“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.”
Majestically gliding through the air in a delicate balance of form, weight, and color, Alexander Calder’s Paulette from 1948 is an exceptional example of Calder’s iconic and singular visual vocabulary, which opened a new dimension of time and movement in the trajectory of twentieth-century sculpture. The present work was commissioned by and named after Paulette Goddard and her husband Burgess Meredith, both iconic actors of the Golden Age of Hollywood, the latter of whom would go on to produce and narrate the 1950 film Works of Calder. Comprised of nineteen metal sheets and discs supported by an intricate wire framework, the mobile glides through space on its seventeen axes, cantilevered in the air by its two largest elements and pivoting with balletic grace at the slightest breeze. The present work, with its colorful elements, alluring red wires, and scintillating choreography of motion, masterfully foregrounds the compositional genius that has come to define Calder’s revolutionary experiments in abstraction. Testament to its outstanding composition and significance, Paulette remained in Sydell Miller’s esteemed collection for over 25 years, alongside masterpieces by Claude Monet, Yves Klein, Wassily Kandinsky and Pablo Picasso.
Paulette’s composition encapsulates the cornerstones of Calder’s artistic lexicon. Two large polygonal plates of black sheet metal, bending in irregular curvatures with rounded edges and suspended from a string – a rare component peculiar to his earlier works – provide an elegant counterweight to the seventeen circular elements supporting each other on multiple axes as they branch out into space. A refined red wire connects these elements, which feature vivid colors of white, black, red, orange, yellow, and blue—a spectrum of colors from the artist’s characteristic palette. The delicate yet poised interaction of the elements recall the precarious balance of his earliest Cirque Calder works; much like his trapeze artists that suspend themselves on wire, who seem to at once float upward and sink downward in their dainty balance, Paulette is at once earthly and celestial in its presence, seemingly drifting weightlessly as it revolves through space and time.
Capitalizing on principles of incalculable airflow and human manipulation as it pivots and swivels at every juncture, it seamlessly redefines its surrounding space in an alluringly poetic dance. As French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre observed, Calder’s mobiles entrance the viewer in their entirely unique understanding of space and movement: “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.” (Jean-Paul Sartre, “Les Mobiles de Calder,” in: Exh. Cat., Paris, Galerie Louis Carré, Alexander Calder: Mobiles, Stabiles, Constellations, 1946; translation courtesy Chris Turner, The Aftermath of War: Jean-Paul Sartre, Calcutta, 2008)
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1909Duck, 1909
brass sheet
Calder Foundation, New York; Mary Calder Rower Bequest, 2011
Born in 1898, Alexander Calder, from a young age, was encouraged to pursue an artistic practice of his own, sculpting his own pieces from the young age of eight. Duck is part of the Christmas gift that Calder gave to his parents in the winter of 1909; its metal construction and kinetic nature, gently rocking back and forth when nudged, foretells the artist’s pioneering mastery in kinetic sculpture.
Born to a multigenerational family of artists, Calder was encouraged to pursue art from an early age. Calder’s paternal grandfather and father were sculptors who created heroic public monuments, while his mother was an accomplished painter. In 1923, Calder relocated to New York City and began taking classes at the Arts Students League, committing to becoming a visual artist and starting his career sketching circus scenes of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus for the National Police Gazette. Even from these nascent moments, which saw him frequently traveling between the United States and France, Calder found himself in the company of pioneering Modernist avant-garde artists such as Piet Mondrian, Man Ray, Fernand Léger, Jean Arp, Marcel Duchamp, and Joan Miró, the last of whom would become a close friend. Energized by his peers’ ventures into abstraction and taking their attempts a step further, Calder famously questioned: “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)
“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.”
Through a masterful manipulation of metal and wire, Calder advanced the possibilities of motion and form, revolutionizing the boundaries of sculpture and allowing it to connect with its viewers and the space surrounding it with a kinetic and dynamic presence. Through his mobiles, Calder rewrites the nature of sculptures from the story of static forms to lively harmonies of color, balance, and movement: “Just as one can compose colors, or forms, so one can compose motions.” (the artist quoted in: Exh. Cat., Pittsfield, Berkshire Museum, Modern Painting and Sculpture: Alexander Calder, George L.K. Morris, Calvert Coggeshall, Alma de Gersdorff Morgan, 1933) Paulette, with its enthralling colors and graceful movements, underscores Calder’s peerless brilliance that solidified his status as one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.
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