Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Gustav Metzgers
Auto-Destructive/
Auto-Creative Art
An Art of Manifesto, 19591969
Andrew Wilson
Third Text ISSN 0952-8822 print/ISSN 1475-5297 online Third Text (2008)
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/09528820802012844
178
the art world. One way in which the manifesto has achieved this is by
identifying its polemical and declarative style of delivery with theatre, in
the sense that many manifestos since the Futurists were intended to be
read aloud or performed in front of an audience or as the Futurists, and
after them the Dadaists, discovered, delivered as a carnivalesque rupture
to more established theatrical events. This goes some way towards
explaining why Metzger linked his production of manifestos with the
form of the Lecture/Demonstration the Lecture/Demonstration being a
performative realisation of the manifesto to explain and declare the aims
and beliefs underpinning auto-destructive art and show clearly its rele-
vance and meaning to a contemporary audience, while at the same time
remaining apart from the structures of the art market there being no
by-product, nothing to sell.4
It was during his time in Kings Lynn in the late 1950s that Metzger
moved closer to an art of the manifesto. Although this corresponds with
his increasing political activities, especially with the growing anti-nuclear
movement, there are also particular artistic reasons for this development
in his work. In 1953, just before he moved from London to Kings Lynn,
he broke off relations with the Borough Bottega and David Bomberg
the move from London was in one respect a tangible effect of this
rupture and his wish to reassess his artistic practice. However, although
he rented a large building in the town, where he established himself as a
junk dealer, he would not start to paint again until 1956. Then, during
August and September of the same year, he made repeated visits to
London primarily to visit the This is Tomorrow exhibition at the
Whitechapel Art Gallery. The initial reason for visiting the exhibition
was probably the inclusion of Eduardo Paolozzi in the exhibition.
4 Nevertheless, Joseph
Metzger had met and made friends with Paolozzi in Oxford in 1944, and
Beuys, who harnessed the through him he had also met and become friendly with Nigel Henderson
lecture form as part of his and William Turnbull, although he had lost contact with them soon
practice in the 1970s and
80s, was able to market
after. During his visits to This is Tomorrow he collected together copies
his blackboard drawings of all the different posters produced for the exhibition and exhibited
that resulted from his these at a local shop in Kings Lynn,5 where a short while later he re-
lectures as art objects of
some value. visited his friendship with Paolozzi and mounted a small exhibition of
works by Paolozzi, Turnbull and Anthony Hatwell.
5 These were all printed in
editions of about thirty as The reasons why Metzger was so enthralled by the exhibition are not
dyeline transfer prints. hard to see. Its presentation of different specific collaborations between
Each group produced one architects, painters and sculptors was premised on ways in which art
print which was exchanged
among fellow exhibitors or could be integrated with the structures of society and daily life. Where
pasted onto the exterior some groups approached this from a utopian and idealistic point of
entrance walls of the
gallery. Theo Crosbys set
view, those groups associated with the Independent Group (IG) most
is preserved in the notably that of Richard Hamilton, John McHale and John Voelcker; and
collection of the Victoria & that of Paolozzi, Henderson and Alison and Peter Smithson presented a
Albert Museum.
vision of daily life that swung from the ironically celebratory to the post-
6 Group 2 (Richard apocalyptic. Furthermore, Hamiltons rejection of style, rigid formal
Hamilton, John McHale
and John Voelcker), Are
concepts and declaration that What is needed is not a definition of
they Cultured?, in This is meaningful imagery but the development of our perceptive potentialities
Tomorrow, ed Theo to accept and utilize the continual enrichment of visual material,6 or
Crosby, Whitechapel Art
Gallery/Whitefriars Press, McHales view that Any change in mans environment is indicative of a
London, 1956, change in mans relation to it, in his actual mode of perceiving and
unpaginated symbolising his interaction with it,7 would have chimed with Metzgers
7 Ibid changing viewpoint on the place of the artist in society following his
180
Any discussion of Brutalism will miss the point if it does not take into
account Brutalisms attempt to be objective about reality the cultural
objectives of society, its urges, its techniques, and so on. Brutalism tries to
face up to a mass-production society, and drag a rough poetry out of the
confused and powerful forces which are at work. Up to now Brutalism
has been discussed stylistically, whereas its essence is ethical.8
the visual wasnt introduced and argued (in a linear way) but shov-
elled, shrivelling in this white hot maw of the epidiascope. The main
sound accompaniment that I remember was the heavy breathing and
painful sighing of Paolozzi to whom, I imagine, the lateral nature of
connectedness of the images seemed self-evident, but the lack of agree-
ment in the air must have been antagonistic and at least viscous.10
8 Alison and Peter Smithson,
The New Brutalism,
Architectural Design, April The manner in which Paolozzi presented his visual imagery is very close
1957 to the ways in which Metzger was to do so eight years later at Ealing
9 Cited in Graham Whitham, where he was to yoke together declamation and a rapidly changing
Chronology, in The sequence of images. However, even though Metzger did not know of
Independent Group: Paolozzis 1952 lecture at the ICA to the nascent IG, it is probable that
Postwar Britain and the
Aesthetics of Plenty, ed he had heard about a similar public lecture that Paolozzi gave to the ICA
David Robbins, exhibition in 1958. Paolozzis notes for this particular lecture, on his recent mech-
catalogue, MIT Press,
Cambridge, MA and
ano-morphic sculptures, were published with accompanying illustrations
London, 1990, p 20. in the art and design magazine Uppercase (edited by Theo Crosby, orga-
10 Ibid, p 21
niser of This is Tomorrow); furthermore the lecture was reported by
The Times, which described it in ways that bear close comparison with
11 See The Times, 2 May
1958, p 7. See also
Hendersons description of the earlier lecture for the IG. Paolozzi gave
Eduardo Paolozzi, Notes the lecture at break-neck pace, against a quick changing background of
for a lecture at the ICA, slides of his figures as well as of photographs of crashed cars and
Uppercase, no 1,
Tonbridge, Whitefriars aircraft, men with mechanised arms, and other odds and ends which he
Press, 1958, unpaginated. had carefully cut out of newspapers.11
181
Schwitterss unity of art and non art also entails the unity of art with
adoption and presentation of ethical positions and acts. For Metzger this
realisation was of major significance for the appearance of an auto-
destructive art in 1959 that could embody rather than just represent or
symbolise ethical or political ideals and acts in its form.
Metzgers first public exhibition of auto-destructive art in November
1 Manifesto, Auto Destructive Art, 4 November 1959
1959 at 14 Monmouth Street (a coffee house run by the kinetic artist Brian
Robins) set the parameters for the next few years. The exhibition was a
presentation of objects that provided an example of auto-destructive art
named and explained by a manifesto sheet and was also the subject of
carefully organised publicity in the Daily Express. By adopting these strat-
egies Metzger was not only laying claim to a currency of traditional avant-
garde practice but also doing so in a way that negated the need to make
art objects as such. Indeed, the theory of auto-destructive art as an attack
on the capitalist art market and on capitalism in general necessarily
spurned the production of art objects in favour of a means of working
whereby the results of practice were a polemically and ethically conceived
art without final material form. Seen in these terms, auto-destructive art
described processes rather than objects as such, and was presented as
occurring over time as an event. And as a statement or declamation, the
manifesto was the one thing that could remain to be freely circulated after
the event had taken place.
Metzgers first exhibition at 14 Monmouth Street had taken place
three months earlier when he showed three paintings on mild steel.
These works were a study in contrast between the imposing quality of
a steel sheet and the ephemeral fragility with which colour was applied
in chalk to these sheets. However, being mild steel the surface was easily
attacked and had been scraped by tools over which chalk had been
rubbed. Only a photograph of one of these paintings survives. The
abstract image is an amalgam of the tachism of an artist like Serge
12 Alan Bowness, Kurt Poliakoff and the structured composition of Bomberg which recall a
Schwitters, in Kurt
Schwitters, Lords Gallery, spirit in the mass, but the adoption of an industrial prefabricated
London October 1958 support anticipated his Cardboards installation in the first presentation
182
this might seem a strange starting point for Metzgers theories of auto-
destructive art. The handbill accompanying the exhibition makes the
connection quite explicit. Four clear sentences describe Cardboards as
having been selected and arranged by the artist from cardboard that
had been discarded its quality being that of something found, rather
than something fashioned or even represented. It had a form that was
unadulterated by commercial considerations or the demands of the
contemporary drawing room. This stressed that the work could have no
connection with the art market whatsoever while still making reference
13 In this respect it is
interesting to note how the
to the greatest qualities in modern painting, sculpture and architecture.
meaning of this work has Finally, the cardboards that make up the work were made automatically
shifted over the three for a strict purpose and for a temporary usage. It is also significant that
occasions it has been
presented in 1959 it
the strict purpose that the packaging was intended for was the tempo-
referenced the Duchampian rary protection of luxury consumer goods, defined by entertainment and
ready-made and Russian leisure rather than work.
functionalism; in 1996,
remade for Made New,
These sentences were followed by six sentences arranged under the
an exhibition at City heading of Auto Destructive Art. The new movement and art form was
Racing, the work reacted thus not only named for the first time but a concrete yet ephemeral
to those realisms recording
the material waste of example was also provided by Cardboards. It is public art for industrial
pollution and the human societies, in other words it is the opposite of an art market purveying
tragedies of homelessness luxury goods to the rich. Its function as a public art form is to be critical
(furthermore, for this
version Cardboards was of the society in which it is situated. It is a total unity of idea, site, form,
not presented as a set of colour, method and timing of the disintegrative process.13 It can be
reliefs on a wall but now as created in many ways, using natural forces, traditional art techniques
a brutally realist
intervention in a space that and technological techniques and furthermore can be machine
was defined by dimension produced and factory assembled. Given this, it is an art form that may
or aesthetics as much as it
was by ideology); then for
often necessitate collaboration. Metzger then finishes by stating that the
the exhibition City Racing object resulting from the different auto-destructive process can last only
19881998: A Partial for a finite time: When the disintegrative process is complete the work is
Account at the ICA, in
London in 2001 again
to be removed from the site and scrapped.14 This last sentence once
the source and again makes clear that the purpose of auto-destructive art does not stop
configuration of the with the object but has a distinct social and ethical dimension as public
cardboards were changed,
as was the title to Been
art in creating a degree of catharsis and confrontation with issues seen
There, Done That, KS, by Metzger; scrapping the ruins of the work is part of this process and
making direct reference to chimes with his desire to oppose any form of picturesque reading of his
Kurt Schwitters.
work.
14 One example of this A few days after Cardboards opened, Metzger attended Jean
manifesto, preserved in the
collection of the Sohm Tinguelys lecture and Cyclo-Matic event at the ICA. This spectacular
Archive in Stuttgart, has a event featured two out-of-phase recordings of Tinguely haltingly reading
seventh sentence added by a lecture, Art, Machines et Mouvement, in a barely understandable
hand by Metzger to the
effect that The amplified English; a cigarette girl manipulating a small hand-operated painting
sound of the auto- machine; and two cyclists who competed in creating a huge Mta-Matic
destructive process can be
an integral part of the total
drawing from mile-long roles of paper in the fastest time, the results of
conception. which were spewed out over the audience as they cycled. Although
15 A facsimile of this text is
aspects of Tinguelys lecture accord with Metzgers recent formulation of
included in K G Pontus auto-destructive art that the only certainty is that movement, change
Hultn, Jean Tinguely and metamorphosis exist Ideas, works and beliefs change, transform
Mta, New York Graphic
Society, Boston, 1975, pp
and disintegrate Only in movement do we find the true essence of
11320. This also includes things we are afraid of movement because it stands for decomposition
a photograph of the event because we see our disintegration in movement Time is movement
taken by Terry Hamilton
showing Metzger in the and cannot be checked15 what made more of an impression on
audience, p 111. Metzger was that as an event it was an undoubted success and could
184
Manifesto, but is printed on a sheet that also contains the first, a ploy
that immediately declares auto-destructive art to have a history (however
brief). This effect is doubled by the juxtaposition of the two very differ-
ent manifestos, in terms of the type of language they deploy. The simply
stated sentences of the first manifesto shift in the second to a more obvi-
ously declamatory, performative and poetic language. This manifesto
splits between explaining the purpose and meaning of auto-destructive
art that it is not interested in ruins, that it reflects the power man has
over nature to accelerate [its] disintegrative processes, that it is the
transformation of technology into public art and that it embodies the
chaos of capitalism and Soviet communism, the coexistence of surplus
and starvation; the increasing stock-piling of nuclear weapons the
disintegrative effects of machinery and of life in vast built-up areas on
the person before then examining its material properties, ending
with a long list of the materials and techniques that could be used.
Despite the change in tone, the understanding of auto-destructive art as a
public form of art that embodies ethical, critical and political positions is
still made clear. Indeed, the manifesto was produced to coincide with his
publicity for his Model for an Auto-Destructive Monument, 1960, which
was to consist of three massive towers one leaning constructed out of
mild steel around a skeleton from which the steel would fall away over a
period of about ten years. The model was made from office staples stuck
onto the back plate of an old radio, and in both versions the model and
the never built full-size monument technology is harnessed to mount a
stark critique of technological power, in total contrast to Tinguelys
playful Homage to New York that took place two days after John
Rydons story about Metzgers monument in the Daily Express under
the title Modern art will fall to bits.16
Three months later, on 22 June 1960, when Metzger mounted his
3 Newspaper review by John Rydon, Modern art will fall to bits, Daily Express, 15 March 1960
Kings Lynn, Metzger had perfected a technique for painting with acid
on nylon the surviving photographs by John Cox suggest paintings
somewhere between the taches of his mild steel paintings and the cuts
opened up by Lucio Fontanas work. However, as Coxs photographs
show, Metzgers cuts were more like wounds that would not heal but
instead expanded over time as the nylon was eaten up. Coming hard on
the heels of this development, the Lecture/Demonstration at the Temple
Gallery presented this form of painting as manifesto. The critic Jasia
Reichardt, who had introduced the event, provided Metzger with a
186
Newspaper review by John Rydon, Modern art will fall to bits, copyright Daily Express,
15 March 1960. Photo: John Cox
187
17 Jasia Reichardt, The Art of lineage back to Dada as well as a comparison with Tinguely, while
Suicide, Time and Tide, invoking lines from the second manifesto, and suggested that his
25 June 1960, p 731
18 The same autumn, at first sight perverse performance is not without either logic or
Sommerville along with symbolism. Art can only be the mirror of society, and a civilisation half-
Burroughs and Gysin, had
put on a show of action hypnotised by the prospect of atomic suicide, geared to consumer dura-
painting and poetry bles which seldom last five years may well be fairly reflected in works
projection for the of art containing the seeds of their own decay. The idea has a distinct
Heretics, organised by aesthetic appeal, as well as the morbid fascination of renouncing the
David Bonavia. In
December the same trio
tradition that works of art are inherently worth preserving for future
mounted a light show at generations.17
the ICA, during which time
the original cut-up tape Over the following two years the delivery of Lecture/Demonstrations,
54 Notes for Temple Gall
First public demonstration of the acid-nylon technique, Temple Gallery, London, 22 June 1960. Photo: Cyril Wilson
ICA. This fourth manifesto was the most strident and viciously worded
a reaction against the Cuban missile crisis, his imprisonment the
previous year and an obviously burgeoning art market. The manifestos
opening lines set the tone: everything everything everything everything
A world on edge of destruction, that then leads into a reflective
passage on the role of the artist and the observation that Artists cannot
compete with reality. But a mood of invective soon comes through. He
declares galleries are Boxes of deceit, before then moving on to
address the vitality of New Realism which for Metzger heralds the
next development of art. The world in its totality as work of art.
Including sound. Newspapers. Despite its power, Metzger recognised
the increasing commercialisation of New Realism and could not resist
the scathing declaration: You stinking fucking cigar smoking bastards
and you scented fashionable cows who deal in works of art The artist
does not want his work to be in the possession of stinking people.
Metzgers declamatory tirade takes its place in the tradition of such
statements of refusal of avant-garde recuperation; however, it was the
last time that he would use such language in his manifestos or other
publications (even though the underlying message remained). In the
following few years, his recognition of an auto-creative art within auto-
destructive art, allied to the position he had adopted as an artist who
produces no objects, led him to an increasingly close identification with
science whereby his view of the studio as laboratory became actual.
Coracle@workfortheeyetod
o, London, 1996, pp 6481. Two months after he distributed Manifesto World at the Misfits
Evening at the ICA, Metzger gave a Lecture/Demonstration at the Ealing
21 Ark, Journal of the Royal
College of Art, no 32, College of Art under the title of Auto-Destructive Art, Auto-Creative
Summer 1962 Art: The Struggle for the Machine-Arts of the Future. This event,
190
Gustav Metzger, Auto-Destructive Art, Demonstration, South Bank, London, 3 July 1961. The audience included
interested building workers from the Shell House construction project near by. Published in Ark, Journal of the Royal
College of Art, 1962, photographer unknown. All efforts have been made to trace the copyright holder
191
School of Fine Art, one result of which was a film by a fellow student
about Metzgers work. Harold Liversidges Auto-Destructive Art The
Activities of G Metzger included shots of some of Metzgers first light
projections, one of the first tangible results of his increasing interest in
an explicitly scientific process. Another outcome of this shift in his
attitude was his involvement with the Italian kinetic artist Marcello
Salvadori in planning to set up in London a Centre for Advanced
Creative Studies bringing together art, science and technology which
soon became the Signals gallery and magazine under the guidance of
David Medalla and Paul Keeler. Signals own statement of intent, as a
platform for all those who believe passionately in the co-relation of the
arts and Arts imaginative integration with technology, science, architec-
ture and our entire environment,23 declares an adherence to a critically
multidisciplinary approach to art that directly applies to the thinking
behind the shifts occurring in Metzgers own work. This new context for
Metzger led to the publication of his fifth manifesto within the pages of
Signals alongside a brief discussion of Medallas bubble and sand
machines. In this manifesto he refers to molecular theory as a way of
explaining his production of an art defined by image-multiplication and
auto-transformation by recourse to random variable theory. His aim was
to produce an art where at a certain point, the work takes over, is an
23 Signals Newsbulletin of the
activity beyond the detailed control of the artist, reaches a power, grace,
Centre for Advanced momentum, transcendence which the artist could not achieve except
Creative Study, 1:1, August through random activity.24 Rather than solely illustrative of aesthetic
1964, p 1
responses to movement, Signals framed the kinetic art it exhibited and
24 Gustav Metzger, On wrote about as a tendency that reflected the wide social, political and
Random Activity in
Material/Transforming technological structures of reference that this work encapsulated, above
Works of Art, 30 July and before it might be considered aesthetically. Metzger was to find a
1964, in Four Manifestoes material and form in light projections of structural movement that could
by Gustav Metzger,
Signals Newsbulletin of the embody the random and uncontrollable activity he sought.
Centre for Advanced On 24 February 1965, Metzger gave a Lecture/Demonstration at the
Creative Study, 1:2, Architectural Association. An expanded version of the lecture was subse-
September 1964. This fifth
manifesto was published quently published (first by a student press at the AA in June and then in
alongside the first three October by Metzger himself).25 This act of publishing the lecture, and
manifestoes as No IV.
the way in which Metzger controlled the means of distribution, echoes
25 Metzger disowned the the production of his manifestos. It is significant not only that both
demonstration aspect of
this event because of its
editions of the publication carry on its cover an image of notes by
lack of preparation. Metzger for his first Lecture/Demonstration at the Temple Gallery in
Students at the AA took 1960, but also that the edition of the lecture published by Metzger
this aspect of the event
over and hurled glass,
himself includes reprints of his manifestos. Both features of the publica-
fluorescent light tubes and tion declare the history that Metzger has given to auto-destructive art.
other materials into This text, more than any other produced by Metzger, codifies the theory
Chings Yard, in the middle
of the AAs building. This and practice of auto-destructive art. Having done so, Metzger could
was reported in Anarchy, develop his theories in other directions signalled by the name he gave
no 61, March 1966, to to the publisher of the lecture, Destruction/Creation, and, as we shall
which Metzger provided
response in Anarchy, no see, by the techniques that he would use and refine over the next
64, June 1966. few years.
192
For Metzger the liquid crystals promised a set of visual experiences that
could not be predicted and were infinitely variable, in contrast to the solid
state nature of most kinetic art. As he had explained in Cambridge:
art is enriched by an astronomical number of new forms, colours and
textures when the rigidity of material is loosened The new art forms
are related to current ideas in science and to current technology. This
relation is on the level of ideas. It is intuitive and emotional. It is a physi-
cal involvement. In disintegrating and growing art, time ceases to be uni-
directional. At one instant - sic - of time, the work may be going in ten
different directions in time. The anisotropy of time.26
Water jet, fall, atomized. Main line compressed air. Floating structures.
Liquid crystal phenomena with electronically controlled continuous melt-
ing and cooling phases in reflected light, and with projected polarized
light. Expanded metal. Vacuum. Nylon, copper, rubber and plastic tubes.
Mica. Hot plates. Fibre optics. Carbon dioxide. Liquid nitrogen. Dewar.
Silicones. Polyethylene oxide. Stroboscope. Graphite. Plastics. Hot air
blower. Sound.
This event determined the course of his activities over the next few years,
such as his work as publisher and editor of PAGE, the bulletin of the
Computer Arts Society between 1969 and 1973; his six-month research
into automata for two articles in Studio International in 1969; or his
involvement after 1969 with the British Society for Social Responsibility
in Science, founded in 1969 by the biophysicist Maurice Wilkins. Just as
his theories and practice of auto-destructive art were wholly linked with
social and political engagement, so too was his use of science in terms of
a social responsibility in which the use of these techniques in other areas
was continually questioned a point made by the Zagreb Manifesto of
June 1969, that Metzger co-signed with Gordon Hyde and Jonathan
Benthall and published in Studio International, when it stated that:
artists are increasingly striving to relate their work and that of the
technologist to the current unprecedented crisis in society. Some artists
are responding by utilizing their experience of science and technology to
try and resolve urgent social problems. Others, researching in cybernetics
and the neuro-sciences, are exploring new ideas about the interaction of
the human being with the environment. Others again are identifying their
28 Gustav Metzger, Gordon work with a concept of ecology, which includes the entire technological
Hyde and Jonathan environment that man has imposed on nature.28
Benthall, Zagreb
Manifesto, Studio
International, June 1969, Although over the last fifteen years Metzgers working practice has
p 259 noticeably shifted, with work being made and remade for exhibitions,
194
and entering public collections here and abroad, there is a real sense in
which the manifesto and Lecture/Demonstration remain at the heart of
his activity as an artist. For instance, each of the works that make up
the Historic Photographs series, as indeed the series as a whole, can
be read as manifesto in the particular way in which this body of work
addresses a whole range of social and artistic issues. Furthermore, and
more specifically, the lecture has continued to this day to be his
preferred form for engaging in public discourse concerning his ideas
and work. Indeed, the lecture, the Lecture/Demonstration and the
manifesto provide the theoretical basis for understanding the nature of
Metzgers practice as an artist.