Frank Joseph Malina
Passing Planets III
Artist
Frank Joseph Malina
(1912, Brenham - 1981, Paris), American
Original Title
Passing Planets III
Date1966
Mediumpartly painted wood, partly painted plexiglas, mirrors, aluminium, motors, clear incandescent light, bulb
Dimensions43 × 54 × 24 cm
Classificationsmixed media works
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
DescriptionFrank Joseph Malina was a prominent experimental artist of the post-war art scene and a pioneer of kinetic art, as well as a musician and an aeronautic engineer. His artistic style drew on his interest in science and his extensive knowledge of astronomy and physics. Malina aimed for his experimental art to function as a mirror image of the contemporary world, which led him to work with new and unconventional materials. His kinetic paintings of constellations, galaxies, brain waves, and molecules possess a unique imaginative power, in part thanks to capturing the constant change and movement of these entities. During the 1950s, Malina initially created objects based on optical illusions created using the moiré effect. By incorporating electric light into his paintings, he created the concept of electropainting, which can be understood as the beginning of his kinetic work. These light-based painting-objects contain built-in light sources, which shine through a transparent surface construction, thus producing protean light compositions. Along with Jean Villmer, they later developed an electromechanical system termed lumidyne, combining a motor and a light bulb with an upper layer of coloured plexiglass and a semi-transparent diffusive screen. Light travels through colorful moving discs, projecting changing colours and compositions onto an upper transparent surface. Malina constantly strove to improve the technical execution of his works and experimented with varied elements to create new forms of imagery and visual effects combining light and movement. In the early 1960s, he developed a system called reflectodyne, which creates a similar visual experience as the lumidyne but does so via a different technique. Light sources are contained in a flat box in which they pass through a rotating, coloured disc; subsequently, their light hits rotating aluminium constructions, creating the effect of a moving swarm of light. Compared to the imaginatively toned lumidynes, the reflectodyne’s imagery is more abstract, lacking firm composition and instead constantly changing colour and shape. As he invented the reflectodyne on his own, the technique gave Malina complete control over his creative intentions and offered him unlimited freedom in selecting styles and motifs. It also allowed him to seamlessly combine his technical and imaginative visions. A later system, the polaridyne, is based on projecting polarized light which constantly changes colour and intensity, most commonly visualizing geometric and mathematic themes or the laws of regular cyclical movement. Building on the polaridyne, Malina began to develop several other systems in which he aimed to work with audio-visual synthesis.
Passing Planets III (1966) represents Malina’s kinetic paintings created using his kinetic technique known as reflectodyne, via which he achieved a fluid combination of light and movement. The work comprises a semi-transparent plexiglass board, set into a box, with a rudimentary composition painted onto its surface. Static light sources and colourfully painted discs, powered by a small electromotor, are placed behind the plexiglass. The resulting image is a fusion of light, colour, and movement, creating a protean projection with lyrical qualities which reflects the surrounding reality and its variable appearance. This humanizing use of technology directly affects the viewer’s sensibility points to a new role of technology, which should provide viewers with space to cultivate their own imagination and thus spotlight the positive dimension of technological civilization. Passing Planets III is part of a collection of works which Malina presented in his 1966 exhibition at the Charles Square Gallery in Prague. The exhibition’s focus drew on the work of the Moscow kineticists, shown at the Charles Square Gallery in the previous year. In the exhibition catalogue of Malina’s exhibition, art historian František Šmejkal noted the positive contribution of his lumino-dynamic paintings to the interconnection of art and science, describing that “they do not aim to be mere transcriptions of cosmic and nuclear phenomena, instead loosely paraphrasing them, seeking to make them accessible to human perception and simultaneously imbue them with a new dimension as autonomous artistic objects”.
Frank Joseph Malina (1912, Brenham, USA– 1981, Boulogne-Billancourt) was an American scientist with Czechoslovak roots. He studied at the California Institute of Technology, eventually becoming a rocket scientist and later a leading expert in aeronautics. As for his artistic practice, Malina was an autodidact. In his youth, he focused on drawing, studying under painter Richard Weston in New Zealand after the war. In 1953, Malina fully abandoned scientific work in favour of art, continuing to make use of the knowledge he gained during years of scientific research. In 1968, he founded the influential journal Leonardo, which served as a platform for artists whose work incorporated science and technology. In 1978, he published a collection of selected journal articles titled Visual Art, Mathematics, and Computers: Selections from the Journal of Leonardo. From the 1950s onward, Malina exhibited his kinetic art both in the USA and in Europe. In 1967, he took part in the legendary group exhibition Lumiére et Mouvement: art cinétique à Paris at the Musée d’ArtModerne de la Ville in Paris, which presented new tendencies in kinetic art. In the Czech context, his art was first introduced through a solo exhibition curated by Ludmila Vachtová and František Šmejkal at the Charles Square Gallery in Prague, which presented an extensive collection of his work. A small retrospective tracing the evolution of his light painting, titled Frank Malina: Point – Line – Universe, was held at Prague’s Museum Kampa in 2007. Malina’s work is included in most prominent museum collections worldwide.
Passing Planets III (1966) represents Malina’s kinetic paintings created using his kinetic technique known as reflectodyne, via which he achieved a fluid combination of light and movement. The work comprises a semi-transparent plexiglass board, set into a box, with a rudimentary composition painted onto its surface. Static light sources and colourfully painted discs, powered by a small electromotor, are placed behind the plexiglass. The resulting image is a fusion of light, colour, and movement, creating a protean projection with lyrical qualities which reflects the surrounding reality and its variable appearance. This humanizing use of technology directly affects the viewer’s sensibility points to a new role of technology, which should provide viewers with space to cultivate their own imagination and thus spotlight the positive dimension of technological civilization. Passing Planets III is part of a collection of works which Malina presented in his 1966 exhibition at the Charles Square Gallery in Prague. The exhibition’s focus drew on the work of the Moscow kineticists, shown at the Charles Square Gallery in the previous year. In the exhibition catalogue of Malina’s exhibition, art historian František Šmejkal noted the positive contribution of his lumino-dynamic paintings to the interconnection of art and science, describing that “they do not aim to be mere transcriptions of cosmic and nuclear phenomena, instead loosely paraphrasing them, seeking to make them accessible to human perception and simultaneously imbue them with a new dimension as autonomous artistic objects”.
Frank Joseph Malina (1912, Brenham, USA– 1981, Boulogne-Billancourt) was an American scientist with Czechoslovak roots. He studied at the California Institute of Technology, eventually becoming a rocket scientist and later a leading expert in aeronautics. As for his artistic practice, Malina was an autodidact. In his youth, he focused on drawing, studying under painter Richard Weston in New Zealand after the war. In 1953, Malina fully abandoned scientific work in favour of art, continuing to make use of the knowledge he gained during years of scientific research. In 1968, he founded the influential journal Leonardo, which served as a platform for artists whose work incorporated science and technology. In 1978, he published a collection of selected journal articles titled Visual Art, Mathematics, and Computers: Selections from the Journal of Leonardo. From the 1950s onward, Malina exhibited his kinetic art both in the USA and in Europe. In 1967, he took part in the legendary group exhibition Lumiére et Mouvement: art cinétique à Paris at the Musée d’ArtModerne de la Ville in Paris, which presented new tendencies in kinetic art. In the Czech context, his art was first introduced through a solo exhibition curated by Ludmila Vachtová and František Šmejkal at the Charles Square Gallery in Prague, which presented an extensive collection of his work. A small retrospective tracing the evolution of his light painting, titled Frank Malina: Point – Line – Universe, was held at Prague’s Museum Kampa in 2007. Malina’s work is included in most prominent museum collections worldwide.
