It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Alexander Calder’s sculpture

If you have a hanging crib toy or singing wind chimes, you can thank Alexander Calder, the sculptor who invented the mobile.

Such household items are knockoffs of the artist's original idea, which he got from watching fellow abstract artist Piet Mondrian paint squares. Calder thought the squares would look better if they moved around.

A mechanical engineer by training, Calder figured out how to design metal shapes to move with the surrounding air. And he kept it up until he died in 1976. Now he’s in the news with a new showcase of his work called Calder Gardens opening in Philadelphia in September.

You might call Calder Gardens a movable feast because he gave sculptures flight even when they are static. His trademark amoebic shapes impart movement by seeming to float.

Caler’s fans included playwright Arthur Miller who said, “You feel better for having stared at his work for a while. His creations have no meaning, they just are.”

Writer Brendan Gill said Calder redefined sculpture by making it less earthbound, and in the process, turned those who viewed it free. And architect I.M.Pei said Calder was a grownup child.

It's likely that those who are drawn to Calder's work also have a childlike capacity for wonder. When Albert Einstein saw Calder's "A Universe'' - a sculpture of moving spheres - reportedly he stood transfixed before it for 40 minutes.

Though inspired by Mondrian, Calder was no newcomer to the art world. He came from a family of artmakers. His grandfather made the 37-foot-high statue of William Penn on top of City Hall in Philadelphia, and his parents were artists, too.

Maybe Calder’s subject was non-objective because his parents and their artist friends were given to sketching nudes that hung in the family living room and he was embarrassed.

In the biography "Three Alexender Calders,'' Calder's sister told of their teenage years when she and "Sandy'' experienced embarrassment because visiting peers tittered at the nudes.

"Having been surrounded by paintings and statues of unclothed figures all our lives, Sandy and I had never given the matter much thought,'' she said. "Suddenly the attitudes of our new friends become all-important, and the next time they came, we took down the offending drawings and hid them behind the piano.''

Whatever motivated Calder, he is said to never be without a roll of wire and a pair of pliers in his pocket. An early work, a wire sculpture called "Acrobats,'' sold at a Sotheby's auction last month for $794,500, even though the auction house estimated its value at $150,000.

The enthusiasm of the art world aside, Calder refused to call his art art. He preferred the word "objects.'' That way, he said, he never had to defend it to those who didn't think it art.

"I never heard him talk about art,'' Arthur Miller said. This of a man who produced 16,000 works -- from sketches to monumental sculpture. By that count, his grandson, Alexander (Sandy) Rower, figures that Calder created a work a day for nearly 50 years.

Is it art? When it comes to Calder, does it matter?

Like

Comment

Share