Alexander Calder citations (41 citations)

Quote (1951), in 'What Abstract Art Means to Me' http://www.jstor.org/stable/4058250, George L. K. Morris, Willem De Kooning, Alexander Calder, Fritz Glarner, Robert Motherwell, Stuart Davis; as cited in the The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art, Vol. 18, No. 3, (Spring, 1951), pp. 2-15
1950s - 1960s

“It happens that all those who have something of mine, painting, mobile, or static statue, say that it makes them very happy. For example, children adore mobile statues and understand their meaning immediately. I have seen children, here in France, in America or in Great Britain, run and shout with joy in my exhibitions. They like it instinctively.”

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Alexander Calder

Calder, quoted in Calder: Gravity and Grace, eds. Giménez, Carmen, and Alexander S.C. Rower; Phaidon Press, New York 2004, p. 54
1950s - 1960s

“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.”

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Alexander Calder

Question, Which has influenced you more, nature or modern machinery?
1950s - 1960s, interview with Alexander Calder', (1962)

“Before, the wire studies were subjective, portraits, caricatures, stylized representations of beasts and humans. But these recent things have been viewed from a more objective angle and although their present size is diminutive, I feel that there is no limitation to the scale to which they can be enlarged... 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.”

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Alexander Calder

1920s, Statement on Wire Sculpture' (1929)

“It was early one morning on a calm sea, off Guatemala, when over my couch - a coil of rope - I saw the beginning of a fiery red sunrise on one side and the moon looking like a silver coin on the other.”

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Alexander Calder

Quote in his autobiography (1922); as cited in 'Calder' 1966, pp. 54–55; as quoted on Wikipedia: Alexander Calder
In June 1922, Calder found work as a mechanic on the passenger ship H. F. Alexander. Calder slept on deck and awoke one early morning off the Guatemalan Coast; he saw both the sun rising and the full moon setting on opposite horizons
1920s

“We notice the movement of automobiles and other beings in the street, but we do not notice that the turning of the earth. 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.
As truly serious art must follow the greater laws, and not only appearance, I try to put all the elements in motion in my mobile sculptures. It is a matter of harmonizing these movements, thus arriving at a new possibility for beauty.”

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Alexander Calder

Quote of Calder (8 March 1932), in text 'That which moves - On mobile sculptures', unpubl. MS https://web.archive.org/web/20110222045901/http://calder.org:80/historicaltexts/text/5.html, 1932, Calder Foundation Archives, New York
1930s - 1950s

“[to Mondrian:] Maybe you should take all these red, yellow and blue elements off the canvas and let them hang in the air, so they can move. [Mondrian reacted: 'Well, I think my paintings are fast enough already..”

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Alexander Calder

Quote (1930), from a studio-visit at Mondrian's place in Paris, as cited by by Mondrian's recent biographer Hans Janssen, of the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague; as cited by Alastair Sooke, in 'Mondrian - the Joy of Being Square'; BBC culture, 10 July 2017 http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170710-mondrian-the-joy-of-being-square
1930s - 1950s

“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.”

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Alexander Calder

Question, How do you get that subtle balance in your work?
1950s - 1960s, interview with Alexander Calder', (1962)

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

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Alexander Calder

1930s - 1950s, Statement from Modern Painting and Sculpture', (1933)

“Wire, rods, sheet metal have strength, even in very attenuated forms, and respond quickly to whatever sort of work one may subject them to. Contrasts in mass or weight are feasible, too, according to the gauge, or to the kind of metal used, so that physical laws, as well as aesthetic concepts, can be held to. There is of course a close alliance between physics and aesthetics.”

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Alexander Calder

Quote of Calder (1943) in his essay A Propos of Measuring a Mobile, Calder Foundation; as quoted in Calder and Mondrian: An Unlikely Kinship, senior-thesis by Eva Yonas http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.517.581&rep=rep1&type=pdf, Ohio State University August 2006, Department of Art History, p. 19
1930s - 1950s

“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 ] of which animation is one of the chief characteristics.”

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Alexander Calder

1920s, Statement on Wire Sculpture' (1929)

“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.”

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Alexander Calder

In Montparnasse, I became known as the 'King of Wire'.

Quote of Alexander Calder (1952), looking back, from Permanence Du Cirque, in 'Revue Neuf', Calder Foundation, 1952; as quoted in Calder and Mondrian: An Unlikely Kinship, senior-thesis by Eva Yonas http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.517.581&rep=rep1&type=pdf, Ohio State University August 2006, Department of Art History, p.19 – note 26

Calder first began using wire extensively in 1926, creating mechanical toys that would be the precursors to the Paris' 'Cirque Calder'
1950s - 1960s

“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.”

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Alexander Calder

1930s - 1950s, Statement from Modern Painting and Sculpture', (1933)
Source: en.wikiquote.org - Alexander Calder / Quotes of Alexander Calder / 1930s - 1950s / Statement from Modern Painting and Sculpture', (1933)

“Question, What artists do you most admire?”

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Alexander Calder

1950s - 1960s, interview with Alexander Calder', (1962)

“How can art be realized?”

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Alexander Calder

1930s - 1950s

“Goya, Miró, Matisse, Bosch and Klee.”

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Alexander Calder

Question, What artists do you most admire?
1950s - 1960s, interview with Alexander Calder', (1962)

“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.”

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Alexander Calder

1950s - 1960s, Excerpt, What Abstract Art Means to Me (1951)

“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.”

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Alexander Calder

1950s - 1960s, Excerpt, What Abstract Art Means to Me (1951)

“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.”

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Alexander Calder

1950s - 1960s, Excerpt, What Abstract Art Means to Me (1951)

“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.”

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Alexander Calder

1940s, Excerpt, A Propos of Measuring a Mobile (1943)

“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.”

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Alexander Calder

1940s, Excerpt, A Propos of Measuring a Mobile (1943)

“I say nuclei, for to me whatever sphere, or other form, I use in these constructions does not necessarily mean a body of that size, shape or color, but may mean a more minute system of bodies, an atmospheric condition, or even a void. I.E. the idea that one can compose any things of which he can conceive.”

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Alexander Calder

1940s, Excerpt, A Propos of Measuring a Mobile (1943)

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

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Alexander Calder

En.wikiquote.org - Alexander Calder / Quotes / 1930s / Statement from Modern Painting and Sculpture (1933)
1930s, Statement from Modern Painting and Sculpture (1933)