Calder's Work example essay topic

Alexander Stirling "Sandy" Calder was one of the most innovative and original American artists of the twentieth century. Calder was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His mother, Nanette Lederer, was a painter and his father, Alexander "Stirling" Calder, and grandfather, Alexander Milne Calder, were noted sculptors. Young Alexander seemed to break the family tradition of studying art by enrolling at the Stephens Institute of Technology in New Jersey to major in engineering.

But after graduating from college and holding a succession of jobs, Calder eventually returned to New York to study art (Nelson 2001). Calder attended classed at the Art Students League in New York from 1923 to 1926, supporting himself by working as an illustrator. Between 1926 and 1930, Calder went to Paris to develop his intricately assembled Cirque Calder, a work of performance art employing small-scale circus figures he sculpted from wire, wood, clothe, and other materials. Calder's circus helped to establish him in avant-garde circles. At the same time, Calder sculpted three-dimensional figurative works using continuous lengths of wire, which he described as "line drawings in space" (Marter 1991). His wire sculptures became another outlet for the artist's explorations in space.

One of his earliest wire sculptures was a portrait of Josephine Baker, the first of five he ultimately made of the dance (Marter 1991). Many of these wire sculptures, such as his initial portrait of Baker, were affixed to bases. A number of later wire portraits, such as Aztec Josephine Baker, were made to hang from string or wire, so that their elements could dangle and move at the mercy of the wind. Indeed, such works would seem to be conceptual prototypes of Calder's later mobiles. In the early 1930's, Calder's work took a radical turn.

Association with Mon drain and other innovative artists working at the time influenced Calder to begin painting and constructing sculptures in an abstract manner (Nelson 2001). Calder began to construct abstract kinetic sculptures. Two Spheres Within a Sphere, for example, uses a small wire crank, with sets in motion to two wooden balls within the sphere. Likewise, Pantograph features a small motor that whisks red and black disks back and forth through the air. During a visit to Calder's studio, fellow artist, Marcel Duchamp became particularly fascinated by one of Calder's motor-driven sculptures. Duchamp suggested the term "mobile" to describe his work (Nelson 2001).

In 1932, Duchamp opened an exhibition featuring thirty-one of Calder's mobiles (Marter 1991). Calder took this concept one step further by building large-scale mobiles for the outdoors, allowing his works to operate at the hands of weather's fate. Steel Fish, for example, involves an intricate system of weights and balances, and depends on the strength of the wind to arrange or rearrange its composition. This particular work is an early example of the types of outdoor sculptures Calder would later build during the final years of his career. By the late 1930's, Calder had established himself and his work as a major force in twentieth-century art. As well as being the inventor of wire sculpture and the mobile, he was one of the first modern artists to create monumental work for public spaces.

In a career that stretched to his death in 1976, Calder became one of the best-loved and widely appreciated American artists of all time..