Calder Foundation

Featured Text

Introduction

Fernand Léger

Galerie Percier, Paris. Alexandre Calder: Volumes–Vecteurs–Densités / Dessins–Portraits. Exhibition catalogue. 1931. Translation courtesy Calder Foundation, New York.

Eric Satie illustré par

Calder

Pourquoi pas ?

“C’est sérieux sans en avoir l’air.”

Néoplasticien à l’origine il a cru à l’absolu des deux rectangles colorés….

Son besoin de fantaisie a rompu le lien ; il s’est mis à “jouer” avec les matières : bois, plâtre, fil de fer, surtout fil de fer…. période pittoresque et spirituelle….

….Réaction, le fil se tend, devient rigide, géométrique—plastique pure—c’est l’époque actuelle—volonté anti-Romantique dominée par le souci de l’équilibre.

Devant ces nouvelles œuvres transparentes, objectives, exactes, je pense à Satie, Mondrian, Marcel Duchamp, Brancusi, Arp, ces maîtres incontestés du beau inexpressif et silencieux. Calder est de cette ligne-là.

C’est un Américain 100/100.

Satie et Duchamp sont 100/100 Français.

Comme on se rencontre ?

Eric Satie illustrated by

Calder

Why not?

“It’s serious without seeming to be.”

Neoplastician from the start, he believed in the absolute of two colored rectangles….

His need for fantasy broke the connection; he started to “play” with his materials: wood, plaster, iron wire, especially iron wire…. a time both picturesque and spirited….

….A reaction; the wire stretches, becomes rigid, geometrical—pure plastic—it is the present era—an anti-Romantic impulse dominated by the problem of equilibrium.

Looking at these new works—transparent, objective, exact—I think of Satie, Mondrian, Marcel Duchamp, Brancusi, Arp—those unchallenged masters of unexpressed and silent beauty. Calder is of the same line.

He is 100% American.

Satie and Duchamp are 100% French.

And yet, we meet?

Exhibitions  1
Galerie Percier, Paris (1931)

Galerie Percier, Paris. Alexandre Calder: Volumes–Vecteurs–Densités / Dessins–Portraits. 27 April–9 May 1931.

Solo Exhibition
Featured Texts 96

Hauser & Wirth, Somerset, England. Calder: From the Stony River to the Sky. Exhibition catalogue. 2018.

Susan Braeuer Dam, For the Open Air

Jessica Holmes, More than Beautiful: Politics and Ritual in Calder’s Domestic Items

Solo Exhibition Catalogue

“Calder in France.” Cahiers d’Art, no. 1 (2015). Edited by Alexander S. C. Rower.

Susan Braeuer Dam, Calder in France

Robert Melvin Rubin, An Architecture of Making: Saché and Roxbury

Agnès Varda in conversation with Joan Simon

Magazine, Monograph

Musée Picasso, Paris. Calder-Picasso. Exhibition catalogue. 2019.

Bernard Ruiz-Picasso and Alexander S. C. Rower, Confronting the Void

Chus Martinez, No Feeling Is Final

Group Exhibition Catalogue

“Calder in France.” Cahiers d’Art, no. 1 (2015). Edited by Alexander S. C. Rower.

Susan Braeuer Dam, Calder in France

Robert Melvin Rubin, An Architecture of Making: Saché and Roxbury

Agnès Varda in conversation with Joan Simon

Magazine, Monograph