Rhythmus 23

In the second of the Rhythm series, "Rhythmus 23", (the first being No. 21 and the last being No. 25) Hans Richter utilizes the same concept that was the focus of the first one: Cubism as motion pictures. Richter, a painter from the 20th century, was also a member of the Dada movement (aka nonsense art), and most of his pictures preceding this were painted in modern conceptual styles such as Supremism. Richter would later go on to use live action in his films; it is these earlier works (primarily this series) that he described as being intended paintings. For him, film was no different than canvas whatsoever; the same functions could apply to both, but with film, he could go a step further and move his images.

"Rhythmus 23" illustrates this, as having seen supremist and cubist paintings, I can see how this bears a resemblence to these art movements which Richter was influenced by. Like the first one in the series, it consists of a lot of squares, rectangles and lines shrinking, growing and moving. There is a lot more going on than that previous film however, which seemed to first be testing how to create such animations on film, while this one takes such animations to their highest potential. As such, a more engaging film for me, with some interesting effects and ideas being put to good use; a step up for one who would later become an even greater artist.

Many more shapes and faster movements. I suppose audiences had matured quite a lot since Rhythmus 21? Here, the shapes are not just simple geometric shapes, they are complex lines and bars overlapping to form new shapes.

We watch white shapes dancing on black background, which changes when the white shape fills up the screen completely, and black lines and figures bounce around on the now white background.

Grey tones look like shafts of light cascading onto the floor from an open doorway.

There are times when the mind tries to find shapes in all of this chaos, like looking for faces in clouds.