Whitney Museum of American Art
On view October 16, 2008 – February 15, 2009
“For decades [Calder's] Circus, lent by the artist in 1970 to the Whitney Museum of American Art, has set flight to the imaginations of visiting children and adults. Now the museum is celebrating its genesis in “Alexander Calder: The Paris Years, 1926-1933,” an exhibition that brings the young Calder and the giddy ferment of his artistic circle to life.”
–The New York Times,
Josephine Baker IV
When Alexander “Sandy” Calder (1898–1976), 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 openform 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 in his Paris studio, 14 Rue de la Colonie, fall 1931
The Whitney has the largest body of work by Alexander Calder in any museum and is proud to be the exclusive American venue for this landmark exhibition, co-organized with the Centre Pompidou.
Calder with Myxomatose, Paris
Calder with his Cirque Calder, 1926-30
Witness private and political moments along Barack Obama’s path to the presidency, as seen by official White House photographer Pete Souza
Kate Isherwood graduated from the University of Plymouth in 2008 with a first class BA (hons) in Photography, where she was also awarded the Greg O’Shea Memorial Prize given to one student in recognition of their outstanding photographic practice throughout the degree. She has recently embarked on a two year, part-time MRes at Plymouth, where she will be researching the work of landscape photographers in Britain during the 19th Century, with particular emphasis on notions of Place and Identity.
In the current economic, environmental, and political climate, change seems the only constant we can hold onto. And with change comes movement. From shifting markets and politics to 24/7 Facebook feeds and global travel, flux defines our times. Even the production of a print magazine is a shifting series of negotiations, creative processes, and re-interpretations. The latest issue of design mind tries to capture this notion of movement in as many ways as possible, whether through the eyes of a ballet choreographer, a parent nurturing a hyperactive child, or a designer trying to manage the flow of ideas.
