This playful, sculpture by Alexander Calder, with its curving, pointed, long, and delicate legs, represents a crab. The work is made of steel and painted bright red. Calder called this kind of work a stabile, because unlike his famous mobiles, it stands still, and its parts are stable. While first ridiculed by the Houston press when acquired in 1962, The Crab has now become a signature work of art for the museum and the city.
Two large pieces of metal, placed at right angles, anchor The Crab, from which extend four long, slender, arching forms. The curving lines create a sense of movement and also recall the awkward, scuttling motion of a crab. They also define a negative space, the empty space in and around an object, which balances the more massive triangular area. The vivid red color lends a lively, playful air to the sculpture.
In discussing the fabrication process for his stabiles, Calder said:
I make a little maquette [model] of sheet aluminum, about 50 cm [25 inches] high. With that I’m free to add a piece, or to make a cutout. As soon as I’m satisfied with the result I take the maquette to my Biemont [foundry] friends… and they enlarge the maquette as much as I want. When the enlargement is finished, provisionally, I go to add ribs and the gussets, or other things which I hadn’t thought of. After that they work out my ideas on the bracing. And that does it.¹
Alexander Calder was born into an artistic family. His mother was a painter and his father and grandfather were sculptors. At a very young age, Calder began making toys, small wire people and animals, and jewelry for his sister’s doll. His family encouraged his talent and helped him turn the basement of their home into a studio.
Calder completed a degree in mechanical engineering before studying at the Art Students League in New York. In the 1920s, while living in Paris, he began work on his famous Circus, a collection of wire, wood, and metal sculptures of animals and performers that Calder would bring to life in performances. In the Circus are the elements of motion and abstraction, the subject of animals, and a playful quality found in much of Calder’s art. He may be most famous for his mobiles, which he began creating in 1932, and for his stabiles, like The Crab, which are installed in public spaces in cities around the world.
- Jean Lipman, Calder’s Universe (New York: Viking Press in cooperation with the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1980), pp. 304-5.
