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拍品专文
How can art be realized? Out of volumes, motion, spaces bounded by the great space, the universe. Out of different masses, light, heavy, middling—indicated by variations of size or color—directional lines—vectors which represent speeds, velocities, accelerations, forces, etc. . . .—these directions making between them meaningful angles, and senses, together defining one big conclusion or many. Spaces, volumes, suggested by the smallest means in contrast to their mass, or even including them, juxtaposed, pierced by vectors, crossed by speeds. Nothing at all of this is fixed. Each element able to move, to stir, to oscillate, to come and go in its relationships with the other elements in its universe. It must not be just a “fleeting” moment, but a physical bond between the varying events in life. Not extractions, but abstractions. Abstractions that are like nothing in life except in their manner of reacting.
—Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder’s Exit is a definitive and mature example of the artist’s renowned mobiles. Widely regarded as one of the most innovative modern sculptors, Calder reimagined the role and function of sculpture, freeing it from millennia of relative stasis and ushering in a new era of artistic freedom and inventiveness. Calder relied on intuitive principles of balance, weight distribution and aerodynamics to create his suspended mobiles. A committed modernist, Calder visited Piet Mondrian’s Paris studio in 1930, an experience that is well documented as one of the sparks that ignited his shift to abstraction in art. Calder was also close friends with the Spanish painter Joan Miró, and yet their works developed along entirely separate trajectories. Their friendship was based on outsiders from the established art scene and reveled in their disdain of convention. From the early stages of their relationship, the pair explored the increasingly dominant field of abstraction—Calder prompted by his experience in Piet Mondrian's atelier and Miró with his painterly forms that would eventually morph themselves into his iconic Constellations a few years later. The far-reaching elements of Exit recall the lyrical, semi-abstracted forms of Miró’s paintings, a visual relationship that is emphasized by the fact that they are held together by wires that resonate with the elegant sense of calligraphic line of the Spanish artist.
Exit celebrates Alexander Calder’s lifelong passion for movement and abstraction through energized forms. The unique use of an arrow-like shape makes the present work a rare iteration of the artist’s kinetic sculpture, paying homage to the artist’s career-long survey of directional movement in space. In some ways, Exit is a culminating moment for the artist—a nod to the concept of motion, which is so integral to Calder’s work. The flock of red elements take flight in the wake of this uppermost shape in black, which serves almost like a zenith, performing a dramatic descent as it dashes forward into space. With a signature palette of red, black, and white and spanning almost five feet across at its widest point, the present work occupies space in a theatrical and quintessentially Calder way.
The idea of the arrow here further plays on the idea of mobility and motion that characterizes the dynamic movement of the work itself. Using little more than the suggestive, soft forms of a pointed tip and a flouted tail, Calder ingeniously draws on a connection between a narrative symbol and his own sculpture, seemingly anchoring it to the physical world in a way he rarely does. Beyond its use-value as a symbol, the arrow has long been imbued with a more spiritual meaning, alluding to the idea of motion, dynamism and energy. It comes as no surprise that an artist Calder much admired, Paul Klee, used the arrow symbol frequently in his work: “The father of the arrow is the thought, how do I expand my reach?” Klee wrote. “Over this river, this lake, this mountain? ... It is the contrast between power and prostration that implies the duality of human existence. Half winged, half imprisoned — this is man! Thought is the mediary between earth and the universe” (P. Klee, quoted in From the Arrow to the Fish: Paul Klee's Architectural Thinking, Columbus, 2007).
Notable is the sculpture’s approximation of a real, observable event: the motion of an arrow through space. Like an actual archer, Calder can plan an arrow’s flight-path, but is ultimately forced to rely on gravity and wind currents to achieve his goal. Thus, Exit acts as a useful microcosmic metaphor for Calder’s mobiles more broadly. In addition to meticulous planning and precise execution, Calder’s mobiles also rely on environmental externalities for their full activation.
In addition to its elegantly balanced form, Exit is also distinguished by its chromatic range and intensity. Color was an important expressive device for the artist and one of the most important factors in his compositions. For Calder, color was not a representational force but rather an emotional one, in much the same way as Henri Matisse and André Derain, the historical pioneers in non-traditional use of color. As Calder himself once commented: “I want things to be differentiated. Black and white are first—then red is next—and then I get sort of vague. It’s really just for differentiation, but I love red so much that I almost want to paint everything red. I often wish that I’d been a fauve in 1905” (A. Calder, quoted in Calder, London, 2004, p. 89). Exit clearly demonstrates this philosophy with its harmonious use of black and white discs to compliment the chromatic brilliance of its red structure and elements.
Executed in 1975, Exit was realized during a decade in which Calder devoted much of his time and effort to public commissions. Three years prior, in 1972, Calder started working on the commission project for the new East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which would be one of the last major commissions that he conceived. In the maquettes he sent to the Board of Trustees in 1972 and 1973 and the final work Untitled installed in 1976, a sequence of five V-shape metal plates appeared. Exit bears a shared dynamism and force with these aforementioned works, as the elements take flight with soaring energy and monumental force, despite the difference in scale. Exit, like so much of Calder’s work, beautifies the once-mundane and transforms the humblest of materials into powerful works of kinetic sculpture.
—Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder’s Exit is a definitive and mature example of the artist’s renowned mobiles. Widely regarded as one of the most innovative modern sculptors, Calder reimagined the role and function of sculpture, freeing it from millennia of relative stasis and ushering in a new era of artistic freedom and inventiveness. Calder relied on intuitive principles of balance, weight distribution and aerodynamics to create his suspended mobiles. A committed modernist, Calder visited Piet Mondrian’s Paris studio in 1930, an experience that is well documented as one of the sparks that ignited his shift to abstraction in art. Calder was also close friends with the Spanish painter Joan Miró, and yet their works developed along entirely separate trajectories. Their friendship was based on outsiders from the established art scene and reveled in their disdain of convention. From the early stages of their relationship, the pair explored the increasingly dominant field of abstraction—Calder prompted by his experience in Piet Mondrian's atelier and Miró with his painterly forms that would eventually morph themselves into his iconic Constellations a few years later. The far-reaching elements of Exit recall the lyrical, semi-abstracted forms of Miró’s paintings, a visual relationship that is emphasized by the fact that they are held together by wires that resonate with the elegant sense of calligraphic line of the Spanish artist.
Exit celebrates Alexander Calder’s lifelong passion for movement and abstraction through energized forms. The unique use of an arrow-like shape makes the present work a rare iteration of the artist’s kinetic sculpture, paying homage to the artist’s career-long survey of directional movement in space. In some ways, Exit is a culminating moment for the artist—a nod to the concept of motion, which is so integral to Calder’s work. The flock of red elements take flight in the wake of this uppermost shape in black, which serves almost like a zenith, performing a dramatic descent as it dashes forward into space. With a signature palette of red, black, and white and spanning almost five feet across at its widest point, the present work occupies space in a theatrical and quintessentially Calder way.
The idea of the arrow here further plays on the idea of mobility and motion that characterizes the dynamic movement of the work itself. Using little more than the suggestive, soft forms of a pointed tip and a flouted tail, Calder ingeniously draws on a connection between a narrative symbol and his own sculpture, seemingly anchoring it to the physical world in a way he rarely does. Beyond its use-value as a symbol, the arrow has long been imbued with a more spiritual meaning, alluding to the idea of motion, dynamism and energy. It comes as no surprise that an artist Calder much admired, Paul Klee, used the arrow symbol frequently in his work: “The father of the arrow is the thought, how do I expand my reach?” Klee wrote. “Over this river, this lake, this mountain? ... It is the contrast between power and prostration that implies the duality of human existence. Half winged, half imprisoned — this is man! Thought is the mediary between earth and the universe” (P. Klee, quoted in From the Arrow to the Fish: Paul Klee's Architectural Thinking, Columbus, 2007).
Notable is the sculpture’s approximation of a real, observable event: the motion of an arrow through space. Like an actual archer, Calder can plan an arrow’s flight-path, but is ultimately forced to rely on gravity and wind currents to achieve his goal. Thus, Exit acts as a useful microcosmic metaphor for Calder’s mobiles more broadly. In addition to meticulous planning and precise execution, Calder’s mobiles also rely on environmental externalities for their full activation.
In addition to its elegantly balanced form, Exit is also distinguished by its chromatic range and intensity. Color was an important expressive device for the artist and one of the most important factors in his compositions. For Calder, color was not a representational force but rather an emotional one, in much the same way as Henri Matisse and André Derain, the historical pioneers in non-traditional use of color. As Calder himself once commented: “I want things to be differentiated. Black and white are first—then red is next—and then I get sort of vague. It’s really just for differentiation, but I love red so much that I almost want to paint everything red. I often wish that I’d been a fauve in 1905” (A. Calder, quoted in Calder, London, 2004, p. 89). Exit clearly demonstrates this philosophy with its harmonious use of black and white discs to compliment the chromatic brilliance of its red structure and elements.
Executed in 1975, Exit was realized during a decade in which Calder devoted much of his time and effort to public commissions. Three years prior, in 1972, Calder started working on the commission project for the new East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which would be one of the last major commissions that he conceived. In the maquettes he sent to the Board of Trustees in 1972 and 1973 and the final work Untitled installed in 1976, a sequence of five V-shape metal plates appeared. Exit bears a shared dynamism and force with these aforementioned works, as the elements take flight with soaring energy and monumental force, despite the difference in scale. Exit, like so much of Calder’s work, beautifies the once-mundane and transforms the humblest of materials into powerful works of kinetic sculpture.