Information on Alexander Calder American, 1898–1976 Standing Mobile, ca. 1940 Steel wire and sheet aluminum, 35 in. high Mary and Sylvan Lang Collection 1975.60

Subject Matter Black steel wire and sheet aluminum are the materials Calder used for this mobile. (Note: A mobile is a sculpture that moves, usually a light weight, delicately balanced suspended work.) The artist bent thin steel wire into four graceful curved lines and suspended these on vertical wires. Through two-dimensional painted aluminum shapes, Calder provided color and shape. Four shapes are circles: two white, one yellow, and one green. Three small asymmetrical shapes are yellow, blue, and green. These seven small shapes are on one side of the mobile balanced by a large, red, asymmetrical shape on the other side. Calder’s concern with organizing lines, shapes, and colors resulted in a graceful, finely balanced mobile. Air current in the room often causes a slight movement of the suspended arcs and shapes.

About the Artist One of the best known sculptors of the 20th century, Alexander Calder was born in Lawnton, a suburb of Philadelphia. His mother, Nanette Lederer-Calder, was a painter, and his grandfather, Alexander Milne Calder, and his father, Alexander Stirling Calder, were sculptors. Calder trained as a mechanical engineer, graduated in 1919 from the Stevens Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey, and worked at engineering jobs for a few years.

From 1923 to 1926, he studied at the Art Students League, New York City, where he produced oil paintings. He and his fellow students made a game of rapidly sketching people in the streets and Calder was notorious for his skill in conveying a sense of movement by a single unbroken line. During this time he took an interest in sports and circus events and contributed drawings to the satirical National Police Gazette. In 1927, Calder began his famous miniature circus and animated toys. Using wire, wood, metal, cloth, paper, leather, string, rubber tubing, corks, buttons, sequins, nuts, bolts, and bottle caps, he created a mixed media sculptural circus. From these activities, it was but a step to his larger wire sculptures.

After visiting Piet Mondrian’s Paris studio in 1930, Calder experimented with abstract constructions. Mondrian’s brightly colored shapes delighted Calder, but he decided that they would be more wonderful if they moved. During the 1930s, Calder became known both in Paris and in America for his wire sculpture, his abstract constructions, and his drawings. In 1931, he joined the Abstraction- Creation Association and in the same year produced his first non-figurative moving construction. The constructions, which moved by hand or by motor power, were baptized “mobiles” in 1932 by Marcel Duchamp; that same year Jean Arp coined the term “stabiles” for Calder’s non-moving constructions. [Note pronunciations: the nouns mobile = moe-beel; stabile = stay-beel.]

In 1934, Calder began to make unpowered mobiles for which he is most widely known. Usually constructed from pieces of shaped and painted aluminum suspended on thin wires or cords, these sculptures responded by their own weight to the faintest air currents and, by design, took advantage of changing light created by the movements. Some consider Calder’s mobiles and stabiles three- dimensional drawings. Calder added a fourth dimension: motion.

theMcNay Alexander Calder Standing Mobile, ca. 1940

About the Artist continued Calder continued to make both mobiles and stabiles until the 1970s, sometimes combining the two into one structure. His mobiles ranged from small table models to stabiles as high as 75 feet and mobiles over 45 feet wide, such as the one in the National Gallery of Art, Calder’s last major piece. He usually worked in aluminum, which is easy to cut and shape. The large mobiles and stabiles were built in foundries from models, with Calder supervising. He used no power tools and had invented many of his hand tools, including a gadget for locating the center of gravity of a piece of material. His studio was a magician’s junkyard, overflowing with old models and mobiles and bits and snips of metal.

Calder’s mobiles were among the forerunners of kinetic art (art that moves) and his reputation depended in part on the fact that he was among the first to incorporate real movement into sculpture. Calder once remarked that what he wanted was to make things that are fun to look at. The things turned out to be art: mobiles, stabiles, wire sculptures, tapestries, and paintings.

Quotes from the Artist I paint with shapes. I put them down on the table and move them around. It’s sort of like objets trouvés [the art of making a composition with ready-made odds and ends], only I’ve made the objects.

I make a mobile without very much worry about how it’s going to move. You trust to luck and the linking. Somehow things seem to work out rather pleasantly.

Strategies for Tours Primary Grades (ages 6–8): [Explore the kinds of things artist make.] Is this a painting or a sculpture? [Talk about the definition of sculpture. Introduce the word mobile.] Why is a mobile a sculpture? [Relate to mobiles over a baby’s crib.] Describe shapes and colors you see here. Upper Elementary (ages 9–11): What materials did Calder use in this mobile? What kind of shapes do you see? How is this work of art like a math equation? [Both sides of the equal sign must be equal.] If you made a mobile at school, how would you balance it? Adolescents and Adults: What is the definition of a mobile? How long has this definition been in our dictionary? Calder called his mobiles “four-dimensional drawings.” What are the common three dimensions? What do you think the fourth dimension is here? [Guide the discussion with information about the artist and his experiments with abstract construction. Share information about his family background.]

Sources Worth Consulting Calder. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1992. Calder, Alexander. Calder. An Autobiography with Pictures. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977. Marchesseau, Daniel. The Intimate World of Alexander Calder. Newark, New Jersey: Harry N. Abrams, 1989. Prather, Marla; Rower, Alexander; and Pierre, Arnauld. Alexander Calder: 1898–1976. London: Yale University Press, 1998. Vilardebo, Carlos, and Calder, Alexander. Calder’s Circus. VHS, 19 min. 1961. Distributed by the Roland Collection, New Jersey.

Prepared by Gail Bistes Guerra Date 5/22/97 theMcNay