The Prague Post
July 6th, 2008
Reader's SurveyNEW     Endowment Fund     Book of Lists ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Hotel Prague Centre

Home » Archives » Night & Day

Space and light

Rocket scientist-cum-artist Frank Malina shines at Kampa
Gallery Review | Search restaurants | Archives

By Tony Ozuna
For The Prague Post
November 28th, 2007 issue

Image courtesy of THE MALINA FAMILY
Hardly hebulous. Malina's Pax No. 3, Lumidyne system at Kampa.
Frank J. Malina

at Museum Kampa
Ends Jan. 7, 2008

Coming from a true artist of the Space Age, Frank Malina’s kinetic paintings from the late 1950s to mid-1970s are inspired by the stars and wider universe. His first exhibit in the Czech Republic in 20 years, currently at Museum Kampa, is a long-overdue tribute to a pioneering Czech-American artist who was also, fittingly, a rocket scientist.
Malina (1912–81) was born in Texas, but in 1920 his father decided to take his family back to their homeland, Czechoslovakia, after it became an independent republic at the end of World War I. The young Malina lived in Moravia from the age of 7 to 12, returning to the United States in 1925. In his 20s, he earned a degree from Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College and won a scholarship to study at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, where he earned master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and aeronautical engineering.
After his studies, he worked as a rocket scientist and aeronautical engineer for many years, co-founding, in 1935–36, the GALCIT Rocket Research Project, whose research led to the production of the first U.S. jet-propelled guided missile. In 1940, he received his Ph.D. in aeronautics, from Caltech, and he led research teams in developing hydrazine-nitric acid fuel (eventually used to propel NASA’s Apollo rockets).
In 1945, Malina conceived and ultimately tested the United States’ first successful high-altitude rocket; in the next years his research in rocket fuels and rocket propulsion led to his co-discovery, in 1946, of criteria for “step-rockets,” which led toward the capability to lift rockets into outer space.
Soon after, however, he joined UNESCO. After visiting Albert Einstein at Princeton in 1947, he wrote: “One of my first projects will be to break down the frontiers between countries to facilitate the movement of scientists and their equipment.” Such efforts became problematic.
In 1953, his U.S. passport wasn’t renewed on the grounds that his activities did not contribute to the good image of the United States, and he, along with other scientists and intellectuals of the time, was monitored by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the U.S. Congress. As a result, Malina stayed in France, and concentrated on art.
The exhibit begins with drawings made in the early 1950s. His earliest untitled works, from 1954, are fine watercolors on paper, with highly interesting spots of color, and in one in particular, a cluttered dance of dots around white and beige spaces. By 1953, Malina was already experimenting with light: Intermittent consists of layers of painted wire over light in a box. In this same period, he also created clever collages using colored scotch tape on paper in the shape of candelabras, waves, lines and wobbly circles. He also dabbled in “mesh” or “string” pictures with painted string and wood across painted canvases.
Deep Shadows (1954) is constructed of painted pieces of cut-up wire and elongated boxes covered by painted wire netting, creating a truly deep-shadow effect. Malina applied the same idea, but with more artificial light in the background, in a series of “electro-paintings” that employ wire netting to create a moiré effect.
By the mid-1950s, Malina’s paintings began moving, or at least the rear lighted areas appear to move in slow circular motions. He had developed a system of painting the main composition on a fixed transparent plate and painting other designs on rotating transparent discs. Light from incandescent bulbs or fluorescent tubes shines through the plate and discs to create a moving image of light and changing colors. Malina called this the “Lumidyne System,” and his kinetic paintings were first exhibited in Paris in 1955. These luminescent, kinetic works from the late 1950s through the mid-1960s are the centerpiece of the Kampa Museum exhibit, each varying in size, deep-shadow effects and color combinations to an almost dizzying or hallucinatory effect. And with paintings titled Earth, Life, Space (1959) and Interplanetary Space (1967), the viewer is reminded that Malina was a scientist at heart who had never lost his fascination for the cosmos.
In 1960, he proposed the establishment of a manned research lab on the moon for all nations; in 1967, he also founded Leonardo, a contemporary arts magazine (designed like a science journal), which he edited until 1993. Archives of Leonardo, many with articles by Malina, are available in the gallery space.
His later works are less sensuous, yet still actively soothing: Points and Geometry IV (1969) has little lights moving up and down in lines on a dark blue background, and he returns to the moiré effect in several works, combining black backgrounds and white spirals, many reminiscent of shining stars. Sink and Source (1966) is a pulsating star in blue and silver, expanding and contracting, resembling a silent fireworks display.
In his essay “On the Visual Fine Arts in the Space Age” in Leonardo, Malina states that, in the future, “one can expect that art objects will make up a part of the visual environment of the passenger spacecraft for transport between Earth and the Moon.” He also expected that art would be made by astronauts on the moon. More than anything else, his own art seems to anticipate such a future, with relish.
This unique exhibition of the scientist-artist Frank Malina is part of the third international festival ENTER, organized in cooperation with the Prague-based CIANT, the International Centre for Art and New Technologies.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at features@praguepost.com


survey banner


Other articles in Night & Day (28/11/2007):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Book of Lists

Provokator
Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.