Artist Dossier: Alexander Calder

Courtesy the Alexander and Louisa Calder Foundation, New York

Calder, ca. 1954, in his Connecticut studio

From the Files

+ Calder was the inspiration for Mr. Piggy Logan in Thomas Wolfe’s autobiographical 1940 novel, You Can’t Go Home Again—a character satirized for being “the darling of all the smart society crowd.”

+ Calder’s father, Alexander Stirling Calder, was a sculptor, and his mother, Nanette Lederer Calder, was a portrait painter. Aware of the difficulties of making a living as a professional artist, they encouraged him to study engineering.

+ The highest auction price for a Calder is $5.8 million, paid for an untitled 16-foottall stabile from the Camino Real Hotel in Mexico City at Christie’s in 2003.

+ The auction record for a mobile by Calder is $4.7 million, achieved at Christie’s New York in 2004 by Baby Flat Top, a standing construction of red and black wire and sheet metal from 1946.

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It is nearly impossible to read about the work or life ofAlexander Calder without encountering anecdotes that illustratethe American sculptor’s sheer inventiveness. In 1906, at age eight,he transformed some copper wire into jewelry for his sister’s dolls.(More-sophisticated but equally playful jewelry for his wife andfriends would come decades later.) And at 11, he shaped sheet brass into a duckand a dog as Christmas gifts for his parents. The duck rocked back and forthwhen nudged—an early precedent for his career-defining kinetic sculptures.

At 27, just a few months before leaving New York to set up a studio inParis, Calder found himself in need of a clock. So he crafted a sundial in the formof a wire rooster perched on a rod. Once settled in Paris, he began using wire,wood and other pedestrian materials to make tiny three-dimensional figureslike jugglers, acrobats, tightrope walkers, clowns and animals. He transportedthe entire ensemble in suitcases and brought it to life through hands-on performancesin a range of venues, including patrons’ homes. Known as Calder’sCircus, the miniature troupe, which belongs to the Whitney Museum ofAmerican Art, in New York, is currently the centerpiece of the museum’s show“Calder: The Paris Years, 1926–1933,” on view through February 15, 2009.

In the early 1930s, Calder made what most would agree was his biggestcontribution to art history: introducing motion to sculpture by assemblingmoving parts—at first of wood; then, for many decades, of sheet metal lightenough to spin with the wind—and suspending them from the ceiling or mountingthem on a base. According to Calder, it was Duchamp who, upon viewingone of these works in the American’s studio, gave the new art form the namemobile, which, Calder wrote in his autobiography, “in addition tosomething that moves, in French . . . also means ‘motive.’ ”

Not surprisingly, Calder’s mobiles today are amonghis most coveted works, with examples from the 1930s to’60s accounting for about half his top 20 sales at auction. Theauction record for one of these works is $4.7 million (est. $1.5–2 million), achieved at Christie’s New York in 2004 by Baby FlatTop, a standing construction of red and black wire and sheetmetal from 1946, measuring 49 by 78 11/16 by 17 1/2 inches, with thewingspan of a large eagle. The price reflects the factthat the piece is in key ways the perfect collectible:hefty enough, despite its delicate, spidery appearance,to feel significant but small enough to fit inthe buyer’s living room. Also, it has more historicappeal than, say, a work from the 1960s.

It is not Calder’s mobiles, however, that holdhis overall auction records but their stationarycounterparts, the stabiles, which were first calledthat by the Dada artist Jean Arp. Calder made thesestructures throughout his career, creating smallerversions for gallery shows and monumental onesas commissions for museums, sculpture gardensand parks. Today the largest stabiles outperformCalder’s mobiles at auction, if only because oftheir size. In 2003 an untitled 16-foot-tall stabile,made in 1968 for the Camino Real hotel inMexico City, brought $5.8 million (est. $4–5 million) at Christie’s New York. More recently,in May 2006, Sotheby’s New York sold the30-foot-tall Flying Dragon, 1975, consigned bythe Exxon Mobil Foundation, for $5.6 million(est. $6–8 million).

According to Marc Glimcher, the presidentof PaceWildenstein, in New York, eventhese impressive auction prices are lowerthan the sums earned by the very best mobilesand stabiles in private transactions. “We’veseen quite a few Calders sell privately for over$10 million recently,” he says. PaceWildensteinrepresents the Calder estate, but a staggeringnumber of dealers—including John Berggruen,in San Francisco; Richard Gray, in Chicago; andChristophe Van de Weghe, in New York—havea hand in secondary-market sales.