Alexander Calder

Galerie Maeght, Paris
Odette Valabregue Wurzburger, Cleveland
Sotheby's, New York, November 12, 2008, lot 144
Acquired by the present owner from the above sale

This work is in very good and sound condition overall. The elements move smoothly and freely and the colors are vibrant and fresh. The outer yellow element is bent very slightly due to the imprint of the artist's monogram.
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.
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Suspended in mid-air, the constellation of enigmatic and brightly colored shapes hovers with gentle movements depending on the perspective from which Plutôt Jaune is viewed or the environment in which it is placed. Calder's skillful structure allows each piece to retain its inherent delineation while at the same time sustaining a harmonious sense of unity with graceful contours and a cohesive palette. The sense of lightness leads to an overall visual and physical agility, the grace and dynamism that characterizes Plutôt Jaune as one of his most iconic works.

Calder created a new visual language with spraying discs of industrial material. The individual painted metal sheets render the composite elements as discrete volumes of color in space. Originating from a single, delicate loop of wire, the mobile structure cascades outward in multiple tiers to one side, and a more sparse constellation of discs on the other. Each wire branch is punctuated by a brightly colored metal disc arranged in a rhythmic network. Though most of the wire-suspended discs hang downward, Calder creates an appearance of weightlessness by arranging his painted forms along a horizontal spread. Precisely engineered and colored for graphic impact, the mobile retains the artist's ability to create harmony within the limitations of an asymmetrical structure, through visual echoes of shapes, angles and colors, while at the same time exploring his growing interest in monumentally scaled works.

In Plutôt Jaune, there are four cascading yellow leaves on one side, with one blue disc in between them. The other side contains only two shapes – one red, the other black. The bold color contrasts intensify the impact of this delicately constructed work. Calder intentionally reduced his palette, following the lead of Mondrian, primarily to black and white and strong primaries; calculating counterpoints in red, yellow, and blue, remaining conscious that color relationships have a kinetic quality that adds a sense of weight and movement to individual pieces. Calder’s visit to Mondrian’s Parisian studio in 1930 grounded his commitment to abstraction in three dimensional space, as well as his defining use of color. With Plutôt Jaune, balance is struck between the various organic shapes by constantly evolving and rescinding color-relationships, depending on the spatial relationships between the various shapes. The four predominant yellow discs, which inspired the title of the work meaning "mostly yellow," juxtapose the lone and intense black, red, and blue shapes. The overemphasis of yellow hues in this work suggest the artist’s delight in simultaneously reinforcing and complicating the work’s light ethereal quality. His choice of color was inextricably linked to the overall sense of dynamism with which Calder's mobiles are often first identified. Its chromatic simplicity is set off by the complexity of its structure.

That Calder was able to create such an object of extreme grace and elegance out of dense metal is a clear demonstration of both his aesthetic vision and engineering prowess. Calder sought to redefine the nature of art (sculpture in particular) by taking it off the pedestal and breathing movement into its static form. In 1932, Marcel Duchamp christened Calder’s early mechanized wire works as ‘mobiles.’ Plutôt Jaune remains a superlative example of Calder's unfettered imagination, architectonic fascination, and his unmatched technical skill. Jean-Paul Sartre’s insightful appraisal of Calder’s work in 1947 reinforced the way in which Calder’s work liberated sculpture from the constraints of the pedestal through the play of movement. In 1952, Calder represented the United States at the Venice Biennale, and won the Grand Prize in sculpture. After these accolades, executed at the height of his career, Plutôt Jaune demonstrates Calder's unrivaled ability to translate the delicacy and complexity of his smaller mobiles into larger scale. With measurements half-way between his intimate mobiles and his monumental ones, Plutôt Jaune exemplifies the artist's ability to render intricate structures at any dimension.

Plutôt Jaune clearly demonstrates the all-encompassing universality of Calder's art. His unique ability was to create works of exquisitely balanced composition which retain their harmony when moved by the merest breath of wind. The striking colored elements are anchored together using a series of exceptional mechanisms that allow them to move independently of each other yet retaining a formal unity that ensures that none of the elements dominate or touch each other. While the mobile's shapes recall planetary, natural and biomorphic forms, the work is unfettered by any direct notion of representation. Instead, it interacts with its environment, participating actively in the universe. The network of sloping armatures, the floating yellow, blue, red and black elements together engender unpredictable contortions and resolutions of alternating balance as they continually move. This mature work, in Calder’s most desired and captivating format, was executed at the height of his creative and technical genius. Moving in a sublime metallic dance of ever changing composition, the diversity of balance and axis in this complex aerial position exudes subtle cadence and masterful dexterity of forms that are utterly unique to Calder’s canon of suspended assemblages.