Gardners Art through the Ages A Global History

engineering skills soon helped him to fashion a series of balanced
structures hanging from rods, wires, and colored, organically shaped
plates. This new kind of sculpture, which combined nonobjective
organic forms and motion, succeeded in expressing the innate dy-
namism of the natural world.
An early Calder mobile is Lobster Trap and Fish Tail(FIG. 35-61),
which the artist created in 1939 under a commission from the Mu-
seum of Modern Art in New York City for the stairwell of the
museum’s new building on 53rd Street (see “The Museum of Modern
Art and the Avant-Garde,” above). Calder carefully planned each non-
mechanized mobile so that any air current would set the parts moving
to create a constantly shifting dance in space. Mondrian’s work may
have provided the initial inspiration for the mobiles, but their organic

shapes resemble those in Joan Miró’s Surrealist paintings (FIG. 35-52).

Indeed, a viewer can read Calder’s forms as either geometric or or-

ganic. Geometrically, the lines suggest circuitry and rigging, and the

shapes derive from circles and ovoid forms. Organically, the lines sug-

gest nerve axons, and the shapes resemble cells, leaves, fins, wings, and

other bioforms.

GREAT DEPRESSION In the 1930s much of the Western

world plunged into the Great Depression, which had particularly

acute ramifications in the United States. The decade following

the catastrophic stock market crash of October 1929 dramatically

changed the nation, and artists were among the many economic vic-

tims. The limited art market virtually disappeared, and museums

954 Chapter 35 EUROPE AND AMERICA, 1900 TO 1945

E

stablished in 1929, the Museum of Modern Art
(often called MoMA) in New York City owes its
existence to a trio of women—Lillie P. Bliss, Mary
Quinn Sullivan, and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (see “Art
‘Matronage’ in America,” page 933). These women saw
the need for a museum to collect and exhibit mod-
ernist art. Together they founded what quickly became
the most influential museum of modern art in the
world. Their success was extraordinary considering
the skepticism and hostility greeting much of mod-
ernist art at the time of the museum’s inception. In-
deed, at that time, few American museums exhibited
late-19th- and 20th-century art at all.
In its quest to expose the public to the energy and
challenge of modernist, particularly avant-garde, art,
MoMA developed unique and progressive exhibitions.
Among those the museum mounted during the early
years of its existence were Cubism and Abstract Art and
Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism (1936). Two other note-
worthy shows were American Sources of Modern Art
(Aztec, Maya, Inca) in 1933 and African Negro Art in
1935, among the first exhibitions to deal with “primi-
tive” artifacts in artistic rather than anthropological
terms (see “Primitivism,” page 920).
The organization of MoMA’s administrative
structure and the scope of the museum’s early activi-
ties were also remarkable. MoMA’s first director, Al-
fred H. Barr Jr., insisted on establishing departments
not only for painting and sculpture but also for pho-
tography, prints and drawing, architecture, and the decorative arts.
He developed a library of books on modern art and a film library,
both of which have become world-class collections, as well as an ex-
tensive publishing program.
It is the museum’s art collection, however, that has drawn the
most attention. By cultivating an influential group of patrons, MoMA
has developed an extensive and enviable collection of late-19th- and

20th-century art. Its collection includes such important works as

van Gogh’s Starry Night (FIG. 31-17), Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avi-

gnon (FIG. 35-12), and Dali’s The Persistence of Memory (FIG. 35-49),

as well as many others illustrated in this book, including 19 in this

chapter alone. MoMA has also served as an art patron itself, com-

missioning works like Calder’s Lobster Trap and Fish Tail (FIG. 35-61)

in 1939, just a decade after the institution’s founding.

The Museum of Modern Art

and the Avant-Garde

ART AND SOCIETY

35-61Alexander Calder,Lobster Trap and Fish Tail,1939. Painted sheet aluminum

and steel wire, 8 6  9  6 . Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Using his thorough knowledge of engineering to combine nonobjective organic forms

and motion, Calder created a new kind of sculpture—the mobile—that expressed

reality’s innate dynamism.

1 ft.