Mobile

A mobile is a type of sculpture made of delicate components suspended in the air, which move in response to air currents or mechanical force. Unlike static sculpture, a mobile continually changes its configuration, so the viewer never sees it the same way twice: balance, line and space are in constant motion. A mobile usually consists of thin metal rods and flat coloured elements, balanced so that the slightest breath of air sets the whole structure into subtle oscillation. The genre was invented by the American sculptor Alexander Calder in the late 1920s and early 1930s; the name "mobile" itself was suggested by Marcel Duchamp. Calder's abstract compositions of coloured metal "petals" became classics of kinetic art and influenced the understanding of sculpture as an art of time and movement rather than mass alone. The opposite concept, also coined by Jean Arp, is the "stabile" — a stationary construction. Mobiles influenced interior design, children's hanging toys and many twentieth-century artists, affirming the idea that sculpture can be light, airy and ever-changing.