Skip to main content

Google doodle goes mobile for Alexander Calder's 113th birthday


New Delhi: A piece of kinetic art took the place of the usual Google logo to celebrate the 113th birthday of American artist and sculptor Alexander Calder.
Friday's Google doodle shows a mobile, a type of kinetic sculpture that was invented by Alexander Calder. Mobiles take advantage of the principle of equilibrium and have objects hanging from rods. Kinetic art uses motion for an artistic effect.
Mobiles are usually brightly coloured free-moving creations in abstract shapes made from sheet metal. The mobile Google doodle sways on its own and can also be controlled by mouse gestures.
Screenshot/US Library of Congress
Calder was born on July 22, 1898 in Lawnton, US to a family of artists. While his father and grandfather were both sculptors, his mother was a painter.
He graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1919. He then took art lessons. After a brief career in commercial art, Calder moved to Paris and put up an exhibition of a miniature circus with toy-like animals made of wood and wire. In Paris he formed associations with renowned artists and their influence helped him shape his art.
Calder was also a jewellery designer, an interest that developed when he was fashioning a wedding ring for his marriage with Louisa Cushing James. Besides his sculptures, Calder also illustrated a number of books. Besides mobiles, he also earned a name with stabiles, a type of stationary abstract sculptures.
With the years Calder also scaled up the size of his mobile and stabile installations. Calder died at the age of 78 on November 11, 1976. Two months after his death, Calder was honoured with United States' highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Interactive and animated Google doodles have now become a regular feature on the Google home page. The last such doodle was during the total lunar eclipse of June 15-16 when Google put up its first live doodle that refreshed itself every two minutes to reflect the stage of the moon.
For a dozen years, Google has been occasionally swapping its everyday logo for a doodle, a sketch celebrating holidays, inventions, artists and sporting events, and showcasing designs from contest-winning students.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In pics: The Bachchan Family Tree

The Bachchans:  Bachchans are busy celebrating the arrival of Aishwarya and Abhishek's daughter. Let's meet the Bachchan clan Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Amitabh Bachchan's father was a famous Hindi poet. He is most popular for his book 'Madhushala'. He passed away in 2003. Harivansh Rai Bachchan got married to Shyama in 1926. Shyama died after ten years of marriage. Harivansh married Teji Bachchan (in the picture) in 1941. They had two sons, Amitabh and Ajitab. Born in 1969, Amitabh Bachchan is the most popular Bollywood celebrity today. Ajitabh Bachchan (second from left) is Amitabh's younger brother Amitabh Bachchan is married to actress Jaya Bachchan. They have two children, Abhishek Bachchan and Shweta Nanda. Jaya was born in a Hindu Bengali family to Taroon Kumar Bhaduri and Indira Bhaduri. Her father was a writer, journalist and stage artist. Abhishek's elder sister Shweta Bachchan Nanda is married to industrialist Nikhil Nanda. Nikhil and Shweta have t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Google doodle celebrates André-Jacques Garnerin and the 216th anniversary of the first parachute jump

Google has created a ‘doodle’ to celebrate the 216th anniversary of the world’s first parachute jump. The doodle is based on Andre-Jacque Garnerin’s daring leap on October 22 1797 at Parc Monceau in Paris, which saw the then 28-year-old leap from a balloon using a seven-metre silk parachute that resembled an umbrella. Once Garnerin’s balloon reached a height of approximately 3,000 feet, the Parisian daredevil severed the rope that attached it to his basket, automatically opening the parachute. This left Garnerin plummeting towards the earth still inside the container, with just the attached silk parachute in place to decrease the speed of its fall. Although the basket lurched violently during the descent and suffered a violent landing, Garnerin somehow emerged totally uninjured. Following the jump, Garnerin was granted the title Official Aeronaut of France and he went on to become a well-known international figure. He and his wife Jeanne Genevieve Labross...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thor Heyerdahl's 100th Birthday Marked by a Google Doodle

Google on Monday is celebrating the 100th birth anniversary of Thor Heyerdahl with an animated doodle. The Norwegian 'ethnographer and adventurer' Thor Heyerdahl was most famous for his 8,000km 'Kon-Tiki' voyage across the Pacific Ocean. Born on October 6 1914, the subject of Monday's  Google  doodle Thor Heyerdahl as an ethnographer was trained in biology, botany, zoology and geography at the University of Oslo. Ethnography, is the systematic study of people and cultures where the researcher observes a society from the point of view of the subject of the study. Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki expedition is the best known of his distinguished career, with the ethnographer showing just why the appellation 'adventurer' was appropriate for him. Sailing 8,000km in a handmade raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands, Thor Heyerdahl aimed to demonstrate that ancient cultures could have made contact with each other across vast geographical distances wi...
Post a Comment
Read more