I am enjoying the sculptures of Alexander Calder who I have just discovered through Open Culture. There is a freedom of movement in his sculptures, multiple axis that interact in a unpredictable way, there is freedom to the movements, away from conventional practical design, yet they are still bound to those laws.
Alexander Calder was very influenced by movement, and this idea of ‘Abstractions’. There is a haphazard nature to his work, inviting in complex relationships into the pendulum of balance. Finding ways for these objects at odd with each other to coexist. It reminds me of jazz, or experimental music which still desires to exist within the frame of popular music. There is still a desire to stick to a thread of relation. Whether or not this is a conscious act. These air sculptures would not have the same gravitas if they sat in a pile on the floor…
Calder came from a family of sculptures, and studied mechanical engineering to appease them. He quickly rebelled against this academic route working with wire sculptures and was very influenced by the circus before falling in with Parisian contemporaries of 1930s. Marcel Duchamp apparently the coined the term ‘mobiles’ for Calder’s moving wire sculptures, which were slightly more clumsy and mechanical wire based sculptures. In my opinion, the ‘Wind Mobiles’ or ‘Air sculptures’ are a much more elegant and effortless kind of interactive sculpture. I enjoy the juxtaposition between art/design with these pieces, there is a undeniable level of calculation balanced with the freedom of expression which is plainly visible within the work.
“How can art be realized?
Out of volumes, motion, spaces bounded by the great space, the universe.
Out of different masses, light, heavy, middling- indicated by variations of size or colour- directional line – vectors which represent speeds, velocities, accelerations, forces, etc…-these directions making between them meaningful angles, and senses, together defining one big conclusion or many.
Spaces, volumes, suggested by the smallest means in contrast to their mass, or even including them, juxtaposed, pierced by vectors, crossed by speeds.
Nothing at all of this is fixed
Each element able to move, to stir, to oscillate, to come and go in its relationship with the other elements in its universe.
It must not be just a fleeting “moment” but a physical bond between the varying events in life.
Not extractions
But abstractions
Abstractions that are like nothing in life except in their manner of reacting.” (Written By Alexander Calder From Abstraction-Création, Art Non Figuratif, no. 1, 1932)
In Sound Art and Music, we often talk about Architecture as something that is closely related. This quote brings to mind, the song Abstractions by Mingus. Much like the freedom of Calder, this at times discordant piece by Mingus really encapsulates a similar spirit. The cadences of a jazz standard through a cracked lens. There is still the intention of a feeling through it’s phrasing, even if its buried in the complex harmony.