What’s the difference between a mobile and a stabile? Which European artists coined the terms describing Alexander Calder’s wire, metal, and paint sculptures? As LACMA curator Stephanie Barron explains, an artwork’s position in regard to the gallery floor determines its designation. She put together the museum’s new show, Calder and Abstraction: From Avant-Garde to Iconic, on view at the Wilshire Boulevard museum’s Resnick Pavilion through July 27, 2014. “Before Calder, viewers were accustomed to sculpture that sits on a pedestal or on the floor. His pieces are sometimes on a pedestal, but they move,” says Barron, noting that Calder’s friend, sculptor Jean Arp coined the term stabile in 1932. Painter and sculptor Marcel Duchamp visited Calder’s home and studio the pervious year and used the term mobile to describe the Pennsylvania-born artist’s creations. “When the pieces, the mobiles, are mounted on the wall or hanging from the ceiling, they could be a painting or a sculpture,” Barron adds, explaining that the mobiles play with viewers’ perception, and their sense of movement and time.

Because of his innovations in the genre, she credits Calder with sparking an “anarchic upending of the sculpture paradigm.” And Barron worked with architect Frank Gehry to rework the way Calder’s works are displayed. Instead of crowding them into a big open room as if they were still in storage at the Calder Foundation, Gehry and his firm designed unique spaces between undulating walls for the 50 works at LACMA. “There’s a magic to the pieces,” says Barron. “They were designed for a domestic situation where they slowly move throughout the day.” Gehry’s sets lets them do just that. “I do all kinds of deep exhibitions,” says Barron. “And it’s nice to occasionally do a show that’s just beautiful.”

By Elizabeth Varnell

 

Pictured: Calder and Abstraction: From Avant-Garde to Iconic
Installation photograph
November 24, 2013 – July 27, 2014
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Photo Courtesy of © Calder Foundation, New York, photo © Fredrik Nilsen

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