Alexander Calder

Perls Galleries, New York

Private Collection, Providence (acquired from the above in 1973)

Sale: Ivey-Selkirk, St Louis, The Twentieth Century – Design & Fine Art, 8 November 2003, Lot 426

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner 

Providence, Rhode Island School of Design, on loan to the collection, 1992-2003

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals a few spots of scattered media accretion and a few minor scratches in places to the elements. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
"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. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

In a feat of equilibrium archetypal of Alexander Calder’s groundbreaking sculptural innovation, the floating network of interconnected elements that define the composition of Two Black Discs and Six Others is delicately and perfectly balanced, suspended in mid-air. Executed in 1971, a decade marked by growing public commissions and worldwide acclaim, the present work is testament to Calder’s absolute supremacy in the field that he came to redefine. As evident in the celestial arrangement and asymmetry of the present work, Calder’s embrace and celebration of natural forces was arguably as integral to his practice as his favored media of sheet metal and wire. Indeed, encouraged to move organically with the subtlest breath of air, the present work epitomises the captivating dichotomy of the material and the natural, of stasis and mobility, that is so central to Calder’s practice.

It is not solely Calder’s physical works, but also his career and artistic persona that are defined by dualities. American born, the artist matured in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, where he was received by both his abstract and Surrealist contemporaries as one of their own, becoming the only artist to exhibit with both groups. He returned to the United States during the Second World War, and consequently emerged as a major artist of international sophistication and significance. In 1943 Calder became the youngest artist to be given a full-scale retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, a show that received such acclaim that it was extended into 1944. Two years later, Calder took his first transatlantic flight to Paris to assist with the preparations for his legendary exhibition of stabiles and mobiles at Galerie Louis Carré. In a catalogue essay for the exhibition, the French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre marvelously distilled the unique complexity of Calder’s mobiles: “His mobiles signify nothing, refer to nothing but themselves: they are, that is all; they are absolutes. Chance, ‘the devil’s share,’ is perhaps more important in them than in any other of man’s creations. They have too many possibilities and are too complex for the human mind, even their creator’s, to predict their combinations. Calder establishes a general destiny of motion for each mobile, then he leaves it on its own. It is the time of day, the sun, the station between the servility of a statue and the independence of nature. Each of its evolutions is the inspiration of a split-second. One sees the artist’s main theme, but the mobile embroiders it with a thousand variations. It is a little swing tune, as unique as ephemeral as the sky or the morning. If you have missed it, you have missed it forever” (Jean-Paul Sartre, 'Existentialist on Mobilist', Art News, No. 46, December 1947, pp. 22-23).

Both artist and artisan, Calder made manifest his incomparable genius by exercising highly technical precision whilst enacting a seamless choreography of individual elements that appear inherent, even inevitable. Harnessing, in the artist’s own words, “the system of the universe” as “the ideal source of form,” Calder created an incomparable corpus of standing and hanging mobiles that were a means of approximating the freedom, mastery and joy of earthly existence (Alexander Calder, quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, 1998, p. 59). The power of Two Black Discs and Six Others is grounded in a fundamental understanding of this earthly existence, infused with both the science and mysticism of the cosmos. The sensation of fluctuating stasis and suspension redolent in the present work utterly crystalises the remarkable innovation of this most revolutionary twentieth-century sculptor.