As art has become more ideas-based and less about reproduction of the world around us, engineering’s role in it has grown in importance.
Creating gravity-defying mobiles, rearranging the pieces of an exploded shed, building an inside-out sculpture of a house, and designing a fountain from tipping water hoppers, are all 20th-century works of art whose success is underpinned by engineering.
How much of what we call art or engineering is about context? Do the materials and technology we use matter? And can the passage of time change our views on what is or isn’t art?
The American artist Alexander Calder (1898-1976, below) is best known for creating large mobiles from brightly coloured aluminium shapes of varying weights and densities, hung from extended series of thin metal rods. Earlier in his career, Calder made cartoon-like sculptures of people and animals out of strands and spirals of wire that quivered and danced with any movement of air. He also built...