Jean Tinguely (1925-1991). Tools, 1985. Iron tools, metal wheels, chains, rubber belts, and electric motor. 33-1/2 x 25-...

Description

Jean Tinguely (1925-1991)
Tools, 1985
Iron tools, metal wheels, chains, rubber belts, and electric motor
33-1/2 x 25-7/8 x 27-1/2 inches (85 x 66 x 70 cm) (overall)

Property from the Hechinger Collection

PROVENANCE:
The artist;
Anne Berthoud Gallery, London;
Commissioned from the artist by the present owner through the above.

EXHIBITED:
City Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri, (and elsewhere), "Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection," July 1, 2001-December 30, 2008.

LITERATURE:
C. Bischofberger & W. Rotzler, Tinguely Catalog Raisonné, Vol. 2, Sculptures and Reliefs 1965-1985, Männedorf, Switzerland, 1990, p. 218, fig. 669, illustrated;
P. Hamill, Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, New York, 1995, p. 39, illustrated.

NOTE:
This lot is accompanied by a photocopy of a July 19, 1985, letter from the artist to John W. Hechinger acknowledging the commission of Tools '85 through the Anne Berthoud Gallery in London.

The Hechinger Collection was started by John Hechinger, Sr., in the late 1970s to beautify his company's corporate offices with renderings of their stock-in-trade: tools. The work of Swiss artist Jean Tinguely was a natural candidate for inclusion in the collection. Tinguely, incorporated recycled hardware arranged into moving parodies of industrialism and consumer culture. Commissioned by Hechinger through London's Anne Berthoud Gallery in July 1985, Tinguely composed this kinetic sculpture in a matter of weeks, with the work headed stateside by early August of the same year.
At the center of this cluster of wheels, belts, and various hardware tools lies one motor-the nucleus that powers a saw endlessly cutting into a wrench, an arm continuously whirling a length of chain, and, every 15 seconds, the raising of a small green pickaxe, only for it to crash back down onto a makeshift anvil below. Creating nothing but noise, Tinguely enlivens this cold metal ecosystem into, in Hechinger's words, a monument to "the purposelessness of modern machinery." Tinguely wrote in 1959 that "playing is art, so I am playing," and his contribution-a crown jewel of the Hechinger Collection-epitomizes the theme, and title, of one of the collection's many travelling exhibitions: "Tools at Play."




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