Calder: Wire Sculpture





	Aztec Josephine Baker, ca. 1929 wire 53 x 10 x 9 in. 134.6 x 25.4 x 22.9 cm Private Collection © 1998 Estate of Alexander Calder/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York view enlargement	"I think best in wire." - Alexander Calder, from Calder's Universe, 1976.

	Calder's wire sculptures, which he described as "three-dimensional line drawing," became yet another outlet for the artist's explorations in motion and space. At the suggestion of his friend, Clay Spohn (a Californian who went on to become one of San Francisco's most influential artists), Calder made his first sculptures composed entirely of wire in Paris in 1926. One of his earliest wire figures was a portrait of Josephine Baker, the first of five he ultimately made of the dancer. Many of these early wire sculptures, such as his initial portrait of Baker, were affixed to bases. A number of later wire portraits, such as Aztec Josephine Baker, (ca. 1929) were made to hang from string or wire, so that their elements could dangle and move at the mercy of the wind. Indeed, such works would seem to be the conceptual prototypes of Calder's later mobiles. Still, it should be noted that Calder had experimented with wire as a sculptural medium even earlier in his career, for he had crafted a wire sundial for himself in New York in 1925. In his 1966 autobiography, Calder writes: "I had no clock and faced south, so I made a sundial with a piece of wire -- a wire rooster on a vertical rod with radiating lines at the foot indicating the hours."
	Early Mobiles >>
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