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Home , Constellations (Miró), Piet Mondrian

THE SURREAL CALDER • September 30, 2005-January 8, 2006 With every anecdotal element excluded, Calder's object is Gallery 1: THE SURREALIST MILIEU reduced . . . but by sole virtue of movement-not represented move­ Calder's interests specifically converged with those of in his ment, any longer, but real movement-it is miraculously restored to use of playful wit and parody; in his own versions of the so-called life in its most concrete form and conveys to us with equal fel icity "Surrealist Object" and related fantastic, hybrid figures; and in his the evolutions of the celestial bodies, the trembling of leaves on depictions of both organic nature and heavenly . A group their branches, the memory of caresses. of and sculptures from The Menil Collection by M ir6, Max -Andre Breton, Ernst, Rene Magritte, , and sets the stage for Founder of the Surrealist Movement1 "The Surreal Calder" by illustrating these aspects of the Surrealist style that are echoed in Calder's work. The remaining galleries delineate the ways in w hich Calder's love of found objects, humor, and machinery and toys coincided with other themes of both and Surrealism.

THE SURREAL CALDER Gallery 2: WIT, CARICATURE, AND LINEAR FLIGHTS OF FANCY hile remains a ubiquitous presence In the mid-, the Surrealists developed "automatic drawing" as a W in the story of modern , especially in America, he means to liberate the subconscious. W hile at the Art Students League in is rarely viewed or remembered in the context of the 1925, Calder mastered a similar technique of continuous line drawing European avant-garde from which he initially emerged as an artist. based on spontaneous expression: he would make figurative drawings Calder became "Calder" in part due to the presiding influence of without lifting his pen from the sheet. Less than a year later, he exploited the artists living in in the 1920s and , when he resided this technique in his circus drawings, and soon after in Paris, he there. They included Jean Arp, who christened Calder's construc­ adapted it to his wire sculpture. tions "stabiles"; , who provided the name and Calder's mechanical and machine­ concept of the "mobile"; Joan Mir6, who communicated to Calder inspired works share elements of humor and the central theses of Surrealism; and , who intro­ play with much of the Surrealist art from duced him to pure abstraction. the mid-1920s and 1930s. The exhibition Although Calder went on to play a ma jor role in the Surrealist includes his first mechanized sculpture, group during the formative years of the movement, he has not Goldfish Bowl (1929), which operates using usually been included in the Surrealist exhibitions of the last twenty­ a small crank; equally playful is Tightrope five years. Organized by Mark Rosenthal, The Menil Collection's ( 1936), a sculpture that recalls Calder's adjunct curator of twentieth-century art, "The Surreal Calder" places ongoing fascination with the circus, and the artist back in the midst of Surrealism, so that viewers may more Two Acrobats (1929), whose figures change fully understand his achievement within the movement. Comprising in form with the movement of the spectator. approximately sixty objects-many from the Calder Foundation, Like the Surrealists, Calder also parodied with a number of key works from institutions and private collections legendary figures, as seen in early works -the exhibition attests to the ways in which Calder's aesthetic was such as Hercules and Lion (1929) . highly influenced by his Surrealist parentage and how he in turn Included in the exhibition is a "Cabinet contributed to the group. of Curiosities," w hich holds thirty objects gathered by the artist's grandson, Alexander S. C. Rower, from Calder's former studio in Roxbury. The contents reflect the Surrealists' Two Acrobats, 1929 Pai nted w ire and wooden base fascination with mysterious indigenous 34' /4 x 2 1 '/2 x 6•/2 inches The Menil Collection, Housto n objects. Gallery 3: THE SURREALIST OBJECT In 1936 Calder created a The Surrealist Object, as it came to be known after a 1936 exhibi­ group of mobiles in which he tion in Paris, was an object assembled from diverse found materials, painted and suspended metal sometimes with an erotic connotation. As described by Andre Breton, elements against wooden panels "[Surrealist] objects are particularly enviable in their sheer power of within a frame. In Panel evocation, overwhelming us with the conviction that they constitute (1936), each element is the repositories, in art, of that miraculous charm which we long to equipped with a small crank recapture." 2 Indeed, Calder's approach to creating his own Objects that allows it to be wound up recalled his use of everyday materials in his homemade toys of the and set in motion. Calder 191 Os; for the 1936 exhibition, he produced a mobile. equated the shifting relation­ Calder's wood sculpture often has a "disturbing beauty," favored ships of forms in his mobiles by the Surrealists. An example in this exhibition would be Wooden with the natural orbits of Bottle with Hairs (1936). Calder also molded natural materials to bodies in space, a theme suggest spatial and astronomical phenomena, as exemplified by explored in depth in this Gibraltar (1936). Interestingly, in his autobiography Calder vividly exhibition with a group of recalled watching porpoises cavort while he passed through the sculpture and works on paper Straits of Gibraltar late at night on his way to in 1932.3 (see Gallery 6).

Gallery 4: THE MARVELOUS PERSONAGE Inspired by the work of artists such as Picasso, who is represented 1 in the exhibition by Femme au fauteuil rouge [Woman in a Red I Armchair] (1929), Breton applauded "convulsive beauty," a term he I first coined in 1928. While convulsive beauty was sometimes asso­ I I ciated with themes of sexuality and the Surrealist Object, it was also I I used to describe those monstrous and humorous qualities of w hich I I Calder made particular use. left: Calder's works in this gallery have been called "ungainly Gibrallar, 1936 I Lignum vitae, walnut, steel rods, creature[s] worthy of the most macabre surrealist invention ."4 As I and pointed wood 5 17/ a x 24 '/• x 1 1'/a inches he did for many of his Surrealist Objects, Calder assembled these The Museum of , New York, gih of the ortist, sculptures from found materials and they underscore an anthropo­ 1966 morphic strain in his work: for example, he created legs from an apple tree branch in Apple Monster (1938), and in Devil Fish above, right: Wooden Baffle with Hairs, 1943 (1937), he used sheet metal connected by bolts to allude to forms Wood and wire in the natural world. Also on display are Calder's " marvelous" 223fa x 13 x 12 inches W hitney M useum of American (in the Surrealist sense of that word) personages-fantastic, never Art, New York, 50th anniversary gih of the Howard a nd Jean before seen creatures, such as Untitled (1938). Lipman Foundation , Inc. Gallery 5 : IMAGINARY VISIONS OF NATURE The Surrealists were inspired by the spontaneous aspects of the natural world and in turn depicted its lush organic growth in inven­ tive ways. In this exhibition the paintings of Ernst investigate the parallel dimension of flora and fauna. Similar to Ernst's visions­ at once lyrical and ominous-are Calder's gouaches with their embedded biomorphic shapes. Duchamp once compared Calder's art to "the sublimation of a tree in the wind." 5 Calder expressed his vision of the natural world by introducing the dimension of movement into art through mobiles, stabiles, and standing mobiles-most notably, he created his mobiles in an ascending , thus recalling the growth of organic forms. At once monumental and delicate, his mobiles hover just above the floor and maintain a terrestrial quality that is shared by his nature-related stabiles. Resting on pedestals or platforms with their unfolding metal fronds, works such as Un effet du ;aponais (1940) tremble ever so slightly in response to wind currents or vibrations.

Gallery 6 : CONSTELLATIONS AND APPARENT VIEWS OF CELESTIAL SPACE As Calder once said, "The underlying sense of form in my work is the system of the Universe."6 The solar system was a primary pre­ occupation for Calder when he started a unique series in the early 1940s. Named "Constellations" by Duchamp and curator , these delicate sc ulptures reflect similar themes explored in the works of Mir6 and Ta ng uy (on display in Gallery 1). However, in contrast to their works, Calder's constellations are pre­ carious and evoke the heavens in constant motion. While many of these objects rest on a platform, others are borne aloft- mounted on the wall and pedestal, or hung from the ceiling. left: Apple Monster, 1938 Calder experimented with a number of materials to express his Wood {apple branch), wire, and visions of celestial phenomena. Croisil3re (1931) consists of two paint 66 x 55 1/2 x 32 1/ 2 inches wire circles arranged in perpendicular fashion to create an implied Courtesy Calder Foundation, New York sphere with an unanticipated kinetic dimension. Gouaches from the early 1930s treat themes on the planets and movements in space. above, right: Un effet du ;aponois, 1941 And Double Helix-one of the twenty-seven known bronze works Sheet metal, rod, wire, and paint 80 x 80 x 48 inches created in 1944-suggests the subtle movement of rotating spheres Courtesy Calder Foundation, and mobiles. New York -Susan Braeuer, Pro;ect Curatorial Assistant "The Surreal Calder" is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, including an essay by Rosenthal on Calder's Surrealist origins, a suite of Herbert Matter photographs of the artist and his work­ undoubtedly the most vivid taken during Calder's Surrealist years­ and an illustrated chronology of Calder in relation to Surrealism by Rower. After opening at the Menil, the exhibition will travel to the San Francisco , March 3-May 21, 2006, and the Minneapolis Institute of , June 11-September 10, 2006.

The exhibition is generously supported in part by The Eleanor and Frank Freed Foundation, Anita and Mike Stude, an anonymous donor in honor of Elsian Cozens, Mary and Roy Cullen, and Nancy C. Allen, with additional support from The Cullen Foundation, Fayez Sarofim & Co., George and Mary Josephine Hamman Foundation, Houston Endowment Inc., The Wortham Foundation, and the City of Houston.

NOTES 1. Andre Breton, "Artistic Genesis and Perspective of Surrealism," in Surrealism and , trans. Simon Watson Taylor (New York: Macdonald and Company Ltd., 1972), 73. 2. Andre Breton, "Surrealist Exhibition of Objects," in Surrealism and Painting, 283. 3. See Alexander S.C. Rower, Alexander Calder: 7898-1976, exh. cat. (Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1998), 66. 4. Rower, 138. 5 . Marcel Duchamp, quoted in , The Sculpture of this Century (New York: George Braziller, 1959), 85. 6. Carmen Gimenez and Alexander S. C. Rower, Calder: Gravity and Grace, exh. cat. (Bilbao, Spain: Museo Guggenheim, 2003), 51-52.

Cover: Untitled, 1938 Metal, wire, and point 701/ • x 37 x 23 inches Courtesy Calder Foundation, New York

All works by Alexander Calder © 2005 Estate of Alexander Calder/ Artists Rights Society JARS), New York

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