcasm, that he as well as many of the artists today who are working with mechanical movement are really exploiting clockwork systems, mechanical movements, the type of art that it's a shame didn't develop in the last century or even in the century before, which was the period of the mechanistic development.
POPPER : It seems that it has developed, and I'm trying to do some research. It's in some museum in Switzerland, there's an apparatus of the 18th century which is exactly in that spirit, or even of the 17th century.
MALINA : And now the movement that one obtains with light, if you mean by mechanical, as something opposed to human movement, then perhaps one could use a better word. I'd say real movement, rather than mechanical, or actual movement -- in other words, a painting in which there is actual movement whether it's mechanical or not, because there's actually a change with electric light.
POPPER : Yes, the mechanical part.
MALINA : That is to say physical movement.
POPPER : That is to say the rotor is moving. The light is not moving in itself, the fluorescent light.
MALINA : No, although one can make systems in which the lights themselves might move. For example, I think there's one system of achieving movement in which you use mirrors, and the mirrors turn and then the light is reflected from theses mirrors onto your picture screen.
POPPER : Yes.
MALINA : So physical movement, not necessarily human, but actually physical movement.
POPPER : That's a question of terminology. Now, I've still got these two questions which I put to you before hand. One was why do you think people are so concerned as to whether the same picture will repeat itself, or the same series of pictures, and the second question was the correspondence between sound and color which you won't go into at this stage -- except that I would like to have your opinion on " Son et Lumière ".
MALINA : Well, now. On this first question, whether or not a picture has a cycle, a short cycle or a long cycle, or whether it is like a film with a story which has a beginning, a middle, a climax, and an end. Now, I've had a discussion with a psychoanalyst who felt strongly that a picture should be like a story -- a classical story which has a beginning, a middle, a climax and an end, and then it starts again. But, as a matter of fact, I have only one picture in which you know the cycle repeats, but it's not quite like that. The Big Dipper, or what you call the Wagon, the constellation appears about every two minutes, and know every two minutes that this is when it starts again. But in most of the pictures, the movement is so complex that you don't know when the cycle does repeat. Now, aesthetically speaking, I'm not too clear how to analyze the situation, except that I would say this : If you watch the sea or fire in the fireplace, you have essentially a given form and movement around this essential form. Well, in the fire perhaps there is a beginning and then a continuing of the burning and then a going out, but I mean one doesn't usually watch it that long to see all that take place, and one doesn't regard it as that kind of a story, but you watch the movement as a sort of movement as such.
POPPER : In fact, the sea would have the same movement for a very long time.
MALINA : Yes, the waves breaking on the seashore. One could watch them for a very long time.
POPPER : Yes, although there are variations in it, the general picture will be roughly the same. And this is also what you really want your pictures to do.
MALINA : I think that these pictures tend to be within that category of experience, that is complex movement which does not radically change its form, but has a movement something like the movement of the sea or the fire in the fireplace. Now, I am somewhat concerned that if you make a picture that has a very definite clear-cut story, that it will become after you've seen it say for 5 times.
POPPER : Exactly.
MALINA : It's like listening to phonograph record. It's like one doesn't take a phonograph record and put it on and keep it playing for an hour, over and over, starting from the beginning. I think it would fatigue. And I think a painting using that principle finally would fatigue too. Whereas if it doesn't have a discrete beginning and an ending, it's possible to look back at it very frequently without feeling any sense of boredom.
POPPER : Yes, of course there was the possibility that the psychoanalyst was thinking about psychodrama . I think you know about that therapeutical drama where patients act their own lives - - there is a sort of therapy, on art, based on dramatic art, and, of course, the spontaneous part of this is that you can go on and on as life goes on and on, and you can go on acting. Maybe your psychoanalyst thought of something like that.
MALINA : Maybe.
POPPER : Well, anyway. That answers question 1, and question 2 we won't cover unless you want to tell me what you think about the " Son et Lumière ".
MALINA : Well, I must say, I think I've seen " Son et Lumière ", once -- I believe it was at Rouen, at the château. It seems to me it's essentially, well it's not a pantomime, but it's more related to a theater or the cinema than to an art object.
POPPER : Yes.
MALINA : I think it's an entirely different animal from a painting or a sculpture.
POPPER : Well, you would call it an art ?
MALINA : Well, I suppose one would call it an art if someone did it unusually well.
POPPER : Yes, maybe, but it would be possible.
MALINA : I suppose.
POPPER : But you feel it's very far, it doesn't matter how you do it.
MALINA : I think it's very far from the kind of thing I am doing. I don't think there is much relation. I mean I can visualize that what I've been doing could be blown up into murals of very large size, but I have not conceived it as a spectacle, exactly in the sense something like " Son et Lumière ".
POPPER : Now, one question which will probably cause a big discussion -- whether the artist more or less controls all the creative process ?
MALINA : There's no question about it that with the kinetic paintings using this type of system, there is control to the extent that there is control say in flat painting. There is no doubt that at the beginning, when I started working, not knowing anything about it, what I saw and what I've painted on the rotor and the stator was, say, a surprise. And so that empirically I had to build up experience. On the other hand, the same things must have happened when people drew and first made things look in perspective. It must have also been a surprise. I don't think that this was something - now I want this to look like -- I know this didn't happen, because if you look at the paintings of Giotto where they didn't understand the rules of perspective correctly, of course one might say that he didn't want to, but I suspect that he didn't know how to truly make it look in perspective. It was still empirical, and this is how it was, of course, with this. Now, after working with it for years, I now have rules -- for example, if you want movement to go one way or another, you know you must paint on the stator and how you must paint on the rotor. From the point of view of the composition, all the rules of flat painting apply.
POPPER : Maybe, I should put the question differently. At what stage, and how many modifications are possible ? Do you keep control in the whole of the cycle ?
MALINA : Do I follow a cycle ? Well, now this is like asking an impressionist painter if he can control every spot of color that he puts. If you asked Monet -- I think it was Monet who painted the cathedrals in impressionist painting -- well, there are thousands of spots of color. I can't imagine that every one of those has been calculated and determined. I mean in general, or if he was standing back and he said a few more her or something like that. Certainly, the same thing applies here. One can determine the principle and you could determine in detail if you had the time and the patience. There is nothing to keep one from doing this.
POPPER : On the question of detail. For example, if you get an impressionist picture or a pointillist picture, you can step back, look at the picture if you are an artist, and modify it slightly by one point or three points or ten points. Now, by changing one detail in your picture, don't you modify many things in the picture ?
MALINA : Well, you have a possibility of making modifications. I usually start out with a sketch -- with a special gouache mixture -- with a sketch both on the rotor and stator elements. Then, I can make changes in either of these elements. Now, if you make a change in the rotor, there's no doubt that that change will be felt round the whole cycle in the picture. If you make a change on the stator, then this will only affect the vision on the screen at that particular area of the composition. Now there's no doubt that one has to bring about some kind of integrating process. It might be that you have some certain kinds of things taking place in one area that are satisfactory and a very bad situation somewhere else. That you must work it out between both to bring about something that you find satisfactory. But, it is certainly more difficult that with flat painting because...
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POPPER : That's what's in front of me -- I see it's very colored but I don't want to record all my impressions which I shall try to collect and write about afterwards, but maybe you can tell me the history of the picture if you can remember, and salient points.
MALINA : Well, this is one of the very early string relied pictures. As you will notice the string structure is within an old-fashioned frame. The frame itself has painting on it to tie in with the composition of the string relief. All the string in the picture is in tension, which I think does give to the painting a feeling of tension. When I made it, I wasn't very conscious that it represented anything very special, but as you know, just recently we had an American physicist here who looked at it and said " Oh, I see you have a picture of the cosmic ray showers. " And I think there is no doubt that there are patterns there that are very similar to cloud-chamber photographs of cosmic ray showers.
POPPER : Of course, you know there is quite a school of thought who dispute this fact, that if you see something in a picture, something figurative in a picture afterwards, that is only an association of ideas. Here it is pretty obvious that it corresponds very closely to a photograph, so you really think that the first impression was that it went into your unconsciousness, and you made your picture, and you transformed the pattern and you put color onto it, and put a new frame, and a real frame, and also in a new framework, and transformed it -- but it becomes afterwards again visible. Can you accept that sort of explanation ?
MALINA : I think so. I don't think that one can deny that frequently things come out of subconscious as little as we know about them.
POPPER : Well, it's like a dream as a matter of fact, you recognize it afterwards.
MALINA : And also, I think it may be worth pointing out that when you work with a different media, the very properties of the medium lead you to making certain kinds of things. In other words, when you are working with string in this kind of a structure, this type of pattern is one that is quite readily made.
POPPER : And of course, because of using string there, it gave it a new synthesis.
MALINA : Well, I can remember when I started working with these pictures with string, I started saying well, really, this string has three dimensions. In other words, it's line, but it's a line with three dimensions. In other words, it's solid, a real line, rather than a painted line.
POPPER : You get the feeling of that. I got the feeling, and of course it's underlined by the color scheme, that the real third dimension and you sort of are part of the picture. You're in the middle of the picture.
MALINA : One can imagine paintings of this kind of picture in which the lines are purely painted on a flat surface, which would be quite different feeling and quite a different appearance.
POPPER : Well, this was a definite turning point in your career... when you introduced the depth.
MALINA : Yes, the depth. But, actually, going away from painting on a flat surface and going to the use of real, solid line.
POPPER : Mainly due to the string used as a line. The line transformed into a string. The second picture I asked you to show me is entitled " The Family ". Now we have already gone into another period, although I can see that there are strings, painted strings, but the background -- that's the striking part -- the background are children's paintings, and I believe you told me that this was Roger when he was 3 years old who provided these, and you cut the out and used them as a very interesting experiment. But could you just resume...
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MALINA : [ I used (?)] pieces of paper and built up that collage as the background with copies of the child's drawings he made at the age of 3.
POPPER : It give it the feeling, in some cases, of wall paintings, of prehistoric paintings. But is it a conscious thing or just an ornamental thing ?
MALINA : Not specially. As you pointed out, in the wire and string are rather outlined figures of the mother and the father, and the children. This perhaps was one in a period when I was having quite a few discussions about mature, grown painters imitating children, and I must say I have a rather strong view about that. My feeling is that this is going backwards for a mature painter... It seems to me that this is a dubious approach, because I know that one of the feelings is that a child sees things in an uninhibited , special way. On the other hand, as one grows and gets exposed to life, and has an education, one doe build up a much more complex and perhaps much more realistic view of what the universe is like than a child does. It's not a simple problem. I remember Shoffer saying that the difference between a grown artist painting like a child and a child, was that he would perhaps paint 20 picture or make 20 drawings which would be in the same pattern of thought. Whereas a child will go from one to another and has no style. Now this is perhaps true. On the other had, it seems to me that children's' drawings lack just that contact that an educated, grown person looks for in something that is aesthetically satisfying.
POPPER : Well, you see certain people like Dubuffet and similar things, they are taking children's drawings or drawings of primitive people on the walls, just the texture of wall as a pretext from nature. A manifestation of nature which is later taken up by the artist and transformed into a sort of symbol. Whereas -- well, and I have the feeling that you were doing practically the same thing there.
MALINA : I think that I was just demonstrating to myself that one can do this kind of thing and I must say I did not follow it by others. The other thing on the primitive -- I'm never very convinced by the people that are great admirers of the primitives. Primitive art was developed by people within a whole hypothesis of the universe they had, and we do not have that today.
POPPER : Like the cave painting.
MALINA : They have a special significance in a different world. And I think to try to live in the 20th century and to try to imagine that one can get real understanding from primitive art objects is dubious. I can see the art historian's interest and I can see even an admiration for their craftsmanship, but I cannot understand how an educated person today can really get much out of it -- except -- not a snobbishness, but just to be different.
POPPER : Look, I've noticed that you have been trying to make a certain sarcastic comment with one picture on various things, on various set ideas, modes, fashions. That is to say, here on children's drawings or on the people who think that any prehistoric wall painting can be compared with any great artist's achievement. Also, you were making comments by imitating the monochrome Kline and Fontana ; also I think there's a sort of attitude at the back that you say that this is just one statement, you can do the same afterwards.
MALINA : I would say, that is probably not uncommon. I think any person if he has written something, he likes to experience the process. For example, I don't think anyone objects if you write down the poem of a poet. It doesn't mean you have created that poem. You might even play with it a bit and revise it to your own satisfaction. Certainly, some of the things I have done have been more or less to get into my own fingers and into my own sensation the creation of that kind of thing.
POPPER : So, it's not really a negative approach.
MALINA : Not necessarily negative at all. For example, Van Gogh made many drawings from Millet. He took within his own style.
POPPER : Then generally, they made an ironic or tragic comment on it, just as Picasso did.
MALINA : I think some of it may have an element of sarcasm, but if I remember correctly, I think Picasso's appeal was that most of the classical painting was not really art.
POPPER : On the other hand, he had a perfect technique, as you know he was doing perfectly classical pictures when he was working with his father, and I think this is a general attitude of this where he says " I can do the same, but I can also make a personal comment on it. "
MALINA : Of course, there's another aspect -- it may be that he's just getting old and that does not require original thinking, and if you feel you want to do something you haven't got a conception or an idea, then you make something else and twist it around a bit.
POPPER : Well, I'm glad the 3rd picture that you are showing to me is this light bulb because it's got very nice colors. As I told you, I am not going to give you my impressions straight away, but rather in writing. But, also for the light bulb, perhaps you'll tell me the genesis of it or anything that happened at the time.
MALINA : I think that the most interesting point about this picture is that even though I had not yet started working with light, with manmade light, the light was already on my mind. And this is one you might say is a glorification of an electric light bulb using the technique of the wire on wire mesh with transparency to a color foundation, and also in this one there's enamel paint in the interstices of the wire mesh. I had in mind the idea of putting in photons which is supposedly the way light is sent from a light source, and also there is a curve, a sign curve, which is the way alternating current manifests itself, at least in recording. Otherwise, I think this is about all I can comment.
POPPER : I can see for example these yellow geometric patterns on the right. Are they actually symbolic of a light coming from a source or is it a repetition of the light bulb.
MALINA : Actually, those are, that's a repetition of this sign curve, you see on the lower right hand below the light bulb, and then it's a repetition of this sigh curve which is the alternating current flowing in a wire.
POPPER : Is there already a sort of dynamism in it, represented by the curve I suppose, or is it rather geometric ?
MALINA : Well, It certainly is geometrical except that it isn't the rigid straight type of geometrical arrangement. Certainly much more fluid. It's also made with a wire cable which lends itself to making nice flowing curvilinear lines.
POPPER : Well, I must say I t-get the impression immediately that light will come on there. Well, that's probably because I know most of your later works.
MALINA : Yes, that's quite possible.
POPPER : Well, we've got 4 pictures in front of us now and I can see that the main differences from the previous ones -- in spite of the transparency you have been looking for -- you're using paint in a different way -- that is to say you squeeze it through until you get sort of a relief through paint. But maybe you resume the titles of the 4 pictures -- that is to say the first one on the right is " Buildings on Lake Shore ", the second one " Vertical Lines on Blue Background ", the third one is " Red Lines with a Blue Outline Against a Blue-Green Background ", and the 4th one which is special to this technique of squeezing paint is " Boy's Head ".
MALINA : Right. These come immediately after working with the wire mesh, and the wire and the screen structures. An in these the wire and the string have been omitted, and instead enamel paint has been used in the first three. In the second, that's using oil paint and Spanish white. All of these are developing further the idea of transparency, of looking through, and also in contrast to the interest in line, the question of the interest in structure. And one hears so much about structure these days.
POPPER : Well, structure of course can be seen very clearly in these pictures, especially the architectural side of it -- that is to say verticals and horizontals, but what I notice straight away is with the constructivist school that they repeat their structural patterns always, whereas here, apart from the picture's red lines on green - where this is one of the motives -- I don't find so many repetitions. It's rather a study in color and atmosphere. So, I would say that your whole is beginning to break away from a purely geometric outlook to free expression -- but staying a painter ; color is always very important in your work.
MALINA : I think that it's true. I might say that when I use the word " structure ", I don't think of it so closely in terms with, say, the framework of a building or a skyscraper or so much in terms of structure as so many of the constructivists had used it. I've often thought of it much more in terms of the structure of the atom, or the structure of crystals, or the structure of a leaf ; in other words -- and I think this is where I've sort of been pulled toward the use of transparency -- is that in most of the kind of structures, you cannot actually see this by eye. You do it by x-ray techniques, by microscopic techniques, but we hear very much about it. In other words, this is sort of an artistic attempt to see through and to try to give a pictorial feeling of the universe that is built up of various aspects that have a structural nature.
POPPER : Well, I'm very glad you're saying that because, as you know, there is a philosophical quarrel about the word " structure ", which I can't repeat in too concise form, but I think the main object is to get into touch with the universe. So through that structure, the new phenomenological school is trying to prove that the structure of the universe or the structure of objects corresponds in some particular way to psychological structure. So, maybe there is something in your saying that you're trying to get into the feeling of things. There's also the famous " Einfühling ", the feeling into objects by Warriner ? The first theoretician of abstract painting.
MALINA : Well, I don't think I've ever sufficiently verbalized in my own mind on different aspects. I think with me there's been a much more primitive and simple approach, merely the idea -- although we say we have this table here, and it looks like a solid, theoretically and by experiment we know that it is a structure ; the material of the table is made up of a structure which actually our own eye cannot see, but we've heard so much about it that we are convinced that it has it. The thing is how to convey aesthetically and visually this kind of knowledge.
POPPER : Well, I think this corresponds to the most high-flung ideas, you know.
MALINA : I think this is very different from the idea of say someone taking metal and cutting it into squares, rectangles, what have you, and say imitating the girders for a skyscraper. That certainly is a reality too, but I am not sure it's as far as one can go in the concept either of geometrical or of structure.
[Break in tape]
POPPER : Well, now we're talking of the collage period and we have 3 pictures in front of us. On the left, the transparency recital, in the middle a picture mainly in blues and on the right, you've got another untitled one which you had I think in the Arno show and which I think is mainly yellow. Would you give some sort of description of them ?
MALINA : Well, these are worked with transparency and they are collages in which painting is carried out on a top surface of wire mesh. But the structure is given by building up layers of mesh under the painted top surface on which painting is frequently carried out.
POPPER : Now, the main paint I can see is on the back or on the various wire meshes colored?
MALINA : Most of the painting here is on the top layer of mesh, although on the middle blue one, which looks a bit like a rocket taking off into space, you can see that there are several layers of mesh at different angles, but the principle painting is on the top layer, although there is painting on the bottom surface, which in this case is I think a piece of canvas.
POPPER : I can see you've been playing on a mental effect of the different wire meshes ; it is essentially texture, which is most striking in the middle one again, because there are so many different layers. Now, the color is still an effect that is rather geometric, not following the texture.
MALINA : Not necessarily. The color and the texture can be quite independent of the design on the top surface.
POPPER : Well, now we have gotten into your first movement pictures, and this is circle transformation, which I've seen a series of photographs giving the different phases. We shall talk less about the idea of movement than whether this was a haphazard thing or whether you were trying to construct these rather fine and subtle transformations.
MALINA : I might say that although this is the first one which built around the idea of the fringes which transform themselves into different shapes when the observer moves, I have noticed this effect is doing the work of the possibility of pulling that aspect out, and actually seeing these fringes and noticing their movement when one changed position.
POPPER : You had not seen similar things before ?
MALINA : I had not, although as you, know Soto uses essentially the same principle, only instead of using wire mesh, he paints lines on two planes of transparent material, and then, of course, you get the same effect as you do here. This is much less work in the sense that you don't have to draw the lines. Whether or not he had applied or found this out before I did, this I don't know. But certainly I was not aware of his and I am certain he wasn't aware of mine. What's curious about this is that it's very similar to some mathematical methods that are used even in aeronautics -- and that is what is called conformal transformation. In other words, you can take vertical-horizontal lines in one plane, perform a mathematical operation on this field into another plane and transform it into circles -- and actually this more or less happens in this picture. When you look at it straight ahead you see essentially horizontal-vertical lines ; then if you move around to one side, the horizontal lines convert themselves into circles around a point which I think I've called a moon. Now, the way this happens is that there are two layers of mesh, and where the moon is, these two layers of mesh are drawn much closer together. In other words, in most of the picture, the mesh may be something like a centimeter and a half apart. And this then gives the artist some control of the kind of patterns he gets, and also of the kind of transformation you can get. In other words, you can make two points, make two moons if you like, then you will get a different kind of pattern form the front, and it will transform differently.
POPPER : And it will be concentric in two points ?
MALINA : Then you will have two stationary points.
POPPER : Could you say what that represents in mathematics, what that means ?
MALINA : It's a relatively simple equation that transforms one plane to another, from straight lines to circles. One interesting thing is that this moves only when the observer changes his eyes, or if you take a light, and you move the light, then it will also move, although - that is to say if you keep your eyes steady and only move the light, you will also get the movement. The other thing one can notice, and I think that's why I left this work after a time is that there are certain positions of it which are not quite in focus, and that creates a certain eye strain. And I've noticed the same thing with Soto's. There is a certain feeling of disequilibrium in looking at it.
POPPER : Also, there is a certain placid feeling. If you look at it for a long time, then it becomes a picture and you don't feel like changing it anymore. It's not particularly dynamic at that moment. And what are these small lines at the bottom ?
MALINA : I wanted to make it into the feeling of a landscape. Moon on a landscape -- which are quite separate from the lines of force -- these are the magnetic lines of force around the earth if you can imagine ; this is a landscape which has again in it certain aspects of reality that you cannot see without aid. And you may remember one of the drawings I had, in the beach scene in Italy, in which the cosmic rays were shown in the sky. And there's again an attempt to try to show the viewer that there are things there that we can't see, but we know are there. You can tell from photographs and things, the forms they do have.
POPPER : And you can make a real landscape or moonscape, and you get the feeling that they are not too far away from the earth.
MALINA : It takes me to the time when, say, in Italy there were doing primitive and religious paintings ; as I remember, it isn't that they did them primitive or did them that way because that's the way they saw things. They tried to make them beyond this earth, and so they tried to give them the appearance - not of a real man, like they tried to do in the Renaissance -- painting Christ as real man and the Virgin May as a girl -- but they would make beings and faces that were unreal , to make them seem spiritual. Now, here we're confronted with sort of the reverse problem -- we know that there are things there -- well you can't call them spiritual very well - but if we know that there are things in the universe which we cannot see with ordinary eyes and whether or not it is possible for the artist to transfer a feeling of this unseen universe with ordinary eyes, which we know is there, and which has certain visual patterns and arrangements, it's a nice philosophical question.
POPPER : Yes, well, I think you've shown it in your article about aerodynamics -- you get these invisible things which by new inventions can easily become visible. And they correspond very strangely to your artistic expressions, even to middle age expressions. There is a feeling and they will transform it without necessary going into mathematical formula. By your knowledge and transforming that knowledge into some sort of a visual statement.
MALINA : Let's say my children grow up surrounded by these kind of visions, and then they start studying and learning, say, about the magnetic field around the earth, they will probably remember they have something like this, and then it may be that they will have a much easier time accepting and working with it. There's no longer the question of something strange and all this antagonism to mechanism, and to science in general, that we find in certain circles. But, if it's something that's accepted -- and certainly visually we can prepare our minds for things we realize later on have a reality, and doesn't necessarily have to have a feeling of strangeness and antagonism.
POPPER : What about the color you're using ? Does it have any sort of symbolic or natural reason, or have you just been using this for decorative reasons ? It gives a particular feeling of the universe.
MALINA : It has a sort of an earth brown. I can't say really if I consciously chose the color. Although... [Missing part]
POPPER : Well, we've gotten into the electropainting periods. Now the picture you have been showing me is the first one where you have been using the actual Christmas tree lights to give you the idea of using light in connection with your wire mesh. Maybe, you have some new things to tell us.
MALINA : Well, I might start by saying that the picture that we saw just before with the moving fields of lines, that is the picture where I first tried using electric light. As you remember there, the fringes are not too strong, and I was trying to find a way to bring the fringes out more strongly. One day, I put a light bulb in back of the wire mesh, and it didn't help me very much in that particular picture, but it gave me an entirely new vision. And I might say that it was a great surprise to me and I became very interested. Then, I tried to make something using light, but I started working with rather high wattage lamps, with rather strong lights that heat up, and I was also trying to work in a very limited volume of picture frame, and these became overheated and I dropped the idea and returned to working with the pictures. Then the next Christmas, when we took the Christmas tree down, I thought -- well, if they can use these tiny lights on Christmas trees without heating problems, I can put them in a picture. So, I took this and built up the wire mesh collage and transparent form and put the lights in back. You notice the top surface is painted in an essentially geometrical abstract type of design, and you can see the colored lights in back of the different shapes coming through. Now, in the daytime you see the painted top surface with the lights -- not very strongly but if this is looked at in a very subdued light or even in the dark, then the painted top surface sill disappear, and instead you will see the lights, and very clearly the structure of the mesh collage. Now, I looked at this and I showed it to my wife, and her first reaction was rather negative, and this I think shows that the artists themselves are not too confident of what they are seeing or doing. When I thought it over a bit, I put the picture aside for several months. Then, one day my good friend Sandy Koffler came to the house and I said I have something here I'd like to show you to see what you think about it. He became terribly excited : I think this is wonderful, remarkable, I've never seen anything like it ; and you better start getting to work. And he was really so enthusiastic that then I started really working with light, electropainting. Of course, that has evolved along quite a long road. In the first ones of course there was no movement, except in the wire mesh, some of the fringes.
POPPER : This " Lighted Mesh Collage ", is this the one you showed at the Colette Allendi show ?
MALINA : Yes.
POPPER : And in that one you used the light bulbs afterwards or did you construct the painting with the light bulbs in it ?
MALINA : The wire mesh structure was built with the location of the lights in mind. It was really an integrated work.
POPPER : And it gives the particular effect because the colors of the light bulbs correspond with the painting in a certain way.
MALINA : There is a certain integration. After this first electropainting, I made a series of pictures using light bulbs and also I found I could make better use of lights if I made use of " papier calque ", a tracing paper, for diffusing the light - Most of these pictures had wire mesh on the top layer and under that would be a layer of translucent material -- say the " papier calque " and under this I made, painted with colored cellophane, transparent colored material which can be superimposed very easily. And, of course, it is transparent color so it comes through very well when you have it illuminated.
POPPER : Well, these are more or less studies in relationship between color and light.
MALINA : It's essentially going back to the old stain or glass window. But, instead of using glass and lead, this is much freer technique, because you have any shape you like and you do not have these lead lines which dominate the stained glass. Also, it gives a new, or what you might say a return to looking at directly transmitted light, rather than to reflected light from opaque surfaces. Then, after this, when I started working with lights, the possibility of movement became obvious. In the first picture using movement, I resorted to the use of interrupters and circuits which make light turn on and off, and with this I made a series of what I called at the time -- mobile paintings, with on-off lights. And for example, one of them, that I showed at the Réalités Nouvelles, at the time of the Allendi exhibition was called " One Plus Two Triangles ", and in this one there are groups of lights - actually instead of one picture, you have four pictures, depending on which group of light is on. One triangle is always illuminated, but there are two other triangles that come and go, and they are different colors and so, in addition to the different pictures that you see in time, you already have the idea of movement and seeing something for the movement itself.
POPPER : Well, I've seen the on-off effect and saw the first picture of the lumidyne system. Now what I was struck by was three things -- the subject matter, the color transitions, and the movement itself.
MALINA : In the on-off picture that you saw with the 3 triangles, that was a geometrical landscape, but now in the first lumidyne, or kinetic, painting, there already one can see some ideas of a different kind : there's an orbit, a satellite around a planet, some planets and stars that come and go and also as I recall, I had the idea in the lower part of the picture of giving the idea of people walking on the earth.
POPPER : Let's continue today April 9, 1963, and you remember we were looking at your first lumidyne picture and you had started telling me the subject matter.
MALINA : That picture as you remember was called " Point Counterpoint ", and as I said that it was the first one that gave some indication of the idea of making orbits, the idea of stars coming and going, and down in the lower portion, there's movement to the right that gives the impression of people walking about. This one is the first one, and in color it has a wide range of color, including, of course, color changes; it has color both on the rotor and stator, so that you get the color combinations. For example, if the yellow on the rotor goes past a blue on the stator, you see a green on the pictorial surface.
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Frank J. Malina
"Point Counter Point", 1956
Système Lumidyne
57 x 57 cm
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POPPER: And the cycle of colors is a long one or a short one ?
MALINA : This one is about a minute and a half or two minutes ; the cycle is rather difficult to find because the movement is rather complex. If you study the picture for a very long time and concentrate on one area of the picture and are patient enough, you will find when the cycle starts again. Although it's not too easy, because you may have the same color appearing several times in the cycle at the same spot, so that in relation to other areas of the picture, it would be much more complex.
POPPER : The actual color you've been using, you've of course been composing the picture, have you had something naturalistic in mind -- say that the earth could be brown or the sky could be blue or...
MALINA : I think perhaps there is some color scheme, sky colors -- blue -- tend to be the upper portion ; stars and things like that go in the yellows ; browns more toward the bottom. Now, there's one thing I'd like to point out : one gets a very interesting transformation ; there are times in larger color areas that you see it slowly changing into another color. And in that transition stage, you get a sort of strange superposition of colors, not blending but merging.
POPPER : Is there really an atmosphere of color there, that you go really into red or blue or green for a whole phase of the picture ?
MALINA : No, I don't think so. I think this is more just one color following another, there's not a half cycle of blue or green ; there's much more variety in the colors in the cycle of the picture.
POPPER : Is the movement itself variable as far as different portions of the picture are concerned ?
MALINA : Yes. They are different types of movement. With this lumidyne system, of course, it is possible to get movement in all directions, although the rotor is always turning, say, in this one clockwise, you will have a large amount of counterclockwise movement. Also, one can make points of light that go up and down or back and forth and sideways.
POPPER : I was really struck by the movement of a shape coming in at a rapid rate from the top, which you perfected afterwards.
MALINA : Well, one can always control the speed of the movement also by the type of design you put on the rotor and the type of composition you have on the stator. Also, since the rotor is turning more rapidly on the outer periphery than the inner one, it could go faster -- although you could correct for that by the way you paint. You can make a point go very slowly on the outer periphery by the way you paint on the two elements.
POPPER : Now, on to another painting. You told me before I think that the subjects in the lumidyne period could be divided into three -- you have first geometrical abstract, then the human figure, and the third with astronomy and astronautics. Let's start at the geometrical abstract ; let's look at " Geometry One ". I don't think there is any movement. I can see on the right side a very large geometrical shape in red, with various luminosities ; at the left, roughly the same shape in blue with green streak across, and also different luminosity. An then there are darker areas but all very much divided, like a Mondrian painting, if you like, but influenced by your previous period. The previous period was using the wire screen, and, for example, like the painting in the Musée de la Ville de Paris. Am I right that there is not other movement, but it's more or less a study in luminosity and in color that you're using the geometrical shapes to reduce the variables.
MALINA : I might say what led me to make this one is that I had a talk at Stockholm with a collector named Arenberg, a collector who has expressed interest in kinetic painting, and he asked if it would be possible to make a geometrical one in which geometrical shapes would be transformed. Now, I don't think I achieved exactly what he wanted to see, but I became interested on other terms. This one has no painting in it except for the color ; the shapes that you see, the geometrical pattern, are built up on the stator out of cloth. There are several layers of cloth overlapping which gives the shading and then you have the red and blue trapezoids - or the elongated trapezoids -- which undergo certain change. Now on the rotor there are two yellow trapezoids which cause the green area to appear in the blue trapezoid. Now, it's an interesting color effect and that is that the red is so dominant that you do not know when the yellow trapezoid passes behind it, and you only see the evidence of change in the blue trapezoid -- you see either one or two yellow-green shapes at certain moments coincide with the complete blue area and the whole blue is transformed into green.
POPPER : Does the red on the right change ? Because I have the impression sometimes that there is a difference in color, in hue, whereas it's probably only caused by the green acting on it.
MALINA : I have the feeling that most of the movement you tend to see in the red is a vibration of the red itself, although it may be effected by the green or blue further away. But, as you know, red on gray has a definite optical effect, and I think that this is more done completely by the color rather than by the fact that there is a yellow moving in back of the red.
POPPER : This interaction is interesting because you know these geometrical pictures where the areas are predetermined -- where the artist tries to play with a small blue area in front of a big red area, he's trying to get a sort of rhythm which is not very developed. You can of course get a very fine effect, but is comes stronger and stronger like a musical theme developing.
MALINA : The movement is very slow. People have looked at it and not noticed that there were actual changes taking place.
POPPER : I couldn't see it at first. I think the beginning is rather slow -- but the green and blue effect is quite obvious and on the right -- you are not certain of change.
MALINA : To me, the red area tends to dilate ; it gets larger and smaller. It was study in color, light and intensity. And also what is the effect of the observer of a very slow movement. You don't watch the movement here, you really watch the change in shapes and in the color.
POPPER : The previous picture, I believe, was painted in 1961 whereas we're going now to an example of the human figure from 1956. Although I am not quite impressed with the difference in time. I can see you are doing some parallel research and in the subjects and treating them in a parallel way which is very convincing. What is first striking is that the color is very much reduced, the emphasis is on lines -- that is to say in luminosity not of areas out of very fine effects in white and yellow, and there's a definite background there. Of course, the subject is perhaps figurative, although from another world. Perhaps you can tell me the origin.
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