www.moderndesign.org:
These chrome balls gently move up and down with the rhythm of the water while reflecting the passersby.
Pol Bury achieved such effects with clever mechanisms of motors, magnets, strings, and springs, but by keeping it all hidden, he created a sense of basic Nature: the will to exist. Rewarding patience, Pol Bury's marvelous living works, are ultimately endearing.
Stare long enough at one of Pol Bury's unsettling kinetic sculptures, and you may start to feel like those scientists in The Andromeda Strain searching for signs of microscopic alien life. Suddenly, you're startled by tiny, possibly imagined, movement. In this small exhibit of the artist's rarely seen devices, something a little eerie is happening.
www.metmuseum.org:
Pol Bury's sculptures with their unexpected and irregular motion can have an unsettling effect on the beholder. This element of surprise and chance is a legacy of the Surrealist movement, which has never fully ceased to inform the artist's work. Bury has lived and worked in France and the United States and has received a number of large-scale public commissions for locations throughout the world, including projects for the Palais Royal in Paris and the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul. He has also created a number of fountains that incorporate water as an additional ingredient of movement in his sculpture.
www.guggenheim.org:
In the late 1960s, Bury began working with stainless and Cor-Ten steel, polished brass, and copper. By 1969 he had created his first public fountain, at the University of Iowa Museum of Art. Similar in many ways to his kinetic sculptures, the numerous fountains that Bury designed throughout his lifetime involve arrangements of cylinders and spheres that move slowly and irregularly. In these works, he embraced the reflections and light effects produced by the interaction of metal and water in the open air.
www.parisladouce.com:
Les Sphérades de Pol Bury, fontaines cinétique lovées au cœur du Palais Royal, font entendre un chant fluide, murmure des flots auquel se mêle le cliquetis du métal et les craquements du mécanisme horloger.
Les deux fontaines du Palais Royal ont trouvé place dans des bassins préexistants. La circulation de l’eau anime les modules géométriques dans un mouvement continu dont le mécanisme demeure invisible en surface. Sur des plateaux dodécagonaux, dix-sept sphères de différentes tailles en acier inoxydable poli, reflètent et multiplient l’espace. Dans un jeu d’effet miroir, le ciel, les jardins, les colonnades deviennent des éléments de l’oeuvre. Le mouvement des formes est multiple. A la circulation de l’eau, s’ajoutent les caprices de la météo, cavalcades des nuages, vent qui caresse les arbres, le passage des visiteurs, le vol des oiseaux.
Peintre, sculpteur créateur de bijoux et graphiste, l'artiste belge Pol Bury (1922-2005) est l’un des pionniers de l’art cinétique. Des premiers reliefs mobiles de 1953 inspirés par les œuvres d’Alexandre Calder jusqu’aux fontaines monumentales en métal, il n’aura cessé tout au long de sa vie d’expérimenter dans une quête permanente de nouveaux moyens d’animer ses créations.
Pol Bury en véritable plasticien-ingénieur invente de nombreux moteurs électriques puis hydrauliques dont la technicité se plie à la fantaisie poétique de l’artiste ainsi qu’à son humour. Il cherche à « intervenir dans la respectable ordonnance de la géométrie, des décors, des visages et s’imaginer ainsi qu’on peut chatouiller la pesanteur ». Son travail sur le mouvement incarne l’éloge de la lenteur. Invitation à la contemplation zen, il convoque la lumière et la mobilité des éléments afin que surgisse l’inattendu, l’accident heureux qui dilate le temps, fait naître l’émotion de la combinaison aléatoire des formes.
Dans ce lieu unique, trois siècles d’architecture s’entremêlent. Les bâtiments originaux du Palais Royal ont été édifiés pour le Cardinal de Richelieu par l’architecte Lemercier à qui l’on doit également la Sorbonne. Ce n’est qu’en 1634 que le corps principal face au Louvre devient résidence royale à l’occasion de la Régence d’Anne d’Autriche.
La famille d’Orléans investit les lieux partir de 1661. L’ouvrage remanié au XVIIIème et XIXème siècle connaît des temps mouvementés, haut lieu de la prostitution et des jeux d’argent avant de replonger dans la quiétude. Aujourd’hui, havre de paix et d’histoire, le Palais Royal attire en nombre les touristes mais également les Parisiens qui apprécient la promenade et fréquentent assidument la Comédie française, le théâtre du Palais Royal ou encore le restaurant au décor classé le Grand Véfour.
Les deux oeuves commandées en 1981 par Jack Lang alors ministre de François Mitterrand ont été installées dans la Cour d’Orléans en 1985 entre la Cour d’Honneur où se trouvent les colonnes de Buren et le jardin, entre le Conseil Constitutionnel et le Ministère de la Culture. Rénovées en 2015, les Sphérades n’ont cependant pas retrouvé toute leur mobilité. L’eau glisse sur les courbes miroitantes des boules en acier inoxydable. Colonnades et jardin se reflètent dans l’éclat froid de l’acier, images mouvantes, poésie hypnotique. En travaillant l’élément liquide, Pol Bury a choisi d’invoquer la précision des humeurs dynamiques qui laissent une place à l’inattendu. Translation:
Les Sphérades by Pol Bury , kinetic fountains nestled in the heart of the Royal Palace, make a fluid song heard, the murmur of the waves mixed with the clatter of metal and the crackle of the clockwork mechanism.
The two fountains of the Royal Palace have found their place in pre-existing basins. The circulation of water animates the geometric modules in a continuous movement whose mechanism remains invisible on the surface. On 12-sided platters, seventeen spheres of different sizes in polished stainless steel reflect and multiply the space. In a mirror effect, the sky, the gardens, the colonnades become elements of the work. The movement of forms is multiple. In addition to the circulation of water, there are the vaher, the cavalcades of the clouds, the wind that caresses the trees, the passage of visitors, the flight of birds.
Painter, sculptor, jewelry designer and graphic designer, Belgian artist Pol Bury (1922-2005) is one of the pioneers of kinetic art. From the first mobile reliefs of 1953 inspired by the works of Alexandre Calder to monumental metal fountains, he never ceased throughout his life to experiment in a permanent quest for new ways to bring his creations to life.
Pol Bury, as a real plastic-engineer, invents numerous electric and then hydraulic motors, the technical nature of which bends to the poetic fantasy of the artist as well as to his humor. He seeks to 'intervene in the respectable order of geometry, decorations, faces and imagine that we can tickle gravity'. His work on movement embodies the praise of slowness. An invitation to Zen contemplation, it summons the light and the mobility of the elements so that the unexpected appears, the happy accident which expands time, gives rise to emotion of the random combination of forms.
In this unique place, three centuries of architecture intertwine. The original buildings of the Palais Royal were built for Cardinal Richelieu by the architect Lemercier, to whom we also owe the Sorbonne. It was not until 1634 that the main body facing the Louvre became a royal residence on the occasion of the Regency of Anne of Austria. The Orleans family took over the place from 1661. The work, redesigned in the 18th and 19th centuries, experienced turbulent times, a hotbed of prostitution and gambling before plunging back into tranquility. Today, a haven of peace and history, the Palais Royal attracts many tourists but also Parisians who enjoy the promenade and regularly frequent the Comédie francaise, the Palais Royal theater or the restaurant with the classified decoration of the Grand Véfour.
The two works commissioned in 1981 by Jack Lang, then Minister of Francois Mitterrand, were installed in the Court of Orleans in 1985 between the Cour d'Hon where the Buren columns are located and the garden, between the Constitutional Council and the Ministry of Culture . Renovated in 2015, the Sphérades have not however regained all their mobility. The water glides over the shimmering curves of the stainless steel balls. Colonnades and garden are reflected in the cold shine of steel, moving images, hypnotic poetry. By working the liquid element, Pol Bury has chosen to invoke the precision of dynamic moods that leave room for the unexpected.
www.parisladouce.com:
Born in 1922 in Haine Saint-Pierre in Belgium, Pol Bury studied at the Academy of Beaux-Arts in Mons from 1938, and between 1940 and 1953, he started his career as a painter. Interested for a short time in the surrealist movement, he notably participated as an illustrator in the surrealist review 'L'invention collective' created by Magritte and Ubac in 1940. In 1945, he becomes one of the founders of the 'Haute nuit' group with Achille Chave, which specialised in publishing, and took part in the COBRA- movement. He created the Montbeliard academy with André Balthasar in 1954.
www.galerie-laurentin.com:
Having discovered Calder's works, he abandoned painting for the sculpture and exhibited for the first time his 'Plans Mobiles'. Influenced by cinetism, he created panels the appearence of which depends on the position of the visitor. In 1957 his first animated works appeared, called 'Multi-plans'. He then used various elements such as lighting effects, balls or still disks. Bury began his important series of opened and closed sculptures in 1963.
At the beginning of the 1960s, he started working with flat surfaces again and created his famous 'Cotisations', photographs which he had taken or bought and then cut up. He was mainly interested in New York, Chicago and Paris. Moreover he said in the Pol Bury catalogue by André Balthazar published by Cosmos in 1976 'the verticality of New York skyscrapers lend themselves perfectly to the process of cotisation.'
In 1968, he returned to snd works based on the notion of attraction and repulsion, therefore metal became the material he used the most frequently. Bury also created jewelry as well as monumental works, mainly fountains, for various institutions and places such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York or even the Palais-Royal gardens in Paris.
In addition to his artist's status, Bury also wrote texts in which he evoked his work and his artistic motivations. He participated on numerous occasions in collective exhibitions as well as in various personal exhibitions in galleries.
www.christies.com:
From sculptures and works on paper to magnificent fountains, the art of Pol Bury defied convention and pushed boundaries. Ten years after his death, we asked writers, collectors and friends - as well as Bury's wife, Velma for their memories.
Francois Pinault - art collector: Few artists in the 20th century embraced all disciplines - science, aestheticism, literature, history and, of course, philosophy - with tasm as their illustrious predecessors once did in the Renaissance. Thanks to his talent, insights and temperament, Pol Bury (1922-2005) was one of them.
Daniel Marchesseau - conservationist, art historian and author: Born in Haine-Saint-Pierre in 1922, Pol Bury travelled a long road before becoming the master of slowness we know today: a path he discovered through his successive encounters, influences, experiments and failures.
Gilles Marquenie - art historian and author: At first glance, nothing seems particularly surrealistic in the work of Pol Bury. And yet it was Surrealism, a movement at its height during his youth, that shaped Bury for his future career. The young artist discovered Surrealism through Achille Chave - lawyer, communist, a former Spanish Civil War fighter, poet and founder member of the Surrealist group Rupture - whom he met in 1939.
These chrome balls gently move up and down with the rhythm of the water while reflecting the passersby.
Pol Bury achieved such effects with clever mechanisms of motors, magnets, strings, and springs, but by keeping it all hidden, he created a sense of basic Nature: the will to exist. Rewarding patience, Pol Bury's marvelous living works, are ultimately endearing.
Stare long enough at one of Pol Bury's unsettling kinetic sculptures, and you may start to feel like those scientists in The Andromeda Strain searching for signs of microscopic alien life. Suddenly, you're startled by tiny, possibly imagined, movement. In this small exhibit of the artist's rarely seen devices, something a little eerie is happening.
www.metmuseum.org:
Pol Bury's sculptures with their unexpected and irregular motion can have an unsettling effect on the beholder. This element of surprise and chance is a legacy of the Surrealist movement, which has never fully ceased to inform the artist's work. Bury has lived and worked in France and the United States and has received a number of large-scale public commissions for locations throughout the world, including projects for the Palais Royal in Paris and the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul. He has also created a number of fountains that incorporate water as an additional ingredient of movement in his sculpture.
www.guggenheim.org:
In the late 1960s, Bury began working with stainless and Cor-Ten steel, polished brass, and copper. By 1969 he had created his first public fountain, at the University of Iowa Museum of Art. Similar in many ways to his kinetic sculptures, the numerous fountains that Bury designed throughout his lifetime involve arrangements of cylinders and spheres that move slowly and irregularly. In these works, he embraced the reflections and light effects produced by the interaction of metal and water in the open air.
www.parisladouce.com:
Les Sphérades de Pol Bury, fontaines cinétique lovées au cœur du Palais Royal, font entendre un chant fluide, murmure des flots auquel se mêle le cliquetis du métal et les craquements du mécanisme horloger.
Les deux fontaines du Palais Royal ont trouvé place dans des bassins préexistants. La circulation de l’eau anime les modules géométriques dans un mouvement continu dont le mécanisme demeure invisible en surface. Sur des plateaux dodécagonaux, dix-sept sphères de différentes tailles en acier inoxydable poli, reflètent et multiplient l’espace. Dans un jeu d’effet miroir, le ciel, les jardins, les colonnades deviennent des éléments de l’oeuvre. Le mouvement des formes est multiple. A la circulation de l’eau, s’ajoutent les caprices de la météo, cavalcades des nuages, vent qui caresse les arbres, le passage des visiteurs, le vol des oiseaux.
Peintre, sculpteur créateur de bijoux et graphiste, l'artiste belge Pol Bury (1922-2005) est l’un des pionniers de l’art cinétique. Des premiers reliefs mobiles de 1953 inspirés par les œuvres d’Alexandre Calder jusqu’aux fontaines monumentales en métal, il n’aura cessé tout au long de sa vie d’expérimenter dans une quête permanente de nouveaux moyens d’animer ses créations.
Pol Bury en véritable plasticien-ingénieur invente de nombreux moteurs électriques puis hydrauliques dont la technicité se plie à la fantaisie poétique de l’artiste ainsi qu’à son humour. Il cherche à « intervenir dans la respectable ordonnance de la géométrie, des décors, des visages et s’imaginer ainsi qu’on peut chatouiller la pesanteur ». Son travail sur le mouvement incarne l’éloge de la lenteur. Invitation à la contemplation zen, il convoque la lumière et la mobilité des éléments afin que surgisse l’inattendu, l’accident heureux qui dilate le temps, fait naître l’émotion de la combinaison aléatoire des formes.
Dans ce lieu unique, trois siècles d’architecture s’entremêlent. Les bâtiments originaux du Palais Royal ont été édifiés pour le Cardinal de Richelieu par l’architecte Lemercier à qui l’on doit également la Sorbonne. Ce n’est qu’en 1634 que le corps principal face au Louvre devient résidence royale à l’occasion de la Régence d’Anne d’Autriche.
La famille d’Orléans investit les lieux partir de 1661. L’ouvrage remanié au XVIIIème et XIXème siècle connaît des temps mouvementés, haut lieu de la prostitution et des jeux d’argent avant de replonger dans la quiétude. Aujourd’hui, havre de paix et d’histoire, le Palais Royal attire en nombre les touristes mais également les Parisiens qui apprécient la promenade et fréquentent assidument la Comédie française, le théâtre du Palais Royal ou encore le restaurant au décor classé le Grand Véfour.
Les deux oeuves commandées en 1981 par Jack Lang alors ministre de François Mitterrand ont été installées dans la Cour d’Orléans en 1985 entre la Cour d’Honneur où se trouvent les colonnes de Buren et le jardin, entre le Conseil Constitutionnel et le Ministère de la Culture. Rénovées en 2015, les Sphérades n’ont cependant pas retrouvé toute leur mobilité. L’eau glisse sur les courbes miroitantes des boules en acier inoxydable. Colonnades et jardin se reflètent dans l’éclat froid de l’acier, images mouvantes, poésie hypnotique. En travaillant l’élément liquide, Pol Bury a choisi d’invoquer la précision des humeurs dynamiques qui laissent une place à l’inattendu. Translation:
Les Sphérades by Pol Bury , kinetic fountains nestled in the heart of the Royal Palace, make a fluid song heard, the murmur of the waves mixed with the clatter of metal and the crackle of the clockwork mechanism.
The two fountains of the Royal Palace have found their place in pre-existing basins. The circulation of water animates the geometric modules in a continuous movement whose mechanism remains invisible on the surface. On 12-sided platters, seventeen spheres of different sizes in polished stainless steel reflect and multiply the space. In a mirror effect, the sky, the gardens, the colonnades become elements of the work. The movement of forms is multiple. In addition to the circulation of water, there are the vaher, the cavalcades of the clouds, the wind that caresses the trees, the passage of visitors, the flight of birds.
Painter, sculptor, jewelry designer and graphic designer, Belgian artist Pol Bury (1922-2005) is one of the pioneers of kinetic art. From the first mobile reliefs of 1953 inspired by the works of Alexandre Calder to monumental metal fountains, he never ceased throughout his life to experiment in a permanent quest for new ways to bring his creations to life.
Pol Bury, as a real plastic-engineer, invents numerous electric and then hydraulic motors, the technical nature of which bends to the poetic fantasy of the artist as well as to his humor. He seeks to 'intervene in the respectable order of geometry, decorations, faces and imagine that we can tickle gravity'. His work on movement embodies the praise of slowness. An invitation to Zen contemplation, it summons the light and the mobility of the elements so that the unexpected appears, the happy accident which expands time, gives rise to emotion of the random combination of forms.
In this unique place, three centuries of architecture intertwine. The original buildings of the Palais Royal were built for Cardinal Richelieu by the architect Lemercier, to whom we also owe the Sorbonne. It was not until 1634 that the main body facing the Louvre became a royal residence on the occasion of the Regency of Anne of Austria. The Orleans family took over the place from 1661. The work, redesigned in the 18th and 19th centuries, experienced turbulent times, a hotbed of prostitution and gambling before plunging back into tranquility. Today, a haven of peace and history, the Palais Royal attracts many tourists but also Parisians who enjoy the promenade and regularly frequent the Comédie francaise, the Palais Royal theater or the restaurant with the classified decoration of the Grand Véfour.
The two works commissioned in 1981 by Jack Lang, then Minister of Francois Mitterrand, were installed in the Court of Orleans in 1985 between the Cour d'Hon where the Buren columns are located and the garden, between the Constitutional Council and the Ministry of Culture . Renovated in 2015, the Sphérades have not however regained all their mobility. The water glides over the shimmering curves of the stainless steel balls. Colonnades and garden are reflected in the cold shine of steel, moving images, hypnotic poetry. By working the liquid element, Pol Bury has chosen to invoke the precision of dynamic moods that leave room for the unexpected.
www.parisladouce.com:
Born in 1922 in Haine Saint-Pierre in Belgium, Pol Bury studied at the Academy of Beaux-Arts in Mons from 1938, and between 1940 and 1953, he started his career as a painter. Interested for a short time in the surrealist movement, he notably participated as an illustrator in the surrealist review 'L'invention collective' created by Magritte and Ubac in 1940. In 1945, he becomes one of the founders of the 'Haute nuit' group with Achille Chave, which specialised in publishing, and took part in the COBRA- movement. He created the Montbeliard academy with André Balthasar in 1954.
www.galerie-laurentin.com:
Having discovered Calder's works, he abandoned painting for the sculpture and exhibited for the first time his 'Plans Mobiles'. Influenced by cinetism, he created panels the appearence of which depends on the position of the visitor. In 1957 his first animated works appeared, called 'Multi-plans'. He then used various elements such as lighting effects, balls or still disks. Bury began his important series of opened and closed sculptures in 1963.
At the beginning of the 1960s, he started working with flat surfaces again and created his famous 'Cotisations', photographs which he had taken or bought and then cut up. He was mainly interested in New York, Chicago and Paris. Moreover he said in the Pol Bury catalogue by André Balthazar published by Cosmos in 1976 'the verticality of New York skyscrapers lend themselves perfectly to the process of cotisation.'
In 1968, he returned to snd works based on the notion of attraction and repulsion, therefore metal became the material he used the most frequently. Bury also created jewelry as well as monumental works, mainly fountains, for various institutions and places such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York or even the Palais-Royal gardens in Paris.
In addition to his artist's status, Bury also wrote texts in which he evoked his work and his artistic motivations. He participated on numerous occasions in collective exhibitions as well as in various personal exhibitions in galleries.
www.christies.com:
From sculptures and works on paper to magnificent fountains, the art of Pol Bury defied convention and pushed boundaries. Ten years after his death, we asked writers, collectors and friends - as well as Bury's wife, Velma for their memories.
Francois Pinault - art collector: Few artists in the 20th century embraced all disciplines - science, aestheticism, literature, history and, of course, philosophy - with tasm as their illustrious predecessors once did in the Renaissance. Thanks to his talent, insights and temperament, Pol Bury (1922-2005) was one of them.
Daniel Marchesseau - conservationist, art historian and author: Born in Haine-Saint-Pierre in 1922, Pol Bury travelled a long road before becoming the master of slowness we know today: a path he discovered through his successive encounters, influences, experiments and failures.
Gilles Marquenie - art historian and author: At first glance, nothing seems particularly surrealistic in the work of Pol Bury. And yet it was Surrealism, a movement at its height during his youth, that shaped Bury for his future career. The young artist discovered Surrealism through Achille Chave - lawyer, communist, a former Spanish Civil War fighter, poet and founder member of the Surrealist group Rupture - whom he met in 1939.