Sam Hunter Quotes

Sam Hunter was an American historian of modern art. He was emeritus professor of art history at Princeton University and an art historian, author, museum director, Professor and Curator. Wikipedia  

✵ 5. January 1923 – 27. July 2014
Sam Hunter: 2   quotes 0   likes

Sam Hunter Quotes

“He had come there dissatisfied with his work, even though his multi-kinetic work was admired and winning him professional recognition. However, at that moment, other ideas were gestating and he wanted to add what he called a "fifth dimension" to his art - that of artificial intelligence. […] : [At the colony, ] he was able to turn his thoughts inward, hoping to discover the new methods and direction that would more deeply satisfy his creative needs. It was at this point, while watching the motions and patterns of sun on leaves in the New Hampshire woods one morning, that Tsai finally achieved the revelatory breakthrough that changed his art and liberated his creative energies. As he put it, he wanted to create "natural movements in dynamic equilibrium, with intelligence," and he found his solution in an unlikely combination of natural phenomenon, the precedent of Gabo's singular (and unrepeated) kinetic sculpture, and the new resource of contemporary analog and digital technology. Speaking of this moment of revelation, Tsai said that he had quite deliberately turned himself into "a sort of plant": facing his chair into the sunshine in the morning, he turned his body in stages throughout the day, mulling over ways of make an "art that presented the observer with natural movements in dynamic equilibrium, and art that could convey the awe I felt while watching sunbeams shimmer through forest leaves." But a work that would "shimmer" simply did not do enough either for the artist or viewer, Tsai concluded. It must also respond in some way to the observer; it would have to work on a new feedback principle and actually engage the observer directly. In short, a cybernetic sculpture was required. To create such radically participatory works, he understood, would require that he draw on his engineering skills rather than suppress them, as he had been trying to do in his period of oil painting.”

Source: The Cybernetic Sculpture of Tsai Wen-Ying, 1989, p. 67

Similar authors

Romain Rolland photo
Romain Rolland 43
French author
Bruce Lee photo
Bruce Lee 193
Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and f…
Andy Warhol photo
Andy Warhol 133
American artist
Tim Burton photo
Tim Burton 43
American filmmaker
Meryl Streep photo
Meryl Streep 12
American actress
Sinclair Lewis photo
Sinclair Lewis 136
American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright
Steven Weinberg photo
Steven Weinberg 46
American theoretical physicist
Allen Ginsberg photo
Allen Ginsberg 76
American poet
Reinhold Niebuhr photo
Reinhold Niebuhr 65
American protestant theologian
Hannah Arendt photo
Hannah Arendt 85
Jewish-American political theorist