Alexander Calder Quotes

Wherever there is a main issue the elimination of other things which are not essential will make for a stronger result. In the earlier static abstract sculptures I was most interested in space, vectoral quantities, and centers of differing densities.

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?"

The admission of approximation is necessary, for one cannot hope to be absolute in his precision. He cannot see, or even conceive of a thing from all possible points of view, simultaneously. While he perfects the front, the side, or rear may be weak; then while he strengthens the other facade he may be weakening that originally the best. There is no end to this. To finish the work he must approximate.

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.

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.

I started [in Paris, 1920's, making toys] right away, using wire as my main material as well as working with others like string, leather, fabric and wood. Wood combined with wire (with which I could make the heads, tails and feet of animals as well as articulating parts) was almost always my medium of choice. One friend of mine suggested that I should make bodies entirely of wire, and that is how I started to make what I called 'Wire Sculpture'. In Montparnasse, I became known as the 'King of Wire'.

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.

We notice the movement of automobiles and beings in the street, but we do not notice that the earth turns. We believe that automobiles go at a great speed on a fixed ground; yet the speed of the earth's rotation at the equator is 40,000 km every 24 hours.

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.

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.

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.

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

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....

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

Question: How do you get that subtle balance in your work?
You put a disk here and then you put another disk that is a triangle at the other end and then you balance them on your finger and keep on adding. I don't use rectangles - they stop. You can use them; I have at times, but only when I want to block, to constipate movement.