Dome

Detail, base of the red stabile part of the sculpture; decorative pavers in Beinecke Plaza; The moving parts of Alexander Calder’s kinetic sculptures decorate and energize public spaces across the world. As the painted steel plates of Gallows and Lollipops hover and seesaw around the tip of their red tripod base, they obey chance atmospheric stimuli to destabilize the grid of Beinecke Plaza. Developed in the 1930s, the mobile became Calder’s trademark. While his primary colors follow the purist palette of Piet Mondrian, the animated geometric shapes resemble the abstracted objects and animals in the surrealist paintings of Joan Miró and Paul Klee. Source: Yale University [website]; http://www.yale.edu/ (accessed 5/8/2013)