Thursday, Jan. 24, 2002 | 8:30 a.m.
Some may consider mobiles mere child's play.
But the expansive and colorful mobiles Alexander Calder first began building in the 1930s are studies of the mind of an artist who is considered by critics to be the greatest sculptor of the 20th century.
Rare pieces of the late Calder's work from his metal mobiles to a stone-and-wire toaster he made for his wife, Louisa will be displayed Friday through July 24 in an exhibit that officially reopens the 4-year-old Bellagio Fine Art Gallery.
For the first time in 25 years, Calder's "Roxbury Fish," and the 17-foot hanging mobile "Panama," will be displayed publicly.
The 40-piece exhibit was originally scheduled to open at the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art on Oct. 6. But while awaiting transport to Las Vegas in September, the pieces were trapped in a warehouse four blocks from the rubble of the World Trade Center, said Marc Glimcher, chairman of the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art.
Removing the delicate pieces from the chaos of downtown New York was not possible for weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Glimcher said.
Although the exhibit was postponed, business dealings behind the scenes continued between MGM MIRAGE, which owned the gallery, and an esteemed New York art house.
In December plans were completed for the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art to be acquired by PaperBall, a division of the largest commercial art gallery in the country, PaceWildenstein, in New York.
"The Bellagio was ready to try something else (with the gallery) and we said, Let us do it for you,'" Glimcher said.
PaperBall redesigned the Bellagio's space from the subdued room designed to showcase paintings to a more versatile gallery space, Glimcher said. The dark velvet was stripped from the walls, hardwood floors were installed and the number of track lights was increased.
"The paint and architecture will be changed for each show," Glimcher said. "The art will dictate what we will do."
The Calder exhibit called for extensive lighting of the wire-and-metal sculptures, he said.
The stark background of the gallery's white walls showcases each moving mobile by not allowing shadows to interfere, but rather enhance the viewing of the artwork.
For instance, "Gong," a 6-foot-long, orange-and-black metal mobile, is lit so that the top, bottom and back of the piece are illuminated while it spins.
"We wanted the work to stand out for what it is," Glimcher said.
Creating Calder
An inventor since childhood, Calder is considered by critics to be the creator of two of the most popular sculptural reforms of the last 100 years: mobiles, moving sculptures that hang; and stabiles, large-scale constructions of brightly colored steel forms.
Born in 1898 to artist parents in Lawnton, Pa., Calder grew up tinkering with wire. He eventually created miniature copper-wire jewelry for his sister's dolls.
In 1919 Calder received a degree in mechanical engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. But the world of engineering was unsatisfactory to the ambitious Calder, who moved to art full time in the early '20s.
He supported himself as an illustrator and joined the Art Students League, a society of struggling artists, in New York from 1923-26.
In late '26 Calder moved to Paris, where surrealism was giving way to abstract art. One of his first creations was a collection of small-scale circus figures he sculpted from wire, wood and cloth, titled "Cirque Calder."
At that time Calder began to sculpt three-dimensional works using lengths of wire. His free-floating wire sculptures were described by critics as drawings in space.
As his new art form developed, Calder imagined paintings in air with abstract shapes that could quiver and change as they responded to their environment.
While in Paris in 1931 his friend, abstract painter Marcel Duchamp, christened Calder's first suspended wire sculpture as a mobile.
The mobiles evolved into stabiles, huge sculptures of arching lines and graceful abstract shapes that populate office buildings, parks and museums worldwide.
His works are on display at such prestigious art centers as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Local angle
The Las Vegas exhibit features a 4-foot-tall prototype of the 130-foot-tall "Jerusalem Stabile."
In the gallery, close to the orange arches and flat planes of the Jerusalem artpiece, are toys that Calder handmade for his grandchildren.
A horse in repose made of rusted Ballantine Ale cans and a yellow Kodak film canister was made for a cousin, according to Calder's grandson, Alexander "Sandy" Calder, speaking at the gallery earlier this week. Sandy Calder flew to Las Vegas to assist with the Bellagio gallery installation.
"I think these things especially tell so much about him," Sandy Calder, 38, said. "He was always in his studio (in France), but he let us watch him work and included us."
Each piece in the gallery was placed, shifted and often moved to a better lighted area to show off its particular beauty, Sandy Calder said.
As he walked through the gallery and viewed each piece from different angles, Sandy Calder discovered something new about his grandfather's art, he said.
"Each piece has volume," Sandy Calder said. "A mobile exists greatly beyond the space it occupies, moves in."
One such piece, he said, is Calder's 1929 "Hercules and the Lion." Calder twisted thin, black wire into a 3-foot-tall mobile that depicts the hulking arms of the mythological figure grappling with a fierce, sinewy animal.
As the abstract mobile made of common wire turns in the gallery, the lion seems to twist in Hercules' grasp.
It is the detail and simplicity of objects that attracted his grandfather to design and eventually invent mobiles, Sandy Calder said. "He was fascinated by the way things work."
One of five elaborate, functional toasters made by Calder, who died in 1976, is included in the Bellagio gallery exhibit.
Within the steely contraption, a stone heats coils of wire that toast the bread. A large, intricate coil fitted to the top of the crude toaster allows for cold butter to melt on the crisp bread while keeping it warm.
Placed next to the toaster in the exhibit are an oversized silver serving spoon and matching fork Calder made for his wife, Louisa.
Close to these art appliances is a wooden cigar box Calder made for his wife's 43rd birthday in 1948. Inside are five velvet-lined compartments that hold tiny, metal toys that playfully wobble on wire appendages.
"For tourists who come to see these things, they see the poetic nature of the work," Sandy Calder said. "But (included in the exhibit) are everyday things he made for his wife to use. He made them into pieces of art."
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