Constant Calder

Upon entering the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts on a typical Wednesday morning and making my way through the sea of school children gathering in tour groups in the lobby a tug on the heavy glass doors opens a path into semi-silence. Entrance guards smile a greeting as I pass them and head for the stairs. After climbing the first several steps I am in the belly of the building, a courtyard area with open space that rises three stories above my head. I look up and am delighted to see a mobile by Alexander Calder drifting quietly in the open space of the upper stories. Here is an artist I have long been fascinated with, his bold use of primary colors, inventive playfulness, and the peace and joy I find whenever I encounter his work. The constantly morphing shapes of his mobile compositions call viewers to pause and notice the significance and potential impact of even the mundane moments of life.

Making my way up the stairs to the second floor, my eyes stay on the piece as much as possible. I watch as it dances through the air, a black-monochrome mobile, it is enormous and yet it floats on the slightest breeze. On the far side of the courtyard opening there are some benches with viewing access to the Calder. I find one that offers a good view and sit down to spend some time with the work of silent beauty hanging in the midst of so much noise both visual and audio.

A school group stops to look at the Calder, more of them interested in looking down on visitors still making their way into the inner sanctuary of the museum than looking at the piece silently drifting in space. The guide starts to inform the kids about the sculpture. “This is a piece by Alexander Calder…,” she continues with biographical details that most of the kids miss, their eyes glazed over from boredom. To draw them in, she asks questions. “What would happen if a person blew really hard on this piece of art?” Slowly the kids’ attentions are grabbed as they start to investigate. “It would spin!” One of them suggests. “Right,” affirms the guide, “and what is that called when a sculpture can move with the wind?” “A Mobile!” The kids cry out and again she praises them. At this point all eyes are tracing the black pieces as they cut through the air. The guide continues. “Many people see the morphing shapes as leaves, plants”-“hands, lily pads!” the kids jump in with their offering of what they see. “Perhaps,” suggests the guide, “but Calder was probably thinking of the ocean, fish, and the way things move in the water when he made this. He named this piece “Ahab” after the mean captain of the ship in the story of Moby Dick. Perhaps he was thinking of the waves, or a whale.” The group pauses for a moment taking in the sculpture with newly found respect and awe. “Alright,” quips the guide, “let’s go around the corner and look at another piece.” With that the attention to the Calder is gone and the kids bustle off around the corner and out of sight.

I am left alone with the piece again. Well, as alone as one can get in the inner courtyard of a museum that contains the nonstop hustle and bustle of visitors traveling up and down the stairs of the three stories, and the service people cleaning glass walls and shifting around supplies in squeaky rolling carts. Yet somehow the Calder stands its ground as a pause in the busyness, a place of calm and resistance to the forces of constant movement encompassing it. Ironic in the sense that the Calder itself is never still, it too is constantly adrift on the tides of the air pushed around by the movement of bodies. At times it pauses for a moment to frame the visitors staring at it from the platform of the stairway, pausing to catch their breath and then, as the visitors continue the climb, the Calder too shifts from the wave of movement. We affect it and it, if we let it, affects us.

As I sit here observing the mobile, it has moved around 360 degrees and now faces me as a flat composition in the air. A moment later, it has shifted and again takes on 3 dimensional form. The flat black pieces of shaped metal are welded onto metal arms of differing lengths and weight that hang precariously from figure 8 shaped loops allowing for the maximum movement of each arm. The piece hangs in space suspended from the ceiling by a thick silver chord that blends, almost to disappearance, into the lighting vents as one looks up, letting the sculpture claim all the attention it can.

A mobile is one of the few forms of sculpture that shows off all sides of itself to the viewer as the view sits still, and yet also shifts as the viewer moves to different observation points around, above and below the piece. Moving around to the side of the piece more directly overlooking the courtyard, the Calder is silhouetted against a blank white wall. All visual distractions are peripheral from this vantage point either to the sides or below. The piece stills and rocks just slightly as if almost pretending to be painted on the white wall behind it for my viewing pleasure, but as another group climbs the stairs and shifts the air molecules the mobile reacts and is spinning again.

I stop a smiling security guard and ask him what he thinks of the Calder. He pauses for a moment and says, “I love it, it kind of blends in, so it’s easy to overlook, but it’s great. As a guard, it’s not something I have to worry about people touching because it’s isolated, so it doesn’t really get a lot of my attention, but it’s great.” He stammers on, “it has also been here for a very long time. Everything else is always changing, but this remains. You get used to it. But it is nice to be reminded of it and to draw attention to it again.” Leaving me to continue his rounds, I smile as I look at the piece and reflect on its nature as a permanent presence.

Enduring and yet ever changing, Ahab carries with it the reminder of what process theology calls the dipolar nature of God, classified as primordial nature and consequent nature. The primordial nature of God sends out possibilities of what each moment of existence might become taking into account the moments of the past and putting forth options for the future. The consequent nature of God takes in and is affected by each moment of existence after a decision has been made about what that moment will become. Each moment is an elegant interweaving of the suggestions of possibility offered by the primordial nature and the becoming of the consequent nature in response to the outcome of the previous moment. In these natures there is action and reaction, just as in Ahab, an action, such as a burst of air, is followed by a reaction as the sculpture moves it into a new composition.

The air system kicks on to circulate the museum air and Ahab begins to rock gently, side to side, and up and down. What a witness this piece of art is to the dynamic presence of God in the world and a model of what it is to be in relationship in a life of faith. It is constant, yet constantly moving in its interaction with the surrounding environment. Constructed of steel, welded in a specific formation, and balanced perfectly, it is as it was created to be. Each piece, the arms, the figure 8 hooks, the shapes, is essential to the whole, without even one the balance would be thrown and either the whole piece would need to be reconstructed, or some pieces would have to change to compensate for the missing member. Only with each specific piece in place as planned by its creator can the sculpture optimally function. In perfect balance and solid construction it gives and takes in interaction with the constantly changing world around it, affected by each movement of its surroundings and affecting those who are willing to take the time to get to know it. The Calder, in its almost methodical movement, is a still small voice calling out “pause and be still” in this world full of movement and distraction and take joy in the new composition that each moment brings.