Incredible racing cars and their crystal-movement: poetics of Géo Ham's automobile images

Abstract

This article wants to observe how the car racing posters, notably those drawn by French artist Géo Ham, can engender, in his poetic image of the automobile, a kind of static image that mentions the almost cinematic form of movement, called here moving-crystal. Using the theoretical framework of Gilles Deleuze and Groupe μ, the goal here is to see how these posters’ mise en scènes are portemanteau constructions that unite in a imagetic representation both movement-image as the time-image and, most important, that portemanteau is the graphical representation of the movement-crystal and it is crucial to the poetic thought of imagery arts focused on racing and sports.