Alexander Calder (1898 – 1976) , known to many as ‘Sandy’, was an American sculptor from Pennsylvania. He was the son of well-known sculptor Alexander Stirling Calder, and his grandfather and mother were also successful artists. Alexander Calder is known for inventing wire sculptures and the mobile, a type of kinetic art which relied on careful weighting to achieve balance and suspension in the air. Initially Calder used motors to make his works move, but soon abandoned this method and began using air currents alone.
Calder always enjoyed making art. However, he trained as a mechanical engineer at the Stevens Institute of Technology in his early twenties. He began to pursue painting in earnest a few years after receiving this degree.
He is said to have chosen mechanical engineering arbitrarily, simply because someone he befriended was going to study that subject. Nevertheless he excelled at mathematics, and the experience was later applied to his unique and ingenious artistic approach.
Although not the first person to use metal and movement in his work, Calder became known for his pioneering use of both. In particular he was famous for what Marcel Duchamp christened, ‘mobiles’, and what Jean Arp named ‘stabiles’.
Essentially his mobiles moved, often lacking the traditional base or pedestal which would usually anchor a sculpture to the floor. Stabiles were simply sculptures which were stationary and placed on the ground. These were often made on a colossal scale.
Calder visited Piet Mondrian’s studio in 1930, as described by him here:
It was a very exciting room. Light came in from the left and from the right, and on the solid wall between the windows there were experimental stunts with colored rectangles of cardboard tacked on ….
I suggested to Mondrian that perhaps it would be fun to make these rectangles oscillate. And he, with a very serious countenance, said: ‘No, it is not necessary, my painting is already very fast.’…
Calder loved the circus. In his twenties, whilst working at the National Police Gazette, he was asked to produce a series of illustrations of a circus troupe. As he later described in an interview;
When he moved to Paris in 1926, his interest quickly escalated into the creation of his own miniature Cirque Calder, fashioned from an array of found materials. He would pack this into two suitcases and give performances to his friends. Soon the two suitcases became five, and Calder began to make some modest earnings from the venture. As such, his career as an artist began in a very unusual way.
In historical photographs, Calder often seems to be amusing himself in his workshop, Yet as those who had the rare fortune to be present in the act of creation can attest, Calder’s “playing” was actually the antithesis of frivolity. Calder’s instinctual experimentation resulted in an extended legacy, now loudly resounding in contemporary art of the twenty-first century.
Calder always carried wire and pliers with him so that he could “sketch” in his favourite material. This has come to be known as ‘drawing in space’ because he would literally use the wire to create a drawing in the air.
I want things to be differentiated [within my work]. Black and white are first—then red is next… It’s really just for differentiation, but I love red so much that I almost want to paint everything red. I often wish I’d been a fauve in 1905
Out of different masses, light, heavy, middling- indicated by variations of size or colour- directional line - vectors which represent speeds, velocities, accelerations, forces, etc…-these directions making between them meaningful angles, and senses, together defining one big conclusion or many.
Spaces, volumes, suggested by the smallest means in contrast to their mass, or even including them, juxtaposed, pierced by vectors, crossed by speeds.
In 1937 the Calder’s became very involved with the Paris World’s Fair, in particular the Spanish Pavilion. Calder offered to exhibit a mobile but initially the architect was against including a non-Spaniard in the show. However when they received a very plain looking fountain, which was to display liquid mercury from Almaden, they decided to call Calder in to create a new one. Calder’s Mercury Fountain was made of irregularly shaped steel plates for the liquid to run over, and also a rod with a red disc attached on one end, and the word ALMADEN written in wire hanging from the other. As the mercury moved through the fountain it would disturb the rod causing the disc and wire to oscillate in the air. The piece was shown alongside Picasso’s Guernica and entertained the audience greatly:
In 1969, Calder’s monumental public artwork, his stabile Le Grande vitesse was installed in the plaza outside City Hall in Grand Rapids Michigan, USA. The title is a tongue-in-cheek French translation of the name ‘Grand Rapids’ which also means ‘Great Speed’.
The artwork has caused great controversy from the word go. When locals discovered the plans there was a hot debate in the local newspapers about whether the project should go forward. Even to this day many people do not appreciate Calder’s vision.
Nevertheless the Plaza has become known as Calder Plaza, and there is an annual arts festival on the artist’s birthday. Le Grande vitesse is even seen on street signs and the city government letterhead, placing the artwork at the heart of the city’s identity.
Calder developed the idea of dismantling even large sculptures so they could be posted unobtrusively avoiding customs problems. He essentially designed flat pack artworks. He would also send detailed numbered and colour coded instructions along with the piece so that it could be reassembled correctly on the other end.
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| Alexander Calder |
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| Cow, 1926 |
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| Brass family, 1929 |
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| Medusa, 1930 |
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| Feathers, 1931 |
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Panneau bleu, 1936
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| Untitled, 1936 |
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| Standing Mobile, 1937 |
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| Little spider, 1940 |
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| Yucca, 1941 |
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| The Big Ear, 1943 |
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| Blue Feather, 1948 |
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| Tower with Painting, 1951 |
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Acoustic Ceiling, 1953
Aula Magna, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela
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Flamingo, 1953
Chicago |
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L'empennage, 1953
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art |
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La Ciudad, 1960
Galería de Arte Nacional, Caracas, Venezuela
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The Four Elements, 1961
Moderna Museet, installation at the entrance of the museum |
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| Têtes et Queue, 1965 Berlin |
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| Man, Expo 67 |
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Untitled, 1968
Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Portugal |
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La Grande Vitesse, 1969
Grand Rapids, Michigan |
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Bobine (Bobbin) 1970
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia |
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Le hallebardier, 1971,
Prengel Museum, Hannover, Germany |
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| Blondie, 1972 |
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Feuille d'arbre (Tree leaf) 1974
Tel Aviv, Israel
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| Tripes, 1974 |
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The BMW 3.0 CSL, 1975
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| Homage to Jerusalem, 1977 |
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| Mountains and Clouds, 1985 |
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Five swords, 2003
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| City Hall Park, NY |
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| Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen |
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