A stunning example of Alexander Calder's innovations in form and motion, Untitled from 1972 is a hallmark of the artist's celebrated late mobiles. Created only a few years before the artist’s unexpected death in 1976, Untitled showcases Calder at the top of his career and at the summit of the international art world; by this point in time, his work had already achieved widespread intercontinental acclaim, cementing Calder’s status as one of the most beloved artists of the 20th century. A breathtaking yet intimate example of Calder’s desirable hanging mobiles, Untitled represents the artist’s lifelong innovation in all of its spectacular simplicity.
Untitled is a seminal work in Calder's most desirable and iconic form: the mobile, an artform that brings Calder’s lifelong ambition to incorporate motion into his artwork to its apex. Calder had been interested in breathing life into his artworks as early as the 1930s, when he first created a series of animated circus figures as part of the famous Cirque Calder performances he gave to friends and patrons in Paris and New York. Many of these works, however, were powered using small motors and Calder lamented the artificiality of their movement. He strove to create a smooth and organic form of kinetic sculpture, achieving this feat at the onset of the 1930s with works that Marcel Duchamp coined "mobiles" during a visit to Calder’s studio. By 1932, Calder had created his first suspended mobile that was free from all mechanization, propelled instead by atmospheric elements.
Calder continued to innovate and improve on the suspended mobile for the entirety of his career, creating a beloved series of works distinguished by their eternal balance and ever-changing dance. A sublimely elegant combination of sleek design and technical craftsmanship, the present work is an excellent example of a master creating at the height of his artistic practice. As none other than Jean-Paul Sartre espoused, "Valéry said the sea is always beginning over again. One of Calder’s objects is like the sea and equally spellbinding: always beginning over again, always new. A passing glance is not enough; you must live with it, be bewitched by it. Then the imagination revels in these pure, interchanging forms, at once free and rule-governed.”i
"A passing glance is not enough; you must live with it, be bewitched by it. Then the imagination revels in these pure, interchanging forms, at once free and rule-governed." —Jean-Paul SartreAn exceptionally elegant paragon of simplicity, Untitled is bewitching as its graceful geometry hovers in harmonious circular arcs above the viewer. Although they are undeniably striking works of art in their own right, Calder’s mobiles are incomplete without the influence of their environments. Jean-Paul Sartre, writing about Calder’s mobiles in the 1940s, indeed described the mobile as "defined by its movement and non-existent without it; a flower that withers as soon as it comes to a standstill."ii As a soft touch or a gentle breeze sets Untitled into motion, the work smoothly dances in the air, reminiscent of the undulating and everlasting motions of the natural world.
i Jean-Paul Sartre, "Les Mobiles des Calder," 1946, quoted in Calder/Prouvé, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, Le Bourget, 2013, p. 112-113
ii Jean-Paul Sartre, "Les Mobiles des Calder",1946, quoted in Calder/Prouvé, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, Le Bourget, 2013, p. 112