I recently made a custom mobile sculpture for the TV show And Just Like That … and installed on the set in a loft in New York City last week. Filming took place a couple of days after, and the art department informed me afterwards that the mobile “looked incredible on our set” and that it “was much admired”. The mobile should be visible in Season 2 Episode 5, which will be released on Thursday, July 13, 2023.

This is a photo of the yet-to-be-painted mobile in my work shop:

Made of aluminum, the mobile weighs only about 5 pounds (2.25 kg), so it moves even with the slightest air currents. The dimensions are approximately 10 feet (300 cm) in height and 10 feet in diameter.

A photo by Tanya Stadelmann from installation day:

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Update – July 13th 2023:

Here are screen captures from the episode where the mobile is featured when Sarah Jessica Parker‘s character (Carrie Bradshaw) visits Peter Hermann‘s character’s (George) place.

Mentions of the mobile, although (possibly) mistaken for a piece by Alexander Calder:

New York Times: ‘And Just Like That …’ Season 2, Episode 5 Recap
Decider: Peter Hermann is the Perfect ‘And Just Like That’ Love Interest — Until He Isn’t

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Upon request, the design is based on a mobile that I custom-made for a private residence in Long Island, New York about 10 years ago:

Update:

There will be two more mobiles sculptures that I’ve made in Season 3 of the series, of which the first episode was released on May 29th 2025.

– See more of my mobile sculptures –

The sculpture consists of two parts that visually correspond with each other and complete each other. Each part measures 25 feet (8 meters) in height and 16 feet (5 meters) in diameter. Made of aluminum to keep the sculpture lightweight and therefor susceptible to air movements within the space, the lower part weighs only 47 pounds (22 kg), the upper part only 39 pounds (18 kg).

The custom design of the two-part mobile sculpture, an application of a new approach to expanding Alexander Calder’s art form of mobiles:

Shown within the 4-story atrium:

View from the ground floor:

Render of the building:

The atrium:

Several weeks were spent on experimenting with fabrication techniques and inventing custom tools. Several jigs to facilitate the assembly process were also made. The balance point of each of the almost 50 parts had to be calculated precisely within the 3d model. The balance point of each part is dependent on the weight of the other parts. Each part had to be fabricated according to the 3d model, with some parts needing many adjustments until they positioned themselves correctly. In the process, the sculpture had to be raised and lowered hundreds of times, making additional adjustments to the parts each time.

The sculpture is made with a conventional hook-and-loop structure, as in a Calder mobile. A custom-made bending tool bolted to a table weighing 2 tons was utilized to allow for the metal rounds as thick as 3/4 inch (2 cm) to be bent into tight loops with an inner diameter of only 1 inch (2.5 cm):

Calculated measurement marks lining up perfectly after a loop was bent, ensuring that the balance point will be precisely in the correct place:

The 3d model of the atrium with the space utilized by the mobile (in red) to ensure that as the kinetic sculpture rotates and moves with the air currents, it will always remain out of reach from the various floors:

A video illustrating the various suspension options for mobile sculptures in the atrium:

Abstract metal shapes in the fabrication process:

The spreadsheet for one of the two sections, comparing the weight of the parts in the 3D-model to the actual weight of the parts as they were being made. The difference throughout the fabrication process had to be kept to a minimum to ensure that each part of the almost 50 parts, and the sculpture as a whole, would balance correctly. In the end, the weight difference between the model and reality was only 0.05% (0.31 ounces / 8.73 grams) of the total weight of the section:

Photo from installation day:

Photo from the opening ceremony in September 2022:

Thanks to Mike Rainer of Mike’s Machine & Welding for providing outstanding assistance with the fabrication of the mobile sculpture.

Update October 2023: The Learning Commons earns the Grand Prize at “Learning By Design” magazine’s Fall 2023 Architecture and Interior Design Awards of Excellence program.

I will be adding more images and information to this post as soon as I have time.

– See more of my art installations and mobile sculptures –

A photo of the yet-to-be-painted mobile suspended in my work shop:

Photos of the mobile sculpture installed at the yet-to-be-finished residence (photos of the finished project will follow soon):

In the evening with shadows of the mobile sculpture on the walls and the ceiling:

The sculpture is made of stainless steel and measures 136 inches (345 cm) in diameter and 107 inches (272 cm) in height.

– See more of my mobile sculptures –

These are images of 3d models of the mobile sculptures that I’m working on expanding, with the balance point for each part precisely calculated. Each of these mobile sculptures has an interconnected balance structure throughout, just like an Alexander Calder mobile. The balance of each part is determent by the weight of the parts connected to it. This specific mobile sculpture, for example, is made of 51 balanced parts that are connected to each other, resulting in just one suspension point for the whole sculpture:

One of these mobile sculptures here shown with the precisely calculated balance points (103 points in total):

– See more of my mobile sculptures –

George Rickey, while outlining the early explorations by artists into kinetic art from 1912 to 1932 in his book Constructivism – Origins and Evolution (published in 1967, and to my knowledge, the most wide-ranging and comprehensive book on the subject of Constructivism to date), remarked: “It was Calder who succeeded in securing a place for kinetic art. He started making mobiles twelve years after Gabo’s Manifesto, and his first exhibition of these was in 1932 at the Galérie Maeght in Paris. Although his mobiles have since become famous and popular and have enlarged the limits of art, his style, deriving from painterly concepts, has had little influence on the new generation, especially the more mechanically inclined. Until his stabiles of the last decade, Calder retained a two-dimensional outlook in sculpture devised as outline drawings, often witty, with ingratiating movement added. He seemed indifferent to the wide possibilities of a kinetic art. He discovered a new world but did not explore it.“

To put the idea in different words: Calder’s process began with seeing Piet Mondrian‘s paintings and feeling the impulse to make the static abstract shapes in the paintings move. He translated this idea to his mobiles quite precisely, essentially creating two-dimensional abstract paintings made of a series of flat shapes that move. Most of them only happen to become three-dimensional because these two-dimensional abstract “paintings” (essentially two-dimensional planes made of a series of flat shapes) happen to curve three-dimensionally when moved by air currents. He remained devoted to this approach with his mobiles and veered from it only very rarely, and not far when he did.

In 1962, in a review in Arts Magazine of an exhibit of Calder’s work at Tate [PDF], George Rickey wrote: “The mobile, even if flexible, is two-dimensional, like a drawing on a rubber sheet. The sinuous tracery of each set of wires profiles may sit contrapuntally against the next, but flat against flat. With the parts swinging around a vertical axis, the galaxy occupies space but does not energize it. Calder has run through the permutations of these wire profiles; yet, apart from some perfecting of wire technology, extension and refinement of his vocabulary of shapes (the Arpesque flame forms are the best), and increased size, he shows very little advance in the expressive use of movement in the thirty years since Calderberry Bush [also known as Object with Red Discs, made in 1932 and regarded as Calder’s first mobile sculpture]. It is not the first time that an artist has been confined by his own invention; it happened to Samuel F. B. Morse. The Master of the Catenaries has become the prisoner of the chain he forged.“

To expand Calder’s idea, one could create mobiles with the same balance structure as Calder’s mobiles (based on the whippletree mechanism), and create moving abstract “paintings” that are truly three-dimensional, not just two-dimensional planes made of a series of flat shapes that curve with the air currents.

In his later years, Calder designed and made some of his mobiles consisting of two (or more) horizontal and vertical planes, each one being essentially arranged in two dimensions. His hanging mobile titled Lone Red Among Blacks (1961) is a good example to illustrate this. Here again, the three-dimensionality was a result of combining two or more “flat” two-dimensional arrangements, not of a fully three-dimensional arrangement.

These mobiles shown here are still designed with the interconnected balance structure where the balance of each part depends on the other parts, as in a Calder mobile. And same as in Calder’s mobiles, it’s essentially an upside down whippletree mechanism, which probably dates back to between 190 to 209 AD, and has been used to distribute force evenly through linkages when horses or mules pull a plow or a wagon:

Man Ray was the first artist (to my knowledge) to utilize this balance structure in a suspended sculpture with his piece titled Obstruction in 1920 (if you’d like to read more about the history of mobiles, please see my page Mobiles before Calder – Who Invented Mobiles – A History of Mobiles Part 1).

Almost all artists who have made mobiles since Calder have adapted his two-dimensional approach. Few have worked to move beyond and explore the possibilities of fully three-dimensionally designed mobiles that utilize the interconnected balance structure that distinguishes them from simply suspended sculptures (please see my page Mobile Sculpture Artists – A History of Mobiles – Part 2 for some examples). George Rickey recognized the limitations of Calder’s two-dimensional approach to mobiles and expanded the art form, although many of his pieces don’t utilize an interconnected balance structure throughout. After around 1950, he often also opted for standing sculptures instead of suspended ones. Lynn Chadwick, Tim Prentice, Jerome Kirk, Derick Pobell, Laurent Martin “Lo”, Philippe Jestin and Jade Oakley have found ways to some extend to free the art form of mobiles from Calder’s two-dimensional approach. Tim Prentice expressed the challenge in a conversation with Nicholas Fox Weber (published by Maxwell Davidson Gallery in 2000): “Calder was credited with inventing sculpture with moving parts, so for me Rickey was incredibly important because he demonstrated that this concept wasn’t any one man’s property. I can do it to a limited degree. I can draw a line and have it curve, undulate, curl, turn, twist – in that sense, the line is changing – and I can do it with planes. The next challenge would be to do it with volume.” Volume as in three-dimensional planes instead of two-dimensional planes? Or no planes at all?

On the topic of Calder and Rickey, Tim Prentice wrote in his book Drawing on the Air – The Kinetic Sculptures of Tim Prentice: “If you compare the two, Calder was a great storyteller [and an entertainer] and not a theorist. When anyone asked him tough questions about his work, he hid behind his humor. For example, when asked how he knew a piece was finished, he famously answered, “When it’s dinner time.” He operated entirely on intuition. By contrast, Rickey was an intellectual and teacher. He was far more strict in his use of Constructivist principles. He analytically isolated movement in the way Josef Albers isolated color. [Rickey] and Calder represent the two contrasting sides of the brain.” Tim Prentice’s work greatly expands the art form of mobiles. He seems to build on Rickey’s approach more than on Calder’s. As he himself has explained: “As I concentrated on reducing weight and friction, the decisions came to be based more on engineering and less on aesthetics” and “we make the machine and keep our artistic instincts out of it and the air comes along and does the art.” Can the contrasting approaches be combined in new ways?

Building on Calder’s hanging mobile 13 Spines (1940):

Photos reverse the idea of turning an abstract painting or drawing into a three-dimensional moving sculpture. They turn it back into a flat immobile image made of abstract shapes. Two-dimensional layouts in mobiles, like many of Calder’s mobiles and the more conventional mobile sculptures I made some years ago, are easier to capture and comprehend in photos. While video can provide a solution to this, most people discover new art in the form of photos nowadays, especially now in the digital age. You can make an amazing three-dimensional sculpture, but if the sculpture doesn’t allow you to represent its idea comprehensively in images and photos, then you’re limiting the reach of the idea greatly. As Sarah Sze put it in an interview with Melissa Chiu: “In many ways, great artworks are known primarily through photos – so arguably the photos are as important as the artworks themselves.”

An approach that seems architectural to me:

The balance structure of a mobile (the whippletree mechanism) is like a few simple chords on an instrument: simple, but the possibilities of what can be done with it are infinite.

“Paintings are but research and experiment. I never do a painting as a work of art. All of them are researches.” – Pablo Picasso, in an interview with Alexander Liberman for Vogue in 1956.

Or as architect Santiago Calatrava has pointed out: the surrealist André Breton said, “Everyone knows what a head looks like”, to which Alberto Giacometti retorted: “Not me.”

See the continuation of this post Contemporary Mobile Sculptures – Expanding Calder’s Art Form – Part 2 with additional new mobile sculptures that I’m working on based on this approach.

As with anything on my website, if you have any suggestions, anything that should be added, corrected, or have any questions or comments, please let me know.

– See more of my mobiles –

Made out of aluminum and stainless steel and with a diameter of 60 inches / 150 cm, it weighs less than a pound / less than half a kilogram, and therefor moves with the slightest air currents.

Unlike a conventional mobile by Alexander Calder, this is essentially one mobile made of three mobiles. I believe this is quite unique and original, I’ve not seen a mobile like it.

A “fly around” animation of the design:

Painted:

Custom made wooden box for shipping:

– See more of my custom made kinetic sculptures and suspended mobiles –

Marco Mahler gives new life to the kinetic art form Calder made famous

It talks about how I got inspired by Alexander Calder’s mobiles at the National Gallery of Art’s Tower 2 in Washington, D.C. to make my first mobiles, then made small mobiles and kinetic sculptures that I sold on online, got commissioned for a series of mobiles for a New York Fashion Week, winning third prize in the 2015 International Kinetic Art Organization competition, a custom mobile for Robert A. M. Stern, New York architect and dean of architecture at Yale, collaborated with mathematician Henry Segerman to create 3D printed mobiles, a custom designed mobile sculpture that I made for the 2019 movie The Upside starring Bryan Cranston and Nicole Kidman, and some of my new ideas for suspended kinetic sculptures for future projects.

Mobiles shown in the article are Mobile 92 and one of my original contemporary mobile sculptures. Some of the 3d printed mobiles and a shape for a large custom mobile are visible in the background, as well as some of my other contemporary mobiles.

Thanks to Elizabeth Cogar and R•Home managing editor Susan Morgan!

Incidentally, a mobile that I custom-made for architect and former Dean of the Yale School of Architecture Robert A.M. Stern for his room at The Kips Bay Designer Show House is featured in the following issue of R•Home Magazine in the feature article about interior designer Doug Stiles and his condo in Richmond’s Bellevue Square where the mobile is currently suspended:

The design:

The residence:

The finished sculpture:

Indoor storage solution for stormy days:

Ready for shipping:

Installed on site:

A painting by David Hockney complementing in dynamics and colors hangs on the wall in the background:

– See more of my custom made moving sculptures –

Roy Lichtenstein
Mobile I, 1989
Galerie Gmurzynska

FOS
Mobile, 2010
Nils Stærk

Alexander Calder
Untitled, 1967
Kukje Gallery / Tina Kim Gallery

Alexander Calder
Gypsophila on Black Skirt, 1950
Helly Nahmad Gallery

Helly Nahmad Gallery also showed and sold Rouge Triomphant, a large hanging mobile by Calder, at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2014.

Alexander Calder
Untitled, 1955
Helly Nahmad Gallery

The above mobile sculpture measures 9 ft (2.74m) in height and 11 ft (3.35m) in width. It was made by Calder in India and can rotate full circle. Helly Nahmad Gallery is offering it for US$6.8 million.

Alexander Calder
Three Tentacles, 1975
Galerie Thomas

Alexander Calder
Untitled, 1974
Galería Leandro Navarro

Martin Boyce
Untitled, 2017
The Modern Institute

Alexander Calder
Red Snail, 1959
Galerie Thomas

Tomás Saraceno
Cumulonimubus calvus/M+Mb, 2017
Esther Schipper

Tomás Saraceno
Foam 91p/Mn, 2017
Esther Schipper

Tomás Saraceno
NGC/IC/M, 2017
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Claire Falkenstein
Sun, 1960
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery

The above sculpture reminds me of Swarm Chandelier by Zaha Hadid.

Bruce Nauman
Untitled (Two Wolves, Two Deer), 1989
Hauser & Wirth

Jorge Pardo
Untitled, 2015
neugerriemschneider

And some suspended sculptures for sale at Design Miami Dec 6th to–10th 2017:

Christopher Kurtz
Untitled #1, 2017
Patrick Parrish Gallery

Christopher Kurtz
Untitled, 2017
Patrick Parrish Gallery

Kasper Kjeldgaard
Talisman, 2017
Patrick Parrish Gallery

And a hanging mobile:
Kasper Kjeldgaard
Friction, 2017
Patrick Parrish Gallery

Related: The 15 Best Booths at Art Basel in Miami Beach 2017

– See more mobiles –
– Read more of my blog about mobiles –

The idea / design:

Measurements:

The finished mobile:

The installed mobile on site (L’Usine’s Facebook post):

See more of my mobiles
Read more of my blog about mobiles
See the most popular blog posts

The design was inspired by this mobile (is it a bird?) that I previously made (also one of my favorites):

Variations from the Design Process:

Three “wings” as shown in this 3D fly around animation:

Additional Variations from the Design Process:

– See photos of the mobile sculpture in the movie –

• See more of my custom mobiles
• Read more of my blog about mobiles
• See the most popular blog posts

The 3D printing company we use (Shapeways) has a cyber monday sale today (Nov 28 2016): Free shipping + 25% off your order with code SMALLBIZMONDAY via our shop.

Sumac #17
Hanging Mobile
Sheet metal, wire and paint
Inspired by the flowering plant of the same name
Estimated at US$4 million to US$6 million
[Update: Price Realized $5,765,000]

Related: Watch a 360-degree view of Calder’s large red mobile Sumac created in 1961.

How the visit to India came about, in Calder’s own words: “In 1954, I received a letter from a young Indian woman, Gira Sarabhai, youngest of eight children of a large wealthy family in Ahmedabad, which is somewhere halfway between Bombay and Delhi. She offered Louisa and me a trip to India, if I’d consent to make some objects for her when there. I immediately replied yes.”

Calder in India in 1955 (Louisa Calder, his wife, is seated atop the elephant):

Estimates range as high as US$10 million, with a total pre-sale estimate of around US$26 million to US$38 million.

Read The forgotten journey of Alexander Calder and view the e-Catalogue. Also see An Expert Look at Never-Before-Auctioned Alexander Calder Works and Mobile Revolution.

– Read more of my blog about mobiles or see some of my mobiles –

I competed against 22 sculptors for the commission including Zaha Hadid.

– See the design proposals that I submitted –

The sculpture measures 33ft (10m) in height and 26ft (8m) in diameter.

The largest shape is 5 2/3 ft long (1 3/4 m), the longest arm measures 17 3/4 ft (5 1/2 m) in length.

Made of aluminum, the mobiles weighs only about 100 pounds (45kg).

Two photos from the Grand Opening Celebration on August 28th 2015:

Render animation of the 3D model of the mobile:

The hospital is located on a hilltop in historic Mt. Auburn above downtown Cincinnati. The view from the hospital’s rooftop garden:

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) designed the new Joint and Spine Center, the same architecture, interior design, engineering, and urban planning firm that also collaborated with Alexander Calder on numerous projects from the 1950s through the 1970s. A view from outside of the suspended sculpture in the atrium:

The 125 year old Christ Hospital is consistently recognized by U.S. News & World Report as one of the nation’s top hospitals. Here’s an outside view of the newly built Joint and Spine Center with the atrium in which the sculpture is installed at the main entrance:

These are photos that I took myself. Professional photos should follow within a month. Here’s one by Tom Rossiter for Health Care Design Magazine:

Thanks to Mike Rainer of Mike’s Machine & Welding for assisting with the fabrication of the mobile.

– See more of my large mobile art –

A photo of one of the sheet metal (aluminum) shapes before assembly for size comparison – this one is the top (highest) shape in the mobile:

– See the finished mobile installed or see more of my large mobiles –

Here’s a preview:

– Read the Utne Reader’s review –

– Available through First Run Features –

– Also available on Amazon.com –

The shapes (paddles) had to be reattached and the new rivets needed to be painted.

Mini-pulley system for the roof designed by Jorge to raise the mobile:

The design of the mobile:

Measurements of the atrium:

The design of the mobile photoshopped into pictures of the space (the colors for the mobile had yet to be decided at this point):

Photos of the installed mobile:

From the client: “The mobile is truly beautiful! [It] lives up to our expectations – which were inordinately high! The wonderful thing we discovered is the full meaning of the word ‘mobile’. With the advent of winter, we have turned on the heat on occasion. What that causes is real movement — almost a revolution per minute as the warm air floats upward. At night, with the lights on, the shadows play across the wall as well. Beautiful!”

And for kicks, a local cafe in Buenos Aires around the corner from the residence where the mobile now is:

Read more of my blog about mobiles or see more of my large custom mobiles.

– See more of my custom mobiles or read more of my blog about mobiles –

Poisson volant (Flying Fish)
hanging mobile
1957
signed with initials and dated ‘CA 57’
24 x 89 x 40 in. (60.9 x 226 x 101.6 cm.)
From the collection of Edwin A. and Lindy (Betty) Bergman
Expected auction price $9,000,000 – $12,000,000

[Update: it sold for $25,925,000 tonight (May 13th 2014) – a new world auction record for Calder – bought by Xin Li on behalf of a Chinese client]

From the catalogue: Alexander Calder’s remarkable sculpture, Poisson volant (Flying Fish), amply demonstrates the breadth and diversity of the artist’s prolific career. The sleek black outline of the fish combined with the complex construction of animated elements that comprise the fish tail demonstrate the artist’s unique compositional ability, unsurpassed technical execution and sheer sense of joie de vivre in one memorable work. Although much of Calder’s work was defiantly non-referential, the fish motif was one that occurred throughout his life; from Steel Fish, one of the artist’s early standing mobiles he created in 1934, to the themed headboard he made for Peggy Guggenheim in 1945, and continuing with his large scale mobiles and stabiles, such as the present work and Yellow Whale created during the late 1950s, the symbolic nature of the fish seemed to encompass much of what Calder wanted to achieve in his unique brand of sculpture.

Dominated by its dramatic silhouette, Poisson volant skillfully combines the monumentality of Calder’s large-scale sculptures with the delicacy of his legendary mobiles. The striking appearance of the fish’s curved body is tempered by the hypnotic nature of the fish’s eye, which Calder beautifully fashions out of a tightly coiled piece of steel wire. The monumentality of the fish’s body is then tempered by the dramatic fourish of fishy tale — a highly dynamic collection of more than a dozen individuality fabricated and assembled elements, which, when moved by a passing breeze, spring into life with all the zeal of fish darting through the water. Working on both the vertical and horizontal plane, Poisson volant is one of Calder’s most complex works as both aesthetically and structurally, his arrangement of elements work together to produce an effect that delights and amazes as it becomes a symphony of movement and joy.

By taking the fish as his subject matter, Calder is building on a custom that dates back to the very earliest days of human civilization. The fish has acquired an important role in many of the world’s great faiths and religions. In the West, the earliest use of the fish as a symbolic object was made by the Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria (born circa 150) who encouraged his readers to place the image of a fish in their personal seals. The origin of the fish’s status in the Christian faith has been traced
back to the miracle of the Feeding of the Five Thousand (the only miracle to appear in all four Gospels) in which Jesus feeds a large crowd of people with just five loaves and two fish. In the Eastern tradition, the fish is one of the eight Buddhist symbols of good fortune, and in many faiths acts as a representation of abundance and wealth. Linked to the idea that water is the giver of life, the fish has become associated with sustenance and nourishment and also linked to health, wealth and prosperity.

But for Calder, the fish was symbolic of the serene and graceful movement that he was trying to emulate in his work. After centuries of being constrained by its static traditions, Calder wanted to release sculpture from these confines and introduce a fourth dimension to the work—that of movement. The resulting body of work, of which this piece is arguably one of the most accomplished examples, gave Calder the opportunity to fully explore the kinetic possibilities of sculpture and produce three-dimensional worlds that were in constant fux. As he once said, “A mobile is a feisty thing and seldom stays tranquilly in one place. …A mobile in motion leaves an individual wake behind it , or rather, each element leaves an individual wake behind its individual self. Sometimes these wakes are contracted within each other, and sometimes they are deployed” (A. Calder, quoted by M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, Washington, 1998, p. 137).

He first began to explore the aesthetic possibilities of the fish form in 1929 with his exquisitely delicate work, Goldfsh Bowl. By 1934, it appeared again in his large-scale sculptures, and in the summer of that year, buoyed by the warm temperatures and his recent move to an old farmhouse he’d purchased in Connecticut, Calder produced a monumental outdoor sculpture called Steel Fish. Many of these early complex constructions coincide with the organic imagery of Joan Miró and Paul Klee. Calder and Miró formed a lifelong friendship after the pair first met in Paris in 1928 and lasted until Calder’s death in 1976. But as Miró’s work became more symbolic, Calder’s became more abstract. Although his piscine forms were making more frequent appearances in his oeuvre, these pieces often merely allude to forms without following them implicitly. When these new works were shown at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York in 1937, a critic asked Calder to define the significance of these new organic forms. He replied, “I don’t really think that the thing can be reduced to a formula. Each thing I make has, according to its degrees of success, a plastic quality, which includes many things… These things may be related, and doubtless are, but I have formed no theories about the relation. An idea which will lead me to make a new ‘object’ may come from almost anywhere, from anything” (A. Calder, quoted in M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, Washington, 1998, p. 138).

Calder’s use of this form was to reach a wider audience when, in 1939, he was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art to produce a work for their new building in New York. The result was the spectacular Lobster Trap and Fish Tail. This consisted of a cascade of black organic elements that would become one of his trademark arrangements, and along with a wire cage-like trap and a bright red lure, this work was his largest hanging mobile to date—and the commission that launched Calder’s career as a publicly known artist. The success of Lobster Trap and Fish Tail also meant that Calder had become a critical, as well as a commercial success. Four years later, when the Museum of Modern Art staged a retrospective of his work, he became the youngest artist ever to have been accorded the honor, an event that was to propel him into the ranks of America’s most influential living artists.

Although the fish form proved to be the perfect vehicle for enabling him to express his interest in the spontaneity and kinetic nature of his sculpture, it also enabled him to indulge in the whimsical and more intimate side of his work. In the winter of 1945-46, Peggy Guggenheim, the socialite and art collector, commissioned Calder to make her a silver headboard for her apartment in New York. Calder chose to craft for her a magical, shimmering depiction of an underwater garden. He included two simple fish motifs in the bottom left of the work, closest to where Peggy Guggenheim would have entered the room. In an added touch of whimsy, the fish were not part of the work itself, but attached to it by thin wires, which meant that they would move and shimmer with every gust of wind or each time someone entered or left the room. Peggy Guggenheim became particularly fond of Calder’s work containing his fish motif. A large, fish mobile hung in the drawing room of her apartment and often became a talking point during her glamorous cocktail parties.

Perhaps fittingly, the piscine motif that had been so central to almost half a century of Calder’s work is also the key theme in one of Calder’s final commissions. Untitled (1976) is a large mobile specially made for the Trustees of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. to hang in the atrium of their new East Building. It is comprised of a majestic collection of black, red and blue forms suspended below a shimmering glass ceiling; the effect of the sunlight bouncing off these gently moving multicolored forms evokes the sight of tropical fish swimming in shallow pools of sun-drenched water. Of all of Calder’s forms, in terms of its size, complexity and sheer delight, Poisson volant is clearly one of the most accomplished sculptures of his career. Its monumental size and graceful and majestic movement is a supreme example of Calder’s skill not just as an engineer, but also as an artist who took a thousand years of sculptural tradition and turned it upside down, and in doing so created some of the most innovative and influential works of the past one hundred years. As the artist himself once said “When everything goes right, a mobile is a piece of poetry that dances with the joy of life and surprises” (A. Calder, Calder, London, 2004, p. 261).

___________

Also for sale:

Untitled
standing mobile
1945
Expected auction price $900,000 – $1,200,000

Design 1:

In red and black, a classic Calder combination:

Again, in red and black:

Design 2:

First floor perspective:

Design 3 – inspired by the shapes on a rug that will be in the lobby:

Design 4 – Showing a different type of mobile structure with a mid-century modern art design element to it:

[Update: The client picked “Design 2” – see photos of the finished and installed mobile]

– Or see more of my other custom mobiles –

Yet when I draw up proposals for these kinds of projects, I keep wondering where the lines are between a mobile that could be a replica, a mobile that’s strongly influenced by Calder’s style (“in the manner of Alexander Calder”), and a Calder inspired mobile. If I copied his style to a tee, most people wouldn’t be able to tell it from an original Calder mobile, yet it wouldn’t be a replica.

The question here is not simply about style, because Calder invented a new art form, and he still is to date by very far the most well known sculptor to create mobiles. This could be compared to Wassily Kandinsky, who is often (arguably) noted as having created the first abstract paintings starting in 1911, and then attributing all abstract paintings that followed by others to his work. An important difference here being that compared to abstract painting, few kinetic sculptors have tried to create their own style of mobiles so far, and even then, the basic idea, and in many cases the structures of their mobiles, are based on Calder’s work, and in that way, most mobiles are Calder inspired, even if they’re original in style. However, the underlying idea and structure of Calder’s mobiles was not invented by Calder. It is based on Man Ray‘s 1920 piece titled Obstruction, which he made about 10 years before Calder started to make mobiles. It utilizes the same structure as a whippletree mechanism, which probably dates back to between 190 to 209 AD. For further reading on this topic, please see the photos below of Calder’s copy of Man Ray’s sculpture, and see my page Mobiles before Calder – Who Invented Mobiles – A History of Mobiles.

From a legal perspective, case law is telling us that style isn’t protected by copyright. In Steinberg v. Columbia Pictures, the court stated that style is merely one ingredient of expression and for there to be infringement, there has to be substantial similarity between the original work and the new, purportedly infringing, work. In Dave Grossman Designs v. Bortin, the court said that:

“The law of copyright is clear that only specific expressions of an idea may be copyrighted, that other parties may copy that idea, but that other parties may not copy that specific expression of the idea or portions thereof. For example, Picasso may be entitled to a copyright on his portrait of three women painted in his Cubist motif. Any artist, however, may paint a picture of any subject in the Cubist motif, including a portrait of three women, and not violate Picasso’s copyright so long as the second artist does not substantially copy Picasso’s specific expression of his idea.”

For more on the legal perspective, there’s a great article by Greg Kanaan titled You Can’t Copyright Style.

The sculptor Jerome Kirk, who in his early career was strongly influenced by Calder, went to visit him at his studio around 1954, and described the encounter in his book: “Low on money and feeling the need for some encouragement, I visited Alexander Calder at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut. To enter his studio was like walking into a dream world. There were large work benches, vices, anvils and a magnificent clutter of tools, wire and sheet metal. His mobiles and stabiles of varying sizes were everywhere. At first Calder seemed interested in wanting to know what I was all about, but his cordiality gave way to petulance after seeing examples of my work. Guessing that he resented the close resemblance of my work to his own, I left discouraged, saddened and angry.” Jerome Kirk went on to creating his own very original style with his kinetic sculptures.

A standing mobile by Arthur Bauman:

A standing mobile by Calder (Quatre Blancs, 1976):

Here’s Calder (with Klaus Perls) at his 1956 exhibit at Perls Galleries with his mobile Untitled – Mobile with N Degrees of Freedom that he made in 1946:

Calder’s mobile is essentially the same sculpture as Man Ray’s Obstruction (1920) just made with wire instead of coat hangers:

Pablo Picasso once said: “What does it mean for a painter to paint in the manner of So-and-So or to actually imitate someone else? What’s wrong with that? On the contrary, it’s a good idea. You should constantly try to paint like someone else. But the thing is, you can’t! You would like to. You try. But it turns out to be a botch. And it’s at the very moment that you make a botch of it that you’re yourself.” (Hélène Parmelin, Picasso: The Artist and His Model, and other recent Works, 1965, page 43)

Picasso in his studio in 1956 standing next to a mobile not made by Calder:

Pablo Picasso and Alexander Calder knew each other and crossed paths in Paris’s vibrant art scene during the late 1920s and 1930s. Their acquaintance likely began around 1926 to 1933, when Calder was living in Paris, creating his Cirque Calder and early mobiles, and Picasso was an established figure in Montparnasse and the Surrealist circle. A key moment in their relationship came in 1937 during the International Exposition in Paris, where both contributed major works to the Spanish Pavilion, a project organized to support the Spanish Republic during the Civil War. Picasso created his monumental Guernica, while Calder designed the kinetic Mercury Fountain. They collaborated closely with architects Josep Lluís Sert and Luis Lacasa on the pavilion’s layout, fostering direct interaction. Calder admired Picasso’s inventive spirit, and Picasso, intrigued by Calder’s innovative use of movement in sculpture, reportedly visited his studio. Their mutual connections, including artists like Joan Miró and Surrealist circles, further facilitated their acquaintance. While not intimate friends, their shared artistic environment and the 1937 pavilion project cemented a professional respect and familiarity during their time in Paris.

On the topic of style, as in style in fine art and art movements, Calder is widely regarded as one of America’s most important surrealists, although he did not consider himself an abstract artist, as noted by Milly Burroughs. 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 would therefore be Realism.

– Read more of my blog posts about mobiles or see some of my mobile sculptures –

Alexander Calder, Maripose, 1960, 30 x 67in.

Bonhams will offer Alexander Calder‘s (1898-1976) 1960 sculpture Maripose in the November 12 2013 Contemporary Art auction (est. $1,200,000-1,600,000). This stunning example of Calder’s large scale mobiles has been in private American hands for nearly 40 years in Wisconsin-based collections.

A native of Pennsylvania, Calder was born into a family of sculptors. His first solo show was held in Paris in 1927 while he was still in his twenties; he would soon become one of America’s most lauded and prolific artists. It was Marcel Duchamp who first dubbed Calder’s kinetic wire sculptures “mobiles,” – these hanging, interactive pieces would come to define the artist’s legacy.

Maripose was originally offered at Perls Gallery in New York, which represented Calder from 1954 until the artist’s death. The mobile was acquired in 1976 by a prominent private collector from Milwaukee’s Irving Galleries, and passed by descent to the present owner in 1988. The mobile was exhibited at the Milwaukee Art Museum in 1987, and is registered with the Calder Foundation.

“In Maripose, every element of Calder’s genius is evident through the striking sense of balance and momentum the sculpture evokes,” said Jeremy Goldsmith, Bonhams Director of Contemporary Art in New York. “It’s a pleasure to bring such an important work to the market after nearly four decades in private hands.”

The auction will preview at Bonhams November 9-12 2013.