György Kepes

Works

Light-Space Modulator (1922-30)

With Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

Flame Orchard

"Beginning in the early 1800s, the stages of opera houses were lit with gas foot lamps, whose flames appeared on occasion to change shape with the volume and tone of the singers’ voices. CAVS founder György Kepes' Flame Orchard not only investigated this phenomenon, but also did much more. Reporting from the Bienal de Arte Coltejer in Medellín, Colombia, curator Jasia Reichardt compared watching Flame Orchard to watching clouds or the surface of the sea—but they were moving in synchrony with an "extraordinary synthesis of church music and modern jazz."

Flame Orchard consisted of six units like the one seen here, each housing a 2' x 2' x 3" gas container and a sound speaker that vibrated the gas. As composer Paul Earls' music played, the flames vibrated and leap.

See also: Chladni figures.

Publications

Books

• The Language of Vision, Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944. Excerpt.
• The New Landscape, 1951.
• The New Landscape in Art and Science, MIT Press, 1956.
• Kepes, et al., Graphic Forms: the Arts as Related to the Book, Harvard University Press, 1949. Based on a series of four public meetings held on 17-18 January 1949 at the Fogg Museum of Art in Cambridge, 128 pp.
• The Visual Arts Today, Wesleyan University Press, 1960.
• editor, Education of Vision, New York: George Braziller, 1965.
• editor, Structure in Art and in Science, New York: George Braziller, 1965.
• editor, The Nature and Art of Motion, New York: George Braziller, 1965.
• editor, Module Proportion Symmetry Rhythm, New York: George Braziller, 1966.
• editor, The Man-Made Object, New York: George Braziller, 1966.
• editor, Sign Image Symbol, New York: George Braziller, 1966.
• editor, Module Symmetry Proportion, London: Studio Vista, 1966.
  • Module, proportion, symétrie, rythme, trans. Danièle Panchout, Brussels: La Connaissance, 1968, 233 pp. (French)
• editor, Arts of the Environment, New York: G. Braziller, 1972.
  • El arte del ambiente, trans. Nely Coarasa, Buenos Aires: Victor Leru, 1978. (Spanish)

=Catalogues

• Gyorgy Kepes: The MIT Years 1945-1977, MIT Press, 1978, 104 pp. For the exhibition held at Hayden Gallery, 28 April - 9 June 1978.

Articles

• "The Visual Arts and the Sciences: A Proposal for Collaboration", Daedalus 94:1, 1965, pp 117-133.
• "The Lost Pageantry of Nature", Arts Canada (Dec 1968), pp 33-39.
• "Toward Civic Art", Leonardo 4:1 (Winter 1971), pp 69-73.
• "Art and Ecological Consciousness", in Arts of the Environment, ed. Kepes, New York: G. Braziller, 1972, pp 1-12.
• "The Artist's Role in Environmental Self-regulation", in Arts of the Environment, ed. Kepes, New York: G. Braziller, 1972, pp 167-191.

Interviews

• Douglas M. Davis, "Conversations with György Kepes, Billy Klüver and James Seawright", Art in America, Jan/Feb 1968, pp 38-45.
• Interview with Kepes, 1988. Interviewed at his home in Cambridge, MA, on the occasion of a California Polytechnic show on art and science, in December 1988.
• Jud Yalkut, "Conversations with György Kepes", Arts Magazine, May 1970, pp 16-18.

Literature

• Jonathan Benthall, "Kepes' Center at MIT", Art International 19:1 (Jan 1975), pp 28-31+49.
• Marga Bijvoet, "Interdisciplinary Collaborations: Ideas", ch. 1 in Bijvoet, Art As Inquiry: Toward New Collaborations Between Art, Science, and Technology, Peter Lang, 1997.
  • "Interdisziplinäres Gemeinschaftswerk: Pläne", ch. 1 in Bijvoet, Kunst-Forschung, n.d. (German)
• Anne Collins Goodyear, "György Kepes, Billy Kluver, and American Art of the 1960s: Defining Attitudes Toward Science and Technology", Science in Context 17:4 (2004), pp 611-635.

Links

• The Kepes Journal
• Kepes at Wikipedia
• On the Vision + Value series