Sculpture

The Beauty of Balance

 

 

Recently, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH) featured a show of the work of Alexander Calder and Pablo Picasso. The two were exact contemporaries and were acquainted with one another.

Like Picasso, Calder became famous for the wide range of his artistic expression. Most memorable are his ‘mobiles,’ beloved by many. These floating sculptures are the beautifully balanced hanging assemblies of wire and pieces of sheet metal. Unlike the example above, they are usually covered in bright colors or flat black paint.

His ‘stabiles‘ are floor-based sculptures that incorporate flat surfaces arranged in three-dimensional relationships, both vertical and horizontal. Some are wonderfully fluid given the curved shape of their panels, while others are geometric, more linear, and ‘edgy.’

The above photo features what I think was the final study model for La Grande Vitesse, his huge lyrical stabile which now sits on a principal downtown plaza in Grand Rapids, Michigan (which I have featured before.)

Obviously, Calder’s mobiles -especially the most successful ones- depend upon an engineer’s sensitivity for balance, while featuring his not-easily-imitable sense of proportion, shape, and color. He also blessed his mobiles with a capacity to drift quietly with the slightest breezes.

Less obvious is how the element of balance features in his stabiles. This involves the balance between vertical and horizontal elements; it also includes the balance between curved edges and flat surfaces. And finally, his stabiles incorporate the most subtle balance of all. This is the balance achieved by the artist when providing a cohesive experience of visual excitement for the viewer who sees each aspect of a stabile sculpture while walking around it.

Calder has been quoted as saying this: “The admission of approximation is necessary, for one cannot hope to be absolute in his precision. He cannot see, or even conceive of a thing from all possible points of view, simultaneously. While he perfects the front, the side, or rear may be weak; then while he strengthens the other facade he may be weakening that [one which was] originally the best. There is no end to this. To finish the work he must approximate.”

Surely, this is equally true of the spiritual life. Many of us are tempted toward the ideal of some kind of ‘perfection,’ surely never attainable by fallen humans such as ourselves. Yet, that pursuit of a kind of absoluteness and or precision, however attractive, is not true to our lives as pilgrims on an unfolding journey. Such a journey is an ancient and compelling metaphor for our lives, in Scripture and in our tradition.

So, yes, in the abstract, there are some things that are absolutely true in principle. But we so often seek and pursue them while ‘walking in circles,’ admiring the beauty, goodness and truth of what is before us. And yet, our grasp of, and appreciation for, the whole is often based on a single, or a limited number of perspectives. We then are kept from seeing the fullness of the many marvelous gifts given to us by and through our Creator’s grace-filled pursuit of us. Seeking and then finding a balance between sometimes competing perspectives and concerns can be an important step toward perceiving beauty when otherwise it may be hard to see.

I can think of no finer balanced-juxtaposition of these several elements within Calder’s extensive portfolio than the one depicted above, temporarily exhibited in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. A mobile gently moves above you, while you stand. You gently move around a stabile while it stands.

 

{my photograph; copyright reserved} / Regarding the above quote from Calder, remember that while his choice of pronouns may not be what we prefer, they were characteristic of what was considered ‘proper English’ and assumed to be fully inclusive at that time.

To See Spiritual Light

 

I first learned about the monumental sculptures and the suspended mobiles of Alexander Calder during high school in the early 1970’s. My school was in western Massachusetts, and I remember some weekend trips when I saw a couple of his large outdoor sculptures being built at a metal foundry in Connecticut. To me, Calder’s work continues to suggest a delight with the world and a generous appreciation for the beauty within it.

Calder approached the creation of public sculpture in a unique way. His largest pieces are often set in the center of cities, placed on plazas between modern office buildings. We have a beautiful example here in Grand Rapids, with another large one in the same bright red color nearby in Chicago. Many of Calder’s large outdoor “stabile” sculptures provide a lyrical counterpoint to the linear and grid-like facades of the surrounding office buildings.

We know that monumental sculptures from earlier times often portray honored heroes, sometimes on horseback. Perhaps the most dramatic and newsworthy examples in our own day are some Civil War legacy moments in the deep South. I think of the one in Lee Square, New Orleans, and the Nathan Bedford Forrest monument in Memphis, both recently removed. In these cases, major post-Civil War statuary has been an object of contention because of negative historical associations.

By contrast, Calder’s large works are not tethered to historical occasions. Instead, they are abstract, and point to transcendental ideas rather than to memorialized national events. They don’t simply draw attention to themselves as objects of regard. Calder’s plaza sculptures do more. They lead the observer’s eyes to notice the interplay between his work and the spaces around them, as well as their contrast with nearby buildings. One doesn’t just view these sculptures; one interacts with them, and with the larger context of their placement.

Here, we must note a paradoxical aspect of all public sculpture, which indicates something more about us than it does about the art. Many people work everyday in buildings adjacent to where sculptural works are situated. But these workers are just as capable of being inattentive to these pieces of art as they are to their parking spaces, or to the doors of their offices. With the soaring heights and reaching curves of his public monuments, Calder’s sculptures are expressively shaped and tremendously uplifting. But our focus on our work and our worries, and on the practical things we need to do, blinds us! And it diverts our attention from something truly beautiful, right there in front of us.

I note all this because the same thing can happen when we encounter the first verses of John’s Gospel. In what is often called the ‘prologue’ to his Gospel, John has written a passage shaped by poetic beauty and filled with lofty theology. Yet, we have a tendency to focus on what is immediate and practical, and on what seems narrowly relevant to our everyday concerns. And so, we can ‘pass by’ this Gospel ‘work of art’ just as people hurry past the great Calder downtown, absorbed with getting to our ‘work.’ In both cases, something sublime lies before us, ready for us to engage with. But sometimes we don’t see the sublime because we aren’t really looking for it!

 

The image above is of Alexander Calder’s stabile, Le Grande Vitesse. This post is based on my homily for the first Sunday after Christmas Day, December 29, 2019, which can be accessed by clicking here. Other homilies of mine may be accessed by clicking here. The Revised Common Lectionary, which provides the readings for Sundays and other Holy Days, can be accessed by clicking here.

The Arms of Love

Today we commemorate Charles Henry Brent, who in 1902 was called from a slum parish in Boston to serve as Missionary Bishop of the Philippines, arriving on the same ship as William Howard Taft, the territorial Governor and future President. Brent’s missionary vision was evident in his sustained commitment to minister to those at the margins, his work toward ecumenical unity among churches, and his pastoral oversight as a bishop. A much loved prayer written by Brent is now one of the prayers for mission in the Book of Common Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your Name. (BCP:101)

Through our small hands, his great arms of love still reach out to embrace the world, and touch everything within it. Through our hands those arms of love transform our work and our play, so that small activities and projects become part of his greater and divine work of love.

Not just through the hands of the priest who reaches out to hold a baby at the font, but also through the hands of a neonatal nurse who tends a newborn in the hospital; the hands of a teacher who writes a supportive comment on a young students worksheet, and a parent who tucks a child into bed at night.

The Lord of glory stretches out arms of love through the hands of painters who help us see light, the hands of poets who put down patterns of words to help us perceive what is true, and the hands of musicians who express harmonies rooted in a beauty more profound than we can create by ourselves.

I hope you see glimpses of those great arms of love at work through your hands.

(Shown above is John Singer Sargent’s bronze casting of a plaster study he did (around 1900) in preparation for his mural series at the Boston Public Library. Both the Hirshorn Museum in Washington and the Tate in London have examples.)