Calder with Gamma (1947) and Sword Plant (1947), Alexander Calder, Buchholz Gallery/Curt Valentin, New York, 1947, Photo courtesy of Calder Foundation, New York / Art Resource, New York, © 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
AUDIO GUIDE TRANSCRIPT
NARRATOR:
These three photographs offer an intimate glimpse of Calder at work.
The image of Alexander Calder from 1952 was taken by the important photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks. That year, Calder had been selected to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale. Curator José Diaz.
JOSÉ CARLOS DIAZ:
The Venice Biennale is sort of the Olympics of the art world where artists are chosen to represent their countries, and Calder actually won the Grand Prize that year.
This photo was taken for the August 25, 1952, issue of Life magazine and features Calder not installing an exhibition at the Venice Biennale but actually in his studio in Roxbury, Connecticut. This was a very private space, and for Life magazine – or really the American public – to see the artist behind the scenes would have been really captivating at the time.
NARRATOR:
For artist Kennedy Yanko, the photographs offer a different perspective on the work.
KENNEDY YANKO:
When you typically see Calder’s work, you're looking up and you’re looking around. So your entire physical gesture and exploration of it changes. But you can see here how different it is when he's so close to it and how he's experienced it in the making. He's living within the work, and he's living within the sculpture, and I think that that's what allowed all of these monumental sculptures to kind of continue to carry us. That sense of life and that sense of curiosity is how deeply immersed and present he was inside of the pieces.