Mobile

You said, 'The underlying sense of form in my work has been the system of the Universe...that is a rather large model to work from,' referring to the art form you invented--the mobile. There were plenty of these to watch at the Peabody Essex exhibition of your work, Alexander Calder. It's not everyone who invents a new form of sculpture and goes on to exhaust (it seems) its possibilities.

A curated show, of course, but your words, chosen and printed on the walls, and the large selection of pieces from the Thirties on displayed in large, white alcoves illuminated with strong lights that cast shadows of the work on wall, floor, all contrived to put me in touch with your imagination with its cosmic cast.

Such delightful work it is, all form and no content beyond the names (and these contributed by others).  These mobiles (stabiles came later) are just multiple balanced wires linked together and hanging from the ceiling or else a stand of some kind. These wires, often with Arp-like shapes at either end, linked with a pivot joint through their respective centers of mass, are arranged enfilade or in individually, so that a slight breeze, a viewer passing by, stirs the arrangement and individual elements and groups of elements twist with each other, or away.  You wrote: 'A mobile in motion leaves an invisible wake behind it or rather each element leaves an individual wake behind its individual self...a slow, gentle impulse...'  I could see this as the object changed its aspect in space, but also in the layerings of shadows shifting on the white platforms below. You wrote, 'Each element able to stir, to oscillates, to come and go in its relationships with the other elements  of the universe. It must not be a fleeting moments but a physical bond between the varying element in life.'

Everything is obvious; all interiors open for inspection, and no implications beyond those of the forms themselves. One, called Eucalyptus, was perhaps 10 ft long suspended with, at the top, a frond-like array of shapes that in their overall elegant triangular shape reminded me of geese, or a goose, in flight. Below, some darting upward shapes like insects on the surface of a pond. At the bottom, a single writhing shape that seemed like a fish. Was that in your mind, or were you exploring archetypal shapes and arrangements listening for the click telling you everything had fallen into place.  You wrote, 'Not extractions but abstractions.'

Another, La Demoiselle, stood on a leaning tripod of metal legs. There was a sweeping movement backwards and then forwards (like Frost's woman drying her hair in the sun) and progressive descent into detail balanced by upward aspirations movements, and the whole ensemble tremulous and sensitive. You wrote, 'Abstractions that are like nothing in life except in their manner of reacting.'

I was more and more filled, as walked through the gallery with sense of things in the midst of emptiness linked and interactive and occupying space. Was this inter-atomic space or inter-stellar? It could be either or both. The wire linkages were visible but the permutations of arrangement occasioned by external forces on these structures (perhaps also linked in some way) were uncountable. You wrote, 'Each element able to stir, to oscillates, to come and go in its relationships with the other elements  of the universe. It must not be a fleeting moment s but a physical bond between the varying element in life.'  I felt myself, at moments, to be a flexible framework pierced and permeated by light, by air, and by other moving things I could not name.

Mobiles with dangling cartoon animals are hung over baby cribs to provide objects for infant eyes to track, infant hands to reach for. We, as a family, used to, at Thanksgiving, make clothes-hanger mobiles hung with washers and slips of paper saying what we were grateful for. I felt, seeing your work, that these simple, simple things get their power from deeper sources: 'How can art be realized? Out of volumes, motion, spaces bounded by the great space, the universe.'

And you wrote, 'I have remained faithful to this original conception: that disparity is the spice of life, i.e. disparity of form, size, density, motion and perhaps a few other things.' Disparity! I had to read my notes again. I expected you to have said 'diversity.' Non-parity, yet parity nonetheless, only on a more fundamental level. Which? What?

In the meantime, looking out my window as I write this at the wind wrestling the last yellow holdout leaves off the trees, I'm grateful to you, Alexander Calder, for this vision of yours embodied in these diagrams of dynamism, and for your challenge:  'Sculptors of all places and climates have used what came ready to hand...simplicity of equipment and an adventurous spirit in attacking the unfinished or unknown.'