ON SEEING THE CALDER EXHIBIT AT THE WHITNEY MUSEUM

Last week my friend Doris and I went to see the Calder Exhibit at the Whitney Museum.  The show is entitled "Alexander Calder:  The Paris Years, 1926-1933."

In a fine pamphlet that accompanies the exhibit, the viewer learns just how extraordinary those seven years were:

"When Calder arrived in Paris in 1926, he aspired to be a painter; when he left in 1933, he had evolved into the artist we know today:  an international figure and defining force in twentieth-century sculpture.  In these seven years Calder's fluid, animating drawn line transformed from two dimensions to three, from ink and paint to wire, and his radical innovations included open-form wire caricature portraits, a bestiary of wire animals, his beloved and critically important miniature Circus (1926-31), abstract and figurative sculptures, and his paradigm-shifting "mobiles."

Calder had studied engineering.  He knew the principles.  He had an engineer's eye--and he had an affinity for movement.  He put art into motion.  But would the engineer and the artist have come together, divided no more, in any place other than Paris?

In Paris, Calder enjoyed the company of many artists and writers.  He became life-long friends with such artists as Piet Mondrian, Fernand Leger, Joan Miro and Marcel Duchamp.  It was in the studio of Mondrian that Calder received the "shock" (his word) that turned him toward abstraction and triggered ideas for employing movement in abstract sculptural forms.

In Mondrian's studio, Calder saw some colored rectangles tacked on the wall.  Calder suggested to Mondrian "that perhaps it would be fun to make these rectangles oscillate."  Mondrian wasn't interested. He said his paintings were already very fast.  But for the one with the engineer's eye, it was a defining moment.

There are wonderful things to see in this show, not the least of which is the Circus with film of Calder "performing" it.  However, for me, an equally compelling aspect of the show is the role of context--both in terms of place and people.  Calder found his "band of brothers" in Paris and it made all the difference.