Alexander Calder b1898 in Philadelphia ///// Rosalind Krauss Passages in Modern Sculpture from a technical point of view, calder is simple, moholy-nagy is medium, schoffer is complex ... but which is the most appealing? animation is being motivated by the environment, calder was able to do this with minimal technology Schoffer, Tinguely, Takis and the new tendency sculptors "implants the sculpture with sophisticated devices to give one the sense that its animation has been motivated by some aspect of the sculpture's environment" Calder also, but with less technology. Calder's mobiles have a 'delicate equilibrium' [15, p216] from Calder "When I use two circles of wire intersecting at right angles, this to me is a sphere ... what I produce is not precisely what I have in mind -- but a sort of sketch, a man-made approximation. - this makes calder a basic constructivist in approach virtual volume [15, p216] "The path of Calder's mobiles leads from Gabo's abstract geometries to the anthropomorphic content of the body's intermittent action." Calder's sculptures have INTERMITTENT motion rather than MECHANICALLY CONTINUOUS motion, which gives them more of a relation to the body (or organisms) than to machines. ///// Jack Burnam, Beyond Modern Sculpture "Calder in all seriousness explored a considerable area of present Kinetic activity before settling on the hanging mobiles. In the process of exploration ... Calder touched upon many ideas in Kinetics, but developed few. Yet certain types of constructions by Tinguely, Jesus-Raphael Soto, Walter Linck, Harry Kramer, Julio LeParc, Yaacov Agam, and Rickey -- a good portion of the front-rank Kineticists -- have in common elements explored by Calder in the period between 1931 and 1936." - unstable objects hung in front of a panel producing random shadows - sculpture propelled by pumped liquids - elements interchangable by hand - hand-driven cams and crank trains Calder needed to work in a medium less restrained than mechanical machinery [07, p233] "Calder's particular temperment demanded a physical configuration more sensuous and free-wheeling than any producible with machines. Calder chose to explore sculptural means, in the traditional sense, more than mechanical potentialities." where are kinetic innovators 1925-1955? [07, p232] in 1930 Calder visited the studio of Mondrian, after which he stopped making his representational wire constructions and made geometric constructions from wood, wire, sheet metal. through the 30's he experimented with different types of kinetic movement, machine and not. ///// from The Machine As Seen . . . his circus originally made him famous in the Paris art world of the late 1920s began making moving objects in early 1930s, small motors, hand-crank duchamp gave the work the name of mobile his first show not understood, the photograph in the press referred to this work likening it to a gear shift [14, p150] calder, 1951 quote "... the underlying sense of form in my work has been the system of the Universe, or part thereof. For that is a rather large model to work from. What I mean is that the idea of detached bodies floating in space, of different sizes and densities, perhaps of different colors and temperatures, and surrounded and interladen with wisps of gaseous condition, and some at rest, while others move in peculiar manners, seems to me the ideal source of form. When I have used spheres or discs, I have intended that they should represent more than what they just are. ... A ball of wood or a disc of metal is rather a dull object without this sense of something emanating from it. When I use two circles of wire intersecting at right angles, this to me is a sphere ... what I produce is not precisely what I have in mind -- but a sort of sketch, a man-made approximation." used motors to solve an aesthetic problem, why should one position of a form be better than another [14, p151] "I also used to drive some of my mobiles with small electric motors, and though I have abandoned this to some extent now, I still like the idea, because you can produce a positive instead of a fitful movement -- though on occasions I like that too. With a mechanical drive, you can control the thing like the choreography in a ballet and superimpose various movements: a great number, even, by means of cams and other mechanical devices. To combine one or two simple movements with different periods, however, really fives the finest effect, because while simple, they are capable of infinite combinations." calder rejected the motor in 1935 in favor of wind or hands ///// The Movement Jean-Paul Satre on Calder's Mobiles " If it is true that sculpture must engrave movement in an immobile substance, it would be wrong to relate Calder's art to that of the sculptor. He does not suggest movement, he catches it; his intention is not to bury it forever in bronze or in gold, those glorious and stupid materials, doomed by nature to immobility. With trivial and base substances, with tiny bones or tin or zinc, he puts together strange arrangements of stems and palms, disks, feathers, petals, These are resonators, traps, they dangle at the end of a string like a spider at the end of its thread or else they pile up on a base, dull, supine, as if asleep; when a stray gust passes, it gets tangles up in them, stirs them into motion, they channel it and give it a fugitive form: a Mobile is born." also refers to a Mobile as "an object defined by its movement and which does not exist independently of it." ///// Frank Popper, Origins and Development of Kinetic Art [23, p146] Sartre on Calder "Most of the time, he is not imitating anything. I know of no art that is less mendacious than his. Sculpture suggests movement, painting suggests depth and light. Calder suggests nothing: he captures real live movements and shapes them for his purposes. His mobiles do not signify anything, or refer to anything, outside themselves. They are - and that is all there is to say. They are absolutes." "In a word, although Calder has not made any attempt to imitate - since his only intention is to create scales and accords of movement which are not yet known - his works are at once lyrical inventions, technical - almost mathematical - assemblages, and accessible symbols for Nature, that huge vague Nature which scatters pollen in all directions and abruptly brings about the flight of a thousand butterflies, about whom we never know if she is a blind succession of causes and effects or the timid, constantly retarded, deranged adn impeded development of an Idea."