The Alexander Calder projects that never left the drawing board
Around 1946, Frank Lloyd Wright invited Alexander Calder to produce a colossal mobile that would become a permanent focal point of the Guggenheim’s central skylight, while the New York museum was still under construction.
The caveat, however, was that the sculpture would have to be made from gold. Calder, who insisted on working with industrial materials, balked at the idea of using a precious metal (black, he said, would create a starker profile against the sky). When Wright threatened to withdraw the commission, Calder conceded: he would make the work in gold – but paint it black.
Although the mobile ultimately never came to fruition, Calder would later create The Spiral (1966), a motorised standing mobile with a spiralling top element made of industrial brass, that was exhibited at the Guggenheim in 1967. The work’s alternate title was No! to Frank Lloyd Wright. Calder enjoyed a close – and typically more friendly – association with nearly every great architect of the 20th century, from Mies van der Rohe to Eero Saarinen (surely an exhibition in itself). As a result, the fate of many of his public commissions was intrinsically tied to the completion of their projects.
There are few sentiments more compelling than ‘what if?’ – the notion of what could be, or what could have been. As the enigmatic Alexander Calder proves, there is more to the story.
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