It consisted of three elements: a red disc, interlocking steel hoops, and a vertical rectangle, black on one side and white on the other, against a blue backdrop.

[1] “A sense of drama is evident in much of Calder’s work, and his predilection for strong color, movement and large scale led naturally to the theater,” wrote Jean Lipman in the Whitney Museum of American Art catalogue Calder’s Universe .

[2] One of Calder’s first stage commissions was the mobile decor made in February 1936 for a production of Erik Satie’s Socrate at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, sponsored by a group with the amusing name the Friends and Enemies of Modern Music.

In 1975, exactly forty years after he had asked Calder to make this Socrate set, Virgil Thomson found himself reminiscing about the Friends and Enemies of Modern Music with Joel Thome, director of the Philadelphia Composers Forum/Orchestra of Our Time.

Thomson’s vivid description of the 1936 production of Socrate inspired Thome with the idea of re-creating Calder’s lost set.

[5] Using the drawings, Hatke set to work on a tabletop model and the 2:3-scale and full-scale recreations while Calder was in France.

Thome appealed the decision, and the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court rejected the appeal in 2009, finding that the court did not have the power to declare the purported Calder works authentic nor to order the Calder Foundation to include them in the catalogue raisonné.

[12] This decision set an important precedent protecting artist’s estates and foundations when offering their expert opinions.