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Marcel Duchamp gave Alexander Calder's moving sculptures their name in 1931: 'mobile', a French pun meaning both 'moving' and 'motive'. Calder's balanced constructions of wire and sheet metal, first driven by motors and then by air currents, became the best-known form of kinetic sculpture, art that moves.

Alexander Calder

Art

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Calder had trained as a mechanical engineer before becoming an artist, and it shows in how precisely he balanced each arm so that a light draught keeps a mobile turning unpredictably. When he began making fixed abstract sculptures, his friend the artist Jean Arp called them 'stabiles' to match. Calder was not the first to make art move: Naum Gabo's Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave) of 1919–20 was a single steel rod set vibrating by a motor. But Calder's mobiles made moving sculpture familiar around the world, from children's cot mobiles to the huge mobile he designed for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, installed in 1977.

Türkçe oku
Alexander Calder'ın hareketli heykellerine adını 1931'de Marcel Duchamp verdi: Fransızcada hem “hareketli” hem de “güdü” anlamına gelen “mobile”. Calder'ın tel ve sacdan yaptığı dengeli yapılar önce motorla, sonra hava akımıyla hareket etti ve kinetik heykelin, yani hareket eden sanatın en tanınmış örnekleri oldu.

Calder sanatçı olmadan önce makine mühendisliği okumuştu; her kolu, hafif bir esintiyle mobil öngörülemez biçimde dönmeye devam edecek kadar hassas dengelemesinde bu eğitimin izi görülür. Sabit duran soyut heykeller yapmaya başladığında, dostu sanatçı Jean Arp bunlara da uyumlu bir ad buldu: “stabile”. Sanatı ilk hareket ettiren Calder değildi: Naum Gabo'nun 1919–20 tarihli Kinetik Yapı (Duran Dalga) adlı eseri, bir motorla titreştirilen tek bir çelik çubuktu. Ama hareketli heykeli bütün dünyaya tanıtan Calder'ın mobilleri oldu: bebek beşiklerinin üstüne asılan oyuncak mobillerden, Washington'daki Ulusal Sanat Galerisi için tasarladığı ve 1977'de asılan dev mobile kadar.

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