In October 1931, Marcel Duchamp visited Calder’s studio in Paris and saw one of his motor-driven works, with three elements. His first creation, now destroyed, was entitled Motorized Mobile That Duchamp Liked. Greatly influenced by the dramatic astronomical discoveries around 1930, including the identification of Pluto as the ninth planet in the solar system, Calder started building motorized works in 1931. As a result, Calder’s signature sculptural medium would become not the traditional stone or clay, but motion: kinetics in space. It would be perfect, but it is always still. Revolutionary thoughts followed: “Why must art be static? You look at an abstraction, sculpted or painted, an exciting arrangement of planes, spheres, nuclei, entirely without meaning. I suggested to Mondrian that perhaps it would be fun to make these rectangles oscillate”. In the fall of 1929, he visited Mondrian’s studio and later recalled: “This one visit gave me a shock that started things. While experimenting with drawing, painting, woodcarving, and wire in the late 1920s in Paris, Calder became interested in motion. It was there that Calder became acquainted with many famous artists, including Mondrian, Picasso, Miro, Duchamp, Kertész, and Matisse, and made connections with a number of galleries that provided the perfect environment for the budding artist. Compared to the United States’ increasing isolationism, prohibition, puritanism, and racial division, the French capital offered enticing artistic liberties and freedoms. By the fall of 1926, he left New York for Paris, then the global hub of modernity as well as tradition, fashion, pleasure and, most of all, art. Born in 1898 into a family of artists, he was trained as an engineer at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey but, in 1923, while on the west coast of Canada, he decided to become an artist himself. In addition to shedding new light on the stratigraphy of Calder’s painted surfaces, this study informed the optimization of a treatment plan tailored for the safe removal of the overpaint to uncover the original layer, wherever present.Īlexander Calder is one of the best-known and most beloved American artists. On the other hand, the identification of materials that were available in the early 1930s, such as zinc white, calcite, and gypsum, as well as traditional drying oil binders, supported the hypothesis that a layer of original paint may still be present in certain areas. Scientific analysis revealed, in selected white and red areas, up to eleven layers of overpaint composed of a wide array of modern materials, including pigments (titanium white in the form of tetragonal rutile and a variety of synthetic organic red pigments) and binders (alkyd or late formulations of enamels based on ortho-phthalic acid/phthalic anhydride, glycerol and pentaerythritol, polyvinyl acetate with various plasticizers, and acrylics). Scrapings were also investigated with pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS) for a detailed characterization of the binding media. Cross sections were examined with optical microscopy and analyzed with Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) and Raman spectroscopies, as well as scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDS), in order to identify pigments, colorants, and extenders located in the various paint layers. After that, extensive microscopic sampling was performed to assess the possible presence of original layers below the repainting throughout the object’s surface. Non-invasive X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis was carried out to gain initial insight into the paints’ composition. These observations prompted a first, comprehensive scientific study to investigate the stratigraphy of Calder’s painted surfaces on Half- Circle, Quarter- Circle, and Sphere, with the final goal to comprehend and restore its original appearance through careful removal of the overpaint. The appearance of the piece had also been altered, as most surfaces displayed multiple layers of overpainting and, thus, did not deliver the proper gloss, hue, and texture. While the work’s mechanism retained its creator’s ingenious engineering solutions, the motor, urethane belts, plug, and electrical wires turned out to be neither original, nor authentic to the period. Prior to that, the object underwent a series of treatments in order to repair its main kinetic elements that had become compromised during its lifetime. Created in 1932, and acquired by the Whitney in 1969, this seminal work was featured in an iconic exhibition held in 2017 and entitled Calder: Hypermobility. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, owns one of the largest motorized works made by the renowned American artist Alexander Calder, titled Half- Circle, Quarter- Circle, and Sphere.
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