Known worldwide for his delicately balanced wire-and-tin mobiles, Alexander Calder has been called "the man who made sculpture move." He ascribed his interest in motion to his training as a mechanical engineer and to his love for the circus and mechanical toys. Calling his mobiles "four-dimensional drawings" and "moving Mondrians," he attempted to bring movement to geometric abstraction. While his hanging mobiles were meant to be activated by the gentle air movements of an indoor environment, he also created more robust outdoor works that he called "stabiles": non-kinetic, abstract steel forms such as the Garden's Black Flag (1974). In many sculptures Calder combined the stabile and the mobile forms. The 1,500-pound The Spinner (1966)-the 1965 model for which is on view here-consists of a conical steel base topped by a brightly colored mobile; the mobile is spun in the wind by a large steel "pinwheel." In contrast, the tabletop Mobile (circa 1948), a three-legged stabile supporting a delicate mobile, moves subtly in response to indoor air currents.
 

Black Flag 1974
steel, paint

Temporary loan, courtesy The Pace Gallery, New York