Spiral Theme 1941

This transparent sculpture, "Spiral Theme," was made by Naum Gabo, but when exactly, who knows? What I love most is that it doesn’t matter. I can imagine Gabo, like a mad scientist in his lab, bending and coaxing these planes of translucent material into forms that seem both weightless and precisely engineered. Like a paper airplane caught in a gentle breeze, the sculpture has a sense of arrested motion. It's a fleeting moment made permanent. Gabo was probably thinking about space, about how to capture it, divide it, and reshape it. The lines and curves create a dialogue between positive and negative space, challenging our perception of depth and volume. The little coil nestled in the center is especially great – it's like the engine of a very quiet, very beautiful machine. Artists are always riffing off each other, and I see echoes of other constructivists here, maybe even a bit of Tatlin. But Gabo brings his own delicate sensibility, and invites us to see the world in a new way, full of possibility.