Untitled (Métaboles), 1969, Alexander Calder, 1898-1976, sheet metal, wire, and paint, 137 1/2 x 118 in., Promised gift of Jon and Mary Shirley, © 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, photo: Nicholas Shirley, Brightwood Photos
AUDIO GUIDE TRANSCRIPT
NARRATOR:
This unusual work was made as a prop for a ballet, Métaboles, produced by Théâtre Français de la Danse, in 1969.
Alexander S.C. Rower.
ALEXANDER S.C. ROWER:
Here he was invited by Joseph Lazzini, who was a choreographer, to collaborate and participate with this stage performance. And it's a highly active work: the way the loops are connected makes it have a lot of movement. So, you could imagine it hung high above dancers and being quite free in its movement.
Calder often regarded his work in relationship to choreography. His mobiles – the composition and the way they move – and if you think of them as multidimensional experiences – you begin to quickly relate them to music and dance and other arts. So, he kind of broke a lot of traditions in sculpting – what we think of traditionally as sculpting bronze and marble and clay – and he got rid of the mass, and then he introduced this activity of the sculpture responding to our space, responding to the room that we're in or, in this case, in the theater.
NARRATOR:
The work was made according to Calder’s initial model and assembly sketch.
ALEXANDER S.C. ROWER:
Its qualities are extremely unusual because it was actually fabricated by set masters, so not made the way that Calder usually made his mobiles, at his foundry or in his studio with his hands himself. The fact that he could step away and allow others to introduce their aspects makes it really a collaborative thing.