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拍品专文
‘The universe is real but you can’t see it. You have to imagine it. Once you imagine it, you can be realistic about reproducing it’ – A. Calder
Alexander Calder’s bold and colourful painting The Black Mountain epitomises the artist’s lifelong fascination with colour and form, an interest which led him to produce some of the most exciting and innovative works of the post-War period. Here, ribbons of vibrant pigment are positioned alongside solid monochromatic forms in an arrangement that is reminiscent of a landscape, yet their reductive forms decisively dissolve the traditional boundaries between abstraction and figuration. Currently the subject of a major exhibition at the Tate Modern in London, Calder is regarded as one of the most exciting and original artists of his generation. His dynamic and colourful forms, which he composed both on and off the canvas, uniquely bring together elements of both the European avant-garde and the exuberant abstract forms through which American art would soon come to dominate the world. Held in the Kahns’ collection since it was acquired from Perls Galleries, The Black Mountain exemplifies Calder’s singular style which continues to keep his audiences spellbound, more than half a century after they were created.
Although primarily known for his hanging mobiles and monumental sculpture, Calder was also a prolific painter, and his canvases and works on paper are some of the most intoxicating works in his oeuvre. With its vibrant chromatic arrangements, The Black Mountain encapsulates Calder’s infectious sense of joie de vivre. Set against the backdrop of a warm setting sun, a Technicolor river weaves its way across the surface—these bands of pure pigment meander past a large black mass, hinting at the work’s title. Populating the foreground are a number of ‘hourglass’ forms reminiscent of the wooden elements found in some of the artist’s earliest sculptural forms. In this painting, colour is clearly one of the dominant motifs and within the confines of its surface Calder demonstrates his confidence by placing non-complimentary colours next to each other with dazzling effect. Although distinctly non-referential, Calder’s use of colour is nonetheless deliberate. He uses its properties to improve and enhance the appearance of the forms with which he constructs his compositions. Red, one of the key colours here, was among the artist’s favourite and he used it many of his most important sculptural works, ‘I love red so much,’ he once said, ‘that I almost want to paint everything red. I often wish that I’d been a fauve in 1905’ (A. Calder, quoted in H. Mulas & H. H. Arnason, Calder, London 1971, p. 69). Another of Calder’s preferred colours was black, an element which features strongly here, defining as it does the object that denotes the painting’s title. Calder often used black as a monolithic element as it helped to solidify and refine the individual elements in his works.
Before leaving to spend time in Paris, where he became acquainted with many of the giants of the avant-garde, Calder studied painting at New York’s Art Students League in the 1920s under the tutelage of the Aschan artists John Sloan and Boardman Robinson. But it was his friendship with Joan Miró that suggests complicity. Parallels between Calder’s colourful forms and the Spanish artist’s bold and colourful biomorphic shapes seem clear, yet the American artist’s forms are unique, infused with both American and European sensibilities. As the American critic and director of the Solomon R, Guggenheim Museum, James Johnson Sweeney, surmised, ‘Calder brought an art expression that was not immediately associable with the work of the great leaders of the prewar years, or even of the years before World War I, as was so commonly true of the most ambitious work visible in Paris exhibitions at the time. Calder brought something fresh – something characteristically youthful, something blithe … He was an American. He was an American speaking an international language’ (J. J. Sweeney, quoted by M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1998, p. 227).
Alexander Calder’s bold and colourful painting The Black Mountain epitomises the artist’s lifelong fascination with colour and form, an interest which led him to produce some of the most exciting and innovative works of the post-War period. Here, ribbons of vibrant pigment are positioned alongside solid monochromatic forms in an arrangement that is reminiscent of a landscape, yet their reductive forms decisively dissolve the traditional boundaries between abstraction and figuration. Currently the subject of a major exhibition at the Tate Modern in London, Calder is regarded as one of the most exciting and original artists of his generation. His dynamic and colourful forms, which he composed both on and off the canvas, uniquely bring together elements of both the European avant-garde and the exuberant abstract forms through which American art would soon come to dominate the world. Held in the Kahns’ collection since it was acquired from Perls Galleries, The Black Mountain exemplifies Calder’s singular style which continues to keep his audiences spellbound, more than half a century after they were created.
Although primarily known for his hanging mobiles and monumental sculpture, Calder was also a prolific painter, and his canvases and works on paper are some of the most intoxicating works in his oeuvre. With its vibrant chromatic arrangements, The Black Mountain encapsulates Calder’s infectious sense of joie de vivre. Set against the backdrop of a warm setting sun, a Technicolor river weaves its way across the surface—these bands of pure pigment meander past a large black mass, hinting at the work’s title. Populating the foreground are a number of ‘hourglass’ forms reminiscent of the wooden elements found in some of the artist’s earliest sculptural forms. In this painting, colour is clearly one of the dominant motifs and within the confines of its surface Calder demonstrates his confidence by placing non-complimentary colours next to each other with dazzling effect. Although distinctly non-referential, Calder’s use of colour is nonetheless deliberate. He uses its properties to improve and enhance the appearance of the forms with which he constructs his compositions. Red, one of the key colours here, was among the artist’s favourite and he used it many of his most important sculptural works, ‘I love red so much,’ he once said, ‘that I almost want to paint everything red. I often wish that I’d been a fauve in 1905’ (A. Calder, quoted in H. Mulas & H. H. Arnason, Calder, London 1971, p. 69). Another of Calder’s preferred colours was black, an element which features strongly here, defining as it does the object that denotes the painting’s title. Calder often used black as a monolithic element as it helped to solidify and refine the individual elements in his works.
Before leaving to spend time in Paris, where he became acquainted with many of the giants of the avant-garde, Calder studied painting at New York’s Art Students League in the 1920s under the tutelage of the Aschan artists John Sloan and Boardman Robinson. But it was his friendship with Joan Miró that suggests complicity. Parallels between Calder’s colourful forms and the Spanish artist’s bold and colourful biomorphic shapes seem clear, yet the American artist’s forms are unique, infused with both American and European sensibilities. As the American critic and director of the Solomon R, Guggenheim Museum, James Johnson Sweeney, surmised, ‘Calder brought an art expression that was not immediately associable with the work of the great leaders of the prewar years, or even of the years before World War I, as was so commonly true of the most ambitious work visible in Paris exhibitions at the time. Calder brought something fresh – something characteristically youthful, something blithe … He was an American. He was an American speaking an international language’ (J. J. Sweeney, quoted by M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1998, p. 227).