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Lot Essay
Alexander Calder’s Two Knobs encapsulates his most important ideas about color, movement and abstraction. Its cascade of colorful, biomorphic forms stems from Calder’s determination to redefine the nature of sculpture and introduce radical new ideas that would come to dominate the medium for the rest of the century. The rhythmic composition showcases Calder’s ability to expertly craft visual harmony through masterful use of color, shape, and three-dimensional space. The striking red, yellow, black and white elements are all brought together using a series of exceptional mechanisms that allow them to move independently of each other, while retaining a unity that ensures that none of the elements dominate or touch each other.
Calder’s artistic practice and interest in movement can be traced back to his childhood. Born in Philadelphia to a family of artists at the end of the 19th century, the young Calder was given his first studio at the age of eight. “[My parents] approved of the homemade,” he recalled in his autobiography. Among his earliest sculptures, given to his parents as a Christmas gift in 1909, was a kinetic duck made of trimmed sheet brass that rocked back-and-forth when tapped. 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.
In addition to his background in physics, Calder’s penchant for poetry greatly influenced his sculpture. His interest in science and mathematics might seem opposed at first to the more romantic associations of poetry, but, in fact, the two interests were intricately linked for Calder. “He grasped the inextricable relationship between immediate appearances and the hidden forces that shape our world. The lyricism of the works…has everything to do with Calder’s genius for turning to art’s advantage an investigation of the nature of the world generally believed to be the purview of physics, a way of seeing inaugurated not by artists but by the primary texts of Euclid and Isaac Newton. Calder, although not a scientist in any traditional sense, was moved by a desire, common among early 20th century thinkers, to see the poetry of everyday life as shaped by heretofore invisible principles and laws. We sometimes forget that the intimate relationship between science and alchemy and magic of all kinds, taken for granted in early modern times, was still very much a factor around the turn of the century” (J. Perl, “Sensibility and Science,” in Calder and Abstraction: From Avant-Garde to Iconic, exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2013, p. 41).
While lighthearted and lively, Calder’s mobiles are also rigorous and classical investigations into pure form, pure color and pure composition. Featuring black, white and vibrant colors in tandem with abstracted shapes, Calder’s sculptures pare away any extraneous detail to simply focus on form and its realization in space. Two Knobs illustrates the delightfully restrained aesthetic of Calder’s palette. The black, red, yellow and white demonstrates the importance of disparity in Calder’s compositions. Calder used color, not based on ideas of representation or decoration, but as an intrinsic part of the composition, using each color to help distinguish the different elements from each other, “I want things to be differentiated. Black and white are first—then
red is next—and then I get sort of vague. It’s really just for differentiation, but I love red so much that I almost want to paint everything red. I often wish that I’d been a fauve in 1905” (A. Calder, Calder, London, 2004, p. 89). Two Knobs is a particularly fine example of this use of color, as his effortless grouping of colored elements adds simplicity and elegance to the piece’s graceful movement. While it conjures up many associations, Two Knobs is not fettered by any direct notion of representation. Instead, it interacts with its environment and its viewer, participating actively in the universe in its own right. A push or a gust of wind will set its carefully balanced elements in motion, introducing the magical element of chance and movement that makes Calder’s sculptures so fascinating. As he himself said, “When everything goes right a mobile is a piece of poetry that dances with the joy of life and surprises” (A. Calder, Calder, London, 2004, p. 261).
Calder’s artistic practice and interest in movement can be traced back to his childhood. Born in Philadelphia to a family of artists at the end of the 19th century, the young Calder was given his first studio at the age of eight. “[My parents] approved of the homemade,” he recalled in his autobiography. Among his earliest sculptures, given to his parents as a Christmas gift in 1909, was a kinetic duck made of trimmed sheet brass that rocked back-and-forth when tapped. 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.
In addition to his background in physics, Calder’s penchant for poetry greatly influenced his sculpture. His interest in science and mathematics might seem opposed at first to the more romantic associations of poetry, but, in fact, the two interests were intricately linked for Calder. “He grasped the inextricable relationship between immediate appearances and the hidden forces that shape our world. The lyricism of the works…has everything to do with Calder’s genius for turning to art’s advantage an investigation of the nature of the world generally believed to be the purview of physics, a way of seeing inaugurated not by artists but by the primary texts of Euclid and Isaac Newton. Calder, although not a scientist in any traditional sense, was moved by a desire, common among early 20th century thinkers, to see the poetry of everyday life as shaped by heretofore invisible principles and laws. We sometimes forget that the intimate relationship between science and alchemy and magic of all kinds, taken for granted in early modern times, was still very much a factor around the turn of the century” (J. Perl, “Sensibility and Science,” in Calder and Abstraction: From Avant-Garde to Iconic, exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2013, p. 41).
While lighthearted and lively, Calder’s mobiles are also rigorous and classical investigations into pure form, pure color and pure composition. Featuring black, white and vibrant colors in tandem with abstracted shapes, Calder’s sculptures pare away any extraneous detail to simply focus on form and its realization in space. Two Knobs illustrates the delightfully restrained aesthetic of Calder’s palette. The black, red, yellow and white demonstrates the importance of disparity in Calder’s compositions. Calder used color, not based on ideas of representation or decoration, but as an intrinsic part of the composition, using each color to help distinguish the different elements from each other, “I want things to be differentiated. Black and white are first—then
red is next—and then I get sort of vague. It’s really just for differentiation, but I love red so much that I almost want to paint everything red. I often wish that I’d been a fauve in 1905” (A. Calder, Calder, London, 2004, p. 89). Two Knobs is a particularly fine example of this use of color, as his effortless grouping of colored elements adds simplicity and elegance to the piece’s graceful movement. While it conjures up many associations, Two Knobs is not fettered by any direct notion of representation. Instead, it interacts with its environment and its viewer, participating actively in the universe in its own right. A push or a gust of wind will set its carefully balanced elements in motion, introducing the magical element of chance and movement that makes Calder’s sculptures so fascinating. As he himself said, “When everything goes right a mobile is a piece of poetry that dances with the joy of life and surprises” (A. Calder, Calder, London, 2004, p. 261).