Alexander Calder Quotes

Question, Léger once called you a realist. How do you feel about this?
Yes, I think I am a realist. Because I make what I see. It's only the problem of seeing it. If you can imagine a thing, conjure it up in space - then you can make it, and tout de suite you're a realist. The universe is real but you can't see it. You have to imagine it. Once you imagine it, you can be realistic about reproducing it.

Question: How did the mobiles start?
The mobiles started when I went to see [[w:Piet Mondrian|Mondrian [in Paris, 1930]. I was impressed by several colored rectangles he had on the wall. Shortly after that I made some mobiles.

Fernand Léger's film, 'Ballet Mecanique' is the result of the desire for a picture in motion.

Marcel Duchamp's 'Nude descending the stairs' is the result of the desire for motion. Here he has also eliminated representative form. This avoids the connotation of ideas which would interfere with the success of the main issue - the sense of movement.

The various objects of the universe may be constant, at times, but their reciprocal relationships always vary.

In the Spring of 1926 I made some toy animals of curtain rods, broom handles, etc., and wire. Later, a few dolls, which I animated.... In the Winter of 1927–1928 I made some more toys for a friend to take home as gifts, and having shown them to De Creeft a Spanish sculptor with a very acute sense of humor, I was urged by him to make some more toys and to expose them at the . I did this and then began to make more elaborate toys, with articulation, in which the movements got more and more realistic, always adhering to the same basic materials. In this way I have developed quite an elaborate circus of which animation is one of the chief characteristics....

Question: Do you make preliminary sketches?
I've made so many mobiles that I pretty well know what I want to do, at least where the smaller ones are concerned. But when I'm seeking a new form, then I draw and make little models out of sheet metal. Actually the one at Idlewild [Airport (in the International Arrival Building)] is forty-five feet long and was made from a model only seventeen inches long. For the very big ones I don't have machinery large enough, so I go to a shop and become the workman's helper.

How can art be realized? Out of volumes, motion, spaces bounded by the great space, the universe. Out of different masses, tight, heavy, middling - indicated by variations of size or color - 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 relationships 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.

Therefore, why not plastic forms in motion? Not a simple translatory or rotary motion but several motions of different types, speeds and amplitudes composing to make a resultant whole. Just as one can compose colors, or forms, so one can compose motions.

The sense of motion in painting and sculpture has long been considered as one of the primary elements of the composition.

One of the canons of the futuristic painters, as propounded by Modigliani, was that objects behind other objects should not be lost to view, but should be shown through the others by making the latter transparent. The wire sculpture accomplishes this in a most decided manner.

The aesthetic value of these objects cannot be arrived at by reasoning. Familiarization is necessary.

As truly serious art must follow the greater laws, and not only appearances, I try to put all the elements in motion in my mobile sculptures.

Question: Is it true that Marcel Duchamp invented the name “mobile” for your work?
Duchamp named the mobiles and Arp the stabiles. Arp said, "What did you call those things you exhibited last year? Stabiles?"

Before, the wire studies were subjective, portraits, caricatures, stylized representations of beasts and humans. But these recent things have been viewed from a more objective angle and although their present size is diminutive, I feel that there is no limitation to the scale to which they can be enlarged....