**1. Introduction**

Alexander Calder (1898–1976), one of America's best-known sculptors, is renowned for developing two new idioms in modern art: mobiles, which hang from the ceiling and whose shapes move in response to air currents, and stabiles, large scale, stationary abstract sculpture, characterized by simple forms executed in sheet metal. Born into a family of artists, Calder showed facility in handling metals from a young age [1]. Although he trained as an engineer at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey and held several engineering jobs after graduation, at the age of 25, he committed himself as an artist, relocated to New York, and took art classes. In 1926, he moved to Paris where he mingled with established artists and writers of the time, including figures such as Picasso, Miró, Léger, and Duchamp. During a visit to Mondrian's studio in 1930, Calder saw, tacked to the wall, colored cardboard rectangles that Mondrian used to work out compositions [2]. Calder proposed that the rectangles could be made "to oscillate in different directions, and at different amplitudes." The visit proved to be the "shock that started things," as he wrote later [1].

In 1931, Calder began constructing compositions of metal wire and wood and made them move via inherent kinetics, activating their motion with motors and other means [2], and then later allowing free form movement with the wind. The moving sculptures were dubbed "Mobiles" by artist and friend Marcel Duchamp. These sculptures of "detached

**Citation:** Haddad, A.; Randall, M.; Zycherman, L.; Martins, A. Reviving Alexander Calder's *Man-Eater with Pennants*: A Technical Examination of the Original Paint Palette. *Heritage* **2021**, *4*, 1920–1937. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/heritage4030109

Academic Editor: Diego Tamburini

Received: 1 August 2021 Accepted: 16 August 2021 Published: 19 August 2021 Corrected: 1 March 2022

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

bodies floating in space" embodied Calder's fascination with the dynamism of the universe, which he sought to describe through a bold palette of primary and secondary colors [2]. Calder also created abstract stationary constructions for which Jean Arp then coined the term "Stabiles" to differentiate them from the moving sculptures.

*Man-Eater with Pennants*, abbreviated as *Man-Eater* in this paper, (Figure 1) was proposed by Alfred Barr and commissioned by the Board of Trustees for The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden in 1944. A maquette, *Mobile with 14 Flags* (Figure 2), was shown to museum leadership for approval before the final work was fabricated. *Man-Eater* was Calder's largest mobile sculpture to date, towering more than 9 m with a wingspan of more than 14 m. Seven painted metal pennants perch atop long vertical rods; heavy flat black plates counterbalance them at the bottom. The wind- or human-propelled elements bounce, sway, and rotate around a central post. The maquette is nearly identical in form to the final expression of the massive *Man-Eater with Pennants.* Naturally, a full-scale sculpture designed for outdoor installation must be structurally different from a table-top model. For example, on the actual mobile, two of the uppermost polygonal shapes have oval-shaped cutouts, whereas the maquette does not. The main horizontal crossbar on the mobile is heavily reinforced to bear the weight of the vertical rods and the pennants, but on the maquette, all the wires of the structure are the same delicate gauge. However, the shapes and colors of the pennants are the same on both the maquette and the *Man-Eater*; they are black, red, blue, and yellow. In addition, the upright post is a crucial grounding aspect for the large-scale sculpture, whereas the moving parts of the maquette sit on a triangular base, allowing table-top display.

**Figure 1.** Alexander Calder. *Man-Eater with Pennants*, 1945. Painted steel rods and sheet iron 14 (425 cm) × approx. 30 (915 cm) in diameter. Purchase. © 2021 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York All reproductions of this work are excluded from the CC: BY License.

**Figure 2.** Alexander Calder. *Mobile with 14 Flags* (maquette for *Man-Eater with Pennants*), 1945. Painted steel 53 (134.6 cm) × approximately 50 (127 cm) diameter. Gift of the artist. © 2021 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York All reproductions of this work are excluded from the CC: BY License.

*Man-Eater with Pennants* was installed in MoMA's garden from 1945–1949. From the outset, the merits and deficiencies of the mobile were debated within the museum. The curator Dorothy Miller expressed concern about the lack of movement due to the weight of the structure and the absence of ball bearings [3]. Philip Goodwin, Head of the Department of Architecture and Design, had deep reservations about the ironwork, which he called "clumsy," the "far from pleasing" colored forms, and the faulty engineering [4]. Of the opposing opinion, Curator James Johnson Sweeney thought the *Man-Eater* was one of Calder's most successful ventures in this field [5]. In addition, fears about the public injuring themselves on the mobile began right away; in the interest of public safety, a small fence was set around it. Sweeney, a fan of the sculpture, strongly advocated for their removal. "I would like to suggest in my last will and testament that the Calder mobile should move. I would recommend that the chains be taken off the monster" [6]. After four years on view, the mobile was taken off view, ostensibly because reconstruction of the garden space was underway. *Man-Eater* traveled to outdoor venues in London and Houston in the 1950s. After its last showing at MoMA from 1969–1970, it was housed in storage, where it has been since.

As for the maquette, with its purpose fulfilled, it was put away in storage with other Calder sculpture proposals. There it languished for ten years until a storage reorganization and clean-up effort was undertaken in 1959. Internal records called it an extended loan and it was returned to Calder at that time. The Registrar's carefully observed description specifies that the model was made of "unpainted iron" and also notes surface accretions and defects. Ten years later, the artist gifted the maquette to the museum. Photographs from that acquisition suggest that at some time while it was in Calder's possession between 1959 and 1969 it must have received its color coat. Because the maquette was painted sometime after the *Man-Eater* installation, the color scheme on the model cannot be considered a trial for the full-scale iteration; it is the exact opposite: the larger was the example for the smaller.

For MoMA's 2021 exhibition, *Alexander Calder: Modern from the Start*, the exciting work of reviving this forgotten sculpture began with conservation, curatorial, and registrar teams reviewing the documentation in MoMA's files and examining the work in storage. The sculpture had been repainted several times in its history. However, the only record of a repainting campaign is correspondence between the artist and curator Dorothy Canning Miller in 1948, where she describes the colors as not resembling the original paint applied by Calder even though the museum used the Ronan Japan Color paints preferred by the artist [7]. After its last exhibition between 1969 and 1970, extensive paint loss and rusting due to outdoor exposure went unaddressed. In addition, the metal rods were likely bent by painters holding them down to repaint them, or during handling [8]. This project provided a unique opportunity to study the painting history and the original colors of the large mobile and the associated maquette.

While the origins of Calder's affinity for a palette of primary colors are explored in the art historical literature, research in the scientific literature on Calder's paint choices is limited. A recent publication has investigated the red, black, and white paints used on a motorized work from 1932, including extensive overpainting from past treatments [9]. The work outlined here contributes to the discussion on the evolution of Calder's color choices and subsequent attempts by The Museum of Modern Art and others to determine the hues of the early primary palette. To our knowledge, this is the first study to delve into Calder's yellows and blues. As part of planning the restoration treatment for Man-Eater, the conservation team took cross section samples of the paint layers and mounted them for microscopy. These "slices of time" open a window into the history of the painting campaigns.
