Steampunk Fantasyland in Basel: Musee Tinguely

“Switzerland: Where no view is a bad view.” We decided that this really ought to be the country’s tourism tag line as we watched the changing scenery on the train from Luzern to Basel.

The Tinguely Museum is simply a place one must go. Given MM’s experience, we might even say it is best if one knows nothing concrete about Jean Tinguely ahead of time. And since it is highly unlikely these pieces will ever travel in great number—a virtual army of highly conscientious dis- and re-assemblers would be required—it alone makes Basel well worth a trip. (Not that there aren’t other reasons, mind you.)

The current exhibition at the Tinguely, a fairly comprehensive retrospective of the Situationist International and its satellite movements, contains films (click here to see MM engrossed[?] in Debord’s Society of the Spectacle), art (detourned and otherwise), and delightful publications, objects, and documents. If one can curate an exhibition of movements that sought, at least in some part, to be uncuratable, then this was well done. Grafitti, loose pamphlets, multiple films competing with each other, and an installation, something like bleachers, that necessitated walking up and over to parts of the exhibit, and also viewing things from different perspectives.

For MM, the Tinguely Museum was more than an educational visit. It was a tour de force allowing the unitiated to slowly enter the world of Jean Tinguely. So slowly, with jerry-rigged, rusted iron parts welded into episodic moving machines—think zany bicycle—that tantalized the viewer with the artist’s cleverness. This technique quickly explodes into giant abstract machines that challenge art and space, and culminate in the ultimate Grosse Méta Maxi-Maxi Utopia, a complex movement of interchanging parts filling a giant room, bespeaking a life of sheer devotion to art and fueled by genius. One can look at all the reproductions in all the books and never experience the genius of the man until one has been in that huge room, climbing over the parts, wondering how many years it took until his vision could become this reality. He is a giant, and MM strode atop his masterpiece.

[Video #2 here.]

AM was equally delighted, noting that Tinguely’s work—especially the dustier, rustier pieces, not to mention all the rattling, jangling, and gear-turning—were about as steampunk as you can get (electricity notwithstanding). So. Much. Fun. See more photos from the Tinguely Museum. (And as an added bonus, the bookstore was, um, great. We left many kilos heavier, and AM actually found the printed reproductions of Duchamp’s “rotoreliefs” she’d been looking for…)

Unfortunately, there was no time to hit the Beyerof Museum, which sounds well worth the visit. (As it was, we could easily have spent another several hours at the Tinguely.) Our visit to Basel was really limited to travel to the museum and back, which seems sad… but extremely satisfying, strangely.