Red Curly Tail, 1970, Alexander Calder, 1898-1976, sheet metal, rod, bolts, and paint, 192 x 275 x 144 in., Promised gift of Jon and Mary Shirley, © 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, photo: Nicholas Shirley, Brightwood Photos
AUDIO GUIDE TRANSCRIPT
NARRATOR:
Calder had started working on large outdoor sculptures in the 1930s, after he and his wife Louisa moved from Paris to a farmhouse in Roxbury, Connecticut.
Red Curly Tail dates from 1970 – the last decade of his life. It’s essentially a stabile with a mobile element on top, known as a standing mobile.
Curator José Diaz.
JOSÉ CARLOS DIAZ:
Red Curly Tail is a work that originally would have been shown outdoors, but it also has the ... I guess the ambiguity or the ability to be shown inside as a freestanding sculpture without a natural environment around it but actually within other Calder works in this exhibition.
This particular work sort of peeks at you, and you have to approach it, and as you approach it you notice its bold red base. You notice the mobile aspects on top. It's got this anthropomorphic tail that sort of hints at its quality of being something from nature, but it's completely abstract as well.
It does give you a sense of scale because when you look at it, you have to
also look left, right, and look above and realize, wow, I'm face to face with one of Calder’s outdoor works that actually plays with the sense of scale, especially when a human approaches it.
It does take the subtlest air movements to make a Calder mobile move or to sway. However, the outdoor works would require massive gusts of wind. I don't expect it to shuffle much, but I do think that you'll always see it in a different way, and that's really one of the incredible things about this exhibition.