“I wanted whatever eloquence there was to come out of the performance of the piece—never out of the shape itself. What was paramount was that I never considered making any sculpture that didn’t move.”
—George Rickey
Often situated in nature, amidst rolling hills and dense woods, George Rickey’s large scale kinetic sculptures are activated by chance and light. Fusing the hypnotic appeal of random motion with his interest in Constructivism and geometric shapes, Rickey’s constructions stand tall, with long, bladelike arms attached to central posts. The arms of these sculptures – which rotate on bespoke precision bearings designed by the artist – gently and silently trace the sky like scissor blades with every light breeze or gust of wind. In Three Oblique Lines Conical Path III, three elegant lines point upwards in a fixed conical trajectory; a visual testament to the artist’s remarkably contemporary spirit which has solidified his status as a pioneer, even two decades after his death.
Born in South Bend, Indiana, in 1907, George Rickey was an American artist whose Kinetic Art sculptures poeticized the medium of steel in a transformative manner. As Rickey describes, “The object was for the pieces to perform as they could, and I wanted their movement to be slow, unhampered, deliberate—but at the same time unpredictable. As for shape, I wanted only the most ordinary shapes—simple, hackneyed, geometrical.”i For Rickey, design of movement was paramount; shape was of little significance to him.
Originally a painter and draughtsman, George Rickey did not in fact begin working in sculpture until quite late in his career. After America entered World War II, the artist enlisted in the Army Air Corps and found himself working on aircraft weaponry. Tasked with designing machine gun turrets for bombers, it was in this job that Rickey discovered the lightweight aircraft construction techniques and modern hardware that would later inform his kinetic sculptures in the early 1950s.
“In the army machine shop, he began to experiment with bits of scrap metal and glass he found around the base, constructing little sculptures with moving parts.”
—George Rickey
At the same time, Rickey maintained his connection to painting, never renouncing the medium; in his constructions, Rickey uses the movement of sculpture to “paint” different combinations of light and color on its surface. Using the changing effects of reflected light and color as a medium in and of itself, Rickey’s burnished steel “flash[ed] like fish under water.”ii
Although Rickey was continually inspired by other sculptors, he never imitated them. David Smith was one such artist; the two met in the 1930s. Rickey admired Smith’s asymmetrical configurations and the structural integrity of his works. And it was from Smith that he learned how to burnish metal in broad, expressive strokes. However, the two artists differed significantly; while Smith explored symbolic and Surrealist influences in his work, Rickey strictly focused on the rational and technological.
Rickey’s early sculptural works also found inspiration in the work of Alexander Calder, although Calder – similar to Smith – strove for a more witty, whimsical effect. In this manner, Rickey stands alone in comparison to Smith and Calder; rooted firmly in Constructivism, he saw his art as a mission to capture the pure form of movement, and to maintain geometric simplicity whilst creating increasingly mechanically advanced works.
As Rickey often declared, he “aimed to make things [that are] as contemporary as the weather report.”iii Three Oblique Lines Conical Path III achieves just that. Set in motion by the elements of nature, Rickey’s kinetic works move gracefully at random, remaining ever current – as Belinda Rathbone puts it, flirting with instability, but always returning to equilibrium.