Alexander Calder

Artist

• Born: July 22, 1898
• Birthplace: Lawnton (now part of Philadelphia), Pennsylvania
• Died: November 11, 1976
• Place of death: New York, New York

American sculptor

Calder was an experimental abstract artist who applied engineering concepts to sculpture and other media to create a new understanding of the use of space and form in art.

Area of achievement Art

Early Life

Alexander Calder (KAWL-duhr) grew up surrounded by artists. His grandfather, Alexander Milne Calder, was a Scottish immigrant and a prominent sculptor, and his father, Alexander Stirling Calder, also became a successful sculptor and a member of the National Academy. Alexander Stirling married portrait painter Nannette Lederer, and Peggy, their first child, was born in 1896. Alexander Calder followed two years later. Although the family moved frequently, Calder’s parents always encouraged their children to be creative. When he was four, Calder posed for one of his father’s sculptures and later posed for his mother’s oil portraits. At the age of five Calder made little wood and wire figures and later created jewelry for his sister’s dolls using bits of wire collected from spliced cables left in the street. His sister bought him his first pair of pliers with her weekly allowance. Calder had his own workshop before the age of ten, and later his parents always gave him cellar space to experiment with his creations. Despite Calder’s extensive exposure to art, he was not at all anxious to pursue an art career. After a brief discussion with his father, in 1915 Calder entered the Steven’s Institute of Technology, in Hoboken, New Jersey, to study engineering.

Calder was not strongly committed to engineering, and after he completed his studies he spent a few years holding miscellaneous jobs. In 1923, Calder, a curly haired, bearlike man, entered the Art Students League. While attending the art school, Calder secured a job as a freelance artist for the National Police Gazette and worked at a variety of commercial art assignments. During one assignment, Calder sketched circus performers and animals at the Bronx and Central Park Zoos. The sketches provided a foundation for the first of his famous creations, the moveable Circus (1926).

In his spare time, Calder created small wire sculptures from odds and ends or carved animals from bits of miscellaneous wood. Following his first exhibit, which featured oil paintings, Calder sailed for France to study sketching. He completed his studies and secured work sketching passengers on a ship. After the ship returned to France, Calder worked again with his wood and wire sculptures and produced his first set of moveable circus figures. Full of whimsy, the sculptures possessed moveable parts that Calder activated with a series of strings and wires. Calder’s dynamic creations found unusual venues for their initial exhibition and performance but undoubtedly created a new place in the art world.

Life’s Work

Calder’s Circus linked his engineering and art with his early ventures in toy creation. It reflected Calder’s experimental and playful nature, aspects so often present in his later artwork. Calder performed with his circus figures at the Salon des Humoristes in Paris and attracted attention from various corners. After a brief stint at an Oshkosh, Wisconsin, toy company, Calder returned to Paris in 1929 and continued to perform with his circus figures. He also showed paintings, sculptures, toys, and jewelry in various galleries.

Calder’s circus performances brought him into the circle of prominent and experimental artists of Paris, and he joined a group of abstract artists that included Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. Mondrian, a prominent abstractionist, was impressed with Calder and invited him to his studio. The simple forms and primary colors Calder saw in the studio later inspired him to bring these shapes off the canvas and experiment with various methods of incorporating both motion and sound into his creations.

Calder continued to exhibit drawings, paintings, and sculptures in various galleries in New York and Paris over the next few years. In 1931 he married Louisa Cushing James, whom he had met a few years before. The same year, Calder tried his hand illustrating a book of children’s fables. In Paris the following year, Calder’s interest in the abstract found expression in his creation of motorized and hand-cranked moving sculptures that exhibit designer and artist Marcel Duchamp labeled “mobiles.” His stationary constructions simultaneously received the name “stabiles.” Over the next three years, Calder successfully experimented with large mobiles and exhibited his work in a variety of cities in the United States and Europe. One mobile, a motorized creation called Universe (1931), was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In 1935, Calder extended his creative ventures into the dance world and designed mobiles for Martha Graham’s ballet Panorama. The following year, he created Plastic Interludes, a series of circles and spirals that performed on an empty stage for the Graham ballet Horizons, and also created a mobile for French composer Erik Satie’s symphonic drama Socrate (1918). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, considering Calder an established modern artist, included Calder’s work in two of its shows that year.

The size of Calder’s mobile creations increased along with his fame. After creating an ingenious solution for design problems for a mercury fountain for the 1937 Paris Exposition, Calder continued to build his reputation in Europe and the United States for dynamic and experimental art forms. He received commissions to build large-scale sheet-metal mobiles from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and a hotel in Caracas, Venezuela. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, recognizing his stature, scheduled a major Calder exhibit in 1943, which included a film of Calder’s work and also featured Calder himself giving circus performances.

Calder’s major mobile creations continued to grow. In 1949 he created a twenty-foot mobile for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but it was purchased by the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, after the Philadelphia museum refused to accept it. Calder still featured his mobiles in various theater productions and Parisian galleries. His other media also attracted praise. Calder’s illustrations in numerous children’s books assured his inclusion in The New York Times’ 1950 list of the ten best children’s illustrators of the previous fifty years.

In 1958, Calder obtained three major public commissions that reflected his strong international reputation. He created Whirling Ear for the Brussels World’s Fair, Spirale for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) building in Paris, and.125 for the Idlewild International Airport (now John F. Kennedy International Airport) in New York. Calder also mounted major exhibits in Brazil, Venezuela, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. His stature as an artist enabled his election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in New York and later the American Academy of Arts.

Age did not limit Calder’s desire to experiment with art in different forms. In 1960, at the age of sixty-two, Calder designed his first Aubusson tapestry in collaboration with the famous Aubusson firm. The following year he exhibited the tapestries in Paris. He also created monumental stabiles for public commissions in increasing numbers, continued to produce sets for ballet productions, and exhibited works in gouache.

In the 1960’s, Calder became increasingly active in the antinuclear movement. He joined Artists for a Sane Nuclear Policy and marched against the Vietnam War in Washington, D.C., after the group elected him chair. Around the same time, he took out a full-page ad in The New York Times wishing the United States a year dedicated to peace and donated a large stabile, Object in Five Planes (Peace), to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and donated funds from the commission for the stabile Frisco to raise funds for the Vietnam peace movement. The United Nations recognized Calder’s work and commitment to peace in 1975 when they presented him with the United Nations Peace Medal.

In 1967, Calder mounted one of his largest works, Man, at the Montreal World’s Fair and created a sound mobile for use in Calder Piece, an orchestral work by Earle Brown performed in Paris. Public commissions continued as Calder created other huge mobiles and stabiles. In the 1970’s, Calder’s work expanded to even larger objects. In 1973 he painted a jet plane in bold primary colors for Braniff International Airlines. Two years later the airline commissioned his work on its flagship to commemorate the bicentennial of the United States. That year Calder also painted a race car with the same bold style. In 1976, at the peak of his fame and in the middle of a major retrospective of his work at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Calder suffered a heart attack and died.

Significance

Calder changed the world’s perception of sculpture and opened the door to new approaches to the format. Although Calder referred to his works as “objects” rather than sculpture, he transformed the medium from a stationary earthbound fixture that could only represent sound and motion to a dynamic form that possessed sound and motion. His masterfully created mobiles and stabiles used simple, abstract shapes that often represented various aspects of his favorite subject the universe and possessed joyful and fascinating qualities that delighted the viewer. He also pioneered the use of various combinations of wood and metal, forming works larger than life.

Calder’s ideas had a significant impact on the concept of public sculpture. Rather than somber, stately pieces, Calder’s public works, despite his use of exact math and engineering skills, were exhilarating and whimsical. Calder initiated the idea of site specificity by creating public works after viewing their designated spots and seeking to understand the nature of the surroundings in both a physical and social sense.

Calder’s playful and inquisitive nature led him to explore materials, tools, ideas, and industries not usually linked with art. Besides designing Aubusson tapestries and rugs, Calder designed wallpaper, created artistic household objects, and fashioned unusual jewelry from nontraditional materials. His circus figures and his lively wire sculpture portraits possessed a hilarious whimsy and stretched concepts of artistic perception. Calder’s long and productive career constantly challenged the world’s understanding of art.

Bibliography

Arason, H. H., and Pedro E. Guerrero. Calder. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand, 1966. This book is a critical study of Calder’s sculpture and its contribution to the art world. The publication does not cover his work in other media and is limited as a consequence. The text is by Arason and the photographs are by Guerrero. Contains a detailed chronology.

Bourbon, David. Calder: Mobilist, Ringmaster, Innovator. New York: Macmillan, 1980. An engaging and fresh approach to Calder’s life, this work supplies an insight to the person and his inspirations, as well as explaining in simple language Calder’s significant contributions. The publication includes photographs and prints of Calder’s work and some interesting family photographs.

Calder, Alexander. Calder. New York: Pantheon, 1966. This autobiography was compiled from a series of interviews with Calder conducted by his son-in-law, Jean Davidson, in 1965. The publication includes a substantive narrative of personal recollections, large numbers of family photographs, and prints and photographs of Calder’s major works.

Giménez, Carmen, and Alexander S. C. Rower, eds. Calder: Gravity and Grace. London: Phaidon, 2003. This book, which accompanied an exhibition of Calder’s work, includes a critical essay, colored plates of his sculptures, excerpts from his writings and interviews, a bibliography, and exhibition history.

Lipman, Jean. Calder’s Universe. New York: Viking Press, 1976. Published in conjunction with the last major retrospective during Calder’s lifetime, the book outlines the development of Calder’s work with the extensive use of prints and photographs of his work.

Rosenthal, Mark, with a chronology by Alexander S. C. Rower. The Surreal Calder. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005. Places Calder within the context of Surrealism to describe how he was influenced by and contributed to this artistic movement.

San Lazzaro, G. di, ed. Homage to Alexander Calder. New York: Tudor, 1972. This book contains essays by numerous contributors about Calder’s work and his influence.

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