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Lot Essay
This work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York under application number A16489.
Calder's work is closely related to the concerns of the Surrealists and their interests in mechanization, anthropomorphic form, interstellar imagery, the unconscious, dreams and the fantastic. Joan Miró, in particular, had an important influence on Calder's work and supported his creation of fantastic animal forms. Hans Richter's 1947 film, titled Dreams that money can buy, incorporated the work of Calder as well as that of Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. The film's plot follows a struggling artist, who is able to gaze into another person's eyes and cause him to fall into a deep sleep, resulting in surreal dreams. The present work, painted in the same year, seems to create a dream sequence composed of affable, if predatory creatures who inhabit a shallow pictorial plane within an abstraction of day and night, earth and sky under the watchful gaze of a moon shaped face.
Calder's work is closely related to the concerns of the Surrealists and their interests in mechanization, anthropomorphic form, interstellar imagery, the unconscious, dreams and the fantastic. Joan Miró, in particular, had an important influence on Calder's work and supported his creation of fantastic animal forms. Hans Richter's 1947 film, titled Dreams that money can buy, incorporated the work of Calder as well as that of Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. The film's plot follows a struggling artist, who is able to gaze into another person's eyes and cause him to fall into a deep sleep, resulting in surreal dreams. The present work, painted in the same year, seems to create a dream sequence composed of affable, if predatory creatures who inhabit a shallow pictorial plane within an abstraction of day and night, earth and sky under the watchful gaze of a moon shaped face.