Calder (...) says that during a visit to Mondrian's studio, in the rue du Départ
in Paris, he received a vision of a new art form (...). Mondrian's studio was
an extraordinary room, with small, movable red, blue and yellow rectangles
on the white walls, and a large, red, cylindrical gramophone in the middle
of the floor (..). Calder writes: "... the light coming from two facing
windows met in the room, and I thought how beautiful it would have been if
everything had started to move, but Mondrian didn't like the idea." (...)
Hultén 1955, p. 19. [Cf. also: Calder,
1937.]
Calder did not heed Mondriaan's advice, and developed
a form of "kinetic constructivism" in his "Mobiles à moteur" (since
1931): different elementary shapes: line, spiral, circle, ball;
different elementary colors and black/white/grey; different elementary
movements: rotation, pendulum, virtual translation; rotation-axis
in the picture-plane or orthogonal to it.
Calder describes one of these works as follows:
– Dimensions: 2 x 2.50
m.
– Frame, 8 cm., neutral
red.
– The two white balls
rotate at a high speed.
– The black spiral
rotates at a lower speed and appears to be constantly climbing.
– The tin disc
turns even more slowly, the two black lines appear to be constantly
climbing.
– The black pendulum,
which is 40 cm. in diameter, climbs to 45 degrees on each side
with 25 strokes a minute and swings outside the frame.
References
Alexander Calder: "Mobiles." In:
Myfanwy Evans (ed.): The Painter's Object, Gerold
Howe, London, 1937.
Karl G. Hultén: Den Ställföreträdande
Friheten eller Om Rörelse i Konsten och Tinguelys Metamekanik. (Substitute
Freedom or On Movement in Art and Tinguely's Meta-mechanics.)
Special issue of Kasark, October 1955. (English translation
in: Pontus Hultén, 1975.)
K.G. Pontus Hultén: Tinguely. 'Méta'. London: Thames
and Hudson, 1975.
rotation 
