Combining engineering and art: Stevens celebrates Alexander Calder

Hanging from the ceiling in the lobby of the Samuel C. Williams Library is just one of the many mobiles created by Alexander Calder, one of Stevens’ most notable alumnus. This year marks the 100th anniversary of Calder’s graduation from Stevens in 1919, and in celebration the library presented a lecture this week given by art critic and Calder biographer, Jed Perl. The lecture, titled “Calder at Stevens: A Centennial Celebration of the Graduation of Alexander Calder,” was held to further educate attendees on Calder’s life and legacy.

Calder’s life growing up before his Stevens career is essential in understanding his career success. He grew up in a family of artists; his father and grandfather were sculptors while his mother was a painter. Perl explained that all his family talked about was art, and it sometimes drove Calder crazy. “This is what made him hesitant about becoming an artist – it was like a family business.” Nevertheless, Calder still obtained an interest in art and created small figurines of a dog and a duck as a young child. This was mainly due to his parent’s inevitable influence; he was always creating little objects and working in a space set aside specifically for creative thinking. He quickly expanded his small figurines into larger ones, spanning over six feet tall, that were made out of thin wire. Among these is a sculpture, titled “Josephine Baker,” that depicts the icon as an outline of the individual shapes that make up her figure.

When the time came for Calder to think about college, his mind was predominantly blank. Although he was highly intelligent when it came to academics, he had no idea what he wanted to study in college. Perl describes, “He didn’t seem driven at all. He seemed really, really smart, but unfocused.” Calder understood advanced and complicated mathematics, and he solved problems in school without hesitation. He explains himself in his autobiography that he “just naturally wanted to go to college.” The only problem was what he was going to study, and where he was going to go.

Calder eventually landed at Stevens at the remarkable age of just 16 due to a recommendation from a family-friend who eventually persuaded him to attend. In addition, the proximity of Stevens to Manhattan, where his parents were living at the time, further encouraged him to commit to Stevens.

At Stevens, Calder became a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity, where he became undeniably entranced and amazed at the idea of brotherhood. He made close friends with a fellow student, Bill Drew, and their connection stemmed farther than just the classroom. Drew understood Calder on a level that many others could not. Both Drew and Calder didn’t come from families of lawyers, which was considered the “normal Stevens background” at the time. Later on, in the 1970s, Drew went on to talk highly of Calder, saying, “Calder was the clearest mind it has been my pleasure to know. His direct approach to problems was refreshing.”

Studying mechanical engineering, Calder quickly became interested in kinetics. Perl explains, “He was a man who loved the kinetic arts and dancing. He loved physicality, although he was not very good at it.” Calder had tried doing sports at Stevens and, although he actively participated in lacrosse, he proved to be uncoordinated and clumsy. In terms of his work in the classroom, the courses he took largely contributed to his fascination with kinetics. He not only learned about friction, motion, and physics, but also how to cut, drill, and fuse metals. This overlapping of science and physical creation puzzled him, and Perl explains that Calder often felt “like an oddball” at Stevens. He often did not speak highly of his alma mater, and publicly admitted his mixed feelings that he had about his overall experience. In the 1950s, he complained that other students saw him as “foolish and frivolous.”

Once he graduated, Calder still felt feelings of uncertainty. He tried dozens of jobs within the span of four years, working as an engineer one month and in a department store the next. The reasons why he didn’t stay at one job for too long was a combination of quitting once he got bored and being fired. Eventually, he moved back in with his parents despite his father being frustrated that he wasn’t staying consistent with a job. However, life didn’t stay hard for too long. Calder traveled to Paris, France, and saw paintings from abstract artist Piet Mondrian. Instantly inspired, he wrote to his mother asking her to send him paint. Perl discussed that Mondrian was like the “North Star” to Calder. “The purity of his abstraction was very admirable to Calder.”

Calder immediately threw himself into what he believed was the most captivating art form: sculpture. He became invested in the idea of combining physics and engineering with their almost total opposite, art. He used painting as a method of experimentation to lay down his ideas that lacked the amount of confidence needed to put them into formal sculpture. One sculpture that he did end up physically creating is titled “Little Blue under Red,” which, in a sense, captures a wide point-of-view of Calder’s perspective. He often strived for disparity rather than parity (“assymmetry” over “symmetry,” in the context of art), as a way to replicate the scientific ideas of mass and movement. Perl described his sculptures as “equal but interestingly unequal,” adding that architecture was also an inspiration for Calder. He believed that architects were as practical as engineers, but at the same time concerned with aesthetics and unity. “The walls stay up and the wind doesn’t knock them down, but it’s also beautiful,” Perl illustrated.

Now that we have discussed Calder’s life, it is time to draw everything together. Perl explained that once we understand the details of Calder’s life, we can begin to answer the question of what his time at Stevens meant to him. His initial disregard of Stevens and the negative attitude he portrayed can quickly be overlooked once you know his story. Calder’s time at Stevens was extremely influential to his success, and it was on this campus that he began to draw the connections between science and art. Toward the end of his life, Calder became more financially stable and was able to give back to Stevens through donations as well as leading engineering workshops on campus. He worked on projects with small teams and found that intimacy was important to him when working with others; he didn’t want to be distant from the people with whom he was collaborating. That is largely what he thought engineering should be, and he created that sense of community and equality here at Stevens. Perl concluded, “Whatever Calder said about Stevens, whatever anger he presented, what he ultimately did, in his own creative life, was invent the Stevens that he thought Stevens should be.”