Word: calders
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Died. Alexander Calder, 78, America's foremost sculptor...
Alexander Calder's timing was never off. On the face of it, the best death an artist could have is to perish laden with age and honors yet still working, and at a time when he is thrust anew into the public eye through a large and deservedly popular exhibition of 50 years of his work. Such was the context of Calder's death last week, from a heart attack, at the age of 78. The flag on New York's Whitney Museum, where his show of more than 200 works had opened in October (TIME...
...Calder's activity straddled two continents; he kept studios in France and the U.S., and was one of the first American-born artists to be accepted as a charter member by the European avantgarde. Still, as his good friend Fernand Léger once put it, Calder was "a hundred percent American." His heritage was also art. His Scottish-born grandfather, Alexander Milne Calder, came to the U.S. at 22, later sculpted the famous 37-ft. statue of William Penn that stands atop Philadelphia's city hall. Father Alexander Stirling Calder sculpted the classic George Washington statue...
...this sense of mutated organic form, emphasized by Calder's reluctance to smooth away the traces of making the sculpture (bolts always show, surfaces are always hand-painted rather than sprayed), that gives such life to his stabiles-Calderese for static sculptures. They are by turns as graceful as plants, as energetic in profile as a jumping tarpon: Calder's sense of edge is unfailing. Partly because they are assembled from sheet steel and do not dislodge great lumps of space, they also have a light, affable air to them. The larger, recent mobiles are rather less exhilarating...
...drawings are less impressive.The early studies for circus figures, drawn in one continuous line-as the sculptures are made with a continuous wire-are skillful but inconsequential. Nevertheless, they are far above the level of his later gouaches. Thousands of these exist, and not a day in Calder's life appears to pass without more being made. But as a painter, Calder is a paragon of boring fecundity. One is put in mind of an ancient Galapagos turtle laying eggs. There are thousands of them, all alike, and few survive. Even Jean Lipman, his friend of 40 years...