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拍品专文
This work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York, under application number A07599.
Alexander Calder’s 3 Feuilles noirs, 5 blanches, 2 rouges is a captivating example of the artist’s pioneering sculptural mobiles. Consisting of ten painted metal “leaves” (feuilles) attached to wire armature, the work’s apparent delicacy is belied by its significant presence in space. This presence is accentuated by the way in which the sculpture is suspended from the ceiling, where air currents cause it to move, allowing constantly changing shadow patterns to fall upon the mobile’s surrounds as it appears to dance in the air. With the invention of open-form, kinetic works like this Calder revolutionized the medium of sculpture.
Calder was born in Pennsylvania in 1898 to an artistic family. He trained as a mechanical engineer but subsequently took classes at the Art Students League in New York and worked as a painter and illustrator. In 1926 Calder traveled to Paris and it was here, surrounded by the world of the European avant-garde, that he began to create his beloved Cirque Calder (1926-31). Influenced by the artist’s love of the circus, this work, which is now part of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s permanent collection, is comprised of moveable performers made of discarded material and wire. By using found objects and industrial materials Calder continued the sculptural explorations of Picasso but, as a work of performance art, Cirque is at the heart of Calder’s aesthetic concern for animation and kinesis. Yet it was only after visiting Mondrian’s studio and seeing the painter’s working process that Calder was inspired to create his suspended sculptural abstractions. A year later, in 1931, Marcel Duchamp gave a name to these new inventions—mobiles.
Both the form and title of 3 Feuilles noirs, 5 blanches, 2 rouges, express elements fundamental to the artist’s vision, that of nature and color. Calder regarded the sphere and the circle as the universe’s essential shapes, noting that “even my triangles are spheres, but they are spheres of a different shape” (A. Calder and K. Kuh, “Alexander Calder,” The Artist’s Voice: Talks with Seventeen Modern Artists, New York, 2000, p. 39). Here these spherical triangles, constructed from metal disks and suspended by wires, evoke the memory of tree leaves being buffeted by the wind. The horizontal planes of the black and red disks anchor the composition while the verticality of the five white leaves give the impression of the sculpture soaring into the sky. It is as though some leaves remain on the branches of a tree while others are blowing away. This sense of contrasting forces and energy is aided by the colors of the painted disks.
Concerning color’s place in his sculptures, Calder observed that, “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.” (Ibid., p. 41). Interspersed between the black disks and suspended at opposite ends of wire strands to the white, the mobile’s two red spheres provide a similarly exhilarating force as Fauvism’s use of primary color. The inherent kinetic quality of the sculpture furthers this expressive impact. Stirred into life by air currents or human movement, the abstracted ever-changing forms and shadows of 3 Feuilles noirs, 5 blanches, 2 rouges generate the ephemeral wonder of the natural world in pure art.
A recent exhibition at London’s Tate Modern in 2015-16, Alexander Calder: Performing Sculpture, assessed the innovative aspect of performance that his sculptures express. This is a discussion that will be continued by the Whitney Museum of American Art in June with the opening of Calder: Hypermobility, where works will regularly be set in motion and seen as the artist designed. The effect of movement in Calder’s sculptures is also the subject of a current exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Alexander Calder: Motion Lab, the first in a series of annual exhibits in a permanent gallery dedicated to exploring the artist’s work.
Alexander Calder’s 3 Feuilles noirs, 5 blanches, 2 rouges is a captivating example of the artist’s pioneering sculptural mobiles. Consisting of ten painted metal “leaves” (feuilles) attached to wire armature, the work’s apparent delicacy is belied by its significant presence in space. This presence is accentuated by the way in which the sculpture is suspended from the ceiling, where air currents cause it to move, allowing constantly changing shadow patterns to fall upon the mobile’s surrounds as it appears to dance in the air. With the invention of open-form, kinetic works like this Calder revolutionized the medium of sculpture.
Calder was born in Pennsylvania in 1898 to an artistic family. He trained as a mechanical engineer but subsequently took classes at the Art Students League in New York and worked as a painter and illustrator. In 1926 Calder traveled to Paris and it was here, surrounded by the world of the European avant-garde, that he began to create his beloved Cirque Calder (1926-31). Influenced by the artist’s love of the circus, this work, which is now part of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s permanent collection, is comprised of moveable performers made of discarded material and wire. By using found objects and industrial materials Calder continued the sculptural explorations of Picasso but, as a work of performance art, Cirque is at the heart of Calder’s aesthetic concern for animation and kinesis. Yet it was only after visiting Mondrian’s studio and seeing the painter’s working process that Calder was inspired to create his suspended sculptural abstractions. A year later, in 1931, Marcel Duchamp gave a name to these new inventions—mobiles.
Both the form and title of 3 Feuilles noirs, 5 blanches, 2 rouges, express elements fundamental to the artist’s vision, that of nature and color. Calder regarded the sphere and the circle as the universe’s essential shapes, noting that “even my triangles are spheres, but they are spheres of a different shape” (A. Calder and K. Kuh, “Alexander Calder,” The Artist’s Voice: Talks with Seventeen Modern Artists, New York, 2000, p. 39). Here these spherical triangles, constructed from metal disks and suspended by wires, evoke the memory of tree leaves being buffeted by the wind. The horizontal planes of the black and red disks anchor the composition while the verticality of the five white leaves give the impression of the sculpture soaring into the sky. It is as though some leaves remain on the branches of a tree while others are blowing away. This sense of contrasting forces and energy is aided by the colors of the painted disks.
Concerning color’s place in his sculptures, Calder observed that, “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.” (Ibid., p. 41). Interspersed between the black disks and suspended at opposite ends of wire strands to the white, the mobile’s two red spheres provide a similarly exhilarating force as Fauvism’s use of primary color. The inherent kinetic quality of the sculpture furthers this expressive impact. Stirred into life by air currents or human movement, the abstracted ever-changing forms and shadows of 3 Feuilles noirs, 5 blanches, 2 rouges generate the ephemeral wonder of the natural world in pure art.
A recent exhibition at London’s Tate Modern in 2015-16, Alexander Calder: Performing Sculpture, assessed the innovative aspect of performance that his sculptures express. This is a discussion that will be continued by the Whitney Museum of American Art in June with the opening of Calder: Hypermobility, where works will regularly be set in motion and seen as the artist designed. The effect of movement in Calder’s sculptures is also the subject of a current exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Alexander Calder: Motion Lab, the first in a series of annual exhibits in a permanent gallery dedicated to exploring the artist’s work.