In Praise of Alexander Calder
You know, modern art isn’t a monolith, as I’ve written before. I hate Cy Twombly’s pointless scribbles—any time I turn a corner in a museum and see a giant canvas completely lacking balance, dynamism, coherence, or joy, I know I’m looking at a Twombly—but good Lord how I fucking love Alexander Calder’s mobiles.
What’s the difference?
Calder is comforting, is what I want to say, but I can hear the critics pouncing on the word before it’s halfway out my mouth. Art isn’t supposed to be comforting, they say. Art is supposed to be challenging. Art is supposed to be forceful and mind-expanding and profound, but comforting? How dull! How painfully, foolishly dull!
Well, I’m sorry, but it is: it’s comforting. Those bright, flat primary colors mixed with black and white, the almost imperceptible movement, the always-bouba, never-kiki shapes. But most of all, the balance! Never a stultifying symmetry, but always a wonderful, comforting balance! A well-honed sentence transformed into fine art; a melody made physical; a bonsai tree abstracted into pure shape.
What peace his work confers—and I am someone in desperate need of peace. It is so easy, with Calder, to let go of, “Well, what does this mean?” and instead just…look.
How brilliant, to take those shapes no one had dreamed of, to dress them in the colors we all inherently know, and to hang them—hang them!—in space. Piet Mondrian comforts us with his asymetrical, primary-colored, well-balanced paintings. Morris Louis comforts us with his enormous, unprimed, inverted canvases. There are so many others.
There is nothing discordant or ugly or abrasive. Isn’t that what we want? There is so much ugliness in the world. It’s entropy. Entropy, entropy, entropy. And Calder came along and took the free energy of the sun, this little, temporary island rising above the sea of entropy, and turned it into that.
God bless him for doing so.
The experiences I’ve had in the presence of a Calder have been transcendent. I am always amazed how his works respond to the presence of people. Like if someone enters or exits the room, it changes!
Good Morning Alexander. What a wonderful post. I also favour modern art that is pleasing to my senses