Constellation with Red Object

Alexander Calder, 1943 · Gallery 522 · Floor 5

Nothing on this one moves. Which is a strange thing to say about a Calder. No motor. No balancing act. Just a handful of wooden shapes held out from the wall on stiff steel wire. A red almond. A black bowtie. A tall one like a chess piece somebody stretched. A little yellow bead way off on its own. This is Constellation with Red Object. Alright, it's 1943, Calder is in Connecticut. The war is on. Aluminum is going into airplanes and bombs. So he can't get much of it. A year earlier he had gone into his studio and pulled out an old sculpture called The Crowd. A group of people carved from ebony back in 1929. Then he destroyed it. Sawed it up. Carved the figures apart. Hung the pieces on wire and watched them turn. That's where this came from. Steel wire. Everything frozen in place, but spread out like it might keep going. The curator James Johnson Sweeney and a friend came up with a name for these things. Constellations. Calder offered half an explanation. Something about "cosmic nuclear gases." Then said he wasn't going to explain that either. This museum bought the piece the year he made it. There's another wooden Calder in this room. A rock, a couple of balls, and a crescent. Nothing on that one moves either. He carved it seven years before the war made metal scarce. They could ration his metal. They couldn't ration the stars.

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