Hans Richter - Rhythm 23

Source: Richter's witty, reductionist squares, trapezoids, and lines alter size and shade, becoming meditations on pure form, movement, and music. "Rhythm 23" (1923) explores various modes of movement, including criss-cross patterns, negative reversals, and changes in size and shape. His later studies juxtapose abstract forms (circles suspended in space) with their recognizable correlates (a human face, artificial eyeballs).

Rhythm was key to Richter's works. It created a kind of hidden structure, or grid, that helped unify disparate images into a whole. His abstract motion studies melted into a Surrealistic approach, and were explicitly intended to confound the rational mind with irrational happenings. In the obscurist fantasy "Ghosts before Breakfast" (1927), Richter's Dadaist influences take center stage. Everyday objects and people undergo bizarre metamorphoses: hats fly through the air; beards appear, grow, and just as magically disappear on hapless men; tea cups fill of their own accord. Creating a "fantasy trance" of curiosity, Richter's inspired choreography of objects held audiences spellbound at a time when film and special effects were new.