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Takis review – magnetic display of curiosity | Art and design


It’s hard not to use the word “magic” about the art of Takis. A nail floats motionless in space. A cylinder and a ball dance jerkily with each other. Angelic music is played withno sign of a human hand. Yet none of this is the work of the supernatural, nor is Takis trying to fool anyone into thinking that it is. The force that gives his art its innocent joy is part of the fabric of the universe.

Magnetism – the phenomenon that Takis, who was born in Athens in 1925, has been making visible since the 1950s – has a long history of being mistaken for magic. Lodestones, with the power to attract ferrous metal, were coveted long before their properties were understood: it was said their spooky pull could be neutralised by garlic.

The Magnetic Fields installation is on display for the first time since the 1970s.



The Magnetic Fields installation is on display for the first time since the 1970s. Photograph: Guy Bell/REX/Shutterstock

When the scientist Michael Faraday investigated magnetism and electricity in the early 19th century, he didn’t so much dispel the mystery as give it new dimensions by showing how electromagnetism is at the heart of nature. In fact, Faraday made art with magnets a century before Takis. In the 1850s, he scattered iron filings on paper over a magnet and watched them arrange themselves along the lines of its invisible field, preserving the pattern under wax to create readymade “drawings”.

Faraday’s fields led in just a few decades to Einstein’s theory of relativity and Takis uses magnetism to make all the mind-boggling phenomena of post-Einsteinian physics, from fields to quantum mechanics, visible. In his 1959-60 Telepainting, three metal cones are suspended on threads in front of a white monochrome canvas. Instead of hanging vertically, they fly horizontally towards it, attracted by strong magnets hidden under its surface. It’s as if a Russian Suprematist abstract painting has come to life.

Instead of depicting triangles and cylinders in an imaginary space, Takis constructs a relationship between solid objects in real space – all done with magnets. It’s a trick he never tires of. This gets a bit repetitive as you explore one marvel after another. Another magnet! More nails! Yet it’s charming and thought-provoking as we are shown the hidden forces that create our reality.

Telepaintings, Telesculptures: the names of his works from the 1950s and 60s refer to the technological revolution of their day. This was the age of the Telstar satellite and television. Takis has said that when he was a child in Athens, electric streetlights were almost unheard of. When he first visited postwar London, he was entranced by their prevalence.

So lighting became his other obsession. Tall slender poles topped with coloured lights are another strand of sculpture he’s been producing since the 1960s. Other luminous works include a black painted box with flashing lights inside it, and a vintage control panel with the lights going on and off. Unfortunately these are period pieces. They’re an interesting insight into 1960s culture, but not living art that can challenge us now.

Telepainting, 1964 by Takis.



Telepainting, 1964 by Takis. Photograph: Marcus Leith/Takis © ADAGP, Paris and DACS London 2016

Then again, it’s the very archaism of Takis that makes him lovable. His earliest works here include bronze and plaster statues inspired by ancient figures from Greece’s Cycladic islands. His leap from archaeology to electromagnetism may seem big, but there’s nothing slick or fashionable about what he makes visible. They are simply part of the structure of nature. Takis is not really so different from the Arte Povera movement whose members – including Greek-born Jannis Kounellis – sought in the 1960s to reveal the resilient vitality of oil and wax, wood and (in the case of Kounellis) living animals. Takis embraced the technological age yet he reveals the timeless within it. When all the ice has gone from the north pole, it will still be magnetic.

Takis wants to show us the true beauty of the universe and he keeps at it, like a teacher repeating the same lesson until it sinks in. This is a lesson we need more than ever. We’re numbed to technology. It’s part of who we are and we live through it. Yet we don’t stop to savour the scientific intricacy on which our everyday lives depend. Takis is like a curious child who won’t stop investigating what we jaded adults take for granted.

  • Takis: Sculptor of Magnetism, Light and Sound is at Tate Modern, London, from 3 July to 27 October



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