Chain Reaction: Rube Goldberg and Contemporary Art

Chain Reaction looked to the influential early twentieth-century cartoonist Rube Goldberg to set the stage for contemporary artists engaged with humorous explorations of mechanical devices and functions. Goldberg's critique of the industrial era at the turn of the century includes a cache of drawings describing fantastic machines that satirically celebrate the unnecessary complication of simple tasks. Goldberg drew thousands of these hilarious, madcap inventions, born of his fascination with engineering structures as well as his appreciation of vaudeville comedy. Chain Reaction combined more than 50 original drawings from the Williams College Museum of Art's singular collection of original Goldberg material with contemporary paintings, video, sculpture, and site-specific installations that celebrate rudimentary processes and illogical organization. Exhibited together for the first time, Goldberg’s drawings and recent works by these inventive artists engaged in a fascinating visual exchange and raised stirring questions about the role of the mechanical in today’s increasingly electronic age.

A newly commissioned poem by Lawrence Raab, Morris Professor of Rhetoric at Williams College, and a new computer animation/flipbook by artist Dean Snyder accompanied the exhibition.

Artists in this exhibition included William Bergman, Steven Brower, Diana Cooper, Roman de Salvo, Sam Easterson, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Arthur Ganson, Tim Hawkinson, Martin Kersels, Alan Rath, Jovi Schnell, Jeanne Silverthorne, and Dean Snyder.

Organized by Ian Berry, Curator of the Tang Teaching Museum, in collaboration with the Williams College Museum of Art.

A catalogue that features a dialogue with the artists by Ian Berry, a poem by Lawrence Raab, and a flipbook by Dean Snyder is available.