Vertical Constellation with Bomb

Alexander Calder invented mobiles, sculpture that moved, in the early 1930s. Later, he added large-scale stabiles, fixed sculpture. During World War II, Calder created the Constellations series. The pieces are motionless, like stabiles, yet airy, like mobiles. Many, for example Vertical Constellation with Bomb, rest on a flat surface, but some Constellations are mounted from the wall at an angle. Generally, they are composed of small abstract forms carved from wood that are carefully arranged in three dimensions. The materials are either painted or left unfinished.[...]

After a few years of making wire figures, Calder’s work took a different direction, but he did not know what to call his new pieces. One night, a friend brought Marcel Duchamp to his studio in Paris, and Calder took the opportunity to ask the master of visual and linguistic innuendo for advice. “I asked him what sort of name I could give these things and he at once produced ’Mobile.’ In addition to something that moves, in French it also means motive.” Likewise, Calder consulted with Duchamp and another friend, James Johnson Sweeney, when naming his Constellations series.
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  thanks to plep