ART © 2021 CALDER FOUNDATION, NEW YORK / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK
Alexander Calder’s magnificent Untitled from circa 1942 captures the ineffable dynamism, craftsmanship and vitality signature to the artist’s oeuvre. Remarkable for both its date and exceptional composition, the work combines the sinuous, biomorphic qualities of the stabiles with the fascination with movement and chance that characterizes the mobiles. With Untitled, Calder demonstrates his mastery of organic composition and attains his goal of “arriving at a new possibility of beauty.” (Calder cited in “Que ça bouge–À propos des sculptures mobiles,” manuscript, Calder Foundation archives, 1932). The kinetic flourish provided by the branch of mobile discs in the present work creates an enlivening sense of motion; suspended between the “legs” of the stabile element, the work epitomizes Jean-Paul Satre’s assertion that “Calder does not suggest movement, he captures it…he imitates nothing, and I know no art less untruthful than his.” (“Les Mobiles de Calder,” Alexander Calder: Mobiles, Stabiles, Constellations, exh. cat., Paris: Galerie Louis Carré, 1946; trans. Chris Turner, The Aftermath of War: Jean-Paul Sartre, Calcutta: Seagull, 2008) Crowned by a soaring vertical element, Untitled is distinguished by the extraordinary lightness and complexity of its composition. Creating a mesmerizing sense of architectural equilibrium on an intimate scale, Calder encompasses the laws of balance, motion and chance alongside the modernist remit of line and form, creating a sculpture of striking dynamism and beauty. Testament to its quality, the present work was included in the famous 1942 Pierre Matisse show Calder: Recent Work that debuted some of the artist’s most celebrated work from the period, and has been housed in the same collection for nearly 60 years, having been acquired by the family of the present owner in 1961.
CALDER’S EARLY STANDING MOBILES IN INSTITUTIONAL COLLECTIONS
As Calder once described his differing bodies of work, "the mobile has actual movement in itself, while the stabile is back at the old painting idea of implied movement." (Alexander Calder in conversation with Katharine Kuh, The Artist's Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists, New York 1962, p. 42) Here, the standing mobile spans both these worlds as it employs a stabile structure to support a fine mobile arm and kinetic disks and thus resides in a liminal realm of potential energy and possibility. As Marc Glimcher further noted of the stabiles, “While some might consider the mobiles to be the ultimate expression of Calder’s use of ‘drawing in space,’ it is, in fact with the stabiles that Calder takes that final step.” (Exh. Cat., New York, Pace Wildenstein, Calder: From Model to Monument, 2006, p. 5).
THE TATE, LONDON. Art © 2021 Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
ART © 2021 CALDER FOUNDATION, NEW YORK / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK
Calder intuitively sensed the creative possibilities of applying geometric and biomorphic abstraction to spatial constructions, and this epiphany was the catalyst for his inventions of the new sculptural types: stabiles, mobiles and the hybrid standing mobiles. The body of Untitled is a symphony of lines and curves. Perfectly summarized, “The upright orientation of Calder’s freestanding sculpture and the beautifully curving silhouettes of its cut and bent forms underscore the new organic strain in Calder’s art, one that alludes to forms in the natural world without being tied specifically to any one of them.” (Exh. Cat., Washington, D. C., National Gallery of Art, Alexander Calder, 1898-1976, 1998, p. 136) Untitled gracefully and vivaciously encapsulates Calder’s brilliance as both an artist and an innovator. Synthesizing these facets of his identity Calder creates melodic works with a keen and deeply felt spatial presence and immense grandeur.
“While some might consider the mobiles to be the ultimate expression of Calder’s use of ‘drawing in space,’ it is, in fact with the stabiles that Calder takes that final step.”
The striking black body of Untitled is reminiscent of the inky black used in the palette of a deeply formative friend to the artist, Joan Miró, whom he met in Paris in 1928. Both artists shared the ambition to create a new understanding of art based on a focused engagement with color, line and form to explore spatial composition. Observers have long recognized the similarities between Calder's greatest sculptural achievements and Miró's painterly inventions, and indeed the latter’s famous Constellations owe a great debt to the American’s mobiles. However, it was not Miró but rather Piet Mondrian who provided the catalyst for Calder’s move into abstraction. Upon a visit to the Dutch master’s studio in 1930, Calder became entranced by a series of colored rectangles Mondrian had tacked to the wall “in a pattern after his nature,” and speculated aloud that he “would like to make them oscillate,” noting “how fine it would be if everything moved” (the artist cited in: Exh. Cat. O’Hara Gallery, Alexander Calder: Selected Works 1932-1972, 1994, p.3). Mondrian objected furiously, but Calder could not be deterred. He considered movement “one of the primary elements of [artistic] composition, and realized that the truest representation of movement was not movement in stasis, as the Futurists had attempted to capture, but rather movement itself” (Ibid., p.10). In the artist’s words, “You look at an abstraction…an intensely exciting arrangement…It would be perfect, but it is always still. The next step in sculpture is motion” (Alexander Calder cited in: “Objects to Art Being Static, So He Keeps It in Motion”, New York World-Telegram, 11 June 1932).
Private Collection
Art © 2021 CALDER FOUNDATION, NEW YORK / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK
Right: Alexander Calder, Black Beast, 1957
Digital Image © Calder Foundation, New York / Art Resource, NY
Art © 2021 CALDER FOUNDATION, NEW YORK / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK
Digital Image © Albright-Knox Art Gallery / Art Resource, NY
Art © 2021 Estate of Yves Tanguy / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Albright-Knox Art Gallery
Calder’s singular ability was to create works of exquisitely balanced composition with spontaneity, formalist elements and harmony. Although Untitled can certainly be viewed within the context of Calder’s deeply European sophistication, and visually resonates in some ways with the works of the Surrealists, it also brilliantly showcases Calder as a consummate creator and inimitable artist whose consistent artistic innovation throughout his career is undeniable. In Untitled viewers can experience the apogee of Calder’s instinctual formal balance and simultaneous lively and lyrical movement. Calder’s sculptures are imbued with a revitalizing sense of dynamism, vigor and ingenuity, reflective of the artist’s personality. Untitled is an undeniable testament to the artist's technical skill and imaginative genius.
Alexander Calder: Modern from the Start | MoMA EXHIBITION
