Mobiles

While studying the immersive manipulation of space in Piet Mondrian's studio—how the artist activated the environment through color and form—Alexander Calder, a mechanical engineer by training, mused, "perhaps it would be fun to make these rectangles oscillate," and began constructing his first hand-cranked and motor-driven kinetic sculptures. Upon seeing these remarkable contraptions, his friend Marcel Duchamp christened them "mobiles," a word that in French connotes not only movement, but motive. For John, encountering Calder's mobiles at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., was a revelation. He was hooked, immediately intrigued by the delicate, ethereal beauty of balanced form in motion.