Alexander Calder (Hardcover)

This book provides a context for Alexander Calder's greatest sculptural innovations, the mobile and the stabile. As a monograph, the text gives detailed consideration to Calder's sources in engineering and science, particularly his use of astronomical models. The investigation of Calder's working knowledge of designs for Bauhaus mechanical ballet and his assimilation of new ideas for sculpture as promulgated at the Bauhaus are also unique contributions of the monograph. Calder's mobiles and stabiles are discussed not simply as the achievements of a solitary prankster, but are fully embedded within European and American modernism. Calder absorbed Constructivist and Dada/surrealist concepts, and joined them with his long abiding interest in American folk art to produce wood and wire sculpture, and later his innovative kinetic works. As a contributor to a serious reassessment of public sculpture, Calder introduced monumental stabiles, thus advancing the cause of abstract sculpture in the public sphere. By providing a thorough account of Calder's sculptural innovations, this text elucidates his special contributions to 20th-century art.