海角大神

The bright colors and biomorphic forms of Alexander Calder鈥檚 sculpture and mobiles are instantly recognizable. Parks and plazas everywhere bloom with his public commissions, and his work is found in museums all over the world. He is easily one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.聽

But for all his visibility, Calder is not fully credited as a major artist. The mere fact of his popularity has turned off many art critics, with the exception of Jed Perl, who has taken up the monumental task of producing a two-volume biography of Calder. The first, 鈥淐alder: The Conquest of Time: The Early Years: 1898-1940,鈥� was published in 2017. Now, the follow-up, 鈥淐alder: The Conquest of Space: The Later Years: 1940-1976,鈥� has been released.

Having established Calder鈥檚 background in the first volume, this book opens during World War II when Calder and his wife, Louisa, were living in Roxbury, Connecticut, where their home was a popular gathering place for many of the European modernists who had fled to America. This was natural because Calder and his wife had lived in Paris and were close friends with many of the refugees.

By this time, Calder was already an established artist. In 1943, the Museum of Modern Art gave him a retrospective, the first American abstract artist to receive such a tribute.聽

Perl鈥檚 narrative makes Calder come alive. The artist was an ebullient, funny, and fun-loving man who made friends easily and kept them. He liked to dance, travel, and go to parties. A friend said, 鈥淐alder is so devoted to friends, so gregarious, that when he goes from the first to the third floor [in an elevator] he wants company for the ride.鈥� Unlike some of the abstract expressionists with whom he overlaps, Calder was neither tortured nor misogynistic Rather he was an 鈥渋mperturbable optimist.鈥� He was married to his wife until the day he died. He was a devoted father and a doting grandparent.

Perl is a gifted writer and he tells the story with obvious affection for the artist. He seems to have seen every work that Calder made and writes about them with verve and insight. The sections about Calder creating sets for theater and ballet productions, along with his entertaining illustrated books, provide a full portrait of the artist and reveal Calder鈥檚 great gifts. Perl also addresses Calder鈥檚 skills as a draftsman and printmaker 鈥� two aspects of his oeuvre that are easily overlooked.

Calder鈥檚 very popularity worked against his artistic reputation. 鈥淚 want to make things that are fun to look at, that have no propaganda value whatsoever,鈥� Calder told one interviewer.聽

He told a reporter, 鈥淭here is no idea I want to express 鈥� no meaning. ... What I have tried to do is just create something interesting to look at.鈥� In Perl鈥檚 words, Calder was celebrating 鈥渁rtistic escapism. ... Elation was a philosophical principle.鈥澛�

This notion of 鈥渇un to look at鈥� led Calder to take on projects that were easy for the critics to dismiss. So when he was asked to paint a commercial airliner for Braniff he responded, 鈥淚鈥檇 like to see my colors flying in the sky. A jet? I鈥檇 like that.鈥� The pop artists were doing similar things, but unlike them, Calder鈥檚 work had no irony or social criticism behind it. The critics pounced and Calder鈥檚 standing in art history has arguably suffered as a result.

One perceptive critic writing about Calder鈥檚 1976 retrospective at the Whitney Museum noted that Calder鈥檚 art 鈥渋s so much fun, it so easily seduces the eye and so shamelessly charms the mind, that it is just possible ... for the casual or inattentive viewer to miss something important: the fact that Calder is a major figure in the history of modernist sculpture. ... His great distinction ... was to introduce an element of wit into the solemnities of Constructivist art at the same time that he literally set it in motion.鈥�

Unlike the other major artists of the 20th century, Calder has never had a comprehensive biography that set his life and work in context. Thanks to Jed Perl鈥檚 magisterial work, now he does.