Alexander Calder

Perls Galleries, New York
Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago
Ruth and Leonard Horwich, Chicago (acquired from the above in 1966)
Harold Diamond, New York
Private Collection, New York
Sale: Christie's, New York, May 10, 2006, lot 168
Private Collection, Chicago (acquired from the above sale and sold: Sotheby's, New York, May 9, 2012, lot 43)
Acquired at the above sale by A. Alfred Taubman

Chicago, Richard Gray Gallery, Alexander Calder, April - May 1966, no. 14
Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Alexander Calder: A Retrospective Exhibition: Work from 1925-1974, October - December 1974

Calder and Abstraction (exhibition catalogue), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2013, illustrated p. 31

This work is in very good and sound condition overall. The mobile elements move freely and smoothly. There is evidence of very light wear to the wire elements and hanging discs with very minor resultant loss along the edges of the discs and around some of the wire joins, as to be epected for a work of this age. There is a pinpoint white media accretion on the black base. When viewed at an extreme angle under extreme raking light, there are faint irregularites to the sheen of the paint on the base.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

"The underlying sense of form in my work has been the system of the universe."
Alexander Calder

Positioned with the supreme finesse that is elemental to Alexander Calder’s paradigm-shifting sculptural praxis, the variously sized circular ivory elements of White Discs on the Pyramid balance with perfect gravitational equilibrium atop the sculpture’s elegantly slender pyramidal base. One of the most significant artistic innovators of the 20th century, Alexander Calder reshaped the preconceived laws of sculptural art by inviting his forms to move freely through the spaces they inhabit. Transforming the traditional notions of three-dimensional art by establishing an unprecedented alliance of balance, movement and color, he is celebrated today as one of the most ground-breaking artists of the modern era.

Of Calder’s famed kinetic sculptures, his delicate standing mobiles, such as White Discs on the Pyramid, demonstrate a pinnacle of both conceptual and physical complexity. As Calder once described his differing bodies of work, “the mobile has actual movement in itself, while the stabile is back at the old painting idea of implied movement” (Alexander Calder and Katharine Kuh, “Alexander Calder,” The Artist’s Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists, New York, 1962). Here, the standing mobile spans both these worlds as it employs a stabile structure to support mobile arms and thus it resides in a liminal realm of potential energy and possibility. The work is at once active but stationary, both enigmatic yet absolute. Exquisitely illustrating these ideals, White Discs on the Pyramid commands its viewers to gaze, mesmerized, as an assembly of enchanting white discs dances effortlessly around the sculpture’s geometric central architecture which anchors the work soundly on its tripod base.

At once tremendously technical and utterly ethereal, Calder’s corpus of standing and hanging mobiles epitomize these two indelible tenets of his artistic philosophy, exhibiting a fascinating marriage between physics and art. The weight and shape of each individual element is meticulously engineered so as to allow for moments of absolute stasis and equipoise, typified in the instances when the constellation of white discs arrange themselves into equilibrium. These moments, however, are inherently fleeting as the subtlest breath of air flows through White Discs on the Pyramid, encouraging its constituent parts to float and dance around one another, seemingly at random. Yet, within the apparent chaos of their individual paths, these elements ultimately succumb to Calder’s precise choreography: no matter the velocity with which the arms of White Discs on the Pyramid rotate and swirl, they never collide but instead continue to orbit in perfect harmony. As the artist himself stated, "the most important thing is that the mobile be able to catch the air. It has to be able to move" ("Hommage à Calder, XXe Siecle, Paris, 1972, p. 98).

With remarkable facility and ingenuity Alexander Calder forged a revolutionary genre of sculpture that made subjects of shape and movement themselves. By traversing the boundaries of artistic precedent Calder’s groundbreaking work required a new descriptive lexicon, and as early as 1931 Marcel Duchamp christened Calder's early mechanized wire works as 'mobiles,' while some time later Jean Arp coined the term 'stabiles' for his stationary sculptures. Having reveled in the challenges of harmonizing sculptural design within technical parameters and won the Grand Prize in sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1952 for his innovative and ingenious use of sheet metal, Calder was forever consumed by the possibilities of three-dimensional movement through the mobile format. By the 1960s, the sheer range of his ingenious works was astounding and while Calder’s works became ubiquitous in any survey show of 20th century sculpture, they are always unique and surprising to behold.