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Lot Essay
“I think best in wire.” -Alexander Calder
Executed circa 1929, Acrobats combines two of Alexander Calder’s most important early themes: wire sculptures and the circus. This highly sophisticated portrayal of two performers was made shortly after the artist emerged onto the public consciousness with his iconic work Cirque Calder (1926-1931, Whitney Museum of American Art), his kinetic rending of the excitement of the Big Top. Complete with galloping horses, flying trapeze artists, and brave lion tamers putting their heads in their charge’s mouths, the resulting critical acclaim resulted in a short burst of creativity when Calder produced a series of now famous larger wire sculptures. Featuring subjects from the circus, as well as other entertainers such as Josephine Baker and Jimmy Durante, these sculptures were among the earliest of the artist’s works to achieve critical acclaim. Speaking to the importance of these works, the curator of Calder’s major retrospective at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. in 1998 wrote “In wire Calder had found his first serious sculptural medium, a virtually unprecedented one in sculpture” (M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington. D.C., 1988, p. 20).
In Acrobats, a female performer balances precariously on the head of her partner. Her slender figure is comprised solely of metal wire carefully manipulated and worked by Calder to denote not only her graceful silhouette, but also her unique personality. Her statuesque arms present and support her upturned left leg, while her weight is supported on her elegant, tapered right leg. Meantime, her statuesque partner is more solidly defined, his muscular upper body emphasized by the contoured band around his expansive barrel chest. Thick arms mirror his partner’s pose, outstretched, presenting their athletic and artistic accomplishments to an enthralled audience. In this figure too, Calder infuses his figure with a sense of personality and fun. The man’s heavy-set eyes and broad nose, amply portray the ‘hard man’ image of the archetypal circus strongman. However, Calder balances this by including a humorous touch, adding his own ‘signature’ in the form a garter band around the man’s impressively sized leg.
Acrobat follows what had become one of the artist’s most famous and celebrated works. Cirque Calder debuted in 1926, the first kinetic work to draw widespread public acclaim. A highly sophisticated endeavor, it comprises of a model circus complete with a ringmaster, jugglers, trapeze artists, sword swallowers, clowns, and performing animals. Made from a variety of media included wire, wood, cork, yarn, paper, and string, Calder activated individual acts to the delight of watching audiences. First performed in Paris in 1926, by the time the present work was created, Calder Cirque had been viewed on both side of the Atlantic by an impressive roster of people who soon became ardent fans, including Jean Cocteau, Fernand Léger, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, Le Corbusier, and Isamu Noguchi.
Calder’s interest in the circus can be traced back to 1925 when, as part of his job as an illustrator for the National Police Gazette, he spent several weeks with the Barnum and Bailey Circus at their residency at New York’s Madison Square Garden. “I love the space of the circus,” Calder recalled, “It wasn’t the daringness of the performers, nor the tricks or gimmicks; it was the fantastic balance in motion that the performers exhibited” (A. Calder, quoted by M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington. D.C., 1988, p. 17). This sense of “balance in motion” is clearly evident in Acrobats.
The origins of his wire sculptures can be traced back further, to Calder’s childhood. “When I began using wire, I was working in a medium I had known since a child,” he said. “I used to gather up ends of copper wire discarded when a cable had been spliced and with these and some beads would make jewelry for my sister’s dolls” (A. Calder, quoted by M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington. D.C., 1988, pp. 19-20). Later, he studied illustration with Boardman Robinson and Guy Pène du Bois, and Calder credited Robinson with having taught him to draw a perfect line without lifting his pen from the sheet, something which came naturally to him: “I seemed to have a knack for doing it with a single line,” he said (A. Calder, ibid., p. 17). This early training would come to be prophetic for Calder, as to universal acclaim he had created works that were both aesthetically pleasing, but that had also resulted in a new sculptural form: “In a short time he achieved an indisputable virtuosity in the medium, wielding his pliers with remarkable dexterity and ingenuity to create objects characterized by grace, delicacy, and humor…In wire Calder had found his first serious sculptural medium, a virtually unprecedented one in sculpture” (M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington. D.C., 1988, p. 20).
With the circus, Calder joined a proud lineage of artist who had been drawn to the same subject matter. In addition to the spectacle and excitement of the Big Top, the fact that many of the performers existed on the periphery of society endeared them to the artistic community, many of whom often felt the same indignation. In Paris, Edgar Degas was fascinated by both dancers and acrobats and immortalized a number of circus performers, particularly one named Miss La La, an Afro-German acrobat who was famous for her act at the Cirque Fernando in which she was suspended from the roof of the circus tent (200 feet above the audience) using only her teeth. Around the same time, Georges Seurat painted a number of canvases, including Le Cirque (1890-91, Musée d’Orsay, Paris) which feature a female performer, also from the Cirque Fernando, performing her act on horseback as it rides around the ring. The Cirque Fernando proved to a popular place for artists to meet and was the subject of a number of paintings and drawings by the likes of Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg), 1879, Art Institute of Chicago) and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (Equestrienne (at the cirque Fernando), 1888, Art Institute of Chicago).
As noted, Acrobats combines two of the artist’s early concerns: the thrill of the circus and his ingenious wire sculptures. With consummate skill Calder manipulates utilitarian material into a work of art that conveys drama, excitement, skill, and most of all fun. It is these elements that would go on to influence much of the rest of his career. For the artist, it was a medium with which he felt most comfortable and most confident, with himself commenting “I think best in wire” (A. Calder, quoted by M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington. D.C., 1988, p. 21).
Executed circa 1929, Acrobats combines two of Alexander Calder’s most important early themes: wire sculptures and the circus. This highly sophisticated portrayal of two performers was made shortly after the artist emerged onto the public consciousness with his iconic work Cirque Calder (1926-1931, Whitney Museum of American Art), his kinetic rending of the excitement of the Big Top. Complete with galloping horses, flying trapeze artists, and brave lion tamers putting their heads in their charge’s mouths, the resulting critical acclaim resulted in a short burst of creativity when Calder produced a series of now famous larger wire sculptures. Featuring subjects from the circus, as well as other entertainers such as Josephine Baker and Jimmy Durante, these sculptures were among the earliest of the artist’s works to achieve critical acclaim. Speaking to the importance of these works, the curator of Calder’s major retrospective at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. in 1998 wrote “In wire Calder had found his first serious sculptural medium, a virtually unprecedented one in sculpture” (M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington. D.C., 1988, p. 20).
In Acrobats, a female performer balances precariously on the head of her partner. Her slender figure is comprised solely of metal wire carefully manipulated and worked by Calder to denote not only her graceful silhouette, but also her unique personality. Her statuesque arms present and support her upturned left leg, while her weight is supported on her elegant, tapered right leg. Meantime, her statuesque partner is more solidly defined, his muscular upper body emphasized by the contoured band around his expansive barrel chest. Thick arms mirror his partner’s pose, outstretched, presenting their athletic and artistic accomplishments to an enthralled audience. In this figure too, Calder infuses his figure with a sense of personality and fun. The man’s heavy-set eyes and broad nose, amply portray the ‘hard man’ image of the archetypal circus strongman. However, Calder balances this by including a humorous touch, adding his own ‘signature’ in the form a garter band around the man’s impressively sized leg.
Acrobat follows what had become one of the artist’s most famous and celebrated works. Cirque Calder debuted in 1926, the first kinetic work to draw widespread public acclaim. A highly sophisticated endeavor, it comprises of a model circus complete with a ringmaster, jugglers, trapeze artists, sword swallowers, clowns, and performing animals. Made from a variety of media included wire, wood, cork, yarn, paper, and string, Calder activated individual acts to the delight of watching audiences. First performed in Paris in 1926, by the time the present work was created, Calder Cirque had been viewed on both side of the Atlantic by an impressive roster of people who soon became ardent fans, including Jean Cocteau, Fernand Léger, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, Le Corbusier, and Isamu Noguchi.
Calder’s interest in the circus can be traced back to 1925 when, as part of his job as an illustrator for the National Police Gazette, he spent several weeks with the Barnum and Bailey Circus at their residency at New York’s Madison Square Garden. “I love the space of the circus,” Calder recalled, “It wasn’t the daringness of the performers, nor the tricks or gimmicks; it was the fantastic balance in motion that the performers exhibited” (A. Calder, quoted by M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington. D.C., 1988, p. 17). This sense of “balance in motion” is clearly evident in Acrobats.
The origins of his wire sculptures can be traced back further, to Calder’s childhood. “When I began using wire, I was working in a medium I had known since a child,” he said. “I used to gather up ends of copper wire discarded when a cable had been spliced and with these and some beads would make jewelry for my sister’s dolls” (A. Calder, quoted by M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington. D.C., 1988, pp. 19-20). Later, he studied illustration with Boardman Robinson and Guy Pène du Bois, and Calder credited Robinson with having taught him to draw a perfect line without lifting his pen from the sheet, something which came naturally to him: “I seemed to have a knack for doing it with a single line,” he said (A. Calder, ibid., p. 17). This early training would come to be prophetic for Calder, as to universal acclaim he had created works that were both aesthetically pleasing, but that had also resulted in a new sculptural form: “In a short time he achieved an indisputable virtuosity in the medium, wielding his pliers with remarkable dexterity and ingenuity to create objects characterized by grace, delicacy, and humor…In wire Calder had found his first serious sculptural medium, a virtually unprecedented one in sculpture” (M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington. D.C., 1988, p. 20).
With the circus, Calder joined a proud lineage of artist who had been drawn to the same subject matter. In addition to the spectacle and excitement of the Big Top, the fact that many of the performers existed on the periphery of society endeared them to the artistic community, many of whom often felt the same indignation. In Paris, Edgar Degas was fascinated by both dancers and acrobats and immortalized a number of circus performers, particularly one named Miss La La, an Afro-German acrobat who was famous for her act at the Cirque Fernando in which she was suspended from the roof of the circus tent (200 feet above the audience) using only her teeth. Around the same time, Georges Seurat painted a number of canvases, including Le Cirque (1890-91, Musée d’Orsay, Paris) which feature a female performer, also from the Cirque Fernando, performing her act on horseback as it rides around the ring. The Cirque Fernando proved to a popular place for artists to meet and was the subject of a number of paintings and drawings by the likes of Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg), 1879, Art Institute of Chicago) and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (Equestrienne (at the cirque Fernando), 1888, Art Institute of Chicago).
As noted, Acrobats combines two of the artist’s early concerns: the thrill of the circus and his ingenious wire sculptures. With consummate skill Calder manipulates utilitarian material into a work of art that conveys drama, excitement, skill, and most of all fun. It is these elements that would go on to influence much of the rest of his career. For the artist, it was a medium with which he felt most comfortable and most confident, with himself commenting “I think best in wire” (A. Calder, quoted by M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington. D.C., 1988, p. 21).