| Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash | |
|---|---|
| Italian:Dinamismo di un cane al guinzaglio[1] | |
 | |
| Artist | Giacomo Balla |
| Year | 1912 (1912) |
| Medium | oil on canvas |
| Subject | A dog on a leash |
| Dimensions | 89.8 cm × 109.8 cm (35.4 in × 43.2 in)[1] |
| Location | Buffalo AKG Art Museum,Buffalo |
Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash (Italian:Dinamismo di un cane al guinzaglio), sometimes calledDog on a Leash[2] orLeash in Motion,[3] is a 1912 oil painting by ItalianFuturist painterGiacomo Balla.[4] It was influenced by the artist's fascination withchronophotographic studies of animals in motion.[4][5] It is considered one of his best-known works,[6] and one of the most important works in Futurism,[5] though it received mixed critical reviews.[4][7][8][9][10] The painting has been in the collection of theBuffalo AKG Art Museum since 1984.[1]
The painting depicts adachshund on aleash and the feet of a lady walking it, both in rapid motion as indicated by theblurring and multiplication of their parts.[4]
Chronophotographic studies of animals in motion, created by scientistÉtienne-Jules Marey beginning in the 1880s, led to the introduction in painting of techniques to show motion, such as blurring, multiplication, and superimposition of body parts, imitating these mechanical images.[4][5] Such multiplication can be seen inMarcel Duchamp'sNude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, painted the same year as Balla's painting.[4]
Balla's interest in capturing a single moment in a series of planes was inspired by his fascination with chronophotography.[5] In later, more abstract works created duringWorld War I, Balla used planes of color to suggest movement.[6]
The decomposition of movement into moments in time which Balla created inDynamism of a Dog on a Leash likely inspired the photodynamic technique of Futurist photographerAnton Giulio Bragaglia.[11]
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The painting was exhibited in theGalerie Der Sturm's Autumn Salon inBerlin from September to December 1913, accompanied by a photograph of the scene.[13][14] It was sold by the artist in 1938 to the industrialistAnson Conger Goodyear. Upon his death in 1964, Goodyear bequeathed the painting jointly to his son, George F. Goodyear, with alife interest, and to theAlbright–Knox Art Gallery inBuffalo, New York. The gallery acquired the painting in December 1984.[1]
In 1943, artist Cornelia Geer LeBoutillier criticized the painting, comparing it unfavorably with Duchamp'sNude Descending a Staircase (a work with which it is often compared[4][2][9]) and Picasso'sPortrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, calling Balla's work "more crude, less mature, almost childish indeed ... Balla takes himself and his dog so seriously, so studiedly, that it is doubtful that any pleasure has ever come out of it anywhere; certainly no movement has."[7] Writing in 1947, critic Henry R. Hope calledDynamism of a Dog on a Leash "a cliché of modern art".[8] Writer Geoffrey Wagner declared Balla's painting to be anathema to theVorticist aesthetic of British painterWyndham Lewis, who criticized Futurism for its "romantic excess" and dynamism.[9] However,S. I. Hayakawa credited Balla's "classic" for its introduction of the time dimension in its representation of its subject.[2]
In 2009, art critic Tom Lubbock declared the painting "one of the most striking" chronophotography-inspired works, pointing to several features which create a comical effect: the "abrupt close-up" on a trivial subject—a "twee prim sausage dog"—which might have been a single detail in anImpressionist street scene; thebathetic juxtaposition of the worddynamism, "with its connotations of heroism, of the mighty modern machine world" against that subject; the cropping of the owner at the knee, giving a dog's view (and anticipatingTom and Jerry cartoons); and the apparently frenetic motion of the dog's limbs and tail coupled with the stillness of its body, suggesting little forward progress. Lubbock describes Balla's motion effects as "creating new sensations and new phenomena", and evoking the motion ofshuffling cards and the embodiment of ghosts.[4]
In 2014, art criticRobert C. Morgan declaredDynamism of a Dog on a Leash, along withGino Severini's paintingsBlue Dancer andDynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin, to be "probably the most elegant and accurate works ever painted in the Futurist tradition." He credits these works with "moving status into kinesis, stillness into motion, and thus giving life to culture, bringing it back from the bucolic ornaments of the 19th century."[10]
A 2002 research paper onmachine vision bycomputer scientists Roman Goldenberg,Ron Kimmel, Ehud Rivlin, and Michael Rudzsky used Futurism's techniques of motion, as embodied byDynamism of a Dog on a Leash, to illustrate the mathematical representation ofperiodic motion using a small number ofeigenshapes.[15]