B oth organically graceful and precisely engineered, Jerk from 1972 typifies Alexander Calder’s iconic kinetic explorations and technical prowess as an artist. Eight white, celestial discs of various sizes gracefully cascade from one end of an angular, black, red, and yellow base. Counterbalanced by one singular disc, the entire composition is at once asymmetrical and perfectly balanced. The equilibrium of forms allows a compositional harmony that withstands its everchanging permutations.
The harmony of the form is enhanced by Calder’s use of colors. In an artist statement from 1951 Calder wrote, “I have chiefly limited myself to the use of black and white as being the most disparate colors. Red is the color most opposed to both of these—and then, finally, the other primaries.” (Alexander Calder, What Abstract Art Means to Me, 1951). By strategically placing primary colors throughout the composition, Calder creates individual “moments” which culminate in an overall visual rhythm.
“One day, when I was talking with Calder in his studio, a mobile, which had until then been still, became violently agitated right beside me. I stepped back and thought I had got out of its reach. But suddenly, when the agitation had left it and it seemed lifeless again, its long, majestic tail, which until then had not moved, came to life indolently and almost regretfully, spun in the air and swept past my nose. These hesitations and resumptions, fumblings, sudden decisions and, most especially, marvelous swan-like nobility make Calder’s mobiles strange creatures, mid-way between matter and life”
Fellow pioneering modernists such as Jean Arp, Fernand Léger and Joan Miró, as well as the industrialization of the 20th Century and increasingly rapid pace of life, greatly influenced Calder to develop a formal language based on the principles of kinetics. A year after Marcel Duchamp’s 1931 coining of the term “mobile” for the artist’s work, Calder reflected upon his creation of a new visual vernacular: “Why must art be static?... You look at an abstraction, sculptured or painted, an intensely exciting arrangement of planes, spheres, nuclei, entirely without meaning. It would be perfect, but it is always still. The next step in sculpture is motion” (the artist quoted in "Objects to Art Being Static, So He Keeps It in Motion," New York World-Telegram, 11 June 1932).
Springing to life with the smallest movement of air, the ethereal discs dance in a sublime ballet, pivoting and oscillating in a seemingly choreographed performance. Activating its surrounding environment, Jerk continuously redefines the space in which it moves, exemplifying the infinite possibilities of kinetic form.
