Edited with text by Cara Manes. Text by Alexander Calder, Alexander S. C. Rower.
On Alexander Calder’s fruitful, creative and enduring relationship with MoMA, from the early wire sculptures to late abstractions
Alexander Calder’s work first appeared in the Museum of Modern Art’s galleries in 1930, in the exhibition Painting and Sculpture by Living Americans. Over the next decades the artist’s connection with the Museum would be deep, productive and mutually beneficial. Calder cultivated friendships and working relationships with notable figures, including Alfred H. Barr Jr., the Museum’s founding director, and James Johnson Sweeney, with whom he collaborated on his expansive retrospective exhibition in 1943. His work is imprinted on MoMA’s early history, not only for its material and conceptual innovation but also for its presence at significant moments, such as a mobile made to hang over the lobby’s grand staircase on the occasion of the new Goodwin and Stone building (Lobster Trap and Fish Tail, which hangs there to this day); an elaborate candelabra to adorn the tables at a celebratory anniversary event; and a sculpture to fly off a flagpole to advertise the landmark exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art.
Alexander Calder: Modern from the Start celebrates this extraordinarily fertile relationship between an institution and an artist who was both an important creative partner and, with his magnificent gift of 19 works in 1966, a major donor. Through MoMA, Calder came to be known as a pioneer of modern sculpture, and through Calder, MoMA came to understand itself as an American museum of modern art.
After studying engineering, Alexander Calder (1898–1976) moved to Paris in the late 1920s, where he found himself at the center of the city’s artistic avant-garde. There, he developed his Cirque Calder, a performance artwork comprising dozens of miniature handmade objects, and a group of standalone figurative works in wire. Turning toward abstraction in 1930, Calder invented the mobile—an abstract sculpture made of independent parts that incorporate natural or mechanical movement. He would continue to explore the possibilities of this visual language for the rest of his career, eventually shifting to monumental constructions and public works.
"A Universe" (1934) is reproduced from Alexander Calder: Modern from the Start, published to accompany the exhibition currently on view at MoMA. Cara Manes writes, "Calder's sculptures … depend on a viewer's perception of their many elements to achieve their full expression: they contain infinite forms, none of them final. His is an aesthetic of adjustment, of a body to an object, an object to a body, and an object to itself and to its surroundings. In time, or as Calder wrote, with 'familiarization,' some of a given work's infinite possible expressions will emerge. The longer we spend with his work, the more we see, as physical interventions and their perceptions occur in their own time, with accumulating impact. In precisely the same manner that the work implies no fixed viewpoint, achieves no final form, the Calder story, even laid out in a chronological series of events, eludes simple telling. Which seems to be how the artist wanted it: The admission of approximation is necessary, for one cannot hope to be absolute in his precision. He cannot see, or even conceive of a thing from all possible points of view, simultaneously. While he perfects the front, the side, or rear may be weak; then while he strengthens the other façade he may be weakening that originally the best. There is no end to this. To finish the work he must approximate."
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FORMAT: Hbk, 9 x 10.5 in. / 144 pgs / 113 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $45.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $63 ISBN: 9781633451162 PUBLISHER: The Museum of Modern Art, New York AVAILABLE: 3/2/2021 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
On Alexander Calder’s fruitful, creative and enduring relationship with MoMA, from the early wire sculptures to late abstractions
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Edited with text by Cara Manes. Text by Alexander Calder, Alexander S. C. Rower.
Alexander Calder’s work first appeared in the Museum of Modern Art’s galleries in 1930, in the exhibition Painting and Sculpture by Living Americans. Over the next decades the artist’s connection with the Museum would be deep, productive and mutually beneficial. Calder cultivated friendships and working relationships with notable figures, including Alfred H. Barr Jr., the Museum’s founding director, and James Johnson Sweeney, with whom he collaborated on his expansive retrospective exhibition in 1943. His work is imprinted on MoMA’s early history, not only for its material and conceptual innovation but also for its presence at significant moments, such as a mobile made to hang over the lobby’s grand staircase on the occasion of the new Goodwin and Stone building (Lobster Trap and Fish Tail, which hangs there to this day); an elaborate candelabra to adorn the tables at a celebratory anniversary event; and a sculpture to fly off a flagpole to advertise the landmark exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art.
Alexander Calder: Modern from the Start celebrates this extraordinarily fertile relationship between an institution and an artist who was both an important creative partner and, with his magnificent gift of 19 works in 1966, a major donor. Through MoMA, Calder came to be known as a pioneer of modern sculpture, and through Calder, MoMA came to understand itself as an American museum of modern art.
After studying engineering, Alexander Calder (1898–1976) moved to Paris in the late 1920s, where he found himself at the center of the city’s artistic avant-garde. There, he developed his Cirque Calder, a performance artwork comprising dozens of miniature handmade objects, and a group of standalone figurative works in wire. Turning toward abstraction in 1930, Calder invented the mobile—an abstract sculpture made of independent parts that incorporate natural or mechanical movement. He would continue to explore the possibilities of this visual language for the rest of his career, eventually shifting to monumental constructions and public works.
