Three Key Influences of the Kinetic Aesthetic: Henri Bergson, László Moholy-Nagy and Naum Gabo

Abstract

This chapter presents László Moholy-Nagy, Naum Gabo, and Henri Bergson as three key influences of the roles and functions of movement and time in kinetic art history today. It begins by highlighting Henri Bergson’s concept of duration as the perception of the present as it unfolds, and the memory of the past affecting the experience of the present. While Bergson argued that any mechanical representation of movement produced a distortion of duration I highlight that Moholy-Nagy and Gabo used the movement of mechanical media to explore the relationship between movement and machinery to produce new perceptions time. I argue that the use of movement, acceleration, repetition, modulation, and the optical effect of ‘virtual volumes’ with light and machinery enabled Moholy-Nagy and Gabo to articulate the present as an accumulation of temporalities as they unfold which expand the range of temporal codes within duration.

I suddenly saw the difference between concept and reality

(Sibyl Moholy—Nagy ‘The Light Display Machine’ Kostelanetz 1971, p. 147)

Movement does indeed exist here; it is in the apparatus

(Bergson 1913, p. 322)