We remember it fondly. We remember moving in subtle circles constantly looking up and trying to match the subtle movements dangling high above us with such astonishment that we naturally wanted to experience it all over again. Consequently, my wife and I viewed a traveling Alexander Calder exhibit this weekend at the Seattle Art Museum. It’s not every day you can saunter beneath such perfect alignment and balance.
American artist Alexander Calder (1898–1976) is celebrated for revolutionizing sculpture with his renowned mobiles and stabiles, which range from the miniature to the monumental. This exhibition we viewed traced Calder’s career, highlighting his most important themes, styles, and materials from the 1920s through the 1970s. The exhibition demonstrated Calder’s unique vision.
Alexander Calder was the ultimate negotiator. He was a masterful mathematician. He balanced things. He learned on how far to go but no further with the 22,000 works of art he created. He had a vision, and he had a gift.
The Champions of Balance
Many others all around us every day have such gifted visions too to identify missing components in our neighborhoods, our students, our music, our science, our government, our sports, or our environment that prevent balance. These individuals are tremendous negotiators too. These mentors offer guidance, suggestions, insights that redistribute the overall equations for many of us. They clarify/reconfigure items, such as feelings, prejudices, inexperience, fear, education, financial hardships, fashions, commitment, and desire. They bring us balance.
Their lifetime’s work may not be 22,000 items illuminated dramatically in different museums but perhaps 22,000 conversations, or 22,000 hours studying serious problems, or 22,000 hours offering services, moving cargo, completing surgeries, growing gardens, motivating teammates, improving smiles, or other activities.
The Race for the Best Balance
In the world of business, we are all racing each other to provide our products and services that might offer more balance in someone’s life but our approaches often are out of balance. The trick that Alexander Calder learned and mastered was not going too far. He offered a variety of living floating diagrams that shared the flexibility and buoyancy of balance. He showed that there wasn’t just one way or even a few ways to achieve total balance.
In our quest for ever increasing sales and market share it’s easy to push too hard for just our approach for true balance.
Imagine if we all had Alexander Calder’s vision, creativity, and negotiation skills to achieve proper balance when offering our solutions in the marketplace. There would be more room for all of us, not just the loudest or most obstinate. If buoyancy and healthy balance was truly treasured more there would be more daily give and take. Politicians would get more done. Builders would find better ways to honor the environment. Cities would become safer and more efficient. There would be more respect for balanced authority.
Our Urgent Quest for More Balance
In rainforests, enough of the biggest trees grow to provide ample shelter for all the foliage and animals growing below them. We need more leaders acting as benevolent canopy trees. This may be the biggest election year in our lifetimes. We desperately need to vote for those offering balance for all of us!
If we all do not win, none of us wins, and if we don’t find more balance for each other very soon will we ever be able to fix our lopsided mess?
CALDER: IN MOTION
THE SHIRLEY FAMILY COLLECTION
Audio Tour:
Cache of Communiqués 