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Lot Essay
This work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York, under application number A07649.
"Why must art be static? You look at an abstraction, sculptured or painted, an entirely 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." - Alexander Calder, cited in 'New York World Telegram', 11 June 1932.
Commanded by its environment, Alexander Calder’s Two Black Discs and Six Others captures the rhythms of nature; at times, it appears completely still, eternally suspended at a singular point in space and time, while at others, the sculpture becomes alive as it stirs, respires, awakens, and sleeps. Before motion strikes, a placid Two black discs and six others commands space with its modesty. Painted a matted black, it appears more serious than other iterations of his mobiles, whose elements are painted in the primary colors: pure tones of red, yellow, and blue. With his mobiles such as this, Calder displays the confidence of a Master: he makes no effort to detract from the various compositions his sculpture will eventually occupy. Two black discs and six others becomes a vivid display when activated by its surroundings. It gracefully performs at the suggestion of a gentle breeze slipping in through a nearby window or by the commanding pull of a slamming door awakens this mobile from slumber
Calder first conceived of these canonical sculptures in Paris in 1931, which he would exhibit in both Abstraction-Création and Surrealist exhibitions in Europe and the United States. The Abstraction-Création artists were dogmatic in their use of abstraction while the Surrealists juxtaposed figures to create the irrational, yet Calder’s work straddles the figurative and the abstract. Its loosely symbolic form ultimately engages its surroundings to provoke an entirely new perception of its environment, and Calder became a champion within both circles of artists.
These three-dimensional abstractions, whose elements are suspended like leaves on a branch, served as a continual point of return throughout Calder’s prolific career. Christened as “mobiles” by Marcel Duchamp, these abstract, elemental sculptures are activated by the conditions of their environment to delight our senses. In addition to the mobiles, whose pliable materials bend and dance with the suggestion of airflow, Calder’s experimentation led to his development of “gongs” (sound mobiles whose movement cumulates in a musical note) in the 1940s and “towers” (mobiles suspended from the ground rather than the ceiling) in the 1950s.
Reviewing the earliest iterations of these mobiles for Art News in 1947, the French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “Valéry said the sea is always beginning over again. One of Calder’s objects is like the sea and equally spellbinding: always beginning over again, always new. A passing glance is not enough; you must live with it, be bewitched by it. Then the imagination revels in these pure, interchanging forms, at once free and rule-governed” (J. Sartre, "Les Mobiles des Calder," from Alexander Calder: Mobiles, Stabiles, Constellations, exh. cat. (Paris: Galerie Louis Carré, 1946), 9–19. English translation by Chris Turner, from The Aftermath of War: Jean-Paul Sartre (Calcutta: Seagull, 2008), via www.calder.org [accessed 3/30/2018]).
Utilizing the laws of physics as form, the mobile sculptures engage Calder’s lifelong inquiry into science and mathematics. Born in Philadelphia to a family of artists at the end of the 19th century, a young Calder exhibited a mathematical mind and incessant eye for scientific inquiry. Though his artistic practice would engage spatial boundaries and elements of chance, Calder initially pursued engineering and ignored the calling of generations of Calder artists who came before him. After graduating from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1919, Calder worked as a hydraulic engineer. But a few years later, Calder abandoned mechanics—though not entirely, as his mobiles first would utilize electric motors and then environmental forces to stimulate movement—and enrolled in the Art Students League, where he studied painting under George Luks and John Sloan. Calder then studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris’s Montparnasse district, where he would meet Marcel Duchamp and Piet Mondrian, who together would inform Calder’s sculptural practice. Calder would spend his career between the artists’ communities in Paris, frequenting Gertrude Stein’s salon, and that of New York, his mother country. Calder’s trailblazing accomplishments in sculptures would afford him international esteem: Calder received the first-ever commission by the National Endowment of the Arts and participated in the first iteration of documenta.
Although the legacy of his work is largely associated with that of Piet Mondrian, Fernand Léger and Joan Miró, by 1971 Calder was operating within the same art world as the minimalists; the work of Donald Judd, Richard Serra, and Frank Stella did not refer to anything outside of the work itself and its interaction with its surroundings. The overall reception of these works was predicated upon human perception of it. Likewise, the perception of a Calder mobile is completely dependent upon the conditions of its environment.
While, to steal a famous line from Donald Judd, there is nothing minimal about his work, Calder’s mobile sculptures occupy space in a similar manner as the minimalist masterpieces, whose subject is largely our experience of the works. “Sculpture suggests movement, painting suggests depth or light,” Sartre wrote. “Calder suggests nothing. He captures true, living movements and crafts them into something. His mobiles signify nothing, refer to nothing other than themselves. They simply are: they are absolutes” (Ibid)
"Why must art be static? You look at an abstraction, sculptured or painted, an entirely 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." - Alexander Calder, cited in 'New York World Telegram', 11 June 1932.
Commanded by its environment, Alexander Calder’s Two Black Discs and Six Others captures the rhythms of nature; at times, it appears completely still, eternally suspended at a singular point in space and time, while at others, the sculpture becomes alive as it stirs, respires, awakens, and sleeps. Before motion strikes, a placid Two black discs and six others commands space with its modesty. Painted a matted black, it appears more serious than other iterations of his mobiles, whose elements are painted in the primary colors: pure tones of red, yellow, and blue. With his mobiles such as this, Calder displays the confidence of a Master: he makes no effort to detract from the various compositions his sculpture will eventually occupy. Two black discs and six others becomes a vivid display when activated by its surroundings. It gracefully performs at the suggestion of a gentle breeze slipping in through a nearby window or by the commanding pull of a slamming door awakens this mobile from slumber
Calder first conceived of these canonical sculptures in Paris in 1931, which he would exhibit in both Abstraction-Création and Surrealist exhibitions in Europe and the United States. The Abstraction-Création artists were dogmatic in their use of abstraction while the Surrealists juxtaposed figures to create the irrational, yet Calder’s work straddles the figurative and the abstract. Its loosely symbolic form ultimately engages its surroundings to provoke an entirely new perception of its environment, and Calder became a champion within both circles of artists.
These three-dimensional abstractions, whose elements are suspended like leaves on a branch, served as a continual point of return throughout Calder’s prolific career. Christened as “mobiles” by Marcel Duchamp, these abstract, elemental sculptures are activated by the conditions of their environment to delight our senses. In addition to the mobiles, whose pliable materials bend and dance with the suggestion of airflow, Calder’s experimentation led to his development of “gongs” (sound mobiles whose movement cumulates in a musical note) in the 1940s and “towers” (mobiles suspended from the ground rather than the ceiling) in the 1950s.
Reviewing the earliest iterations of these mobiles for Art News in 1947, the French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “Valéry said the sea is always beginning over again. One of Calder’s objects is like the sea and equally spellbinding: always beginning over again, always new. A passing glance is not enough; you must live with it, be bewitched by it. Then the imagination revels in these pure, interchanging forms, at once free and rule-governed” (J. Sartre, "Les Mobiles des Calder," from Alexander Calder: Mobiles, Stabiles, Constellations, exh. cat. (Paris: Galerie Louis Carré, 1946), 9–19. English translation by Chris Turner, from The Aftermath of War: Jean-Paul Sartre (Calcutta: Seagull, 2008), via www.calder.org [accessed 3/30/2018]).
Utilizing the laws of physics as form, the mobile sculptures engage Calder’s lifelong inquiry into science and mathematics. Born in Philadelphia to a family of artists at the end of the 19th century, a young Calder exhibited a mathematical mind and incessant eye for scientific inquiry. Though his artistic practice would engage spatial boundaries and elements of chance, Calder initially pursued engineering and ignored the calling of generations of Calder artists who came before him. After graduating from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1919, Calder worked as a hydraulic engineer. But a few years later, Calder abandoned mechanics—though not entirely, as his mobiles first would utilize electric motors and then environmental forces to stimulate movement—and enrolled in the Art Students League, where he studied painting under George Luks and John Sloan. Calder then studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris’s Montparnasse district, where he would meet Marcel Duchamp and Piet Mondrian, who together would inform Calder’s sculptural practice. Calder would spend his career between the artists’ communities in Paris, frequenting Gertrude Stein’s salon, and that of New York, his mother country. Calder’s trailblazing accomplishments in sculptures would afford him international esteem: Calder received the first-ever commission by the National Endowment of the Arts and participated in the first iteration of documenta.
Although the legacy of his work is largely associated with that of Piet Mondrian, Fernand Léger and Joan Miró, by 1971 Calder was operating within the same art world as the minimalists; the work of Donald Judd, Richard Serra, and Frank Stella did not refer to anything outside of the work itself and its interaction with its surroundings. The overall reception of these works was predicated upon human perception of it. Likewise, the perception of a Calder mobile is completely dependent upon the conditions of its environment.
While, to steal a famous line from Donald Judd, there is nothing minimal about his work, Calder’s mobile sculptures occupy space in a similar manner as the minimalist masterpieces, whose subject is largely our experience of the works. “Sculpture suggests movement, painting suggests depth or light,” Sartre wrote. “Calder suggests nothing. He captures true, living movements and crafts them into something. His mobiles signify nothing, refer to nothing other than themselves. They simply are: they are absolutes” (Ibid)