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拍品专文
Two delicate elements in white sway below brilliant red and ultramarine blue shapes as the interconnected units float seamlessly above the dark, undulating curves of Alexander Calder's Horseshoe Crab. Balanced at the most minute point, this masterfully conceived work seems to emulate the eb and flow of the ocean, waving gracefully with the currents of the air that envelops it. As the thin sheet metal base of the work holds steadfast, Calder’s vibrant irregular objects swim through the air, ever eluding the formidable pull of gravity in their eternal kinesis. Wonderfully dynamic yet technically mystifying, Horseshoe Crab is a delight to behold with bold color, skillful execution, and Calder’s signature style.
Fluttering back and forth in a whirling orbital dance, the delicate balance of Horseshoe Crab’s structure functions beautifully as an example not only of Calder’s mobiles, but also his smaller subsect of standing mobiles. These revolutionary forms pioneered by Calder broke free from the deeply entrenched history of stagnation in art, forging a new path of mesmerizing kinetic systems that would inspire decades of sculpture to come. It was a 1930 visit to the studio of Piet Mondrian in Paris that first inspired Calder's shift to abstraction. Upon seeing Mondrian’s studio wall, covered in his signature red, yellow, black, and white squares, Calder was struck by the notion that the square should oscillate. Though Mondrian himself was not enthused by the idea, this moment revealed a key desire of Calder’s to see motion where there was none, a desire that would set him apart from the vast canon of art history. As Marcel Duchamp, a longtime friend of Calder’s and the man who coined the term “mobiles” in 1931, once stated, Calder’s practice was so “removed from the accepted formulas that he had to invent a new name for his forms in motion.”
Calder was able to conceptualize his pieces in a manner remarkably distinct from his contemporaries. The influence of his close involvement with avant-garde artists and movements of the time, as well as his upbringing in an artistic household, can be clearly felt throughout his oeuvre, yet, it is his inherent technical prowess and mathematical precision that allows his works to truly flourish. Horseshoe Crab is a stunning testament to this intrinsic skill as it mobile elements flow freely with the currents and movements of their environment all the while remaining perfectly balanced atop a single, miniscule point. Created in the last decade of his career, this work is that of a mature artist with a long developed mastery of his craft, an expression of the wonderfully imaginative convergence of engineering and avant-garde sculpture.
Fluttering back and forth in a whirling orbital dance, the delicate balance of Horseshoe Crab’s structure functions beautifully as an example not only of Calder’s mobiles, but also his smaller subsect of standing mobiles. These revolutionary forms pioneered by Calder broke free from the deeply entrenched history of stagnation in art, forging a new path of mesmerizing kinetic systems that would inspire decades of sculpture to come. It was a 1930 visit to the studio of Piet Mondrian in Paris that first inspired Calder's shift to abstraction. Upon seeing Mondrian’s studio wall, covered in his signature red, yellow, black, and white squares, Calder was struck by the notion that the square should oscillate. Though Mondrian himself was not enthused by the idea, this moment revealed a key desire of Calder’s to see motion where there was none, a desire that would set him apart from the vast canon of art history. As Marcel Duchamp, a longtime friend of Calder’s and the man who coined the term “mobiles” in 1931, once stated, Calder’s practice was so “removed from the accepted formulas that he had to invent a new name for his forms in motion.”
Calder was able to conceptualize his pieces in a manner remarkably distinct from his contemporaries. The influence of his close involvement with avant-garde artists and movements of the time, as well as his upbringing in an artistic household, can be clearly felt throughout his oeuvre, yet, it is his inherent technical prowess and mathematical precision that allows his works to truly flourish. Horseshoe Crab is a stunning testament to this intrinsic skill as it mobile elements flow freely with the currents and movements of their environment all the while remaining perfectly balanced atop a single, miniscule point. Created in the last decade of his career, this work is that of a mature artist with a long developed mastery of his craft, an expression of the wonderfully imaginative convergence of engineering and avant-garde sculpture.