Alexander Calder

Galerie Maeght, Paris

The Pace Gallery, New York (acquired from the above in 1965)

Harriet Griffin Fine Art, Inc., New York 

Thomas Segal Gallery, Boston (acquired from the above in 1990)

The Works Gallery, Costa Mesa

Acquired from the above in November 1992 by the present owner

Gliding through space with balletic balance, Alexander Calder’s L’Arlequin perfectly encapsulates the theatrical wonder and elegant choreography of the artist’s revolutionary kinetic sculptures. The present work masterfully exemplifies Calder’s legendary visual vocabulary, which unlocked new dimensions of space, time and movement in the development of twentieth-century sculpture. Delicately cantilevered from a twisting, oblique base, seven angular black and white elements extend over nearly six feet—evoking the inexplicable majesty of nature's forces. Gently balanced on three points, the base of the sculpture unfolds like an accordion, each side revealing vibrant colors: red, blue, and yellow. Enlivened by the slightest changes in the air, L’Arlequin glides through space with mechanical precision, turning on its five axes with unbounded kinetic potential. The present work exudes the magisterial elegance and innovative vision that catapulted Calder to his legendary status in Contemporary art as a revolutionizer of the sculptural medium.

Born to artist parents, Calder’s command of materials and physics propelled him to create gravity defying compositions. Although unquestionably invigorated by family along with Modern predecessors and peers, Calder’s watershed contributions to Contemporary art were the product of a singular vision. 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. A fascination with the energy and theatrics of these circus scenes endured through Calder’s work—from his Cirque Calder (1931) to the present work, over three decades later. Even from the early years of his career, as he traveled between the United States and France, Calder was in the company of pioneering Modernist avant-garde artists such as Piet Mondrian, Man Ray, Fernand Léger, Jean Arp, Marcel Duchamp, and Joan Miró, many of whom would become close friends of the artist. Taking their ventures into abstraction 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) Indeed, Calder expanded abstraction into the fourth dimension, creating groundbreaking kinetic works which respond to incalculable principles of airflow and human intervention, enthralling the viewer in an ever-evolving state of wonder.

In his greatest standing mobiles, such as the present work, Calder investigates the relationship between stasis and motion, balancing the kinetic potential of his mobiles with the sculptural prowess of his stabiles. Nimbly resting on the tripartite base, L’Arlequin extends an impressive 71 inches, yet conveys a weightless presence as if defying gravity. As Thomas M. Messer writes in the introductory essay to the seminal Calder retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1964, “The hybrid combination, then, results from a fusion that brings into play a balanced ensemble of interpenetrated and kinetic components. In Calder’s great stabile-mobile compositions the fruit of former labors has been gathered. The early strive toward motion and the subsequent reassertion of repose are finally resolved in complete mechanical and visual harmony.” (Exh. Cat., New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Alexander Calder: A Retrospective Exhibition, November 1964-January 1965, p. 17)

Although Calder’s abstractions are strictly non-representational, the artist at times assigned titles after the fact of creation based on vague formal associations. L’Arlequin perhaps harkens back to the early wire sculptures of his celebrated Cirque Calder—one of the artist’s most iconic works, which exemplifies his career-long fascination with spectacle and motion. The harlequin, originally a comic figure of the Italian commedia dell'arte, would eventually be circumscribed into the role of the acrobat or clown in the modern circus. The artist remarked: “I was very fond of the spatial relations. I love the space of the circus … The whole thing of the—the vast space—I’ve always loved it.” (the artist quoted in: Cleve Gray, “Calder’s Circus,” Art in America 52, no. 5 [October 1964], p. 23) Cirque Calder, a unique body of performance art which Calder himself activated, would presage the artist’s kinetic sculptures and the role of movement as a defying element of his work. Most easily identifiable by his checkered costume and cocked hat, the Harlequin appears in the work of modern masters including Pablo Picasso, Edgar Degas, and Paul Cézanne. Calder’s L’Arlequin harnesses this spirit with a multi-color, kinetic composition which rotates and balances in flexible form.

Agilely pivoting and fluttering in response to surrounding movement in perfect structural choreography, L’Arlequin captures Calder’s revolutionary curation of space and time. The kinetic potential breathes life into the metal elements, embodying Calder’s radical transformation of twentieth-century art. Robert Osborn writes: “From the very start, from the ‘workings’ of his Circus to the resulting wire sculpture and incredible creation of the mobiles, one observes his essential preoccupation with a logical, elegantly supported, immaculately balanced sculpture … Essentially simple and direct in its approach, never pompous or bombastic, that process has allowed him the greatest freedom in seeking the various combinations and mutations of structure, form and movement.” (Robert Osborn, “Calder’s International Monuments,” Art in America 57, no. 2 [March–April 1969], p. 32)