Mobility in the Works of Alexander Calder and Earle Brown

Transcription

1 Mobility in the Works of Alexander Calder and Earle Brown Owen Meyers McGill University 2001

2 2 Mobility is one of the basic functions of man and nature. Thus it seems fitting for Alexander Calder and Earle Brown to incorporate such an element into their works. Calder brings movement to sculptures with his invention of the mobile, and Brown uses Calder s ideas of mobility to create compositions with a natural movement. The works of Calder explore aspects of simplicity, abstractness, nature and humour. Brown s influence from Calder and the visual arts prompts him to create new forms of music notation, such as graphic notation. His pieces are filled with ambiguity, spontaneity and mobility. Both artists use contrast and balance to add freedom and mobility to their works. This is apparent in Calder s standing mobile, Bayonets Menacing a Flower, and Brown s composition, Music for violin, cello and piano. Through these works and many others, Calder and Brown bring a fresh, new insight to the fine arts world with their use of mobility. Alexander Calder ( ) is a great American sculptor, also known as the inventor of the mobile. His artistic style is simple and natural, yet humourous and abstract. After a brief pursuit of mechanical engineering and painting, Calder decided to follow in the footsteps of both his father and grandfather and become a sculptor. He was able to gain popularity with avantgarde artists with his work Cirque Calder, which is an entire circus made out of little wire figures. Calder put on a performance of his circus during his 1926 visit to Paris. By this time, Calder was the first American abstract artist to receive international recognition (Farber, and the first person to make sculpture move, through the use of his motorized sculptures (Sheldon Gallery, This was his first step in incorporating movement and time into plaster art (Calder Foundation, His obsession with movement would eventually lead to the mobile, for which he is most famous. These devices are made of wire and thin sheets of metal that respond to the currents of the air,

3 3 which is a much more natural movement than his earlier motorized sculptures. After 1945, Calder begins to create mobiles that are part of a stationary sculpture, which he classifies as a stabile. These are called standing mobiles and Calder strives to organically relate the stabile and mobile as a whole (Arnason, p. 95). A good description of Calder s mobiles is that they do not move in any single way, but set up a series of passages from one position to another, in a continuous, gentle, serpentine flux (Carandente, p. 21). Calder s abstract influence comes largely from Piet Mondrian. Mondrian brings out Calder s basic love for natural and organic forms, as well as his abstractness (Sheldon Gallery, Calder's work basically combines simple and natural forms, and adds a humourous and abstract twist on things (Sweeny, p. 59). Earle Brown (1926-) is a composer who is, like Calder, an American. He is influenced by the visual arts, namely Alexander Calder s mobiles. With a background in jazz, engineering, and the U.S. Air Force, Brown is best known for his initiation of graphic notation, time-notation and open form (Nicholls, Incidentally, Alexander Calder had a desire to be in the U.S. Marines, but his application was denied. Brown has two major influences. The first is Schillinger s method of composition that is based on qualitative and quantitative analysis of the physical material of music (Kostelanetz, p. 187). This explains Brown s taste for serial compositions, as Shillinger s methods deal primarily with serialism. Though most of his music is considered to be serial, Brown does not follow these rules very strictly. Secondly is the strong influence from the visual arts in Brown s music, which comes from Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock and Calder. Mondrian s influence lends to the graphic nature in Brown s scores (Brindle, p. 89), Pollock adds spontaneity, and Calder provides mobility. David Nicholls states that his encounter with the work of Calder was particularly

4 4 influential to his developing musical aesthetic (Nicholls, This need for mobility and freedom of the performer causes Brown to place less emphasis on the strict methods of Schillinger and serial composition, and more on the opportunity for the performer to improvise. Brown adds that since 1952, [he has] worked with aspects of mobility in the scoring and performance of [his] work (Brown, Brown s contemporaries include John Cage, Morton Feldman, and David Tudor, though his style is much different from that of Cage (Brindle, p. 130). His music is very free like Cage s, but Brown emphasizes choice over chance. He defines parameters and material that the performer can then improvise around. For this reason, there is always some degree of creative ambiguity in Brown s compositions (Nicholls, The performer has to balance both control and noncontrol in order to portray Brown s vision for the piece. Brown s compositions have unique identities, but through the use of different scoring techniques, he adds vagueness and mobility to them. The sculpture Bayonets Menacing a Flower (1945) by Calder is a stabile mobile. This sculpture was constructed during a period of Calder s life where he had fully developed both mobiles and stabiles on their own and was now combining the two in an organic fashion. It contains contrast, simplicity, and balance: all of which are traits characteristic of Calder s work. The title of this standing mobile is strongly associated with the war, since it was constructed around the time of World War II, and the sharply pierced planes resemble bayonets (Marter, p. 214). Marla Prather describes this sculpture as having pointed, tendril-like appendages, some of which protrude through adjacent forms that have been opened up with cutout elliptical sections. This quality of piercing exacerbates the threatening aspect of the projectile bayonet shapes. Calder strung a wire through one of these openings and added mobiles to either end. At one end, two black elements, apparently the positive shapes cut from the stabile, hover just above the floor; at the other, a tiny, vulnerable cluster of white petals floats in thin air (Prather, p. 228).

5 5 Contrast in this piece exists between nature and man. While nature is delicate, simple and smooth, man is violent, sharp and piercing. The beauty of this sculpture is that Calder is able to balance these images and ideas rationally. Music for violin, cello and piano (1952) is a piece of serial music by Brown. This piece is composed early in Brown s career. He had not yet fully developed his graphic notation and time notation, though this composition leads in that direction. Though the piece is classified as a serial work, Brown argues that it is not entirely serial. It uses rows from twelve-tone writing, but the serialism ends there (Brown, liner notes to Music for Violin, Cello and Piano (1952)). Brown describes the general concept as having a kind of spontaneous pulseless energy, and he wants a flexible, floating quality in [the] performance (Brown, directions for performance of Music for Violin, Cello and Piano (1952)). This piece allows for much more improvisation on the performer s side. Kostelanetz writes that The fully notated pieces Brown wrote between 1950 and 52, such as Music for violin, cello and piano, exhibit a Calder-like mobility in that, as the units of a mobile undergo constant and virtually unpredictable but inherent change, so Brown constructed units of rhythmic groups, assembled them rather arbitrarily and accepted the fact that all possible assemblages were inherently admissible and valid (Kostelanetz, p ). Brown had just viewed the work of Pollock and Calder, and was extremely influenced by the uses of spontaneity and mobility in their works. The music is sparse and has an unsettled, moving feel that one associates with the movement mobiles. Since Brown was greatly influenced by the work of Calder, the products of these two men are very closely related. Calder and Brown are Americans who deal with fairly abstract ideas, most likely because of the great influence of the abstract artist Piet Mondrian. As well, they shared a common attraction to engineering and the military before switching to the fine arts. These common roots help to develop a connection of greater depth between the artists. The main

6 6 theme that relates the two works, Bayonets Menacing a Flower and Music for violin, cello and piano, is mobility. It is clearly documented that Brown draws his ideas of mobility from Calder s mobiles, and, as Kostelanetz mentioned, Brown uses rhythm to mimic Calder s mobiles. While rhythm creates mobility and randomness in Brown s work, the flower in Calder s standing mobile adds a sense of mobility and the bayonets appear sharp and random. The flower balances on a weak piece of wire that is not securely attached to the base of the sculpture, allowing it to move in any direction. The bayonets, like the notes in Brown s piece, are completely mobile and random. There is nothing to constrain their erratic form. Calder s mobiles bring mobility to Brown s compositions, but with mobility comes a need for stability. Another major theme is that of balance. In Calder s sculpture, there is a balance between structure and freedom. The bayonets provide stability, while the delicate flower dangles precariously out of their reach. Though the bayonets menace the vulnerable flower, they also support it. Calder s work displays a variety of contrasting, yet balanced ideas. These include man and nature, war and peace, bayonets and flowers, and ultimately structure and freedom. Similarly, Brown s composition has set music and notation, which provides stability, but the performer has the freedom to play with the time. Brown states in his performance notes that it is more important to develop a sense of the time values of the durations and figurations at the various tempi than it is to count the rhythm in the usual way (Brown, directions for performance of Music for Violin, Cello and Piano (1952)). The performer adds the element of freedom to Brown s composition as the flower adds freedom to Calder s stabile mobile, yet there is an underlying structure that is always present. Aside from being free, the flower in Bayonets Menacing a Flower has a flexible and floating manner. There are many joints and hinges with which the flower is able to move, and it

7 7 is precariously balanced on the end of a long wire simply waiting for a gust of wind to stir it into motion. Brown s piece moves in much the same way. There is no given time signature; the performers must work together in creating a flowing movement. Time remains flexible in Brown s composition while the melody floats on top. This flexible and floating nature of the works requires a degree of lightness and spontaneity. These two works are filled with a relatively limited amount of material, yet they remain without repetition. The material is lightly distributed between the three instruments in Music for violin, cello and piano. There are rarely more than two notes played simultaneously, which makes the texture of the piece is very light. Calder s sculpture has a light texture because it is full of elliptical holes and thin, pointed extremities. As well, the bayonets and white petals create images of agility and grace in the mind of the viewer. Both works are completely spontaneous. Music for violin, cello and piano is performed like a mobile in that the tempo has a starting place and a suggested form, but can go anywhere it pleases. This is rarely back to the place of origin. For this reason, the work has a unique identity, but never appears the same way twice (Revill, p. 127). Besides having a spontaneous tempo, Brown s composition contains no repetition of notes or rhythms. Likewise, the form of Calder s sculpture is completely natural and without repetition. These abstract artists have incorporated mobility into their work, thereby making it natural and flexible. Calder, with his simplicity and humour, and Brown, with his taste for ambiguity, have opened up a new dimension to the fine arts through their mobility. Bayonets Menacing a Flower by Alexander Calder and Music for violin, cello and piano by Earle Brown both use aspects of mobility, balance, flexibility, and spontaneity. The rational frameworks are transcended by Brown's improvisation for classical musicians and Calder's moving sculptures.

8 Bayonets Menacing a Flower, Alexander Calder; 45" x 58 1/4" x 19"; painted sheet metal and wire;

9 9 Bibliography Arnason, H. Harvard. Calder. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand, Brindle, Reginald Smith. The New Music: The Avant-garde Since New York: Oxford University Press, Brown, Earle. Music for Violin, Cello and Piano (1952). Directions for performance by Earle Brown. New York: Universal Edition, Brown, Earle. Music for Violin, Cello and Piano (1952). Notes by Earle Brown. Time Records S/8007 B. Brown, Earle. About Cross Sections And Color Fields" And Its Origins. May Calder Foundation. Alexander Calder Carandente, Giovanni. Calder: Mobiles and Stabiles. New York: New American Library, Farber, Janet L. Alexander Calder. Kostelanetz, R. and J. Darby. Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music. New York: Schirmir, Marter, Joan M. Alexander Calder. New York: Cambridge University Press, Nicholls, David. " (need to access through first). Brown, Earle Grove Music Prather, Marla. Alexander Calder, New Haven: Yale University Press, Revill, David. Brown, Earle (Appleton), Jr. In Contemporary Composers, ed. B. Morton and P. Collins. Chicago: St. James Press, 1992.

10 10 Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden. Alexander Calder Sweeny, James Johnson. Alexander Calder. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1951.