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motion as a compository element:
alexander calder's "mobiles à moteur"





Calder (...) says that during a visit to Mondrian's studio, in the rue du Départ in Paris, he received a vision of a new art form (...). Mondrian's studio was an extraordinary room, with small, movable red, blue and yellow rectangles on the white walls, and a large, red, cylindrical gramophone in the middle of the floor (..). Calder writes: "... the light coming from two facing windows met in the room, and I thought how beautiful it would have been if everything had started to move, but Mondrian didn't like the idea." (...)

 Hultén 1955, p. 19. [Cf. also: Calder, 1937.]


Calder did not heed Mondriaan's advice, and developed a form of "kinetic constructivism" in his "Mobiles à moteur" (since 1931): different elementary shapes: line, spiral, circle, ball; different elementary colors and black/white/grey; different elementary movements: rotation, pendulum, virtual translation; rotation-axis in the picture-plane or orthogonal to it.

Calder describes one of these works as follows:

 – Dimensions: 2 x 2.50 m.

 – Frame, 8 cm., neutral red.

 – The two white balls rotate at a high speed.

 – The black spiral rotates at a lower speed and appears to be constantly climbing.

 – The tin disc turns even more slowly, the two black lines appear to be constantly climbing.

 – The black pendulum, which is 40 cm. in diameter, climbs to 45 degrees on each side with 25 strokes a minute and swings outside the frame.



References

Alexander Calder: "Mobiles." In: Myfanwy Evans (ed.): The Painter's Object, Gerold Howe, London, 1937.

Karl G. Hultén: Den Ställföreträdande Friheten eller Om Rörelse i Konsten och Tinguelys Metamekanik. (Substitute Freedom or On Movement in Art and Tinguely's Meta-mechanics.) Special issue of Kasark, October 1955. (English translation in: Pontus Hultén, 1975.)

K.G. Pontus Hultén: Tinguely. 'Méta'. London: Thames and Hudson, 1975.

 


 



Red Frame, 1931
        



Black Frame, 1934


The Orange Panel, 1936

 



Untitled, 1937

 


Disque Blanc, Disque Noir
1940-1941




Untitled
1931



Untitled
1931



Half Circle, Quarter Circle and Sphere
1932



A Universe, 1934



New York World Fair, 1938

 

 

 

 


 







compiled by remko scha, july 2012