Alexander Calder

1943, Constellation



1934, A Universe



UNESCO Spiral



Alexander Calder was a sculptor, who lived from 1898 to 1976. He produced art from the 1920's and continuously after. His sculptures from the twenties often produce the illusion of mass using thin wires. Later, he made mobile sculptures, for which he is most well known. These began in the early thirties, and after this he continuously elaborated on the idea.

The first sculpture here is an immobile structure, one of the constellation pieces, built in 1943. This is considerably later than the mobile sculptures began, showing that he was still working in a variety of styles contemporaneously. In the constellations, of which there are quite many, abstract, three dimensional shapes are scattered about, separated and suspended in air by a stiff wire. These are organic forms, composed of hard, curved lines, and sharp edges. Even though technically these are termed “organic” forms, as they are composed of curved lines, they are most definitively nonliving—their edges are still strong, and they often do not look like something that is naturally occurring. Instead, they look like pieces of wood that have been shaped by conscious human effort. They are spread apart by the wires, which make the constellation-like shape. What is unusual about this, is that the structures so openly contradict the basic understanding of a constellation. Constellations are human contrivances. The constellations that we are now familiar with are Roman in origin; the various Native American tribes and other cultures created entirely different constellations, independently. This variety of forms identified is the result of the basic human tendency to see patterns in random signals. It is an evolved psychological characteristic—it is better to see a pattern that does not exist, than to fail to see a something that is present, like a hiding predator, or potential food. The pattern of stars seen in the sky is the result of massive objects, casting off a huge amount of energy in light and heat, scattered around our galaxy, over thousands of light years. It is an extremely vast amount of space, yet with everything so distant, it becomes flattened into a particular arrangement of light dots from the vantage point of the Earth. Constellations are built from this flat image, not from the three dimensional arrangement that actually exists. Lines are added between two or more stars that appear close to each other, even though, in the third dimension in the distant space which we cannot see, these two stars might actually be hundreds or thousands of light years away. Calder's sculptures add the third dimension back to the form. Calder's works do not seem to make pictures of soldiers or animals as constellations in the sky do. Their whole form is a geometric abstraction, and it doesn't purport to be anything other than a scattering of forms. The focus is placed on the objects, and the thin, flimsy lines that connect them. This is radically different from the understanding of constellations in the sky, in which the stars and their lines are almost incidental, and the main focus is the total form which is perceived and imposed onto the stars, and the space between them, a form which is usually something living—an animal, a human, or a mythological creature. Calder doesn't offer any such representative idea with his sculptures; the only title is “constellation,” but there is no sense of any particular constellation. There are only the lines, the massive shapes, and the open space between them.

Also shown is “A Universe,” of 1934. It's set on a wooden base, with a thicker curved bar, with something like a bent helical form, rising up, and holding the main circular form, made of wire. From both of these elements, two small spheres are suspended from wire. So, the motion of the sculpture is guided by the circular form, orbiting. Ultimately, Calder found this style of mobile sculpture excessively predictable. According to one anecdote, Albert Einstein saw this structure in New York, at the Museum of Modern Art, and gazed at it for forty minutes, carefully watching it rotate, before declaring that he wished that he had created it. After this, Calder was persuaded to continue these structures for a while, but ultimately still found even the best of them, in his words, “apt to be mechanically repetitious.” This particular sculpture, though, derives an additional humorous quality from its title, “A Universe,” and the disconnect between that and the apparent simplicity of the structure itself. There are possibly two or three small spheres which may be considered planets, orbiting along one sphere of wire, to which they are connected. In both A Universe and Constellation, there is an allusion to these grand, expansive, astrophysical spaces. However Calder was also quite vigorously opposed to the attachment of symbolism to his work. Regarding a large outdoor mobile, the UNESCO spiral, the art dealer George Staempfli once asked about symbolic meaning in his work. Calder responded, “Well, it goes up, something like a flame. But there's no history attached.” His wife apologised for him, “Sorry,.. Sandy is probably as unsymbolic a person as I know.” This little anecdote was recounted in an article by this art dealer, and it is quite illustrative of Calder's opposition to symbolism in his own work in particular, and also of the art scene at the time. This trait is one that Calder shared with many of the abstract expressionist painters, in which allusions might be made to grand philosophical realisations, or the basic human condition, but the work itself does not make use of direct symbolism or representation of these concepts.

The rest of this show will now be spent on the sound which accompanied a short film on Calder's work. It was composed by John Cage in 1950, and the film itself was made by Herbert Matter, and called “Works of Calder”. The film runs for just over 20 minutes, and contains narration from Burgess Meredith, who brought up the idea of making a film on Calder's work. The music itself uses primarily the sounds of Cage's prepared piano technique, in which foreign objects, like bits of metal and plastic, bolts, toys, pencils and the like, are placed about on the strings of the piano, distorting the pitches and making a more percussive timbre. This is combined with recorded sounds of Calder at work, hammering at his sheets of metal.