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'MY WORKSHOP BECAME SOME SORT OF A CENTRE OF ATTRACTION; EVERYBODY CAME IN.'

- Alexander Calder, 1966

American artist Alexander Calder is well known for his invention of the mobile and introducing movement into art. He was born into a family of artists.

After school, Calder studied engineering but soon realised that he really wanted to be an artist. He attended art classes and moved to Paris where he worked and made friends with artists, musicians and writers.

From the start Calder was fascinated with movement: he sketched animals in action at the zoo and began including moveable parts in his sculptures. One of his first major works was Cirque Calder - a circus of performers and animals made of wire and found objects that came to life in his hands. In his huge workshop, Calder's creative mind and skills led him to construct beautiful kinetic mobiles that moved in the breeze and impressive metal sculptures called stabiles, which you can see in the exhibition here at NGV as well as in cities all over the world.

Now it's your turn to be creative at Alexander Calder: Workshop for Kids - construct a sculpture of an animal and build a sculpture for your city at Creation Zone.

SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE

Join the #NGVKids experience by sharing your visit online. Tag #NGV for a chance to be featured by @NGVMelbourne.

The NGV warmly thanks The Truby and Florence Williams Charitable Trust, managed by Equity Trustees, the Crown Resorts and Packer Family foundations and Official Supplier, Canson Australia for their generous support of Alexander Calder: Workshop for Kids.

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'MY WORKSHOP BECAME SOME SORT OF A CENTRE OF ATTRACTION; EVERYBODY CAME IN.' - Alexander Calder, 1966 American artist Alexander Calder is well known for his invention of the mobile and introducing movement into art. He was born into a family of artists.

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MaryAnn F. Kohl, process art and treasures of childhood

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Using only pipe cleaners, a rock (or other base like a chunk of Styrofoam), build a "stabile". Add whatever you have on hand. We had buttons and paper scraps and beads to add to ours. Any kind of wire will work, including the new plastic-coated wires in craft stores (in colors).

This idea is found in "Great American Artists for Kids" by Kohl and Solga.

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alexander calder stabile sculpture

using only pipe cleaners

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a rock (or other base like a chunk of styrofoam)

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build a "stabile". add whatever you have on hand. we had buttons and paper scraps and beads to add to ours. any kind of wire will work

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including the new plastic-coated wires in craft stores (in colors).



this idea is found in "great american artists for kids"

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Alexander Calder Stabile Sculpture Using only pipe cleaners, a rock (or other base like a chunk of Styrofoam), build a "stabile". Add whatever you have on hand. We had buttons and paper scraps and beads to add to ours. Any kind of wire will work, including the new plastic-coated wires in craft stores (in colors).

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Cut & twist extra pipe cleaners onto each side of the balancing pipe cleaner. In Calder fashion, I cut out organic shapes from foam sheets and poke them through the ends of each pipe cleaner, making sure the shapes can balance when finished.

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How to Make a Calder-Inspired Kinetic Sculpture - ArtSmudge

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I first learned of Calder's stabile from art educator Valerie Maggitti at a teacher workshop on primary sculpture making. Using tag board, markers, pipe cleaners and foam sheets you can teach young kids how to make their first kinetic masterpiece.

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Alexander Calder: The Creation of a Stabile

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The mobiles started when I went to see Mondrian. I was impressed by several coloured rectangles he had on the wall. Shortly after that I made some mobiles; Mondrian claimed his paintings were faster than my mobiles.

When an artist explains what he is doing he usually has to do one of two things: either scrap what he has explained, or make his subsequent work fit in with the explanation.

Alexander Calder in his Roxbury studio, 1941
Photo credit: Calder Foundation, New York / Art Resource, NY
© 2015 Calder Foundation, New York / DACS, London

My fingers always seem busier than my mind.

Just as one can compose colours, or forms, so one can compose motions.

Each element able to move, to stir, to oscillate, to come and go in its relationships with the other elements in its universe.

My whole theory about art is the disparity that exists between form, masses and movement.

Alexander Calder in his studio with Circus 1929
Calder Foundation, New York, NY, Art Resource, NY

Join the conversation #Calder
Alexander Calder: Performing Sculpture, supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art, with additional support from the Performing Sculpture Supporters Circle and Tate Patrons, Tate Modern, 11 November 2015 - 3 April 2016. The exhibition is curated by Achim Borchardt-Hume, Director of Exhibitions, Tate Modern, Ann Coxon, Curator, and Vassilis Oikonomopoulos, Assistant Curator, and organised in collaboration with the Calder Foundation.
Book tickets for Alexander Calder: Performing Sculpture
Further reading
Pop Pills - your second dose

Didn't get enough the first time round? The World Goes Pop curators share their next instalment of works you mustn't miss - edible photos, headless figures and a European take on the American flag.

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Calder in the Studio - Picture Essay | Tate

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The mobiles started when I went to see Mondrian. I was impressed by several coloured rectangles he had on the wall. Shortly after that I made some mobiles; Mondrian claimed his paintings were faster than my mobiles.

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Alexander Calder: Works Photographed by Pedro E. Guerrero

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Created in 1949 for Otis and Velma Dozier, Calder's friends and patrons of the Dallas arts scene, is a brilliant manifestation of Calder's fascination with animal subjects, as well as a testament to his new friendship with the Doziers. Calder gifted Pup to the Doziers during a trip to the artist's Roxbury studio in 1949, after the Doziers helped commission a large scale mobile, Flower (1949) for the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. Such intimate provenance coupled with the playful subject matter imparts this sculpture with an added layer of personality and charm. Bewitched by Calder's hand, Pup comes to life with all of the playful dynamism that defines the artist's creations.

Following the Dozier's trip to Roxbury, Calder and Otis exchanged letters discussing their body of work and new experiments. Calder writes:
...About mobiles - in 1931 I made constructions which did not move - except for objects - and which Arp later called 'Stabiles.' I had a show at the Galerie Percier, in Paris. In 1932 I showed the first 'Mobiles' (name by Marcel Duchamp) at the Galerie Vignon. There were some 15 working with motors, but also a lot of others which moved when displaced by hand...Tinkering with motors and 'belting' (usually a string) became such a chore that I got away from the motorized designs, in favor of things simpler to concoct and easier to transport. Besides, dependence on the wind makes the mobile 'turn on and off' automatically, instead of being always definite. I believe I am to have a show in Houston in the spring, sometime, so I'll be seeing you. Greetings to you both, and to Mrs. Camp,
From Louisa & me, Sandy
Calder was always particularly inspired by animal forms from the beginning of his career when he created Calder's Circus in 1926-31, now in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. With these delicate creatures, Calder strikes a balance of form and abstraction, elevating and enriching these figures sculpted from wire and metal. His distinct manipulation of line, shape and color incites the viewer's imagination, creating a character and sense of personality within the work. The Pup's red tongue, tethered to the body but with freedom of motion, invites an imagined narrative. "Side by side with the 'action' of the animal goes its identity. For instance, if we are making a drawing of a dog it must have at least an indication of the precise breed of dog we are drawing. This feature of the drawing, the portrait element, is quite as essential as the other. It entails more intimate study and knowledge and can be attained less by that rapid drawing and recording so essential to the action phase." (Alexander Calder, Animal Sketching, New York 1926, p. 15)

Calder's innovative approach to sculpture challenged the way viewers engaged with and conceived of Postwar art. Even his more abstract stabile figures are inspired in some ways by the animals he so carefully studied. His progression toward abstraction and hanging mobiles often still evoke the physical forms and characteristics of animals. He saturates these creatures with personality and individuality. His animals, though inanimate and crafted of metal and paint, seem to take on a new life through the artist's vision. Infused with Calder's magic, Pup sheds its industrial parts to become a lovable, unique work of fine art.

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calder, alexander pup ||| abstract ||| sotheby's n09624lot9hyrten

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Created in 1949 for Otis and Velma Dozier, Calder's friends and patrons of the Dallas arts scene, is a brilliant manifestation of Calder's fascination with animal subjects, as well as a testament to his new friendship with the Doziers.

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10 things to know about Alexander Calder | Christie's

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An introduction to the American great who began 'drawing in space' before changing our world with his invention of the mobile

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Alexander Calder Sun, Snake and Fish C. 1970 Litho

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Approx 39" x 27" hand signed lithograph. Signed in pencil. 17/125. Print does have some damage which can be seen in pictures. Overall condition is good 7/10

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Calder (1898-1976) is undoubtedly one of the most celebrated inventors of modern sculpture. His cut-out and colorful abstract objects that move in the air or rest firmly on the ground can be found throughout the world, whether in museums or in gardens and public plazas, ranking him among the first and most prolific sculptors of large-scale outdoor works. This show of his monumental sculptures in the gardens of the Rijksmuseum will create a fascinating landscape of stately abstract forms.

Guest curator Alfred Pacquement, former director of Musée National d'Art Moderne Centre Pompidou in Paris, has selected mobiles, stabiles, and standing mobiles by Calder from major museums and private collections.

This exhibition is the second in a series of annual international sculpture displays, which will be presented in the Rijksmuseum's gardens over the next four years, made possible with funding from the BankGiro Loterij and the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Till 5 October Calder in the Rijksmuseum gardens features works from public and private collections including the Calder Foundation, New York | Pierre Giannada, Martigny | Musée National d'Art Moderne Centre Pompidou, Paris | Middelheim Museum, Antwerp and the UNESCO Works of Art Collection.

The Rijksmuseum gardens are open daily from 9 am - 6 pm.

Biography

Calder was not always an abstract sculptor. Born in America into a family of artists, he lived and worked in the United States and France where he had several studios throughout his life. His first works were delicate figures in steel wire where the artist showed an amazing skill in his use of the material: Calder at that time designed toys, animals, and three-dimensional portraits of his friends, and he articulated characters of a miniature circus, which he presented in public performances with great success.

His visit to Mondrian's studio in Paris in 1930 had a major impact on his art and as a consequence he turned to abstraction. Soon abandoning painting, Calder developed the ambition to create moving coloured shapes: after some experiments with a motor, he started creating light structures suspended from the ceiling and set in motion through a breath of air. In 1931, it was Marcel Duchamp who applied the term mobiles to his kinetic works, which, for almost the first time in art history, formalized real movement in sculpture. The precarious balance of the shapes, like leaves on the branches of a tree, shows a very special talent, helped by his training as an engineer.

Mobiles, stabiles and standing mobiles

The development in scale of his works led him to invent a parallel category, the stabiles - a term introduced by Jean Arp in 1932 - where large sheets of generally black metal are assembled to create dynamic structures, sometimes in very large dimensions, to which Calder devoted himself from the 1950s onward. In some cases a mobile structure made up with abstract shapes sways at the top of the sculpture, creating so-called standing mobiles. Those two families of sculptures, lent by major museums and private collections, as well as by the Calder Foundation in New York, will find a perfect setting in the urban green space, between the permanent classic sculpture collection of the Rijksmuseum and architect Cuypers' neo-gothic museum building.

In addition, four Calder sculptures will be installed inside the museum, allowing visitors to explore the relationship of Calder's monumental outdoor sculpture to indoor works, including the mobiles for which he is best known.

Calder in the Rijksmuseum gardens features works from public and private collections including the Calder Foundation, New York | Pierre Gianadda, Martigny | Musée National d'Art Moderne Centre Pompidou, Paris | Middelheim Museum, Antwerp and the UNESCO Works of Art Collection.

A catalogue of the exhibition is available at the garden pavilion or museum shop

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Calder in the Rijksmuseum gardens - News - What's on - Rijksmuseum

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Calder (1898-1976) is undoubtedly one of the most celebrated inventors of modern sculpture. His cut-out and colorful abstract objects that move in the air or rest firmly on the ground can be found throughout the world, whether in museums or in gardens and public plazas, ranking him among the first and most prolific sculptors of large-scale outdoor works.

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Alexander Calder’s Outdoor Mobiles and Stabiles at Hauser & Wirth Somerset

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Arts District - Calder: Monumental at Denver Botanic Gardens

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360 View: Alexander Calder's The Fish | Christie's

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A 360-degree view of Alexander Calder's hanging mobile, The Fish, created in 1957 - offered in the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York on 10 November 2015

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TUE 2                            ARTWORK DESCRIPTION

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TUE 2                            ARTWORK DESCRIPTION

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Alexander Calder’s sculpture Trois disques is composed of five arches made of unpolished stainless steel. The overlapping arches stand on six slender posts whose tops are adorned with two points and three disks. With its abstract form, the arachnoid structure – asymmetrical but balanced – creates plays of shadow and light that evoke dance movements.

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https://artpublicmontreal.ca/en/oeuvre/trois-disques/

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L'Homme, however, is considered a "stabile." I think you can understand the meaning of that - it's stable and stationary, so it's the opposite of something that is mobile and moving. Calder explained the difference between stabiles and mobiles this way: "You have to walk around a stabile or through it - a mobile dances in front of you."

At the time that Calder was commissioned to make this sculpture, he had a studio in Saché, France, and nearby was the Biemont Factory, an industrial company where Calder engaged the boilermakers to assist him in building his large-scale sculptures. What exactly is a boilermaker, you might ask? A boilermaker is a trained craftsman who produces steel fabrications from plates and sections, welding pieces together. Quite literally, they make hot water boilers for heating water in large-scale buildings, among other things. At any rate, Calder would create a model of the sculpture, the research department at the factory would scale it up to its final size, then the boilermakers would complete the actual metalwork - all under Calder's supervision.

By making a sculpture so large ("L'homme" is approximately 80 feet tall), Calder is presenting the viewer with an object that cannot be viewed in just one way. Unlike viewing a painting on the wall, where one stands in front of it to view it, L'homme forces the viewer to assess the sculpture from multiple vantage points. The sculpture appears one way when viewed from 20 feet away, it appears different when viewed from 5 feet away, different again when underneath it, different again when viewing from the other side.

Take a look at our gallery of pictures below to see several different views of Calder's sculpture from all angles.

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Alexander Calder | L'Homme Sculpture in Montreal | Artsology Investigation

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L'Homme, however, is considered a "stabile." I think you can understand the meaning of that - it's stable and stationary, so it's the opposite of something that is mobile and moving. Calder explained the difference between stabiles and mobiles this way: "You have to walk around a stabile or through it - a mobile dances in front of you."

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Lead Image Alexander Calder, Buchholz Gallery/Curt Valentin, New York, 1947 © 2018 Calder Foundation, New York / DACS London

Although widely regarded as one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th century, and one of America's most important Surrealists, Alexander Calder did not consider himself an abstract artist. When pressed on this matter in an interview, Calder explained that his penchant for kinetic art and other-worldly forms was his interpretation of what the universe might look like, and was therefore Realism. It is then perhaps fitting that, more than a century since his birth in 1898 (nobody is really sure whether he was born in July or August of that year), his signature mobiles and "staybiles" have transcended the art world to become staple influences for everyone from interior designers and architects to graphic artists and jewellery designers.

Enchanting art-lovers globally, and currently piercing the serene landscape of Hauser & Wirth's rural Somerset home, Calder's wiry portraits, ethereal mobiles and imposing outdoor installations tell the story of a life lived observing the world through the optimistic eyes of a wonderstruck child. While his love of of bold colour, simple shapes and asymmetrical choreography appears infantile, his fascination with suspension and balance reflects the intrinsic struggle for equilibrium synonymous with the Surrealist movement of the 1920s and 30s.

Juxtaposing the often precariously balanced construction of his pieces, Calder's pendulous sculptures were quickly adopted by architects and style-conscious homeowners as visual centrepieces for enhancing vast atriums and to bring a sense of play to the increasingly popular Modernist abodes of the 1950s. Clearly recognising a shared appreciation for cross-disciplinary vision, architect du jour Gio Ponti included an oversized black Calder mobile in his 1955 Caracas project Villa Planchart. Peggy Guggenheim was also a fan of the sculptor's work, and in many portraits can be seen posing alongside one of his pieces, almost as if it were a partner to her in a moment of solitude.

Calder was the artist's artist. His work broke boundaries and expectation and provided new and unexpected ways to experience space. His art and eccentric charm captured the imaginations of his art-world peers, including Georgia O'Keeffe, whose home in Abiqui, New Mexico was adorned with one of his mobiles. In an award-winning 1998 documentary directed by Roger Sherman, writer Brendan Gill says: "Up until Calder's time, sculpture was a expression of solidity, of motionlessness. It turns out that something else was possible. The flight of the bird was possible, or the seeming flight of the bird. It says that we are ourselves more than Earth-bound."

"Up until Calder's time, sculpture was a expression of solidity, of motionlessness. It turns out that something else was possible. The flight of the bird was possible, or the seeming flight of the bird. It says that we are ourselves more than Earth-bound" - Brendan Gill

For California and New York's glamorous elite, soaring above the realms of realism, Calder's poetic interpretation of everyday environments was an escape from the status quo. This respite from mundanity is perhaps what continues to see design and fashion professionals take inspiration from his unique portfolio. Lending itself to jewellery design in particular, the sculptor's love of movement and abstraction can be recognised in recent offerings by Céline, among others.

A People magazine article from December 1974 states that in the 18 months prior to publication, "More than $1,000,000 in massive Calders have gone up in Hartford, Fort Worth, Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington." In the same article, Calder - then 76 - is quoted admitting that 1974 was his best year ever, "Mainly because city after US city discovered that Calder's gigantic abstractions are just the ticket to fill the void left by urban renewal and the passing from fashion of granite generals on horseback."

Calder's enduring popularity might be attributed to his relentless sense of grounding, in spite of his outlandish and oversized style. As demonstrated in From the Stony River to the Sky at Hauser & Wirth, the artist was enamoured with occasion and theatre and took any opportunity to add an air of pantomime or performance to everyday life. The personal projects and possessions exhibited (many for the first time) demonstrate the breadth of his imagination and the complete lack of contextual constraint attached to his motivation. Having already moved to Paris in 1926, where he was inspired by the circus and its acrobats, Calder was travelling by boat to New York in June 1929 when he met Louisa James. The pair married in 1931 and in 1933 bought a farm in Roxbury, Connecticut. It was this house that the artist filled with domestic creations that would've looked more at home in a gallery than a kitchen, yet were much used and loved and are now cared for by the Calder Foundation, whose president is Calder's own grandson, Alexander S. C. Rower. It was also this home that inspired the artist to explore outdoor sculpture for the first time, in 1934. The land belonging to the farm provided him with a private playground fertile with potential.

There is an accessibility to appreciating Calder's work that doesn't condescend or exclude those new to the world of art. The artist's honesty about his own vision and sources of inspiration has allowed for an unpretentious enjoyment of colour, shape and movement that is often reserved for children. When speculating on the catalyst for and longevity of his influence on contemporary culture, perhaps it could be said that Calder's work is a gentle nudge - not unlike the encouragement between parent and child - tempting us to find joy in movement and simplicity, adding play to the everyday.

Alexander Calder, From the Stony River to the Sky runs until September 9, 2018 at Hauser & Wirth Somerset.

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How Alexander Calder Sparked a Modern Fascination with Mobiles

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Lead Image Alexander Calder, Buchholz Gallery/Curt Valentin, New York, 1947 © 2018 Calder Foundation, New York / DACS London Although widely regarded as one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th century, and one of America's most important Surrealists, Alexander Calder did not consider himself an abstract artist.

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Alexander Calder: The Creation of a Stabile

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Calder's "Eagle" at the Olympic Sculpture Park

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20 summers of RV road trip travels across the USA and Canada

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Pinterest: Calder sculptures

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Alexander 'Sandy' Calder

Photo by Arnold Newman

Alexander Calder

Alexander 'Sandy' Calder

Born: July 20, 1898; Lawnton, Pennsylvania, United States

Died: November 11, 1976; New York, United States

Nationality: American

Art Movement: Kinetic art

Painting School: Abstraction-Création

Genre: sculpture

Field: sculpture

Art institution: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, US,Art Students League of New York, New York City, NY, US,Parsons School of Design (Chase School, New York School of Art), New York City, NY, US

Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Calder

Official site: calder.org

Alexander Calder redefined sculpture by introducing into it the element of movement. He created sculptures and design objects that participated in the larger tendencies of European and American avant-garde, uniquely combining abstract art, modernist principles, machine and cosmic imagery in his works. His major contribution to the modernist redefinition of artistic media is the invention of two new categories of sculpture, called mobiles and stabiles.

The mobiles are constructions made of suspended objects that hang down from the ceiling and continuously move with the flow of air. These evolving sculptures served to Calder's exploration of sculpture and its site of display, which led him to introduce space and movement as fundamental elements in the encounter of the audience with the work of art. In their movable nature, Calder's mobiles can be seen as an example of Kinetic art. The stabiles are large-scale fixed versions of the mobiles, which the artist created in his late years. These monumental abstract sculptures were installed in urban spaces around the world and contributed to revamping the conversation around public sculpture in the last decades of the 20th century.

Calder was born in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia in 1898 to artistic parents. His father was a successful sculptor, and his mother worked as a portrait painter all her life. Calder's early fascination with sculpture began at the age of nine in his father's studio, where he started experimenting with mechanical devices and materials such as wire, sheet metal and wood. He created there his first constructions based on animal-designs. The fascination with construction and industrial materials would later bring Calder to graduate in mechanical engineering. The studies in physics and applied kinetics will crucially effect the artist's early experiments with mechanized constructions. After trying many disparate jobs, Calder decided to follow his artistic leanings, and in 1923 enrolled at the Art Students League to study drawing and painting.

At that time, the Art Students League's faculty was composed by The Eight - a group of realist artists whose determination to bring art into closer touch with everyday life greatly influenced the course of American art. Calder's first large canvases and drawings of that period were directly inspired by his instructors' broad realist style and their ideas of freedom of artistic expression.

In 1926, Calder made the first of many trips to Paris with the desire to gain first-hand exposure of European Modernism. He became fascinated with the European incorporation of non-academic artistic media in sculptural practices as well as with the new stylistic directions in American art, which were building on the influence of European Cubism, Futurism, and Constructivism. Elements of Constructivism and its notion of achieving painterly effects through sculptural materials are particularly evident in Calder's works from 1926 to 1930. These include sculptures made of a single metal wire, such as Josephine Baker (1927), Rearing Stallion (1928), and Portrait of a Man (1929). These experiments with wire culminated in the creation of Calder's Circus (1926-1931), a miniaturized rendering of a circus featuring a complex arrangement of figurines of performers, animals and props. Made of wire, wood, metal, cloth, leather, these sculptures were specifically designed to be manipulated by Calder. The artist gave performances of his kinetic circus in New York and Paris throughout the 1930s, receiving critical acclaim for his elaborate creation of a moving sculptural ensemble.

By 1928, Calder had started to gain popularity and was given his first solo show in New York at Weyhe Gallery. Throughout the 1930s, he continued to exhibit in New York, Paris and Berlin, and developed friendships with European and American avant-garde artists, such as Joan Mirò, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Lèger, and Piet Mondrian; as Calder recalls in his autobiography, a visit to Mondrian's studio was a "shock" that led him to embrace complete abstraction. The move towards abstraction translated into the creation of a series of kinetic sculptures, dubbed mobiles by Duchamp, including Crank-driven Mobile (1931-32), Dancing Torpedo Shape (1932), and A Universe (1934). Calder incorporated mechanisms and motors in these abstract constructions to make the separate elements move at different speeds, using the materials' density and weight as guiding principles in planning the sculpture's movement in space. He later gave up motorized constructions and dedicated himself to designing self-moving sculptures hanging down from a ceiling which could be activated by air currents. He also created stationary abstract works that Jean Arp dubbed stabiles. The first of Calder's outdoor works were made during this era as well.

The 1930s see Calder moving back to the United States and working on the construction of sets for ballets by Martha Graham and Erik Satie. In 1931, he was also invited to join the group Abstraction-Création, which included artists Jean Arp, Piet Mondrian, and Jean Hélion. Disks, spheres, wedges, and triangles in a rigorous palette of primary colors, black, and white, became the fundamental elements of Calder's mobiles from 1935 and 1936. Starting from 1936, the artist started to work on larger scale sculptures with the desire to generate even more dramatic casual spatial relationships. Lobster Trap and Fish Tail (1937), a mobile commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York for the museum's stairwell, points towards this new monumental direction, as well as to Calder's interest in organic forms.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Calder became internationally known - a unique position for an American sculptor at the time, - and was honoured with many prizes, commissions, and exhibitions. In 1945, Marcel Duchamp arranged a crucial exhibition of small-scale works made by Calder with scrap metal pieces at Galerie Louis Carré in Paris; Jean Paul Sartre wrote a seminal essay on the artist's mobiles for the accompanying catalogue.

In his late years, Calder dedicated himself to large-scale projects, stabiles, and various public commissions, including the .125 mobile (1957) for the John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, Teodelapio (1962) for the city of Spoleto, Italy, and Flamingo (1973), a monumental red-painted steel stabile for the Federal Center Plaza in Chicago. In 1966, Calder published An Autobiography with Pictures, a witty illustrated account of the artist's personal life and prolific artistic career. Calder died in 1976 at the age of seventy-eight, a few weeks after visiting a major retrospective of his work at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

by Caterina Franciosi

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Alexander Calder (/ˈkɔːldər/; July 22, 1898 - November 11, 1976) is widely considered to be one of the most important American sculptors of the 20th century. He is best known for his colorful, whimsical abstract public sculptures and his innovative mobiles, kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents, which embraced chance in their aesthetic. Born into a family of accomplished artists, Calder's work first gained attention in Paris in the 1930s and was soon championed by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, resulting in a retrospective exhibition in 1943. Major retrospectives were also held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1964) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1974). Calder's work is in many permanent collections, most notably in the Whitney Museum of American Art, but also the Guggenheim Museum; the Museum of Modern Art; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Centre Georges Pompidou. He produced many large public works, including .125 (at JFK Airport, 1957), Spirale (UNESCO in Paris, 1958), Flamingo and Universe (both in Chicago, 1974), and Mountains and Clouds (Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., 1976). Although primarily known for his sculpture, Calder was a prodigious artist with a restless creative spirit, whose diverse practice included painting and printmaking, miniatures (such as his famous Cirque Calder), children's book illustrations, theater set design, jewelry design, tapestries and rugs, and political posters. Calder was honored by the US Postal Service with a set of five 32-cent stamps in 1998, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumously in 1977, after refusing to receive it from Gerald Ford one year earlier in protest of the Vietnam War.

Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in 1898 in Lawnton, Pennsylvania. His actual birthday, however, remains a source of much confusion. According to Calder's mother, Nanette (née Lederer), Calder was born on August 22, yet his birth certificate at Philadelphia City Hall, based on a hand-written ledger, stated July 22. When Calder's family learned about the birth certificate, they reasserted with certainty that city officials had made a mistake.

Calder's grandfather, sculptor Alexander Milne Calder, was born in Scotland, had immigrated to Philadelphia in 1868, and is best known for the colossal statue of William Penn on top of Philadelphia City Hall's tower. His father, Alexander Stirling Calder, was a well-known sculptor who created many public installations, a majority of them in nearby Philadelphia. Calder's mother was a professional portrait artist, who had studied at the Académie Julian and the Sorbonne in Paris from around 1888 until 1893. She moved to Philadelphia, where she met Stirling Calder while studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Calder's parents married on February 22, 1895; his sister, Mrs. Margaret Calder Hayes, was instrumental in the development of the UC Berkeley Art Museum.

In 1902, Calder posed nude for his father's sculpture The Man Cub, a cast of which is now located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. That same year he also completed his earliest sculpture, a clay elephant. Three years later, Stirling Calder contracted tuberculosis, and Calder's parents moved to a ranch in Oracle, Arizona, leaving the children in the care of family friends for a year. The children were reunited with their parents in late March 1906 and stayed at the ranch in Arizona until fall of the same year.

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Alexander Calder - 229 sculptures, paintings, prints and designs - WikiArt.org

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Alexander Calder redefined sculpture by introducing into it the element of movement. He created sculptures and design objects that participated in the larger tendencies of European and American avant-garde, uniquely combining abstract art , modernist principles, machine and cosmic imagery in his works.

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Let your creative self go

At the start of term 1, students began a portraiture unit as part of the ir elective course titled 'let your creative self go'. The course is intended to expose the students to a wide variety of art ists, working methods, materials and to encourage the students to experiment and take risks.

The wire portraits began with students making a series of continuous line drawings of themselves using mirrors. The y were given pens (deliberately not pencils to avoid rubbing out work) and were encouraged to use a variety of lines to describe the shapes and textures of their reflections. As an added extra the year 9 and 10 students have iPads and they were able to photograph and then draw themselves in a range of poses and with different facial expressions. Students experimented with non-dominant hand drawings, 'blind' drawings and timed drawings.

We studied the wire portraits of Alexander Calder and Karen Jobe-Templeton in class and discussed their use of line and unusual uses of wire. Students were asked to choose their favourite line drawing of themselves and then the y set about transforming this into wire. Students manipulated the wire on top of their drawings, which were used as guides. Students were encouraged to experiment with the wire and come up with new ways of working with it.

Some students were hesitant at using the wire at first, but they soon found the ir own way to manipulate and shape the wire. I think the results speak for themselves and the students had a lot of fun making them!

Gillian NixArt Teacher

Our Lady Of Sion College, Box Hill
Suitable for Level 6

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Let your creative self go At the start of term 1, students began a portraiture unit as part of the ir elective course titled 'let your creative self go'. The course is intended to expose the students to a wide variety of art ists, working methods, materials and to encourage the students to experiment and take risks.

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Year 10 students from Box Hill High School were asked to create a portrait in wire of either themselves or someone who inspires them.

Working with coloured anodised aluminium and plain wires they were asked to manipulate the wires with their hands and tools to indicate the shapes and forms to create the features of their subject matter for their portrait.

Their portraits were created by tracing over a photocopy of your image with your wire, similar to creating a continuous line drawing. (Continuous line drawings were explored in their Visual Diaries).
The students looked at examples of wire work sculpture and portraits by the American Artist Alexander Calder (1898-1976). He looked at creating sculpture in a new way, he incorporated movement in his work he was very much inspired by Surrealist artist Joan Miro and the Abstract paintings of Piet Mondrian.

Some quotes from Calder:

"I want to make things that are fun to look at", 1957,

"I think best in wire", 1925, and

"I seem to have a knack for drawing with a single line", 1961.

Students had to consider these statements while adding notes on this artist for their Visual Diary explorations.
Artwork provided by
Donna Nevard

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Year 10 students from Box Hill High School were asked to create a portrait in wire of either themselves or someone who inspires them. Working with coloured anodised aluminium and plain wires they were asked to manipulate the wires with their hands and tools to indicate the shapes and forms to create the features of their subject matter for their portrait.

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360 View: Alexander Calder's The Fish | Christie's

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A 360-degree view of Alexander Calder's hanging mobile, The Fish, created in 1957 - offered in the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York on 10 November 2015

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Alexander Calder Sun, Snake and Fish C. 1970 Litho

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Approx 39" x 27" hand signed lithograph. Signed in pencil. 17/125. Print does have some damage which can be seen in pictures. Overall condition is good 7/10

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Transcript

Preface

This transcript has been corrected and edited at the Calder Foundation by Alexander S.C. Rower, with additional notes in brackets []. Parts underlined are uncertain trancriptions. Room noises and distractions have been omitted from this transcription.

Interview

PAUL CUMMINGS: It is the 26th of October 1971, Paul Cummings talking to Alexander Calder at the Perls Galleries [New York]. Could we talk for a minute about Stevens Institute--

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: and how did you decide to go to that particular school?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, we were in San Francisco, my father was head of the sculpture out at the Exposition in 1915. He was coming back to New York and...cause he had to do something there...I wanted to be an engineer because some guy I rather liked was going to be a mechanical engineer, that's all there is to that.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh, I see.

ALEXANDER CALDER: So my father asked the chief engineer of construction what would be a good school and he said Stevens right near New York, so that's the way we got there.

PAUL CUMMINGS: That's how you got to Stevens. Were there any instructors there, professors that were particularly important or that you remember at this point?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh, I remember them. Well, most of them had some sort of private practice, too. There was a guy named Hazelstein who was primarily in the early stages of radio...but ah...he made a machine. Whatever the guy's name, Karn, he was a chemist and he had been in explosions so every time he got irritated he started to weep (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh, dear.

ALEXANDER CALDER: No, but he'd get up and walk around his desk with agita to bad. Oh, there was a student there in the chemistry class, he was way up back about fifteen rows of seats, everybody took chemistry lecture at the same time. So Karn would lean over some bubbling retort and do this, and say "Yes, that's chloroform" or something, and the guy in the back seat said "Well, how the hell do we know whether it's chloroform or not?" Well, various things like that.

PAUL CUMMINGS: What was there about engineering that attracted you at that point?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, I always liked to make objects. I had made them for my sister's dolls and so on. I liked working and I thought engineering was a line to that.

PAUL CUMMINGS: A way to make things and do things. But you didn't have interest in traditional sculpture the way your family had though, did you?

ALEXANDER CALDER: No, no except that I was in my father's atelier with him as a boy. Well, I can't remember whether I had any interest in them or not but I don't think so.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, after Stevens you worked as a engineer then for various people?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, yeah, for four years at very modest jobs most of the time (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: You decided to leave that. Why? Did you find it not as interesting as you had thought?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, I ended up after about four years in a logging camp in Washington, the state of Washington. We were up on a hilltop, well not quite on a hilltop but well, I saw three snow capped mountains, here, here and here. I asked my mother to send me some paints, so I painted that. I don't know how I got three point drawing (laugh). My mother didn't like it [the painting] very much, and I think she kept a goldfish bowl on top of it, I haven't been able to find it.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, so then you came back to New York and started going to the Art Student's League, right?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Was there any reason why you picked the Art Student's League?

ALEXANDER CALDER: No, I don't remember. I don't think there would be any reason. Oh my father had taught there but he had taught several places, ah...oh, I wanted to study with [George] Luks, so I moved on there.

PAUL CUMMINGS: You've talked in some of the interviews about, about the League and Luks, how were they, how was he as a teacher?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh, well he was such a...well, you see I went first and Luks was full so they put me in another class.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh I see.

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh yeah well I did Hayes Miller.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Kenneth Hayes Miller.

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, and I think he came up once when...I was only there a week or two. But ah...everybody would draw a nude and then they put windows in behind (laughing)...it attracted. Well, instead of that I drew the backside of a guy who turned out to be John McTrube, a painter. He had a very funny rear end of his pants (laughing).

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh, that's fun, well did you like the League?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, well see I was, I don't know I suppose I was average age, I was about 25 and I liked to talk, liked to ______.

PAUL CUMMINGS: What about Boardman Robinson, who's also someone you knew there?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, well he and [John] Sloan were the real guys, I studied with Sloan and I even went to [Guy Pène] du Bois, but I didn't like him much.

PAUL CUMMINGS: How was Robinson as an instructor?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh, he was very good, he didn't, he didn't touch your apparatus, or handle your drawings...he was way ah...Dolly [Perls] just ask me how I got going on thin line drawing and I think it was there.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh really with him?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh, no, with a...Jean Lipman has an idea...long ago.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Was the line drawing developed because of the work on the Police Gazette--

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh, no--

PAUL CUMMINGS: cause I know you did lots of them?

ALEXANDER CALDER: I got the job because I had some of the drawings of single line. When I started doing drawing I use to patch them up a little (laugh). Well, the editor at that time was named Robinson. As I understood he had a very elegant mother who's name was Fox, widow of the proprietor of the Police Gazette. She had a portrait done by some guy, and he put an oak tree in the side and I said "What's that tree for?" and Robinson said "Well, that's tradition" (laugh). He used to like to paint himself so he picked me up one Sunday and we went off in the sticks in Long Island, it was not a very nice day but we finally set up to take a bead on a farmhouse at some distance and he was in front with an easel and so on, and I was behind...I always liked to nail my things [canvases] to a tree. At the League they used to sell old canvases that had been used quite a lot, but they'd be shiny or have naked ladies on them, well, the one I had for him, I had painted his back and what was beyond him and I had a naked lady on my canvas, when he took a look at it he was frightened stiff (laugh) and he couldn't wait till I blacked her out (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh, that's fun. Were there any students you met at the League who became friends or remained friends or people that were interesting?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well...yeah, some girls, some boys. No, no, well I didn't get to be friends with everybody. There was a guy named John Graham, well his name was Debrowsky at that time and he was Russian and he was a monitor of class at Sloan's.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh, was he? I didn't know that.

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah and a guy named Brodsky, I don't know who else but about five of us would draw very fast and I was happy (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, did you get to know John Graham very well?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, I thought I did...we were very close buddies for a year or so and then...oh, he married one of the girls from the League and they got along for a while...but he died two or three years ago at the age of ninety in London and that was a surprise, I hadn't thought of him as being so old.

PAUL CUMMINGS: I know it kind of surprised everybody, you know, that he was so old. But, you know, considering the people you studied with, it's interesting to know that he was there. Was he as involved with modern European art as...?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Who?

PAUL CUMMINGS: Graham.

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh, I don't know he...I think he took a black pencil here and a red pencil there and he did that (gesture) and that was a lady (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh, that's fun.

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, he was, oh I don't know I don't remember, I guess, like everybody. He tried very hard to earn a living doing fashion drawings. He'd get a good fashion drawing but there's something out of kilt somewhere, so he never did do that.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Did you work for any other publications besides the National Police Gazette?

ALEXANDER CALDER: No, I don't think so.

PAUL CUMMINGS: That was the only one?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Was there a particular reason why you went off to Paris, or was that just like the place to go?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, I'd heard of Paris since the year one from my parents, and well, they spent two or three years a piece there. But ah...I just thought of it as the place to go. A friend, Arthur Frank, told me about Paris; Montmartre, Montparnasse. He was a very nice guy, he was a painter, I don't know what he painted, Arthur Frank, he was a bit older than I...well he had been divorced sometime pretty recent, and they put their furniture in storage and he had lost the ticket and he didn't know how (laugh)...[to get it out]

PAUL CUMMINGS: That's incredible. Well, how did you find Paris after New York, as a place to live and work?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh, I liked it.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Was it easier or more difficult?

ALEXANDER CALDER: No, I found a place to live, on the rue Daguerre.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, you were there quite a period of time the first time you went over, quite a number of years?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, I don't think I've ever been there two years straight.

PAUL CUMMINGS: I know you're always going back and forth, back and forth...

ALEXANDER CALDER: I went over in '26 and then I met some American who wanted some posters made [Student Third Class Association] and I made them for him but for that I took a trip on the Holland American line, two directions. [Europe, USA, Europe]

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, did you find it easy to meet artists in Paris and people were there lots of--?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, I don't know I just didn't think about it--

PAUL CUMMINGS: It just happened.

ALEXANDER CALDER: people who came along...

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well you didn't study in Paris or anything, you really went there to work didn't you?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah well, I went to...what the hell is it?...behind the [Café] Dôme...big...I don't think it was called a ___________ ...académie...

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh, Chaumière.

ALEXANDER CALDER: Grande Chaumière.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Grande Chaumière, right, right. What, just for drawing?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well did you, cause you weren't making sculpture objects at this point were you? you were what, painting and drawing--?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, I've always made objects of some sort.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Yeah, what is "of some sort" do you mean?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, usually they're made of wire...and ah...

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, when did you start using wire?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh, I used wire since I was a kid.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh, you did.

ALEXANDER CALDER: I used to get the...when they'd splice a cable in the street, there'd be a lot of crop ends of copper wire.

PAUL CUMMINGS: So you'd make little bits and things out of them. I suppose Jean Lipman has talked endlessly about the circus and everything, cause she is doing something on that hasn't she?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh well, I don't think she's talked endlessly, cause I expect to see her again (laughing).

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh, I was looking at it [circus] the other day in the Whitney and there's an extraordinary number of pieces. Is that all of the pieces or were there more?

ALEXANDER CALDER: That's about all. I had several that I made when they were used together. I had a guy who had a, he was a strong act, flame goes up from the top of his head, that was too much bother.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, I noticed that one of the things that I found interesting in looking at it is that there's so much use of balance and counter balance and things in making the various people or animals stand up or move and things like that.

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, well I guess most of it was simple mechanics and some of it was just luck, pure luck. The trapeze where the lady swings on, then all of a sudden she goes that way and grabs the guy. Well, I just tried to do modifications and then she did it. When I made the film [ Cirque Calder, 1961] where she did it the first time...some guy and she never had before.

PAUL CUMMINGS: It seems that from what I read anyway, that you gave many, many performances of that?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, I used to drag the five valises and a gramophone of some sort...I even did it for hire once or twice.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh, really, that must have been fun doing it all the time.

ALEXANDER CALDER: I did it once for a lady named Brewster in Chicago, she had a very strange house with black and white paving in the main room. So I got her to put a storm door down so I could nail into it and then I put boards out in four corners to make it farther...and then I put a log of firewood on it to increase the tension [of the Circus guy wires]. Then the lady brought in all of her cyclamens and hid the logs (laughing). So then I said take those right out.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, did you go to the circus in Paris ever?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Because there's the famous circus.

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, well we, ah...I had some friends who worked for Dorland, a publicity agency. They brought some more people, and finally they brought the old Fratellini, the one with the top hat. He came to see my circus. Then there's a little dog that trots along...and he asked me to make one for Albert. Albert used to drag a duck every place. I made this dog for him, that was about `29 or `30 and they used it in the Cirque Divers and...oh, just falling to pieces all the time, the rubber wasn't so bad but the frame was wrong. See I only ran mine once or twice a month, but they had it every night (laugh). So...I used to go to see then once in a while, Fratellini...He's [dog] always being welded and new parts being put on. We tried to find it [dog] recently and couldn't.

PAUL CUMMINGS: What was sort of life like generally in Paris in the late twenties and how would you kind of describe the typical activities you were involved with?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Working was usually in the morning and early afternoon, cause every body headed for the [Café] Dôme in the late afternoon and you would meet people that way. I knew [Yasuo] Kuniyoshi slightly and he came along one day and said "hello" and the guy with him said "who's that?" and this guy was [Jules] Pascin.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Pascin wrote something for you at one time didn't he?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah he wrote a preface to a show I had in `29 in the, R.S.V. [Paris, Galerie Billiet-Pierre Vorms, Jan. 25-Feb. 7, 1929]. Well, he ended it with about his having lived in New York and made a member of an artists group and my father was a member, and my father was very good looking and I was much less good looking errr my salgo I got him to say and then he ended up saying g u d m e r d e with five dots and then they changed the reading to que lo par, so they didn't understand.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, you met José de Creeft at one point there too?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, I met him quite early in Paris the first year [1926]. Well, I met [William Stanley] Hayter, he was married to a girl named Rosalie.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, you seem to have met everybody at one point or another though?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, well, I was on the tag end of the group that floated around [rue] Broca...[Tsugouharu] Fujita and various people.

PAUL CUMMINGS: You met Miró, what the first time when you were there, in?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, in `29, a friend of ours [Elizabeth Hawes] from here sent me to see him. I went up to see him, he lived in a sort of a small Quonset hut and all his works but one had been sent to Brussels. So I saw one, a big piece of cardboard with a postcard or a picture postcard and a feather and a cork and some line. Well I didn't quite see that but I came on to it later. He came to see me once and I was running the circus show...in this show how the little birds pieces of paper that twirl. I ran it once in his town Montroig in Spain and he finally said he liked best those little bits of paper (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, what were you doing at this point, were you painting or just drawing or running the circus, what to come back to?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh, well a little bit of each.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Yeah, did you have any particular direction or were you just testing out things?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, I didn't think about it. Every direction was forward.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, you'd had a show with [Erhardt] Weyhe in New York. [New York, Weyhe Gallery, Feb. 20-March 3, 1928]

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: And that was what? wire sculpture and...

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, and some pieces, Josephine Baker, one or two that they have at the Museum of Modern Art, the smallest figures they have.

PAUL CUMMINGS: That was your first show in this country wasn't it?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah that was the first show, and I had one next year in '29 and I was abroad. [New York, Weyhe Gallery, Feb. 4-23, 1929]

PAUL CUMMINGS: How was that received, were you pleased with the...?

ALEXANDER CALDER: That was in New York, the first one. Well yeah, well, then the one I had where Pascin wrote the preface, that was on rue de Boétie, guy by the name of [Pierre] Vorms...

PAUL CUMMINGS: It's interesting because, you know, the traveling back and forth all the time.

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, well I didn't have much of a way to making a living in Paris.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, what about all the traveling back and forth, was there a reason for that or did you just like to keep moving?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, I went to Paris when I had the money and when I didn't have any more I came back...or just enough for a ride (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: In 1930 I guess it was, you met [Piet] Mondrian.

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: How'd you come to meet him because...?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well there was a guy who lived here, Frederick Keisler. He was an architect and he turned out to be a painter and sculptor at the end and he came over...I don't know how I met him, maybe it was through [Edgar] Varèse or someone, but he, he thought I was an American product and he wanted to show how well he was doing by showing him myself. So, one night...oh I ran the circus, well I put it up briefly with lots of planks...well one night we had [Le] Corbusier and [Fernand] Léger and Carl Einstein in one room and then I also invited [Theo] van Doesberg, and we had to send van Doesberg telling him, saying it was the next day because he would've had a row with all these guys.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh really, why?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, well, yeah they were, they were very irritated with each other. He was very abstract and he had that publication de Stijl.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh yes, right, right. Well how did you find Mondrian because I...?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, he...it was his work not him that I was attracted to (laugh). No, he was alright, he never seemed to be, he never seemed to smile very much. I suppose that's the American in me (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, what were the qualities of his work at that time, that interested you the most?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, I went to his studio with a guy, he had rectangles of different colors tacked on the wall. It was a very nice studio, old fashioned but it had light here and light here.

PAUL CUMMINGS: So it was the color that you liked?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, well I don't know, I just thought he had something.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Where did you spend most of the thirties, cause all I have is you'd kind of gone back and forth and back and forth?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh, well...let's see I came back in June of `29, met Louisa and then in the beginning of `30 I went abroad again. Then I came back and we got married in `31. Then we went back there and now we...I don't know, we came over to see our families and we always seemed to do something.

LOUISE CALDER: Well we bought the house in Connecticut in '33.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Was there a reason you moved to Connecticut, or picked Connecticut or was it just, did it just kind of happen?

ALEXANDER CALDER: No, well, I had done house searching two or three years before we met. Father wanted to get out of New York and he went to Pittsfield but in the meantime we had done the Hoositonic Valley once or twice and so I liked that sort of country and we...well we started out, we came down the west, down the Hudson River and over into the city, through New York, Cold Spring Harbor and now we were running short of cash so we borrowed ten dollars and that was the day we bought the house (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: That's a long time to live in one place, isn't it?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

LOUISA CALDER: Well we haven't lived there...that was years ago.

PAUL CUMMINGS: I mean on and off.

LOUISA CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: James [Johnson] Sweeney did an exhibition at the Modern [New York, Museum of Modern Art, Sept. 29, 1943-Jan. 16, 1944]. When did you first meet him?

ALEXANDER CALDER: I met him in `33, at Pierre Loeb's in Paris.

PAUL CUMMINGS: So you've known him really quite a long time then?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, well Léger told me about him about him before I met him.

PAUL CUMMINGS: What about the marvelous jewelry because have you made that for a long, long time or is that--

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah I've made a lot of jewelry.

PAUL CUMMINGS: You know, you see them constantly, when, how did that start though?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, I was in Berlin for a little while [1929] and there was a girl I knew, Chantal Quenneville, and she was a painter. She looked like a pug boxer but she painted dinky little portraits. I made a fly out of brass wire, about that big and then it had a collar, simple wire, and then a beam out here and the fly stuck out in front and wobbled (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: So that was the beginning of it.

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Do you have any idea how many pieces of jewelry you've made over the years, or is that endless?

ALEXANDER CALDER: No.

LOUISA CALDER: Suitcases of it.

PAUL CUMMINGS: It was lots and lots of...Well, one of the things I've always kind of felt about your work, is that you're very involved with the qualities of the material, I mean one gets a feeling you know, you liked, bend the wire and cut metal and...

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Do you think the materials have an effect on the making of a particular mobile or stabile?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah well, of course metal, iron particularly, you can draw it out and tie it together and...wood or anything like that, wood is very nice but you have to keep going.

PAUL CUMMINGS: I'm curious about Sweeney because he's had, you know he's done a number of exhibitions of your work--

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: and a great kind of association with you for a long time. Was he ever involved in, you know, well he's obviously discussed your work and things with you, hasn't he?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Was he involved?

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, I mean has he talked about your work with you and...?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh, no I never talk about my work (laughing).

PAUL CUMMINGS: So, but he's written all kinds of pieces about it and things, do you like his writing, his content?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, well he's very, desires a million perfect. Well, the book he wrote was the catalogue for the Museum of Modern Art, that seemed to be very terse and to the point.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Are there other writers who you like, I mean, [H. Harvard] Arnason has written a book, and various people?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh, no, well I...Sartre once wrote and article for me, a show in Paris with Carré [Galerie Louis Carré, Oct. 25-Nov. 16, 1946]. Oh, I don't know, I don't really read them (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, you know one thing that I've noticed about them is that the range of colors that you use always tend to be rather bright--

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: and there's always a lot of red or black or sometimes blue or white--

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Is there a reason you like those colors or are they just the ones that work for you?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh, I don't know. Sometimes I try to make it full of color and sometimes I just make one red or black...always just happens. You know you work in a direction to make four or five little objects like that and then you go off in another direction, that's suppose to be the secret of success or something.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, do you have any kind of theory or any idea about...what was I going to say? You know you've never developed any kind of aesthetic theory--

ALEXANDER CALDER: No.

PAUL CUMMINGS: or something about the work, you just keep making things?

ALEXANDER CALDER: I...yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: What about the large mobiles and the commissions, you know like the one for Spoleto [ Teodelapio, 1962], which is so enormous, the big stabile?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Have you seen it?

PAUL CUMMINGS: No, I've seen pictures of it, I haven't been there...but how do you do that do you make a maquette first or drawings?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, I had a thing this big [24"] in my shop before I ever heard anything about it, something like that, and well a guy from the Waterbury Iron Works came to visit me one evening after a while, he said that would be very good for the entrance to a city (laugh). So not very long after that [Giovanni] Carandente wrote me from Rome. I don't know weather I...I guess I hadn't met him before...I can't, I'm not sure...but he asked me to propose a model for a cross-roads, he was going to put it somewhere else first where the main road goes up through Spoleto, I don't understand it but he...I found a photograph with a cross in wax crayon on it. But well, I tend to think that Italsider, the shipyards in Genoa and they made it, and they made it a little bit too big for this crossroads, so we put it in front of the [train] station and the autobuses come under it when they come away from the station.

PAUL CUMMINGS: How do you like the idea of the traffic going through?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh, very much. I was all for painting a red disc on the side where you're not suppose to go.

PAUL CUMMINGS: That's marvelous. When you were making large things like that, do you make drawings first or just maquettes?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, it's the drawings for me. I mean I make a sort of perspective, a transparent thing, it ain't a drawing, but it's just a sketch and then I make a maquette and a thing like that and then I take that to the boiler works and they enlarge it, the object will go into the drafting room. If you have an object and you want to find the center of gravity, they don't hang it up and draw a line, and hang it up again and draw another line, they calculate it (laughing).

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh, well you figured out some devise once, didn't you, to find the center of gravity?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh, well it's very easy, you put a sheet, you hang it up on one edge from one edge with a clamp and draw a line vertically, then you hang it on, more or less 90 degrees and hang it again and draw another line and then you've got it. Well, then if you have a thing horizontally and you want to find the center of gravity you put a sort of a blunt center punch in the vice and balance it on the point, now you whack it with a hammer on the other side.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, what about the kind of cantilevered balance that you seem to do in some of the mobiles, did that happen or was that, were you kind of aware of what was going on?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh, why I guess a combination (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: Cause the engineering seems to flow in and out--

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: and in and out through all of them.

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, most of my things seem so obvious to me now that I don't know whether it was my training or just what I would have done anyway (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: Yeah, well it's just well, keeping doing them over and over and over.

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, well you ______.

PAUL CUMMINGS: What about the, you know, going back to the thirties, the abstraction--

ALEXANDER CALDER: Abstraction-Création

PAUL CUMMINGS: creation group? Were you very involved with all of those people?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Not very much. I showed with them several times, and we put out a little booklet of like biography and...well, there was some very good guys. I didn't know it at the time but I liked [Robert] Delaunay and he was a member of that.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, how did you find being, you know being an American artist, so involved with the European art scene?

ALEXANDER CALDER: I was sure I learned to speak French eventually...it never seems to come over (laughing).

PAUL CUMMINGS: In what 1950 you went with what the French dealer [Aimé] Maeght, right?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Maeght.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Maeght, yeah. How did you get to join that gallery because he'd not represented an American before that, had he?

ALEXANDER CALDER: No, well he may have, a guy named Kelly showed there once.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Ellsworth Kelly, but was it that, I thought that was a little bit later.

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, maybe but...well, somehow or other I knew [Christian] Zervos at Cahiers d'Art and somehow or other Zervos sent me to see him.

PAUL CUMMINGS: What kind of fellow was Zervos, because he seems to float through so many different lives.

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah. Well he published a very fine volume Cahiers d'Art and it was very exciting to have something in there. I managed one or two articles...and then...well I don't know I guess he made a living out of selling things that people gave him. If you didn't understand that you weren't worth the trouble. But I think I understood that. I gave him a thing, but I really wanted to keep it (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well there is an awful lot of that amongst French writers and critics, isn't there?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, yeah, well they make a living that way and they should do it easily and then you give them some once in awhile. Then they have it and they can let it out piecemeal if they're hard up. I mean have a whole row of different guys' objects.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Before that, you had exhibitions with just various dealers, didn't you, I mean you didn't have one kind of special Paris dealer?

ALEXANDER CALDER: No...no I hadn't...I only had a couple of specific shows.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Do you find that that's made any difference for you being with a big dealer like that in France?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well it's nice because he sends a car for us to go over and take a painting (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: That's nice. They don't seem to do that in this country very much, do they?

ALEXANDER CALDER: No, they...ah well...no.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Going back to the large project for the Los Angeles County Museum--

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: you did what, tall girls [Three Quintains, 1964], the one with the water. Is that the first time you used water in conjunction with something?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh, a long time ago...oh in the first New York World's Fair [1939], Wally Harrison [Wallace K. Harrison, architect] was going to put up a water ballet of mine in front of the New York Edison building, but the guy who cotrolled the manufacturer of the pumps never did come through so when we had there wasn't anything...finally nothing happening. So much later, I did that for [Eero] Saarinen who did General Motors in Birmingham [ Water Ballet, 1956, General Motors Technical Center, Warren, Michigan].

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh yes, do you like to do special commissions, special projects like that or...?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah well, nice to get a job once in a while (laugh). Yeah, well it's amusing to try and fit something in...space.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Do you often have the problem of, well in Los Angeles it's kind of between two buildings?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, well I didn't like that place very much, but it wasn't bad cause I had three posts or derricks or something, with things swinging around on each, one more complicated than the other. Then after a while they saw that the oil was coming up there in the water. So they had to put a derrick instead (laugh) and move me [the sculpture].

PAUL CUMMINGS: They moved you, oh, I see.

ALEXANDER CALDER: And then the thing begot awfully battered by the water, it broke like celotex or something. It had been aluminum with that anodized color...

PAUL CUMMINGS: You know this large piece at Lincoln Center which is just a large stabile, I mean that wasn't specifically built for the place was it?

ALEXANDER CALDER: No, I made eight objects in Tours [Etablissements Biémont ironworks in Tours, France], I don't know, it took a year or so for them to come through. I was looking for a place to show them in Paris, in France. So I tried to get into the Court Carré de Louvre, you know the Louvre has a...you drive across outside, but behind the wall there's a square of rather sinister asphalt where they were putting posies in when I was outside (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, do you like having sculpture in public places like that?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: It's kind of fun to...

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well that seems to be the reason for, the real reason for sculpture.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, you've made very few motorized pieces of sculpture, you've...?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, the first show [of motorized sculpture] I had in `32 in Paris I had fifteen objects [Galerie Vignon, Feb.12-20, 1932]. No, I guess there were fifteen little motors, but they were only posts sticking out of a box with thin wire and a red ball on the end of it going around and around (laugh) something like that.

PAUL CUMMINGS: But that finally didn't keep you interested did it? I mean the motors and interest in...?

ALEXANDER CALDER: No, there's too much tinkering involved. You make a thing and then you have to patch it and patch it (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: That's no fun. The only recent motorized one is that large one in Europe with the three, the signals that move, I can't remember what that one is.

ALEXANDER CALDER: I don't remember it. Where is it?. You know where it is?

PAUL CUMMINGS: No, I'm just trying to, I don't have a note about it. I just remember it's got the one with the arm that goes around like that and the ball on the end.

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh, it's in Stockholm [ Four Elements, 1961].

PAUL CUMMINGS: Yes, right, right. I mean, that's the only recent kind of motorized one.

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, well that was the...I made several projects in `39 that same year, various things as they were completed there in Stockholm. I made those for the World's Fair in New York. Nobody ever looked at them (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh really?

ALEXANDER CALDER: So I had these when the guy from Stockholm came around.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh, so that's really an older kind of idea--

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: that was built later?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: I see. You know, in going back to the traveling again, cause you've traveled so much around Europe and everywhere, has this influenced you, or do you just like it as enjoyment, or do you look at nature or buildings or the city for ideas or do they come from...?

ALEXANDER CALDER: I don't know, well I suppose...I got a job now that...to build a...Hannover in Germany...collection...but I don't know whether it will still be open or not...I let it go so long...but I think it'll be alright. I'll go there and see what it looks like.

PAUL CUMMINGS: What happens, yeah. You showed with Curt Valentin [Buchholz Gallery, New York] here--

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: for a while [1944-1955]. What kind of fellow was he as a dealer? Was he a, you know, an interesting dealer or..."

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh well...we got along very well, I liked him personally but a little Russian Roulette sometimes (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: That happens...ah, what about Marcel Duchamp? Cause you met him somewhere early on...

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, I met him...well I knew his girlfriend [Mary Reynolds]. I met her in the Midi [south of France] and then it's really through her I met him.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Were you ever interested in his ideas which are so...?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Ah, yes and no. Some of his things are quite fine...but he always had a ready-made (laugh). Funny, we have several wine racks, bottle racks you know, égouttoir. He went out and he was interested in used commercially.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh that's fun. Have there been any museum exhibitions that you especially liked? The one at the Guggenheim [Nov. 6, 1964-Jan. 31, 1965] or the Museum of Modern Art [Sept. 29, 1943-Jan. 16, 1944], recently, some years ago? Is there any one that you've been particularly been satisfied or dissatisfied with?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, I think you...you were satisfied...I quite like the Guggenheim, you see I was made for it (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: Did you like the installation though?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, but Tom [Messer] had some little bits of plants hanging around (laugh). I further knocked them out, or hid them or...just one or two.

PAUL CUMMINGS: What about the large mobile? The white one, The Ghost [1964]? Was that made for the installation?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, that was made for that show, but it was bought by Philadelphia [Philadelphia Museum of Art].

PAUL CUMMINGS: You once said somewhere that you're interested in forms - forms which have meaning--

ALEXANDER CALDER: What?

PAUL CUMMINGS: Forms which have meaning or are worthwhile.

ALEXANDER CALDER: I said that?

PAUL CUMMINGS: Yeah, and I was curious, what do you mean by that?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, I don't remember saying it (laughing).

PAUL CUMMINGS: It's somewhere in one of the...

ALEXANDER CALDER: Forms that have meaning...?

PAUL CUMMINGS: Yeah, that you're interested in shapes and things...

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah, I like shapes but...round or...

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, what about shapes that have meaning?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, you've got me.

PAUL CUMMINGS: I don't know. It is just kind of an odd line in an interview I was curious about that. Well, how'd you like getting a doctorate of arts from Harvard in 1966?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh, it was alright. They offered it the year before but I was having a show in Paris [Musée National d'Art Moderne, July 8-Oct. 15, 1965] and couldn't make it, so they gave it to me the next year.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Does it have any particular relevance or value or meaning to you?

ALEXANDER CALDER: No, I was a little afraid I would get a delivery...demands for money (laugh) every year...the graduate. It hasn't transpired.

PAUL CUMMINGS: What about the ones with sound, cause there's some that have?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Gongs in it and all. Well, sometimes they make a noise sometimes they don't (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: Is that a recent development or...?

ALEXANDER CALDER: No. I had one once in Buchholz, Curt Valentin, I called it Trolley Car [ Streetcar, 1951], because it had three branches of leaves and in the middle was a big brass gong that sounded just like a trolley car.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh, that's terrific. So they've been going on then for--

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: twenty odd years or so? Well, are there any of them where you've combined more than one, one gong or...?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah. Well I had some where...there were a few where I had two or three put in. I have one up in Roxbury that has three little discs, cause I had strong air conditioning (laughing).

PAUL CUMMINGS: So it keeps going. Well, in making the kind of pattern of that, is that done through drawings or some kind of idea or do you just kind of work with a wire and the shapes and cut out...and build?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well I've made several, that one over there is similar. The one in the stair. Maybe there's one in the Museum of Modern Art...

PAUL CUMMINGS: But, I mean, you know, the way they kind of unfold?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah well, I don't know how I got that idea but...it worked (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: I mean, for example, even that one which is similar to what...do you ever make any kind of drawings of...?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh yeah, well I make a drawing of the thing and the approximate points of support but when you make it, you're usually going back on the bottom there and get it hooked to the next one and then you seek for a--

PAUL CUMMINGS: The balance.

ALEXANDER CALDER: for an arc...and so on.

PAUL CUMMINGS: So they really, they grow like...

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah. I mean now you see the growth and the movement and try to get bigger (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, are there any 20th century sculptors that particularly interest you or...?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well I like Brancusi...oh, Giacommetti.

PAUL CUMMINGS: What's the quality, what about Brancusi interests you? What qualities would you say?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, the simplicity of his things. I only went to see him once or twice but his place was wonderful where...great simple forms.

PAUL CUMMINGS: It was very crowded people have told me--

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: I've seen some photographs.

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah well, he had to store them in his own place (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: How about Giacommetti? What interests you about him?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Well, I don't know. There are certain ones that I like. There's the one with two wheels and the bar and the guys standing up.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh, yes and the figures, I mean he's so different from Brancusi...

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: ...who's sort of solid and he's so lenient.

ALEXANDER CALDER: Oh, I liked Arp, but the early ones with the panels with the sort out blocks.

PAUL CUMMINGS: It's interesting. You've done very little modeling of any kind, have you?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: I've seen a few photographs of some odd pieces but not...

ALEXANDER CALDER: I've made some in wax. I lived in [7] Villa Brune [Paris] which is next door to Valsuani, the foundry. So I went there.

PAUL CUMMINGS: See what happens.

ALEXANDER CALDER: I've always meant to make some more, but (laugh). It's really funny about going back to some previous era where production doesn't seem quite right.

PAUL CUMMINGS: Well, you know, just talking about going back like that, do you look at older things you made for ideas and...?

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS: And is there a relationship back and forth...or only with recent...?

ALEXANDER CALDER: No, why I remember them mostly.

PAUL CUMMINGS: One of the things that's always intrigued me is the fact that in a way what you've done is to make color move. Are there any, is there a reason why you used the few colors you do? Because they're not really that great a variety of colors.

ALEXANDER CALDER: Yeah. Well I like the original...I like black and white, that's one thing and then, black and white and red, red's very...it's the only color that really counts somehow. Then you just use the other colors to do [gesture] (laugh).

PAUL CUMMINGS: A little music to the sides. OK, well I think that's...

END OF INTERVIEW

Last updated August 2, 2004

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Oral history interview with Alexander Calder, 1971 October 26

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Preface This transcript has been corrected and edited at the Calder Foundation by Alexander S.C. Rower, with additional notes in brackets []. Parts underlined are uncertain trancriptions. Room noises and distractions have been omitted from this transcription. Interview PAUL CUMMINGS: It is the 26th of October 1971, Paul Cummings talking to Alexander Calder at the Perls Galleries [New York].

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Calder, known to his friends as 'Sandy', invented the mobile in 1931 when he decided to create a drawing in the air!

The artist Marcel Duchamp called Calder's sculptures' 'mobiles' because they moved when the wind blew. Here is one of his mobiles made in 1953. How do you think it moves?

Calder's mobiles were also inspired by nature, such as Snow Flurry I. Do you feel caught in a blustery snowstorm?

Calder was born in Pennsylvania, USA in 1898 into an artistic family, his grandfather, his father and his mother were all artists. However, as a kid he was great at Maths, so he decided to study engineering at university. This turned out to be very useful later on when he was inventing his kinetic sculptures. Kinetic is used to describe a type of art that moves, either by air or the use of a motor.

In 1926 Calder made a miniature circus out of wire and bits of cork and fabric. He called it the Cirque Calder, and artists like Pablo Picasso were invited to come and watch performances. As a kid, Calder loved the circus, especially the acrobats. He was impressed by their ability to balance on thin wires high up in the air. Have you been to the circus? Do you think Calder captures the magic of a circus performance?

In 1930 Calder visited the artist Piet Mondrian in his studio in Paris where he saw his simple paintings of rectangles and stripes in red, yellow and black.

He thought it would be good if the shapes in Mondrian's paintings moved, so he went back to his studio and began to work on a series of sculptures that would do this.

Calder also loved involving sound in his artwork. In Small Sphere and Heavy Sphere two balls hit bottles, a box, a can & gong. How do you think it sounds?

Calder made new ways of looking at and creating art. What do you think about his work? Does it remind you of anything you have seen before? Have you ever tried to make a mobile?

Watch a cartoon inspired by Calder's circus...

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Who is Alexander Calder? - Who Are They? | Tate Kids

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Calder, known to his friends as 'Sandy', invented the mobile in 1931 when he decided to create a drawing in the air! The artist Marcel Duchamp called Calder's sculptures' 'mobiles' because they moved when the wind blew. Here is one of his mobiles made in 1953. How do you think it moves?

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360 View: Alexander Calder's The Fish | Christie's

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A 360-degree view of Alexander Calder's hanging mobile, The Fish, created in 1957 - offered in the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York on 10 November 2015

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Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden | Smithsonian

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Search Result Details - Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden | Smithsonian

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Alexander Calder - 229 sculptures, paintings, prints and designs - WikiArt.org

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There's a hyperactive pace to his early career. While working at engineering jobs after college, he was also drawing like crazy and designing toys. In 1923 he enrolled at the Art Students League to study painting; John Sloan and George Luks were his teachers. At the same time he took on illustrating gigs for publications like The New Yorker and The National Police Gazette.

His academic drawings from the time are gauche and ordinary. The staying-still-in-a-studio they required obviously cramped his style. Much fresher is the dashed-off, manic-looking magazine work. And his Ash Can School-type paintings of New York scenes - a drunken party; a trip to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus - have a gawky spark of life. Then there are his pen-and-ink drawings of zoo animals. They're in a different category, almost by a different artist, one more relaxed and assured. Often done as one continuous line, they are like an effortlessly sophisticated form of penmanship. So are some of the openwork sculptures of bent and twisted wire that he began to experiment with at this time.

In 1926, with all these balls in the air, he suddenly moved to Paris, because motion for him was a stimulant and because he felt that Paris was the hot place to be, which it was. With its crowded cafes, charged thinking, endless talking and jumpy personalities, the city was hyperkinetic. Calder fell in love with it. And, although he continued to return to New York for long stretches, he made Paris his home base for seven years.

His wire sculpture took off there. Several examples in the form of portrait heads are the first thing you see when you step off the elevator on the Whitney's fourth floor. They're an arresting sight, in a gently wow-inspiring way. Wows were what Calder was after, along with chuckles and satisfied ahs. He was a showman, a performer. "See what I can do, right before your eyes, without even trying?" his art seems to say.

For his purposes industrial steel wire was an ideal medium. It was cheap, malleable, portable and equally adaptable to precision work and doodling, which to him were almost the same thing. Wire was like three-dimensional ink; it was a means of combining drawing and sculpture in space.

In the Paris years he used it for portraiture. His first subject was a star he admired from afar, Josephine Baker. She was the toast of the town in the 1920s. One look at film clips of her dancing a semi-nude Charleston tells you why. Calder made five small Baker figures; four are in the show. With their tiny heads, spiraling breasts and long, long single-strand legs, they catch something of the image Baker wanted to project: that of an ethnographic specimen come to irrepressibly self-amused life.

He made other figures too, of the tennis champion Helen Wills, of John D. Rockefeller playing golf. They are the work of a pop illustrator, clever but nothing special. But for people he actually knew, portrait heads were the form of choice. Of the 18 examples in the show, most depict people Calder had met in avant-garde circles in Paris, including celebrity friends like Edgard Varèse, Joan Miró and Alice Prin, the multitasking muse better known as Kiki de Montparnasse. You can see why Calder did these likenesses: they were an attention-getting novelty; they advertised his skill; they gave him a pretext to network.

They also look as if they were fun to make. One of the attractive features of Calder's art from this period is its gee-I-could-do-that unpretentiousness. At the same time each is a fabulous little virtuosic feat, abstract but exacting. Set on bases or freely suspended, and casting subtle shadows - Jennifer Tipton, the theatrical lightning designer, was in charge of illumination - the portraits have the wit and refinement that will show up again in Calder's first abstract sculptures.

Refinement is not a quality associated with the famously funky tabletop assemblage known as Calder's Circus. A prime draw of the Whitney's permanent collection, it has rarely been off view since the museum acquired it 25 years ago. But it gets a rethinking here.

Up to now it has been exhibited as a compact, one-ring affair with its many tiny handmade figures - clowns, acrobats, animal trainers and so on - doing all the varied things they do at once. The show's curators, Joan Simon of the Whitney and Brigitte Leal of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, have separated the components into individual acts meant to be seen as taking place sequentially, a format that corresponds to the way Calder himself presented the work in live performances.

You can see him giving one in a 1955 film by Jean Painlevé, which is in the show. Calder introduces the figures silently one by one, manipulating them and activating the low-tech mechanisms (cranks, pull-strings, air hoses) that animate their activities. If, like me, you've always found Calder's Circus a little too cute for comfort, the film may change your mind.

When at one point Calder slowly and carefully removes layer after layer of hand-sewn costumes from one clown figure until he arrives at what looks like a skeleton, it's hard to known whether you're seeing a circus or a medieval morality play. No wonder the original Paris performances pulled in the savvy audiences they did. Jean Cocteau, Marcel Duchamp and Piet Mondrian were among the many vanguard types who sat on crates and watched with rapt attention.

The Whitney show's real shock comes a bit later, though, in the last three galleries, when Calder the polymath entertainer becomes Calder the Modern sculptor. The shift happened almost literally overnight. In October 1930 he visited Mondrian's Paris studio; instantly he became an abstract artist. And for some people Calder starts to become interesting only at this point. No more Kikis and tennis players. Now everything is floating circles and curving lines anchored by balls in space.

But two things stayed constant: motion and play. For conservation reasons only one sculpture in the Whitney show is now motorized as intended; others can be seen in action on film. And action is the essence in a piece like "Small Sphere and Heavy Sphere" (1932-33), which consists of two suspended wooden balls and, set out on the gallery floor, a wooden box, four wine bottles, a can and a gong.

Nothing much, right? Until - as seen on film - the balls, attached to a motorized bar, start to move in a slow circle, hitting a bottle, then the can, then the gong. Music! (Varèse loved this piece.) Yet move a bottle an inch or two this way or that and the performance changes. Turn on a fan or open a window and you could create a new score. The game Calder is playing is a finely tuned, verging on magical, game of chance. And it really is a game. And it really is play.

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At the Whitney, Adventures in Wire and Whimsy

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There's a hyperactive pace to his early career. While working at engineering jobs after college, he was also drawing like crazy and designing toys. In 1923 he enrolled at the Art Students League to study painting; John Sloan and George Luks were his teachers.

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Alexander Calder: Performing Sculpture / Tate Modern, London

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Known as the man who made sculpture move, Alexander Calder was one of the most in influential and pioneering figures of modern art in the 20th century.

You may have seen his iconic mobiles hanging in galleries all over the world including at the NGV as part of last year's Winter Masterpiece Exhibition MoMA at NGV.

It's incredible to think that Calder invented the concept of moving sculptures and the name 'Mobile' was coined for them by Marcel Duchamp in 1931, which in French suggests both movement and also a 'motive'. The noun 'Mobile' soon entered common usage to describe suspended sculptures, appearing in Webster's New International Dictionary in 1954.

Before this exhibition, it didn't even cross my mind that 'mobiles' were a recently invented thing.

Alexander Calder: Radical Inventor, is showing at NGV International from 5 April to 4 August 2019, and features nearly 100 works spanning the artist's career, ranging from early childhood sculptures, avant-garde innovations, large-scale objects from the last chapter of his career in the 1970s, and an impressive display of Calder's most iconic forms: suspended mobiles.

Displayed in a stark white exhibition space, the graphic shapes, lines and shadows of Calder's sculptures are striking. The gentle movements of the mobiles are almost mesmerizing as the air blown from the gallery's air conditioning vents provide just enough breeze.

I'd encourage you to visit during a quite, time if at all possible, to get the full effect of the pops of colour, and subtle movement in the vast gallery space.

Calder's early inventive work with metal and wire, creating whimsical and useful objects was delightful and really showed how truly innovative he was for his time.

His three-dimensional wire sketches are incredible, The Brass Family, 1929, a wire sculpture of balancing circus performers was the highlight of the exhibition for me.

This exhibition has been organised in collaboration with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Canada. Bringing together sculpture, drawing, painting, jewellery and other media from North American art museums and private collections, including generous loans from the Calder Foundation, New York.

Alexander Calder: Workshop for Kids

In conjunction with the exhibition, Alexander Calder: Radical Inventor, this NGV Kids installation incorporates hands-on activities for kids. Here they can construct animal sculptures and also play a multimedia game to design virtual public artworks across Melbourne.

The kid's activity space's minimal design is dominated by a striking entrance of concentric circles which take their cue from many of Calder's mobiles and sculptural pieces which feature circles.

Alexander Calder was captivated with movement and animals even as a child. At age 11 he gifted his parents with sculptures he had made of a dog and a duck.

Taking inspiration from this fascination, Alexander Calder: Workshop for Kids presents children with the opportunity to construct their own unique creatures. Using custom-designed paper templates, kids (and adults) can work with
intersecting shapes and folding techniques to build animal sculptures that can be customised with their own designs.

Cut-outs are mixed and matched to create a variety of creatures, all inspired by Calder's metal work sculptures.

ALEXANDER CALDER: RADICAL INVENTOR

WHERE: NGV International, 180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne, Australia

WHEN: 5 April 2019 - 4 August 2019

HOW MUCH: Adult $22 | Concession $28 |
Child (5-15 years) $10 | Family (2 adults + 3 children) $60 | Member 20% discount
Tickets available online or at the door

Alexander Calder: Workshop for Kids Kids Play space FREE entry
www.ngv.vic.gov.au PIN FOR LATER

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Alexander Calder: Radical Inventor - The Mobiles come to Melbourne

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Known as the man who made sculpture move, Alexander Calder was one of the most in influential and pioneering figures of modern art in the 20th century. You may have seen his iconic mobiles hanging in galleries all over the world including at the NGV as part of last year's Winter Masterpiece Exhibition MoMA at NGV.

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The second tutorial in our Series CONNECTING WITH THE ELEMENTS- How to teach the Elements & Principles of Art, is SHAPE.

Want to start at the beginning? Visit the first art tutorial LINE & PATTERN HERE.

This week's Facebook Live art tutorial showcases two of my favorite projects:
Matisse Organic Shape Collage and Calder Inspired Geometric Fish.
But first, why teach Shape?

Shape is a great element of art to follow behind the introduction of LINE because lines connect to create shapes.

You can explore with your students what types of lines are used in geometric and organic shapes so children can see the difference between the two types. This helps children identify and draw basic shapes in the early stages to using shape in an advanced planned out composition to achieve balance and visual interest in later stages.
CHECK OUT THE ART TUTORIAL ON HOW TO TEACH SHAPE

Want to watch the Art Tutorial Video? Click HERE to view video on our Deep Space Sparkle Facebook Page

*This video is available to you if you're a Sparkler in the Sparklers' Club. Here's the link to the video in the EPIC Shape Bundle.
YOUNGER GRADE ART PROJECT: Calder Inspired Geometric Fish
To start this project, offer children a white sheet of paper, a black marker or crayon, and colored markers or crayons to color. If you can, show pictures of Alexander Calder's Fish Mobile. Point out the simple shape of the fish, plus all of the various shapes within the fish.

Ask children what they see when looking at Calder's mobile.
What shapes do they see? What objects did Calder use when making the fish? What shapes are these objects?
Looking carefully at Calder's fish will help children create the shape they want to add in their drawing.
The Drawing...
Offer children a printed version of the drawing guide in the Free handout below...

Start by drawing a simple fish shape on white paper using a black marker, crayon or oil pastel. Add a circle for the eye.

To make the fish-like netting designs inside the fish body, draw short lines from the top line of the body towards the center of the fish body. As a guide, the line can be about the length of a child's finger.

Connect two lines with a chevron arrow.

Draw more lines and arrows. When the children get to the bottom of the fish, the lines may become muddled. That's okay. The goal is to create section to add shapes to the sections. Bigger sections are better so encourage the children to think about this rather than making the grid.

Once the grid is done, switch to markers or crayons and start creating and coloring the shapes.
OLDER GRADE ART PROJECT: Matisse Inspired Organic Shape Collage
To create an organic shape collage inspired by Henri Matisse, print out the Organic Shape Drawing Guide from the freebie PDF below and offer to each student as reference.

Children in all grades can do this project but the approach varies. With small children (Kinder through to 3rd grade), use the handout to make a few organic shape templates. Simply photocopy or print the handout onto card stock and cut out the shapes. Children can use the templates to trace onto a piece of colored painted paper.

Then, if they want, they can draw or even cut more shapes using their knowledge of what an organic shape looks like.

After a child has 1-2 large organic shapes, glue to a colored or white piece of drawing paper. If your time is tight, you can cut 12" x 18" sheets of paper in half.

Fill in paper with smaller organic shapes using different colored paper

For older students, templates are unnecessary. Offer the handout to the students so they can see what an organic shape looks like. Children can cut any shape they like and assemble onto white or black paper.

Here's a short video tutorial to teach children how to cut a spiral.
DOWNLOAD THE HOW TO TEACH SHAPE GUIDE & HANDOUTS NEED MORE PROJECT IDEAS?
Here are a few lessons that focus on how to teach SHAPE...
Trucks & Tractors: Kindergarten Shape Lesson Waterfront Houses Paper Cut Shape Portraits Matisse Inspired Name Panels Paper Cut Flower Arrangement

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The second tutorial in our Series CONNECTING WITH THE ELEMENTS- How to teach the Elements & Principles of Art, is SHAPE. Want to start at the beginning? Visit the first art tutorial LINE & PATTERN HERE. This week's Facebook Live art tutorial showcases two of my favorite projects: Matisse Organic Shape Collage and Calder Inspired Geometric Fish.

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Kids of all ages can be inspired by the great masters of art: inspired to create in their own ways; inspired to learn more about art, the masters, and history; inspired to discover; inspired to invent and experiment; inspired to learn more about everything; inspired to dream.

Alexander Calder is an artist that kids easily relate to because his sculptures are playful, colorful, and, well, they are SCULPTURES, and kids love to create sculptures! Here's some fun information about the great American artist Alexander Calder that you might enjoy sharing with your kiddos.

Alexander Calder, called Sandy by all who knew him, was born in Pennsylvania and came from a very artistic family: his great-grandfather and his father were both sculptors, and his mother was a painter. When Calder was young, he and his sister used to play with toys and gadgets that Calder made. In 1909, when Calder was in the fourth grade, he sculpted a dog and a duck out of sheet brass as Christmas gifts for his parents. T he duck was kinetic because it rocked when gently tapped.

When he grew up, he continued to create such things as games, toys, jewelry, sculptures, drawings, paintings, costumes, movie sets, and more. Through his construction of wire mobiles, he became the founder of a new art form - kinetic sculpture, which means " sculpture that moves." He created sculptures in sizes from very small to tremendously large, as well as mobiles (suspended moving sculptures), standing mobiles (anchored moving sculptures), and stabiles (sculptures that do not move). Calder is the most famous kinetic sculptor in the world.

How to Introduce Kids to Calder (and His Sculptures)

First, show the kids some of his works on the Internet or in a book, or if you are lucky enough, visit his work in person at a museum. Help the kids to take special notice of the wires and see the possibility of movement in his work. Teach them the word kinetic. Even a two-year-old loves new words!
Kinetic Sculptures with Pipe Cleaners
For kids to try their hands at an easy Calder-inspired sculpture, you will need:

Pipe cleaners (or other craft wire)

A base (such as a rock or a block of foam insulation or foam packing. Other ideas: a can of gravel or sand, a cup of playdough, or a colander turned upside down.)

Decorations (any items you have on hand: buttons, paper scraps, stickers, beads, paint chips, bottle caps, hardware nuts, macaroni noodles, etc.)

Glue or tape for sticking things together (or other ideas like ribbons, string, or stickers)

* You can see I'm always saying "or try this," "or try that," and "or what do you have on hand." There are so many options and no right or wrong way to do these creative sculptures. Sometimes the special things you and your kiddos find together will inspire the sculpture to take on new life and design in ways I never thought possible, so have some fun!

Basic Steps:

1. The children push the pipe cleaners into the base or wrap them around the base. If using Styrofoam, push the wires in deep so they will be strong and will hold up well.

2. Bend the wires into designs and shapes, or leave them straight. It's inspiring to cut the wires into different lengths with scissors. Pipe cleaners cut pretty easily. Note: One of the brain challenges of this sculpture is bending and arranging the wires so the sculpture will not fall over.

3. Add decorations! Buttons will thread right onto the wires, and it's easy to sandwich the wire between two gluey scraps or two stickers. Pony beads thread well onto the wires as do macaroni noodles and hardware nuts. Have fun choosing from whatever is on hand. You can always add cotton balls or even lumps of playdough! No rules!

4. Wiggle or blow on or shake or otherwise enjoy the movement of the wires and decorations.

What else? Did you ever think of hanging the sculpture upside down so it becomes a kinetic mobile? Consider adding strings or ribbons too! This project is absolutely wide open for creativity and possibilities. In fact, I once saw a child hammer nails into a block of sculpture and then drape yarn from one nail head to another and say, "Look at my Calder!" That could work here too! Or add some golf tees or toothpicks. Or, or, or. . .

I love this kind of project because it is completely dictated by the materials on hand and the willingness of the child to explore.

Here are some kids working with pipe cleaners and Styrofoam to build Calder-inspired sculptures. Mountain View School, Ferndale, WA, 2011.

MaryAnn and a young friend create Calder-inspired sculptures with wire and foam insulation that has been cut into small blocks. North Carolina, May 2011.

This post was contributed by MaryAnn F. Kohl. MaryAnn is the renowned author of over 20 books about art for children. Her books are published both by Gryphon House and by her own company, Bright Ring Publishing. Connect with MaryAnn online on Facebook, Twitter, and her own blog!

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Wire Sculpture for Kids (Inspired by Alexander Calder)

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Kids of all ages can be inspired by the great masters of art: inspired to create in their own ways; inspired to learn more about art, the masters, and history; inspired to discover; inspired to invent and experiment; inspired to learn more about everything; inspired to dream.

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Alexander Calder's 'Rouge Triomphant' | Christie's

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Met curator Marla Prather on motion in Alexander Calder's Mobile, 1941. Alexander Calder was born to a family of sculptors. His grandfather, Alexander Milne Calder (1846-1923), studied with Thomas Eakins and is famous for the elaborate sculptural decorations of Philadelphia's City Hall.

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Alexander Calder at Tate Modern on The Art Channel

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"The next step in sculpture is motion."

Many artists made contour line drawings on paper, but Calder was the first to use wire to create three-dimensional line "drawings" of people, animals, and objects. These "linear sculptures" introduced line into sculpture as an element unto itself.

Calder shifted from figurative linear sculptures in wire to abstract forms in motion by creating the first mobiles. Composed of pivoting lengths of wire counterbalanced with thin metal fins, the appearance of the entire piece was randomly arranged and rearranged in space by chance simply by the air moving the individual parts.

Alexander Calder, known as Sandy, was born into a long line of sculptors, being part of the fourth generation to take up the art form. Constructing objects from a very young age, his first known art tool was a pair of pliers. At eight, Calder was creating jewelry for his sister's dolls from beads and copper wire. Over the next few years, as his family moved to Pasadena, Philadelphia, New York, and San Francisco, he crafted small animal figures and game boards from scavenged wood and brass. Calder's interest initially led not to art, but to mechanical engineering and applied kinetics, which he studied at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey (1915-1919).

Alexander Calder's childhood, life, career, and various anecdotes

Read Alexander Calder's Biography

And, the artists and movements that built upon Alexander Calder's art

Read Alexander Calder's Artistic Legacy

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"The next step in sculpture is motion." Many artists made contour line drawings on paper, but Calder was the first to use wire to create three-dimensional line "drawings" of people, animals, and objects. These "linear sculptures" introduced line into sculpture as an element unto itself.

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Discuss how Alexander Calder's sculpture might move

In 1930, Alexander Calder visited the Paris studio of Dutch artist Piet Mondrian, where he was intrigued by a group of colored cardboard shapes pinned to the studio wall. The encounter inspired Calder to start making abstract sculpture and prompted him to create the first abstract sculptures that moved. He carefully planned out his moving sculptures before he built them. He thought about how the object would move and what kinds of lines or shapes the different parts would make while in motion. These experiments would eventually lead to Calder's invention of the mobile.

Looking closely at Object with Red Discs, ask students to choose one part of the work to focus on. How would they imagine the sculpture might move? What would happen to the rest of the sculpture? Have students share their ideas with other students to see how they might have imagined the sculpture moving differently.

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Discuss how Alexander Calder's sculpture might move In 1930, Alexander Calder visited the Paris studio of Dutch artist Piet Mondrian, where he was intrigued by a group of colored cardboard shapes pinned to the studio wall. The encounter inspired Calder to start making abstract sculpture and prompted him to create the first abstract sculptures that moved.

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Science meets art in these amazing Alexander Calder Art Projects for Kids! Play with lines, shapes and colors to make beautiful sculptures and paintings!
Fabida Abdulla | |

"To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there's no such thing as perfect."

When you think of artists, we think of slightly eccentric souls, wandering along lakes or forests with their art materials, trying to capture that elusive sun beam or bloom. The last think you'd expect is an artist who's gone and studied something as practical as mechanical engineering!

But that's Alexander Calder, American artist. He's not one to fit into any kind of mould, and his works of art aren't just hung up on a wall or standing on a pedestal - they actually move! Now you see how the engineering part fits in!

**As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases made through this site. Thank you!

What you see here is Calder's famous work, the 'Cirque Calder' or Calder Circus. What you don't see here is that all the parts of this circus can move - from the performers to the animals. And that is exactly what makes Calder's work so special and unique. He was also a man of many talents; along with sculpting and painting, he also designed jewelry, rugs, tapestries and sets - he even painted an entire airplane!

Alexander, or Sandy, was from a family of artists. His father and grandfather were sculptors and his mother a portrait artist. Young Sandy's first sculpture was a clay elephant, when he was four years old. He started out making jewelry for his sister's dolls and then went on to design jewelry for other well known artists and their families - Joan Miro, Georgia O'Keeffe, Marcel Duchamp, Marc Chagall and Peggy Guggenheim.

With 22nd July being Calder's birthday, we think it's the perfect time to introduce kids to this amazing artist and his works, with some fun and simple Alexander Calder art projects for kids.

Calder's sculptures were often in one of two categories - mobiles (those which hung from above and could move) and stabiles ( which were more or less stationery). 'Flamingo' is one of Calder's most popular stabiles, and Barley and Birch take inspiration from this for a spring-theme cardboard sculpture of their own!

The previous project was made using cardboard, now try one with paper! Pink Stripey Socks uses colored paper to make these bright and cheerful sculptures that are reminiscent of Calder's famous stabiles.

Alexander Calder loved the circus, and many of his works reflect this attraction. The 'Cirque Calder' is a piece that features circus performers and animals that actually move! Art Bar Blog brings alive this love for the circus in a beaded wire maze that resembles a roller coaster, where the beads can be moved around.

A mobile is a characteristic Calder piece, and they're so much fun too! Meri Cherry makes a simple but artistic looking mobile out of bottle caps, in signature Calder style using lots of wire.

Sandy, as Alexander was called, was a big fan of the circus, but how did this love come about? Read about Calder's amazing life journey in this book by Tanya Lee Stone, beautifully illustrated by Boris Kulikov.

Calder's kinetic sculptures are 'performing stabiles', and look deceptively simple, but are true works of art. Art Smudge shows us that even we can make our own kinetic sculptures with simple materials; even if we don't have Calder's mechanical engineering degree!

Alexander Calder was influenced by Piet Mondrian, which probably explains why he liked primary colors. Most of his paintings and sculptures feature black, white, red, yellow and blue. Kinder Art takes a page out of Calder's book and creates an open ended collage project based on Calder's work, 'Glacier with Colored Petals'.

Just like primary colors, Calder also liked shapes - circles, spirals, pyramids and of course, lots of straight lines! Several of his paintings feature such shapes, filled in with bright colors. Lez'arts au Soleil does a simple art project directly inspired from Calder's circles and spirals paintings and which'll remind you of fingerprints!

One of Calder's most interesting works is 'Brazilian Fish', made with a base of painted sheet metal and wire rods, with all kinds of broken glass and pottery pieces to add detail. Deep Space Sparkle has a great project for young kids based on Calder's fish, which helps little kids learn about shapes and colors. For older kids, you can turn this into a mixed media collage.

This mobile project from The New Hope Art Gallery is a great way to study Calder's main interests - shapes and colors! Kids can create anything from a circus to a playground, using just paper and their imagination.

When you think of it, Calder's work seems perfect for little kids, what with so many colors, shapes, mobiles and of course, the circus! Calder himself said, " My fan mail is enormous. Everyone is under six". That pretty much explains the audience that'll truly appreciate Calder's work! The best part of all these projects is that they're all organic and open ended - kids can fashion them in any way they like, and the output is sure to be something bright and beautiful.

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10 Alexander Calder Art Projects for Kids

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Science meets art in these amazing Alexander Calder Art Projects for Kids! Play with lines, shapes and colors to make beautiful sculptures and paintings! Fabida Abdulla | | "To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there's no such thing as perfect."

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We had an artists week in art camp last summer (yes, it's taken me this long to post everything). I've already shared with you our Henri Matisse "painting with scissors" collage project, and our Siona Delaunay paintings. Today I am presenting you with our Alexander Calder face sculptures. Ta-dah! Aren't they so fantastic?

Alexander Calder was an American artist of the 20th century who was know for his playfulness with his art. From his iconic hanging mobiles to his drawings, jewelry, imaginative toys, and circus rendering (my fave!) Calder always put a smile on people's faces.

I was hoping the kids would be excited about working with wire because it was such a new material. And I was right! They really worked hard and almost got blisters from all of that bending! But it was thrilling, too.
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support! Supplies:
~ wire (18 gauge craft wire)

~ wire coat hanger (bent into a circle)

~ scissors

~ colored tapes
Process:
Step 1: I started by sharing the images and words I had put up on the wall. We also looked through this cool pop-up book that gave them a really good sense of Calder's playfulness, sense of humor and style.

Step 2: Next I gave them each a few 2-foot pieces of wire (they cut it with scissors). I explained that we couldn't just make two eyes, a nose and mouth. They would not just float in the air. We had to connect them to the sides. They totally got this, even though it was hard. (And it didn't help that I bought the wrong wire which was a bit thicker and harder to manipulate). The kids were ages 9, 7, 6 and 5. All but the 5-yr old did it completely on their own. The 5-yr old needed some help with bending it around the sides of the coat hanger.

Step 3: When their faces were done, I brought out some colored wire for hair and some colored tapes.

Voila! I wish I could have kept them. They were so inspiring to me. Kids are just so free and nonjudgmental in their expressions and interpretations. I want to be a kid again sometimes just so that I can work without hesitation.

Oh, and I did a pre-k version for the 4-yr olds. They used pipe cleaners and tape!

Let me know what you think, and maybe even you and your kids could try this! There are so few supplies so it's actually quite fun and easy (the bending of the coat hanger is the hardest part, but not really that hard at all).

Thanks for reading!

xo, Bar

{Update: I recently found this image on Pinterest. They combined plastic cording with the wire. Stunning!}

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Artist Study with Kids: Alexander Calder

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We had an artists week in art camp last summer (yes, it's taken me this long to post everything). I've already shared with you our Henri Matisse "painting with scissors" collage project, and our Siona Delaunay paintings. Today I am presenting you with our Alexander Calder face sculptures. Ta-dah!

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Make Your Own Circus - Sculpture | Tate Kids

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Make your own wire circus inspired by artist Alexander Calder with Tate Kids. Use this activity to create your own artwork or homework project.

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The Alexander Calder projects that never left the drawing board

Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and designed by Renzo Piano, a new exhibition at Centro Botín explores the boundless possibilities of the artist's unrealised commissions and sheds light on little-known stories within his oeuvre

Around 1946, Frank Lloyd Wright invited Alexander Calder to produce a colossal mobile that would become a permanent focal point of the Guggenheim's central skylight, while the New York museum was still under construction. The caveat, however, was that the sculpture would have to be made from gold. Calder, who insisted on working with industrial materials, balked at the idea of using a precious metal (black, he said, would create a starker profile against the sky). When Wright threatened to withdraw the commission, Calder conceded: he would make the work in gold - but paint it black.

Although the mobile ultimately never came to fruition, Calder would later create The Spiral (1966), a motorised standing mobile with a spiralling top element made of industrial brass, that was exhibited at the Guggenheim in 1967. The work's alternate title was No! to Frank Lloyd Wright. Calder enjoyed a close - and typically more friendly - association with nearly every great architect of the 20th century, from Mies van der Rohe to Eero Saarinen (surely an exhibition in itself). As a result, the fate of many of his public commissions was intrinsically tied to the completion of their projects.

Unlike unrealised architectural projects, however, unrealised artworks are rarely disclosed. Instead they belong to 'a strange species of art' that curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has actively been investigating and publishing since 1990. At Centro Botín, Obrist has applied his methodology to a late, great titan of 20th-century art for the first time. A major new exhibition, 'Calder Stories', considers the little-known aspects of the American artist's oeuvre, from shelved or partially completed commissions, to anecdotes that trace the genesis of Calder's celebrated projects.

The Renzo Piano-designed museum in Santander, Spain, with a spectacular south-facing view of the Cantabrian Sea, sets the stage for mobiles, bronze works, maquettes and Calder's BMW Art Car - though the cavernous, light-filled space might not necessarily have appealed to the artist. 'Calder is about intimacy - he really wants you to be close to his work and have a direct personal experience,' says Alexander SC Rower, president of the Calder Foundation and the artist's grandson, quipping, 'Because Renzo Piano caused this problem, he had to solve the problem.' And so the Pritzker Prize winner stepped in to design the exhibition in his very own museum, forming a 'village' of exhibits that each tell a story.

Among the unrealised projects is a series of sculptures originally destined for a new African habitat that architect Oscar Nitzchke was working on for New York's Bronx Zoo in 1939. 'The main idea was to put the tough guys (lions, etc) behind a moat,' Calder once recalled. 'We even had the visitors walking through an armoured tube. My objects, I felt, could replace trees, being iron they would be immune to animals' claws.' (Upon rediscovering the models in his garage 30 years later, Calder exhibited them for the first time at Perls Galleries, New York, in October 1970 to critical acclaim.)

Elsewhere, drawings related to Calder's 'ballet objects' - including set designs for a proposed ballet with music by Harrison Kerr - come to life in digital animations specially commissioned for the exhibition. Keeping things in the family, Calder's great-grandson Gryphon Rue has assembled a selection of modern and contemporary music that correspond sonically to the artist's notations and animatic ballets. Calder's interest in the kinetic potential of art manifested in other ways: he was invited to produce a fountain for the pool in front of the Consolidated Edison pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair that would comprise a performance of jets of water choreographed as determinedly 'as the movements of living dancers'. Although the jets were installed at the pavilion, the ballet was never executed.

The exhibition, too, sheds light on the scale of Calder's ambition. Concurrent with the New York Water Ballet commission, the artist worked on a series of maquettes to be adapted for an immersive kinetic sculptural environment that would tower over visitors as they interacted with the work. Although the project fell through, one of the maquettes was used in 1961 as the model for a commission from Stockholm's Moderna Museet in Stockholm and realised as a permanent outdoor installation. Similarly, in 1944 Calder envisioned a series of bronze monuments measuring up to 40ft tall that were bound for an International Style architectural project (the modestly sized maquettes on display at Santander belie the artist's intent).

There are few sentiments more compelling than 'what if?' - the notion of what could be, or what could have been. As the enigmatic Alexander Calder proves, there is more to the story. §

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The Alexander Calder projects that never left the drawing board

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The Alexander Calder projects that never left the drawing board Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and designed by Renzo Piano, a new exhibition at Centro Botín explores the boundless possibilities of the artist's unrealised commissions and sheds light on little-known stories within his oeuvre Around 1946, Frank Lloyd Wright invited Alexander Calder to produce a colossal mobile that would become a permanent focal point of the Guggenheim's central skylight, while the New York museum was still under construction.

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For more fun art and craft ideas for kids, visit www.PinkStripeySocks.com!

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Calder, known to his friends as 'Sandy', invented the mobile in 1931 when he decided to create a drawing in the air!

The artist Marcel Duchamp called Calder's sculptures' 'mobiles' because they moved when the wind blew. Here is one of his mobiles made in 1953. How do you think it moves?

Calder's mobiles were also inspired by nature, such as Snow Flurry I. Do you feel caught in a blustery snowstorm?

Calder was born in Pennsylvania, USA in 1898 into an artistic family, his grandfather, his father and his mother were all artists. However, as a kid he was great at Maths, so he decided to study engineering at university. This turned out to be very useful later on when he was inventing his kinetic sculptures. Kinetic is used to describe a type of art that moves, either by air or the use of a motor.

In 1926 Calder made a miniature circus out of wire and bits of cork and fabric. He called it the Cirque Calder, and artists like Pablo Picasso were invited to come and watch performances. As a kid, Calder loved the circus, especially the acrobats. He was impressed by their ability to balance on thin wires high up in the air. Have you been to the circus? Do you think Calder captures the magic of a circus performance?

In 1930 Calder visited the artist Piet Mondrian in his studio in Paris where he saw his simple paintings of rectangles and stripes in red, yellow and black.

He thought it would be good if the shapes in Mondrian's paintings moved, so he went back to his studio and began to work on a series of sculptures that would do this.

Calder also loved involving sound in his artwork. In Small Sphere and Heavy Sphere two balls hit bottles, a box, a can & gong. How do you think it sounds?

Calder made new ways of looking at and creating art. What do you think about his work? Does it remind you of anything you have seen before? Have you ever tried to make a mobile?

Watch a cartoon inspired by Calder's circus...

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Who is Alexander Calder? - Who Are They? | Tate Kids

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Calder, known to his friends as 'Sandy', invented the mobile in 1931 when he decided to create a drawing in the air! The artist Marcel Duchamp called Calder's sculptures' 'mobiles' because they moved when the wind blew. Here is one of his mobiles made in 1953. How do you think it moves?

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Exhibit Showcases Different Side of US Artist