Clever words
(if not original) -- but I don't necessarily agree. The first one shown is handsome and original enough, even if it borrows some almost generic MCM graphic forms (yes, I'm sure the exact prototypes can be found, somewhere).
Creativity has been defined (where ?) as "the synthesis or rearrangement of existing forms or ideas."
It pleases me to see the forms and techniques of a personal hero, Alexander Calder, employed by the present generation. A chair is a chair is a chair; a mobile is a mobile etc etc. Why not ? How different can generic transparent tape be, from the "original," Scotch -- if it does its job ?
Maybe that's not the best analogy. . .
The most Calder-like parts of the subsequent mobiles above are probably the best, I'll give you that -- though the redundant part at the top of the last one is troubling. The first one is the least influenced by The Man -- and I find it quite fresh and handsome. Many worked in Calder's shadow, and a few really original voices (Rickey being one) emerged from that shade into a sunshine of their own. We just have to separate the wheat from the chaff -- but the original idea was so strong that it's no surprise that a lot of mobiles ape Calder's work. Frank Lloyd You-know-who suffers the exact same fate.
Ah, old fateful Frank Lloyd...
Ah, old fateful Frank Lloyd you-know-who. Who would have thunk it. SDR makes one of the more apt statements I've seen here for awhile. Calder was no slouch.
But, don't get me wrong. Like you, I'm a big fan of the derivative mobile, too. Put me on my back on any mid-century psychiatric couch: probably something to do with my childhood.
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As pastiches go I quite like ...
As pastiches go I quite like unigami's, even if the 'all my own work' tag is abit of a stretch!. The Flensted mobiles I've seen in the flesh never seem to have enough presence though I suppose at the price one shouldn't complain.
I don't think I'll ever look at a Calder stabile in the same way after my daughter, when she was about a year old and being carried in a 'wilkie net' took a swipe at a small Calder maquette that was raised on a plinth at a Sothebys viewing...it rocked alarmingly but just managed to stay upright (I think the estimate on it was about £200,000...)
I'm content with the tiny Calder sketch I have which he did for the architect Oskar Nitschke in the 30s.
Second pic is a Kenneth Martin 'screw' mobile.
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