“‘Why must art be static?’ demanded Alexander Calder calmly as he closed his exhibition at Julien Levy Gallery today. ‘You look at an abstraction, sculptured or painted, an intensely exciting arrangement of planes, spheres, nuclei, entirely without a meaning. It would be perfect, but it is always still.’”
S uspended in constant motion, Alexander Calder’s captivating hanging mobiles fully embody his incomparable contribution to the lexicon of modern art. The unending choreography of his mobiles is ever changing, defined by Calder’s mechanical genius. Executed in 1964, the present work displays the most essential qualities of Calder’s mobiles; with its primary colored, organic shapes atop the ends of elegant, branching wires, one is drawn into the artfully inquisitive and technically brilliant mind of Calder. Gifted from the artist himself to the Stillman family, this mobile's exceptionally storied provenance elevates its essential place within not only Calder’s oeuvre, but also his personal history as an artist living and working in Connecticut.
Katherine Stillman lived with the present work for the majority of her adult life, benefiting from the splendors that arise from being in the presence of a Calder mobile. Elegant, sublime, and full of energy, this work harmoniously integrates the solid and organic with the linear and lithe. Its graceful movement ebbs and flows unpredictably which, in the words of Jean-Paul Sartre, only elevates Calder’s mobiles: “There is more of the unpredictable about them than in any other human creation. No human brain, not even their creator’s, could possibly foresee all of the complex combinations of which they are capable. A general destiny of the movement is sketched for them, and they are left to work out for themselves” (Jean Lipman, Calder’s Universe, New York 1976, p. 261).
One of the most important sculptors of the twentieth century, Calder was endlessly enchanted by the universe, the planets, constellations. However, even when he represents these elements figuratively, he "intended that they should represent more than what they just are. More or less as the earth is a sphere, but also has some miles of gas about it, volcanoes upon it, and the moon making circles around it, and as the sun is a sphere—but also is a source of intense heat, the effect of which is felt at great distances" (Calder quoted in: Exh. Cat., Galerie Beyeler Bȃle, Miró Calder, 1972-1973). Cosmological concepts were a lasting fascination for Calder, still appearing here as components of his oeuvre nearly three decades following the creation of his first mobile. Achieving an exquisite balance between weight and counterweight, form and structure, element and air, Untitled exemplifies the captivating formal beauty that is utterly unique to Calder's canon of suspended forms.
“Sculpture suggests movement, painting suggests depth or light. Calder suggests nothing. He captures true, living movements and crafts them into something. His Mobiles signify nothing, refer to nothing other than themselves. They simply are; they are absolutes.”
It was a visit to Piet Mondrian's studio in 1930 which sparked the idea for abstract sculpture in motion, and this intention was realized in 1932 with Small Sphere and Heavy Sphere, Calder's first hanging mobile. A simple presentation of a small white sphere and a larger red sphere that hover at the end of vertical wires, this work itself creates a self-contained constellation, as it is presented alongside what Calder called "impedimenta," or repurposed objects: a wooden crate, a tin can, glass bottles, and a gong. As Calder continually endeavoured to construct new iterations of the hanging mobile, all elements became suspended, and he found his archetypical style. However, the unpatterned choreography of the structures' movement remained constant.
Calder's Small Sphere and Heavy Sphere, 1932/33, set in motion
