Original Calder Mobiles For Sale On May 15th 2013

Christie’s will be auctioning off four original Alexander Calder mobiles, two hanging ones and two standing ones, at their Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sale on May 15th 2013 at the Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. The pieces for sale were created between 1941 and 1968 and are estimated to sell for between $200,000 and $3,500,000 each. Click on the photos below for their respective listings with details and videos for each piece.

Estimate $1,200,000 – $1,800,000 [Update: Price Realized $4,603,750]

Estimate $2,500,000 – $3,500,000 [Update: Price Realized $5,387,750]

Estimate $2,000,000 – $3,000,000 [Update: Price Realized $3,035,750]

Estimate $2,000,000 – $3,000,000 [Update: Price Realized $6,619,750]

– See a list of more original Calder mobiles for sale –

Calder at Pace London – April 19th – June 1st 2013

Pace London (6 Burlington Gardens) will be hosting a comprehensive exhibition of nearly fifty works of art by Alexander Calder from the years of 1945 to 1949, widely considered to be the most important period in the artist’s career. It will include more than twenty-five mobiles, stabiles, and standing mobiles, including Blue Feather pictured below.

More info …

Simple hanging mobile animation

Getting there, getting there … simple hanging mobile calculated and animated:

See more of my videos of mobile sculptures and kinetic sculptures.

Just a little fun kinetic “sculpture” balance animation I just created

See more of my videos of mobile sculptures and kinetic sculptures.

New color combinations for Mobile 78

New color combinations for hanging Mobile 78

For sale soon…

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Getting Kinetic Sculptures ready to be shipped to VFILES

Getting six kinetic sculptures ready to be shipped to VFILES, SoHo, NYC:

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Update:
Delivered and for sale as of March 5th 2013

Direct link to kinetic sculptures for sale in their online store

600 Custom Sheet Metal Shapes for Hanging Mobiles

600 custom laser cut sheet metal shapes ready to be cleaned, assembled and painted (powder coated):

Some Cool Hanging Sculptures, Kinetic, Custom, Mobiles, Etc

I’m a kinetic sculptor specializing in mobiles. I make handmade mobiles, large custom-made mobiles, 3D printed mobiles and kinetic sculptures.

Once in a while I go look around and see what other mobile makers / kinetic sculptors / hanging art installation designers are up to. Here are some of the cooler hanging sculptures (some kinetic, some not) that I came across this time around:

Made of hardware items:

Misawa Aviation and Science Museum:

Astrid Bin:

Ratcliffe Fowler Design – made with 3000 soccer balls:

Maurizio Cattelan, this being his instillation at the Guggenheim Museum (more recently, he received a lot of attention for taping bananas to a wall):

Scabetti Design:

Stu Scheckter:

Lobby at Hilton San Diego:

Claire Morgan:

Ed Carpenter – looking mid-century modern with a splash of contemporary to me:

Program Collective:

Chris Dorosz:

Ball Nogues Studio:

Crystal Schenk:

Cornelia Parker:

Kaarina Kaikkonen:

Putra World Trade Centre:

Ralph Helmick and Stu Schechter:

Mathilde Roussel – that’s real growing grass (obviously reminds me of “Mad Men“):

Lobby at Hyatt:

And the kinetic sculpture at the BMW Museum:

I gave credit where I was able to find it, but sadly all too often, when you see one of these installations in lobbies, atriums (atria) and similar spaces, there’s no plaque or anything anywhere that would tell you who designed, made and installed it.

Take a look at some of my large suspended sculptures, and if you’re interested in the history of hanging sculptures, specifically mobiles, please see my posts A History of Mobiles (Part 1) and the continuation Mobile Sculpture Artists – A History of Mobiles (Part 2).

Mobiles made with food by Carl and Evelina Kleiner – Homage to Alexander Calder

In an homage to sculptor Alexander Calder, Swedish photographer Carl Kleiner, who’s known for his highly creative photography work involving food, and his wife and professional stylist Evelina Kleiner, just came out with a series of mobiles made of food such as marshmallows, eggs, carrots and popcorn.

Homage To Calder from Carl Kleiner on Vimeo

I’d like to see a stabile with appetizers on it …

Confused about the most expensive hanging mobile ever sold

I received an email the other day asking if I could make a reproduction of Calder‘s “Snow Flurry”, which I wouldn’t be allowed to do because all of his works are copyrighted. But it made me take a closer look at the mobile and I came across something that was rather confusing.

The “Snow Flurry” by Alexander Calder is the most expensive hanging mobile ever sold to date (May 2012), only surpassed by “Lily of Force” which is a stabile by Calder [Update: “Poisson volant (Flying Fish)“, a hanging mobile Calder made in 1957, sold for $25,925,000 on May 13th 2014, a new world auction record for Calder]. It realized a hammer price of US$10,386,500 at Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale at the Rockefeller Plaza, New York, on on May 8th 2012. Here’s a photo from the auction:

But here’s what confuses me about this. The following is the photo of “Snow Flurry” that Christie’s posted on their site. Count the elements on the mobile.

21 elements. Now, following is the photo of “Snow Flurry” that the Calder Foundation has on their site. Count the elements on that mobile, too.

30 elements. 9 elements more.

First I wondered if part (9 elements) of the “Snow Flurry” that the Calder Foundation has displayed maybe got lost or destroyed somehow, but then I noticed that besides the number of elements on each, if you pay close attention to the structure of each mobile you’ll realize, these are clearly two different mobiles.

My best guess would be that Calder made more than one hanging mobile with the same name. If that’s the case, I would be surprised that Christie’s wouldn’t be clarifying it in their description of the mobile.

The mobile sold came from Eliot Noyes‘ estate who was a friend of Calder’s.

I’ll post an update if I find out more.

Update: I received the following via email a couple of days ago from Jim in Portland, ME: “It appears that Calder made at least several numbered mobiles called Snow Flurry, all a little different. See this photo regarding the one at MoMA, which is identified as Snow Flurry I. There is one now at the Portland, ME Museum of Art (where I live), which is called Snow Flurry III. I presume the one that sold at auction in 2012, and which you mention in your original post, was a different Snow Flurry than either of these. I wonder how many of them he made? Snow Flurry III is really quite amazing in person.” Thanks, Jim!

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Here’s a beautiful video of the 21 element “Snow Flurry”: