Jean Tinguely: Homage to New York

Date
23 June 2011

Imagine a cold winter night in 1960 in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art, everyone on the art scene is crowded around to watch Jean Tinguely unveil his self-destructing scultpure. The enormous white machine made up of discarded items – such as a piano and a weather balloon – suddenly begins smoking, whirring, crashing, flaming and committing mechanical suicide. The machine was built to destroy itself and ironically, it failed to do so (Tinguely finished it off with an axe.) I’d do anything to go back in time to witness it, all the evidence there is of it is this video.

Share Article

About the Author

Liv Siddall

Liv joined It’s Nice That as an intern in 2011 and worked across online, print and events, and was latterly Features Editor before leaving in May 2015.

It's Nice That Newsletters

Fancy a bit of It's Nice That in your inbox? Sign up to our newsletters and we'll keep you in the loop with everything good going on in the creative world.