In truth, Metzger was probably the only artist actually to withdraw his
labour. While it is easy to scoff at the impracticality of such a gesture,
Metzger's 'career' (or anti-career) stands as a model of sincere and idealistic
commitment.
The following notes are compiled from the writings of John A. Walker -
see refs. at foot of text.
Metzger was born into a Polish-Jewish family in Nuremberg in 1926 where
he was witness to the Nazi rallies. According to Walker he was both impressed
by the spectacle and was left with a life-long suspicion of media manipulation of
the masses. Metzger was sent with his brother to England in 1939; other members
of his family perished in the Holocaust.
Metzger’s interest in art developed through the 1940s and 50s; an early
interest in action Painting (especially Jackson Pollock) evolved into a
practice which combined action with destruction – ‘painting’ with acid onto
nylon so that the ground progressively disintegrated. (Watch a short film
of an action in 1965 here.) He wrote a manifesto ‘Auto-Destructive Art’ in 1959.
Later work experimented with liquid crystals – heat sensitive liquid
crystals were placed between glass slides inserted into a projector and rotated:
as the crystals heated and cooled they changed colour to produce constantly
evolving patterns. (See Tate catalogue.)
Metzger’s work was consistently engaged with politics and he cared
deeply about the fate of the world - haunted by Nazism, the Holocaust and the
Atom bomb he tried to alert us to the dangers of excessive capitalism and
threats to the environment; he would present work only in public galleries and
public spaces maintaining the ideal of making meaningful work that resisted
commodification.
Watch a short video featuring Metzger talking about his work, made in
2015 for the Tate.
References.
Walker, John A. (2002) Left Shift: Radical Art
in Britain in 1970s Britain, London: I.B. Tauris
