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Lot Essay
This work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York, under application number A05375.
"What is a Calder? A Calder is a sort of chandelier which hangs, like all chandeliers, from the ceiling, but which, unlike other chandeliers, does not hold lighting equipment, but serves as a perch for our reveries. A Calder is an iron-web, a 'swan', a sign which has become a trademark, a feather in the wind, a sculpture that moves.
"The least one can ask of a sculpture is that it stay still", said Salvador Dali. "The most one can ask of a sculpture is that it move", amended Calder. Sculpture has been too long in the hands of plasterers and marble-cutters.
Mobiles are birds on the wing or branches swaying in the breeze. Stabiles are, on the other hand, aggressive or hostile plants or insects, headless cranes with drooping wings. They are also like farm machines, mechanical praying mantises like their contemporaries, the scrapers, bulldozers and drag-lines.
A stabile is an airplane without a motor, a tractor without a wheel, a tank without a caterpillar. What are they for Calder himself? He must have some ideas on the subject, because he takes them from his studio and sets them outdoors to graze in the fields, like cows. If one were to believe Calder's titles, they are alternately a Dog, a Double Mushroom, a Widow, a Cactus, or even a Coalman.
We think of mechanisms and he thinks of living beings"
(Michael Rago, 'What is a Calder', Derriere Le Miroir, 1963)
"What is a Calder? A Calder is a sort of chandelier which hangs, like all chandeliers, from the ceiling, but which, unlike other chandeliers, does not hold lighting equipment, but serves as a perch for our reveries. A Calder is an iron-web, a 'swan', a sign which has become a trademark, a feather in the wind, a sculpture that moves.
"The least one can ask of a sculpture is that it stay still", said Salvador Dali. "The most one can ask of a sculpture is that it move", amended Calder. Sculpture has been too long in the hands of plasterers and marble-cutters.
Mobiles are birds on the wing or branches swaying in the breeze. Stabiles are, on the other hand, aggressive or hostile plants or insects, headless cranes with drooping wings. They are also like farm machines, mechanical praying mantises like their contemporaries, the scrapers, bulldozers and drag-lines.
A stabile is an airplane without a motor, a tractor without a wheel, a tank without a caterpillar. What are they for Calder himself? He must have some ideas on the subject, because he takes them from his studio and sets them outdoors to graze in the fields, like cows. If one were to believe Calder's titles, they are alternately a Dog, a Double Mushroom, a Widow, a Cactus, or even a Coalman.
We think of mechanisms and he thinks of living beings"
(Michael Rago, 'What is a Calder', Derriere Le Miroir, 1963)