Alexander Calder: The Artist as Inventor

A magnificent example of Alexander Calder’s iconic hanging mobiles that is at once gracefully delicate and impressively scaled, Mariposa brilliantly distills the crucial elements of form, motion, and color that define the renowned sculptor’s theory and practice. Hovering apparently weightless above the viewer, the nineteen exquisitely cascading elements communicate a sense of limitless kinetic possibility, shifting and rotating to create infinite permutations within the simplest of abstract forms in perfect equilibrium. Although entirely abstract, Mariposa, the Spanish word for butterfly, recalls through its form and motion both the elegant fluttering of flight and the patterns of conspicuous beauty that distinguish those insects’ wings. In addition to its arresting splendor, Mariposa also features a highly distinguished provenance, having resided in the famed Neiman Marcus collects ion since it was acquired by Stanley Marcus in 1951. At the t.mes , Marcus had just assumed the post of CEO at the department store founded by his father, Herbert Marcus, and purchased the work directly from Calder, having met the artist earlier that year. Mariposa became the first acquisition of the collects ion, which currently holds works by numerous renowned artists, the majority of which are exhibited in the company’s locations across the United States. The butterfly is a signature image for the brand, and thus the present work has held a position of great importance in the collects ion, always exhibited in prominent places of honor in flagship stores from Beverly Hills to Dallas to Manhattan’s lavish Hudson Yards. In its illustrious history and stunning dynamism, Mariposa is a paradigmatic example of Calder’s most iconic body of work; as precisely engineered as they are organically inspired, the mobiles mark Calder at his most technically adept and conceptually inventive.

The physical components of Mariposa comprise the absolute essentials of Calder’s aesthetic. Individually painted metal elements, in a palette of black, white, red and yellow, dance majestically into the space they occupy. Extending eleven feet in length and over seven feet in wingspan, this work’s monumental scale is belied by the effortless way it appears to float balletically through the air. Its nimble movement is heightened by the aerodynamic apertures in several of the black elements; in the late 1940s, Calder began piercing certain components of his mobiles in an effort both to heighten their transparency and surface animation and, to a more technical end, to adjust the physical and visual weight of the work as a whole. As he explained, “When I cut out my plates I have two things in mind. I want them to be more alive, and I think about balance. Which explains the holes in the plates. The most important thing is that the mobile be able to catch the air. It has to be able to move.” (Alexander Calder in 1959, cited in: XXE siècle, Homage à Calder, Paris 1972, p. 98) In the present work, the three pierced elements are suspended in perfect counterbalance to each other; as the slightest breath of air drifts through their openings they begin to rotate smoothly and organically, in turn inspiring movement in the vibrant red, pure white and singular yellow discs that surround them. The six smallest black elements comprising the tail of the construction act to stabilize it, seamlessly offsetting the expansive branches at the top, as the entire composition revolves mesmerically on a spiraling axis. With its bold primary colors and abstract, shifting forms, Mariposa, as with the greatest of Calder’s mobiles, continuously redefines the surrounding space as it moves, casting an endless pattern of shadows in their wake. “Just as one can compose colors, or forms,” the artist declared in 1933, “so one can compose motions.” (Alexander Calder cited in: Exh. Cat., London, Tate Modern, Alexander Calder: Performing Sculpture, 2015, p. 24)

During a now-legendary visit to Piet Mondrian’s studio in 1930, Calder was struck by the environment, including the rectangles of colored cardboard arranged on the wall for compositional experimentation, which he suggested be made to “oscillate.” The experience in the Dutch artist’s studio prompted Calder’s shift to abstraction. It was in 1931 that Marcel Duchamp first coined the word “mobile” to describe Calder’s early, mechanized creations, but it was not until the following year that Calder composed the first hanging composition that would come to define that term. In an interview in 1932, Calder revealed his excit.mes nt at the extraordinary new creative world he was in the process of discovering: “Why must art be static?... You look at an abstraction, sculptured or painted, an entirely exciting arrangement of planes, spheres, nuclei, entirely without.mes aning. It would be perfect, but it is always still. The next step in sculpture is motion.” (Alexander Calder cited in: Howard Greenfield, The Essential Alexander Calder, New York 2003, p. 67) Over the next few decades, Calder would go on to revolutionize the concept of traditional sculpture by utilizing the full potential of elements in motion through the remarkable manipulation of metal and wire. This reached its crowning apex in his signature hanging mobiles, which seem to drift weightlessly as they revolve through space and t.mes . Mariposa is thus exemplary of Calder’s mature practice, when his powers of invention and intuition had reached such heights as to allow him to achieve such feats of intuitive engineering and artistic verve as to revolutionize the entire concept of sculpture, liberating the form from stasis and instead embracing the dynamics of motion, celebrating the possibilities for organic movement.

Greatly desired and instantly recognizable across the globe, Calder’s celebrated mobiles represent the very paradigm of his genius, establishing him as one of the most important sculptors of the Twentieth Century. Works such as Mariposa exist today as a test.mes nt not only to Calder’s extraordinary creative vision, but also to his dexterity in exploiting the aerodynamics of balance and harmony into a climactic culmination of color, form and motion. Ultimately, this serene work perfectly epitomizes the emotions and attitudes suggested in Calder’s own conclusion on the art form he pioneered: “When everything goes right a mobile is a piece of poetry that dances with the joy of life and surprises.” (Alexander Calder cited in: ibid., p. 47)

Artist

Alexander Calder