Alexander Calder Quotes

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.

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

To me the most important thing in composition is disparity. Thus black and white are the strong colors, with a spot of red to mark the other corner of a triangle which is by no means equilateral, isosceles, or right. To vary this still further use yellow, then, later, blue. Anything suggestive of symmetry is decidedly undesirable, except possibly where an approximate symmetry is used in a detail to enhance the inequality with the general scheme.

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.

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.

What I mean is that the idea of detached bodies floating in space, of different sizes and densities, perhaps of different colors and temperatures, and surrounded and interlarded with wisps of gaseous condition, and some at rest, while others move in peculiar manners, seems to me the ideal source of form.

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?"

It is a matter of harmonizing these movements, thus arriving at a new possibility for beauty.

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.

Question: Which has influenced you more, nature or modern machinery?
I haven't really touched machinery except for a few elementary mechanisms like levers and balances. You see nature and then you try to emulate it. But, of course, when I met Mondrian [Paris, 1930] I went home and tried to paint [for a while]. The basis of everything for me is the universe. The simplest forms in the universe are the sphere and the circle. I represent them by disks and then I vary them. My whole theory about art is the disparity that exists between form, masses and movement. Even my triangles are spheres, but they are spheres of a different shape.

I think that at that time and practically ever since, the underlying sense of form in my work has been the system of the Universe, or part thereof. For that is a rather large model to work from.

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

My entrance into the field of abstract art came about as the result of a visit to the studio of Piet Mondrian in Paris in 1930. I was particularly impressed by some rectangles of color he had tacked on his wall in a pattern after his nature. I told him I would like to make them [Mondrian's flat painting] oscillate, he objected. I went home and tried to paint abstractly - but in two weeks I was back again among plastic materials.

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