Alexander Calder was born to a Philadelphian family of sculptors and painters. Over a period of time he produced a body of work that is optimistic, gregariously witty, irreverent and bawdy. Calder had an obvious interest in planets stars and the solar system. He seems to have developed this interest on a Californian ranch. In the clear nights skies out on the prairie he could look up and revel in the natural wonder of it all. Caught in the thrall of a childhood fascination he watched the stars in the solar system and the way it all fitted together.
This fascination with oscillations and the machinations required to bring elements together in poetic synergy, culminated in the Circus in Paris in 1926 – 30. This was a kind of installation performance work. There were circus toys and animals trains and other playful elements. Calder had a mechanical aptitude and graduated from engineering in 1919 but the job did not satisfy him.
It is interesting to note that Calders' eccentricity became a precursor to a new way of thinking
He rigged up an arrangement of pulleys by his bed to turn on the stove for coffee in the morning. If it didn’t work he would get up repair it and then get back into bed rather than just turn on the burner in the normal way. (Fineberg. p45)
Cosmic imagery influenced by childhood gazings and seaward meanderings eventually gelled with his engineering prowess which became a form of art called Stables. This concept developed and morphed into what generated mobiles in 1930.
The Individual Aesthetic of Alexander Calder – The Great Project
By 1926 Calder had begun what was to be his greatest project of the 1920s. Within the context of fledgling notions of installation and performance art he staged performances of the kinetic elements of his sculptural installation pieces. Using a scratchy gramophone recording of a ringmaster he ceremoniously marched his sculptural pieces on to the stage. (Into the circus ring)
This style of presentation can be called performance art because Calder was a part of the machinations of the kinetic sculpture. On his hands and knees he made the sounds of the different animals as they entered the ring. Many of these imaginations had the capacity to move by themselves. There were characters such as sword swallowers, acrobats and clowns and lion tamers. This was a long term project and the variety of characters grew over a period of time.
A New Sculptural Genre
Calder had invented a new sculptural genre having moved away from the idea of fixed space as evidenced by such sculptures as Henry Moore’s Reclining Figure and having walked through the notions of open form sculpture influenced by Vladimir Tatlin, which insisted on real materials in real space, Calder went on and in Non-Objective realised this ideal in literal terms. As genre Calder’s mobiles all have celestial metaphor inherent in their structure, since they suggest the absence of fixed frame of reference – an analogy to objects in space. The mastery of continuous, unpredictable change is a central theme in Calders' art.
Resources:
- Fineberg,J. Alexander Calder. Chapter 3. A Dialogue With Europe in Art Since 1940. Strategies of Being. P42-51 Laurence King. London. 1995
- Calder Foundation
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