THE COLLECTION
Jean Tinguely (Swiss, 1925–1991)
Fragment from Homage to New York
- Date:
- 1960
- Medium:
- Painted metal, fabric, tape, wood, and rubber tires
- Dimensions:
- 6' 8 1/4" x 29 5/8" x 7' 3 7/8" (203.7 x 75.1 x 223.2 cm)
- Credit Line:
- Gift of the artist
- MoMA Number:
- 227.1968
- Copyright:
- © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
2011
This is one piece of what the artist called a “self-constructing and self-destroying work of art,” composed of bicycle wheels, motors, a piano, an addressograph, a go-cart, a bathtub, and other cast-off objects. Twenty-three feet long, twenty-seven feet high, and painted white, the machine was set in motion on March 18, 1960, before an audience in the Museum’s sculpture garden.
During its brief operation, a meteorological trial balloon inflated and burst, colored smoke was discharged, paintings were made and destroyed, and bottles crashed to the ground. A player piano, metal drums, a radio broadcast, a recording of the artist explaining his work, and a competing shrill voice correcting him provided the cacophonic sound track to the machine’s self-destruction—until it was stopped short by the fire department.
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