Wednesday, October 27, 2021 - 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Speaker: Alex J. Taylor
In this paper, I will consider how Alexander Calder’s mobiles were drawn into the aesthetic apparatus of the jet age airport. In the post-war decades, Calder’s mobiles were installed in terminals in Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh and Dallas. Calder undertook further commissions for carriers including Middle Eastern Airlines and Braniff International. These works, I want to suggest, provided something that airports and airlines increasingly could not: a unified, palpable vision of the passing of space and time that confirmed its reality, but also suggested something of the bendability of its rules – preparing travelers in the terminal and at the ticket desk for the experiences of dislocation and suspension that lay ahead. This colloquium is the first presentation of a paper I am writing for the conference About Time: Temporality in American Art and Visual Culture at the Université de Paris, November 4-5, 2021. I look forward to feedback that will help me refine my paper in time for this conference!
https://pitt.zoom.us/my/haadept
Zoom password available on HAA Undergraduate and Graduate Canvas sites, or by request from haadept@pitt.edu.