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Lot Essay
The elements that moved, stirred, and oscillated in Calder’s mobiles, like the performers on the stage, existed in a parallel time and space—one with its own laws, possibilities, and revelations.Jed PerlSuspended in poised counterbalance, Three Polygons, Eight Red is a majestic example of Alexander Calder’s mature mobiles. Spanning more than seven feet horizontally when fully engaged, the present work articulates Calder’s unique aesthetic vision of placing elements in constant motion. Each of the work’s eleven forms functions independently, constantly in flux as they respond to their environment. Moving through time and space, each form develops a relationship to the viewer like that between a thespian and their audience. As Jed Perl writes, “The elements that moved, stirred, and oscillated in Calder’s mobiles, like the performers on the stage, existed in a parallel time and space—one with its own laws, possibilities, and revelations” (Calder: The Conquest of Time, The Early Years: 1898-1940, New York, 2017, p. 403).
Asked a few years before making Three Polygons, Eight Red what role color played in his sculptural practice, Calder responded that “It's really secondary. I want things to be differentiated. Black and white are first—then red is next—and then I get sort of vague” (quoted in Katharine Kuh, ed., The Artist’s Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists. New York, 1962, p. 41). The present work proceeds precisely in the order of Calder’s preferred color order—from the top, the first and largest element is a black irregular polygon, against which two smaller polygons, one white and another black, counterpoise. This polygonal ensemble holds the cascading series of red forms in check, allowing the mobile to glide gracefully across space. Calder carefully calibrated each of his red forms in order for the sculpture to function as a unified work; the random movements appear preordained as each red element moves in tandem like the scales of a fish, either unfurling or contracting. The chromatic emphasis on red here parallels Calder’s increasing interest in the color, which played an increasingly dominant role in his work in the 1960s and 1970s. As the artist extolled: “It's really just for differentiation, but I love red so much that I almost want to paint everything red. I often wish that I’d been a fauve in 1905” (quoted in ibid.).
Calder’s shift from figurative to abstract art was inspired by Piet Mondrian, whose studio the American artist visited while living in Paris. Calder's experience of the overall environment served as one of the original impetuses for his bold move into abstraction. While in the Dutchman’s studio in October 1930, Calder suggested that it “would be fine if [the cardboard rectangles tacked on the wall] could be made to oscillate in different directions and at different amplitudes” (Calder to Albert Gallatin, 1934, quoted in M. Prather, Alexander Calder: 1898-1976, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1998, p. 57). After Mondrian rejected his idea, Calder began to experiment with his first nonobjective sculptures, soon adding articulation. The artist later recalled how radical his idea was at the time: “When I began making mobiles, everyone was talking about movement in painting and sculpture. In fact, there wasn’t much of it” (Calder in Yvon Taillandier, 1959, quoted in J. Perl, op. cit., p. 394).
Three Polygons, Eight Red was executed in the midst of a hugely important decade for Calder. The artist was honored with Alexander Calder: A Retrospective Exhibition in 1964 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which then toured across the continent, alighting in St. louis, Toronto, Milwaukee, and Des Moines. The following fall, Calder received his first retrospective in Europe—Calder at the Musée National d’Art Modern in Paris. In the meantime, Calder was creating several significant monumental sculptures, including Chef d’orchestre (1964), Object in Five Planes (1965), La Grande voile 1965), and Trois Disques (1967). Amid international acclaim and intensive experimentation with grand scale, Calder executed the present work, channeling his career’s worth of expertise into the work’s elegant elements and subtle movements.
While Calder first received the conceit for his abstraction from Mondrian, he obtained the term for the kinetic series from another artist resident in Paris, Marcel Duchamp. The avant-garde artist, Calder recalled, “gave me the term he used for his own moving constructions—‘mobile.’ This, in French means not only ‘movable’—but also a ‘motive’ ‘a reason for an act’ so I found it a very good word” (A. Calder, 1956 manuscript, quoted in J. Perl, op. cit., p. 407). Duchamp’s clever double entendre is perfectly suited for Three Polygons, Eight Red. The work’s sophisticated motions reveal the profound insights garnered by an object in motion, while its important execution date, following his retrospectives on both sides of the Atlantic, demonstrate Calder’s continued investigations of the possibilities of his work. With its carefully poised colors, elements, and motions, the present work exemplifies Calder’s definition of his ideal mobile, one that has “a slow gentle impulse, as though one were moving a barge, is almost infallible. In any case, gentle is the word” (A Propos of Measuring a Mobile," manuscript, 1943, Agnes Rindge Claflin papers concerning Alexander Calder, 1936–circa 1970s, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution).
Asked a few years before making Three Polygons, Eight Red what role color played in his sculptural practice, Calder responded that “It's really secondary. I want things to be differentiated. Black and white are first—then red is next—and then I get sort of vague” (quoted in Katharine Kuh, ed., The Artist’s Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists. New York, 1962, p. 41). The present work proceeds precisely in the order of Calder’s preferred color order—from the top, the first and largest element is a black irregular polygon, against which two smaller polygons, one white and another black, counterpoise. This polygonal ensemble holds the cascading series of red forms in check, allowing the mobile to glide gracefully across space. Calder carefully calibrated each of his red forms in order for the sculpture to function as a unified work; the random movements appear preordained as each red element moves in tandem like the scales of a fish, either unfurling or contracting. The chromatic emphasis on red here parallels Calder’s increasing interest in the color, which played an increasingly dominant role in his work in the 1960s and 1970s. As the artist extolled: “It's really just for differentiation, but I love red so much that I almost want to paint everything red. I often wish that I’d been a fauve in 1905” (quoted in ibid.).
Calder’s shift from figurative to abstract art was inspired by Piet Mondrian, whose studio the American artist visited while living in Paris. Calder's experience of the overall environment served as one of the original impetuses for his bold move into abstraction. While in the Dutchman’s studio in October 1930, Calder suggested that it “would be fine if [the cardboard rectangles tacked on the wall] could be made to oscillate in different directions and at different amplitudes” (Calder to Albert Gallatin, 1934, quoted in M. Prather, Alexander Calder: 1898-1976, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1998, p. 57). After Mondrian rejected his idea, Calder began to experiment with his first nonobjective sculptures, soon adding articulation. The artist later recalled how radical his idea was at the time: “When I began making mobiles, everyone was talking about movement in painting and sculpture. In fact, there wasn’t much of it” (Calder in Yvon Taillandier, 1959, quoted in J. Perl, op. cit., p. 394).
Three Polygons, Eight Red was executed in the midst of a hugely important decade for Calder. The artist was honored with Alexander Calder: A Retrospective Exhibition in 1964 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which then toured across the continent, alighting in St. louis, Toronto, Milwaukee, and Des Moines. The following fall, Calder received his first retrospective in Europe—Calder at the Musée National d’Art Modern in Paris. In the meantime, Calder was creating several significant monumental sculptures, including Chef d’orchestre (1964), Object in Five Planes (1965), La Grande voile 1965), and Trois Disques (1967). Amid international acclaim and intensive experimentation with grand scale, Calder executed the present work, channeling his career’s worth of expertise into the work’s elegant elements and subtle movements.
While Calder first received the conceit for his abstraction from Mondrian, he obtained the term for the kinetic series from another artist resident in Paris, Marcel Duchamp. The avant-garde artist, Calder recalled, “gave me the term he used for his own moving constructions—‘mobile.’ This, in French means not only ‘movable’—but also a ‘motive’ ‘a reason for an act’ so I found it a very good word” (A. Calder, 1956 manuscript, quoted in J. Perl, op. cit., p. 407). Duchamp’s clever double entendre is perfectly suited for Three Polygons, Eight Red. The work’s sophisticated motions reveal the profound insights garnered by an object in motion, while its important execution date, following his retrospectives on both sides of the Atlantic, demonstrate Calder’s continued investigations of the possibilities of his work. With its carefully poised colors, elements, and motions, the present work exemplifies Calder’s definition of his ideal mobile, one that has “a slow gentle impulse, as though one were moving a barge, is almost infallible. In any case, gentle is the word” (A Propos of Measuring a Mobile," manuscript, 1943, Agnes Rindge Claflin papers concerning Alexander Calder, 1936–circa 1970s, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution).