Frames from Trade Tattoo.

Another of Lye's "direct films" translating jazz music into abstract patterns. It also includes some animation sequences of words which emphasise the need for security in war-time. Sponsored by the British Ministry of Information which was using the talents of British artists to find new, eye-catching ways to convey war-time information to the public.

TRADE TATTOO    (1937)
(5 min., Technicolor, sound)
Created by Len Lye.

Conveys the energy and rhythm of trade. The original black and white footage consists of off-cuts from British G.P.O. Film Unit documentaries which Lye transformed by colour processing methods similar to those in Rainbow Dance. He also added animated words and patterns. Sponsored by the G.P.O. Film Unit, Trade Tattoo is one of the most exciting and successful attempts ever to combine the methods of modern art with film animation.

LEN LYE (1901-1980) is, in the words of David Curtis, "as important to personal (informal) animation as D.W. Griffith is to the traditional narrative film. Lye's achievement was to free animation from the 'mechanical' frame by frame process – making it as direct and immediate in its creation of images as 'live' photography."

Len Lye working on one of his 'direct films.'

Lye was the pioneer of many film-making techniques, including "direct animation," the process of drawing and scratching designs directly onto film. He made his first animated film (Tusalava) in 1929 and continued experimenting with new film-making techniques to the end of his life in 1980. Throughout his 50 year career as a filmmaker, Lye saw animated film as a perfect medium for experiment. He wanted animators to be "free radicals". He once wrote: "There has never been a great film unless it was created in the spirit of the experimental filmmaker. All great films contribute something original in manner or treatment".

Lye was also a pioneer of kinetic sculpture, making his first experiments around 1920. He wrote: "One of my art teachers put me onto trying to find my own theory of art. After many early morning walks an idea hit me that seemed like a complete revelation. It was to compose motion, just as musicians compose sound. This idea was to lead me far, far away from...traditional art". He saw his work in film and kinetic sculpture as part of the same attempt to develop a new art of motion.

Lye was born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1901. When he heard about the Futurists in overseas art magazines he was excited to learn that other artists were engaged in experiments similar to his. In his early years Lye made a close study of the art of the Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand. In the early 1920s he spent several years in Australia and the islands of the South Pacific such as Samoa. He studied the dance rituals of Polynesia and the Australian Aborigines. In Australia he became involved with filmmaking which he saw as an ideal medium for his "art of motion".

Sample frames showing Lye's 'direct film' technique.

His breakthrough came in 1934-35 when he discovered that he could make films by drawing directly onto celluloid. This was an inspired solution to the problem that he could not afford to hire a film camera. He found he could create "pure figures of motion" by painting, stencilling or scratching. With the right ink and brush he could (to use Paul Klee's phrase) "take a line for a walk" or make it dance along a strip of film.

To finance his films it was necessary for Lye to add advertising slogans. This was the way that experimental filmmakers, such as the German animator Oskar Fischinger were financing their films. Lye found an enthusiastic sponsor in John Grierson who screened Lye's films to add a splash of colour and humour to the programmes of black and white documentaries produced by his G.P.O. Film Unit.

In Rainbow Dance and Trade Tattoo (shown tonight) Lye experimented with the new colour separation processes such as Technicolor, taking black and white footage and re-coloring it in a dazzling way so that it looked like a cubist painting or a collage by Matisse.

In 1944 he moved to New York and contributed to an upsurge in experimental film-making in the U.S.A. In the 1940s and 50s he came to know many of the abstract expressionist artists, screened his films at their parties, and felt an affinity between their paintings and his films. Despite his failure to find sponsorship he continued to make films.

Len Lye in the editing room.

In his later years, Lye devoted himself primarily to kinetic sculpture. He programmed strips of stainless steel to vibrate and spin at selected speeds, creating "figures of motion" and flashes of light similar to those found in his later films. His sculptures produced metallic sounds so that each piece seemed to be dancing to its own soundtrack. Lye first exhibited his sculptures at the Museum of Modern Art in 1961, and subsequently took part in many group exhibitions of kinetic sculpture in Europe.

In 1979 he returned to film, revising his earlier works Rhythm (1957) and Free Radicals (1958), the latter completed with the assistance of Steve Jones and Paul Barnes. He had originally begun work on what would his final film, Tal Farlow (1980), in the 1950s but he died before it could be completed. The editing was finished by his assistant, Steve Jones under the supervision of Ann Lye.

Len Lye's work and ideas continue to influence those involved in kinetic sculpture and experimental animation. He was honored for his originality in 1992 when he was included in "Territorium Artis", the opening exhibition at the Kunsts- und Ausstellungshalle in Bonn. This exhibition grouped him with artists such as Picasso, Duchamp and Brancusi as one of the hundred great innovators of twentieth century art.

Most of Lye's films are available on VHS as Len Lye: RHYTHMS from Re:Voir USA. (Excluded from the collection are Musical Poster #1 (shown tonight) and three other films produced for the British Ministry of Information during WWII.) The tape can also be rented at Scarecrow Video.

In 2001 Lye's former assistant Roger Horrocks published Len Lye: A Biography. It is available from the Aukland (NZ) University Press.

(Notes culled from the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery web site, New Plymouth, New Zealand.)