Warhol (1928–87) places Aldrin next to the American Flag for added effect. Armstrong had portrayed Aldrin standing on the barren lunar terrain, his own silhouette reflected on the visor of his crewmate’s helmet, a shot that made headlines around the world and remains one of the defining images of the era. Moonwalk celebrates the historic Moon landing of July 1969, when Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong and ‘Buzz’ Aldrin became the first human beings to step on another world. Albert Einstein was reportedly spellbound by A Universe when it was first exhibited at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, standing and watching the two spheres moving for the whole forty-minute cycle. While Calder was fascinated by the everchanging, ever-expanding Universe, the world of science was equally fascinated by his interpretation of it. Calder’s fascination with the cosmos was encouraged by contemporary advances in astronomy, particularly the discovery of the dwarf planet Pluto in 1930. Calder was a pioneer of ‘drawing’ in three dimensions, using wire as a means of rendering line as volume in space, in addition to his famed experiments with the element of movement in his artworks. A black iron pipe provides a central axis that eventually curves as a helix, around which thinner lines arc to recall the rings of Saturn.
A Universe is Calder’s take on the cosmos, its abstract spheres, circles, lines and ellipses conjuring an impression of planetary motion through the Solar System. A motor in the base causes the two small red and white globes to glide at different speeds along the undulating wires in a pattern that takes forty minutes to complete. This sculpture by the renowned American artist Alexander Calder (1898–1976) was one of his first to move. And what greater human condition is there than our position on this singular planet amidst an ever-expanding celestial unknown? We've highlighted ten modern artists featured in The Universe who've grappled with the subject evaluating humanity's intimate relationship with the cosmos in thought-provoking visual and sculptural renderings. Throughout history, artists have contemplated and reflected on the human condition. Phaidon's just-released book The Universe: Exploring the Astronomical World presents an extensive image-based survey of the cosmos as depicted by artists, astronomers, and visionaries dating as far back as 16,500 B.C., when the earliest representations of constellations appeared in cave paintings in Lascaux, France and Cueva del Castillo, Spain. The book is notable for its use of juxtaposition rather than being organized chronologically or thematically, The Universe presents disparate works side-by-side, highlighting fluctuations in humanity's understanding of space across vast lengths of time. So, how did all of this mind-blowing, world-expanding information affect the Modern Art movement happening at the time? In 1915, Proxima Centauri (the nearest star to Earth-excluding the Sun) was discovered in 1930, Clyde Tombaugh discovered everyone's favorite dwarf planet, Pluto in 1951 the United States sent four monkeys to space in 1958 NASA was founded and in 1969, we landed on the moon.
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