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Oskar Fischinger II
Motion
Paintings
Jack Rutberg Fine Arts
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It seems impossible,
with this exhibition, any longer to miss the painter’s genius... and
for a very simple reason. All you have to do is step back from his
paintings five or ten feet (it varies) until the correct viewing distance
is reached. Fischinger is an artist who above all understands optics, the
flat brushstrokes and diminutive tones suddenly flare out into the
incandescence of Outward Movement (1948), or a spatial distribution
of circles (modulations of red or green) loses its galactic formulation and
becomes a proper constellation (Red + Green Concentric, 1952).
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Linear
Squares (1961) exhibits the complex
modulations achieved with careful and precise (and offhand-looking)
technique. And there is a construction called Stereo Film, an
acrylic plane suspended over a painted board, with a third-dimension effect
in the abstract dispensation of compositional elements—not only by
dint of the two planes, but because the visual field is divided for
binocular viewing.
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Such an artist,
whose painted-glass film Motion Painting No. 1 (1947) can be seen,
appreciates a subtle joke like Flying Time Presence (1949), in which
the forms and lines suggest a maypole and festoons, a ball and paper
airplanes, among other things.
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There is a
whole roomful of pieces appertaining to the film Quadrate (1934),
squares of red, yellow, blue, green, disposed in countless formats. And
there is the Small Wave (1940).
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