SIGURDS VIDZIRKSTE'S CYBERNETIC CANVASES: THE LOST CODE (Sigurda Vidzirkstes kibernetiska gleznieciba: Pazaudetais kods)

• Authors: Vanaga Anita
• Languages of publication: LV

Abstracts

EN

Sigurds Vizirkste's (1928-1974) exhibition 'Cybernetic Canvases' was on view at the Foreign Art Museum in Riga from 12 September to 21 October 2007. The initiator of the show, painter Daina Dagnija, singled out works from the 1960s featuring dot-like protrusions. Vidzirkste gave them this title at the Kips Bay Gallery auction in New York in 1968. Vidzirkste was born on 10 February 1928 in Daugavpils (Latvia) where his father was a clerk at the Railwaymen Sickness Insurance Fund. He attended Daugavpils 2nd Elementary School. In Riga he graduated from the State Elementary School and continued his education at the Chemistry Department of Riga State Technical Secondary School. In autumn 1944 Vidzirkste and his family fled to Germany, emigrating to the USA in Christmas 1950 where he settled in New York City and soon joined the Will Barnett's workshop at the Art Students' League. Vidzirkste was mathematically oriented. He worked as an audiovisual specialist at the Federal Reserve Bank where he learned the principles of electronic calculation devices. Vidzirkste integrates knowledge of mathematics, chemistry and music in his art. His creative career started in the late 1950s and involved giving up polychromes and reducing composition to dark-and-light, basic formal relations. He organises information expressed as a point, line, circle and plane, creating an arrangement or iteration of elements where the same application uses different sizes and the element used in the application changes with each new painting. Vidzirkste was interested in absolute rhythm, the spontaneous and calculated, regular and irregular, symmetrical and asymmetrical, changing and unchanging intervals, grades of protruding dots as the indicators of distance and gradations of timbre, multi-layered polyphony and minimalist asceticism. Peering into his canvases, the musically oriented observer perceives an intonation analogous to serial music that ignores the motif, condensing all the information into a single sound.

Keywords

EN

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM; CYBERNETICS; LATVIAN ART IN EXILE; NEW YORK; PAINTING; SERIAL MUSIC; SIGURDS VIDZIRKSTE

Discipline

• ARTS_&_ARCHITECTURE: ARTS & ARCHITECTURE

• Publisher: Institute of Art History of the Latvian Academy of Art and Art History Research Support Foundation
• Journal: Makslas Vesture un Teorija
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 9
• Pages: 35-44
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Vanaga Anita

• Anita Vanaga, no data

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

11LVAAAA090910