Gibraltar
Alexander Calder, 1936 · Gallery 522 · Floor 5
A wood so heavy it sinks. Drop a block of lignum vitae in a bucket and it goes straight to the bottom. It sinks. Calder carved a mountain out of it. That's the bottom half. Rough, split, hacked at. Then he cut a notch in the thing and ran a shelf through it. Polished walnut, smooth as a spoon, driven clean through the rock on a slant. So now there's a horizon. Sitting on it, a white ball. Off the far tip, a thin rod with a small red ball on the end. And higher up, another rod carrying a crescent. A rock with a bit of sky over it. Four foot four, the whole business. This is 1936, and Calder had already invented the mobile. Here he is with a chisel and a wood that won't float. Everything but the two rods is wood. The rock, the shelf, the balls, the crescent. Painted where it needed to be. Everything light is out on the ends. The weight is all down in the rock. Four years earlier, the artist Jean Arp had asked him a question. "Well, what were those things you did last year? Stabiles?" The answer was already in it. It was a joke. Calder kept the word. Used it on everything like this. He called this one Gibraltar.
Also in Gallery 522
- Spider — Alexander Calder, 1939
- Untitled (Bébé Marie) — Joseph Cornell, 1940s
- Garden in Sochi — Arshile Gorky, 1941
- Napoleon in the Wilderness — Max Ernst, 1941
- Multi-Use Chair — Frederick Kiesler, 1942
- Green Tea — Leonora Carrington, 1942
- Constellation with Red Object — Alexander Calder, 1943
- The She-Wolf — Jackson Pollock, 1943