Jean Tinguely; Swiss Sculptor, Painter

Jean Tinguely, a painter and sculptor who turned junkyard scrap into whimsical machines that mocked consumer society, has died. He was 66.

Tinguely died at a Bern hospital late Friday of complications of a stroke suffered Aug. 18, a hospital spokesman said.

Tinguely was best known for clattering contraptions typically uniting wheels, motors, welded girders and scrapheap scavengings, often in the service of what he called “cynical social commentary, in a poetic way.”

He once said he could see beauty in a well-designed oil refinery and mysticism in an electric motor.

He also drew, painted and designed stage sets.

One of his last shows brought his machines to Moscow last year. He called the exhibit a warning against “the ‘wonderful’ totalitarianism of our consumer society,” even though it was held in a city hardly accustomed to overflowing store shelves.

The Moscow show’s centerpiece, the “Altar of Western Affluence and Totalitarian Commercialism,” took 18 months to assemble.

Seventeen-feet high, it featured bicycles, flower pots, pushcarts, skateboards and dolls moved noisily by a mass of motors to the accompaniment of small organ pipes.

At one end, a toy bear smiled while being struck every 30 seconds by a club.

Earlier Tinguely extravaganzas included self-destroying machines, such as the 1960 “Homage to New York,” which blew itself up in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art. Some of his machines hammered china plates to bits or smashed beer bottles.

“Playing is art, so I am playing,” he said in a 1959 essay. “All machines are art. I correct the vision of reality that assaults me in everyday life.”

Tinguely was born May 22, 1925, in Fribourg, Switzerland. His father was a chocolate factory worker.

He designed store window displays as an apprentice and irregularly attended art school before rising to prominence in the Paris art scene in the late 1950s.

Tinguely’s survivors include his wife, French artist Niki de Saint Phalle; his first wife, Eva Aeppli, a daughter and a son.