Alexander Calder
Hanging Spider
c. 1940
On view
Floor 7
Date
c. 1940
Classification
Sculpture
Medium
Painted sheet metal and wire
Dimensions
Overall: 49 1/2 × 35 1/2in. (125.7 × 90.2 cm)
Accession number
84.41
Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Mrs. John B. Putnam Bequest
Rights and reproductions
© Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Audio
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Alexander Calder, Hanging Spider, c. 1940
Alexander Calder, Hanging Spider, c. 1940
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Narrator: Alexander Calder called this sculpture Hanging Spider. It doesn’t represent a spider in any straightforward way—for one thing, it seems to have more than eight legs. But as it moves with the breeze, it suggests a kind of spindly daddy longlegs elegance. In the 1930s, Calder had absorbed the Surrealists’ love of biomorphic forms—shapes that suggested life, but were still somewhat abstract. He also picked up on their idea that accident had a role to play in art. This sculpture, with its almost-natural movements and subjugation to the vagaries of air currents, reflects both interests.
Calder invented this form of kinetic sculpture in 1932. He began calling such works mobiles—French for “moving”—at the suggestion of the artist Marcel Duchamp.
