Chicago Loop: Willis Tower / Universe

Universe – by Alexander Calder

Location: Willis Tower, Wacker Drive lobby

Installed: October 25, 1974.
The work was dedicated along with Calder’s other work “Flamingo” in the Federal Plaza.

The sculpture was commissioned by Sears, Roebuck and Company,
for its location of its headquarters at Sears Tower [now Willis Tower].

NOTE: In March 2017, the sculpture has been removed.
It is currently in an art storage facility and its future is unknown. There are some legal disputes about it.

Universe – by Alexander Calder

The “Universe” was commissioned by Sears, Roebuck and Company, for its location of its headquarters at Sears Tower [now Willis Tower]. It was dedicated with great fanfare, along with Calder’s other work “Flamingo” in the Federal Plaza on October 25, 1974.. Fast forward 40 years, Flamingo’s existence is under threat, and Universe is gone. The latter has been in legal dispute with its current owner the Blackstone Group. Now no one knows its fate.

One of America’s most well respected sculptors Alexander Calder was known as the originator of the mobile, a type of moving sculpture made with delicately balanced or suspended shapes that move in response to touch or air currents. Calder’s monumental stationary sculptures are called stabiles. Universe was mobile, whereas Flamingo stabile.

Universe is Calder’s imaginative representation of the Big Bang theory of creation.

The underlying sense of form in my work has been the system of the Universe, or part thereof. Each element can move, shift or sway back & forth in a changing relation to each of the other elements in the universe. Thus, they reveal not only isolated moments, but a physical law or variation among the elements of life. Not extractions, but abstractions. Abstractions which resemble no living things except by their manner of reacting.
– Alexander Calder.

Its components are explained in the book on Chicago’s Public Art by Ira J. Bach and Mary Lackritz Gray..
There are five basic parts:
[1] To the left is floor-to-ceiling spine with ten pennant-shaped extension colored red, yellow, blue and black. All except bottom blue pennant rotate slowly.
[2] To its right are three flower-shapes colored red, blue and black. Two rotate clockwise and one counterclockwise.
[3] Further rights is a huge black pendulum, 9 feet in diameter, suspended from a 22 feet long arm.
[4] On the far right is the “sun”, 7 1/2 feet in diameter. It is made of two intersecting disks , painted red, orange and black.
[5] Mounted on the floor is a horizontal black helix, 25 feet long and 7 feet high. It spirals slowly.

One day, I stood at one place and took 4-5 photos..
Each one came out slightly different.
Cause the sculpture is kinetic. It moves!
Check out images below..