Balla – Girl Running on the Balcony – 1912
Girl Running on the Balcony – Giacomo Balla – 1912
This painting is a beautiful example of Dynamism or Kineticism, a variant of Futurism that tries to depict an motion by presenting different moments of an event simultaneously.
This approach to depicting time is similar to how Cubism depicts space.
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Dynamism also evokes Eadweard Muybridge’s movement studies of the 1870-80s.
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The use of big punctillist pixels makes this very modern, and reminds me of Jim Campbell’s Home Movies series.
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Balla’s painting was featured in the Marcel Duchamp show at the Centre Pompidou
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The balcony balustrade gives Balla a good excuse for dividing the painting into vertical time slices.
There are 8 heads, and 9 slices.
The change in alignment between heads and slices illustrates the speed change in the girl’s movement.
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