- Artist
- Naum Gabo 1890–1977
- Medium
- Plastic (cellulose acetate)
- Dimensions
- Object: 76 × 76 × 38 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented by the artist 1977
- Reference
- T02179
Summary
During Naum Gabo’s stay in London between March 1936 and the start of the Second World War in September 1939, he produced a series of important works in plastic, including Construction in Space (Crystal), Construction on a Line 1935-7 (Tate T03054) and Construction in Space with Crystalline Centre 1938-40 (Tate T06977). Where Gabo’s earlier sculptures incorporated a diversity of materials and tones, these works were made of clear plastics, achieving a new degree of conceptual purity. Construction in Space (Crystal) was the first work entirely made from transparent planes, an elegant formal solution to the challenge which Gabo had set himself twenty years earlier, that of expressing the dynamic interior of objects.
While Gabo had long been fascinated by scientific models and theories, often adapting their general conclusions for his sculptural ends, this work was directly inspired by a mathematical model. The model, in the Institut Poincaré in Paris, was typical of those reproduced in geometry handbooks, and represented an ‘oscillating developable of a cubic ellipse’ (reproduced in Nash and Merkert (eds.), p.35, fig.39). It had already attracted the attention of the Surrealists, having been exhibited in May 1936 in the Exposition surréaliste d’objets at the Galerie Ratton in Paris, and photographed by Man Ray (1890-1976) for a feature in Cahiers d’Art in the same year. While Gabo may have seen the model himself in Paris, he produced the initial sketches for the construction by tracing from an illustration of the model in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Transposing the strung forms onto planes of transparent plastic stuck together with glue, he incised the sculpture with radiating lines to produce a sense of circular movement. Jan Gordon writing in The Observer in 1937 was ‘convinced that anybody with a true sense of three-dimensional form must be delighted by its subtle complexities and ever-changing rhythms’ (quoted in Hammer and Lodder, p.237). This sense of dynamic forces and centrifugal energies relates to Gabo’s interest in modern physics, in particular to recent discoveries which delineated the physical universe as a continuous field of forces. In addition, his use of the word ‘crystal’ in the title of the work suggests a familiarity with the flourishing science of crystallography, which brought together the geometric and organic by examining the internal structure of molecules to reveal their mathematical regularity.
Despite these clear scientific references, Gabo disavowed any dependence on science in Construction in Space (Crystal). He was struck instead, as the Surrealists had been, by the model’s fanciful asymmetry and its unexpected form, saying later that his aim had been to ‘take this complicated formula and change its realisation to prove that what was basically a fantasy (the intuition of the mathematician) could be seen through the intuition of an artist’ (quoted in Nash and Merkert (eds.), p.223, note to 41). He made six works on the crystal theme. This small model is typical of Gabo’s working process and formed a crucial stage in the development of his new sculptural idea. It was the first completed sculpture, and according to Gabo’s wife Miriam, was made in Cholmley Gardens, London, in 1937. It is possible, however, that Gabo conceived the work as early as 1934, since in 1938 he exhibited the second enlargement as Construction in Space, 1934-7. Both this work and the larger version (Tate T06978) are made from cellulose acetate, also known as Rhodoid. Since Rhodoid was clearer, more malleable and less prone to discolouration than celluloid, it became a favoured material for Gabo’s plastic constructions. Experimenting with different plastics in the 1930s, he enjoyed privileged access to some of the latest materials through his friendship with Dr John Sisson, a chemist working in the Plastics Division of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). It was through Sisson that Gabo was introduced to perspex, a plastic only recently available and even more stable than Rhodoid, and which he used for a later version of Construction in Space (Crystal) produced in 1938-9.
Further Reading:
Martin Hammer and Christina Lodder, Constructing Modernity: The Art and Career of Naum Gabo, New Haven and London 2000, pp.236-7, 250-1, 390-1
Steven A. Nash and Jörn Merkert (eds.), Naum Gabo: Sixty Years of Constructivism, Munich 1985, pp.223-4 (note 41.1), reproduced p.115, fig.31
Jacky Klein
September 2002
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Catalogue entry
T02179 Model for 'Construction in Space "Crystal" ' 1937
Not inscribed
Plastic, 3 x 3 x 1 1/2 (7.6 x 7.6 x 3.8)
Presented by the artist 1977
Exh: Naum Gabo: The Constructive Process, Tate Gallery, November 1976-January 1977 (62)
Lit: Herbert Read and Leslie Martin, Gabo: Constructions, Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings, Engravings (London 1957), p.183, note on pl.52
Model for a construction which exists in five larger versions: three 22 x 22cm owned by Arthur Duckworth, near Frome, Vassar College Museum, Poughkeepsie, New York, and Mrs Miriam Gabo, and two 57 x 57cm, including one which belongs to the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island. One of these was reproduced in Architect and Building News, CLIII, 21 January 1938, p.87 as in the current exhibition of Gabo's work at the London Gallery, probably as catalogue no.16 'Construction in Space' 1937.
The version belonging to Mr Duckworth is inscribed and dated on the base: 'NO.1 | TO MR DUCKWORTH | MADE BY MYSELF | N.GABO | 9.6.37'. It is not clear whether this means that it was the first version on a larger scale.
Published in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, p.247, reproduced p.247
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