Tricolor on Pyramid

Alexander Calder was a 20th-century American artist. He combined his interests in nature, abstraction, and motion to create kinetic sculptures. He is best known for his mobile works. Mobiles are suspended sculptures that freely turn in the air. All mobiles are kinetic sculptures, but not all kinetic sculptures are mobiles. Kinetic sculptures are 3D works of art that incorporate movement. They can be powered by wind, motors, springs, magnetism, gravity, or human interaction.

Why must art be static? You look at an abstraction, sculptured or painted, an intensely exciting arrangement of planes, spheres, nuclei, entirely without meaning. It would be perfect, but it is always still. The next step in sculpture is motion.

Alexander Calder

This sculpture suggests more about forces in balance than movement. Mobiles rely on balance to function correctly and turn in the air. In this work the white, blue, and red sections occupy separate sides of balanced equations. The seven small white pieces are balanced by the mid-sized blue one, and those eight pieces are kept in equilibrium by the large red piece. At first the work appears simple, but each piece offers some variation. Except for the round piece, most of the pieces are roughly triangular, with some curved sides and angles. The white pieces are placed horizontally, while the blue and red pieces stand vertically in contrast. One piece has a dime-sized hole in it, making it just the right weight to keep the arm balanced.

Calder’s father was a sculptor and his mother was a painter. They encouraged him to experiment with making art at a young age. As a child he built his first kinetic sculpture as a Christmas gift for his parents in 1909. The sculpture he made for them was a brass duck that rocked back and forth when it was tapped.

Above all, art should be fun.

Alexander Calder

tags: shapes, science, physics, impact, part/whole, problem solving