拍品专文
In the same family collection for over fifty years, the cascade of vibrant colors that comprises Alexander Calder’s Blue Among Yellow and Red perfectly demonstrates the artist’s ability to harness color, form and movement in the pursuit of a dynamic and invigorating art. Executed in 1963, at the height of Calder’s compositional powers, the present work demonstrates his continued dedication to making hand-made mobile sculptures at a time when he was increasingly focused on large-scale civic commissions. Widely exhibited, including in the artist’s 1964 international travelling retrospective organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on New York and having recently been on extended long-term loan to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Blue Among Yellow and Red is a work of exemplary distinction.
Measuring over five feet across at its widest point, the present work consists of a cascade of fifteen colorful elements suspended gracefully in midair. Located at the end of a red metal armature, each element acts independently of each other, yet also in concert of the composition as a whole. Activated by the movement of the air that surrounds it, the sculpture is a constantly changing structure filled with color, form and dynamism.
In addition to its elegantly balanced elements, the present work is also distinguished by the chromatic range and intensity of the colors that Calder selected. Color was an important expressive device for the artist and an important factor in his compositions. For Calder, vibrant pigment was not a representational force, but rather one used for “differentiation,” as he once stated it. (A. Calder, in Katharine Kuh, ed., The Artist’s Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists. New York and Evanston, Illinois: Harper & Row, 1962, p. 41). Color in Calder’s work can carry an emotional force, much as Henri Matisse and André Derain, the historical pioneers in non-traditional use of color, regarded it. Here, Calder exploits the optical effect of the shifting intensity of color by carefully placing the opposing colors in close proximity to each creating a dramatic sense of opposition.
Blue Among Yellow and Red was first exhibited in 1964 in a retrospective curated by Thomas M. Messer, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The exhibition was a huge critical success with the New York Times gushing that Calder was the perfect artist to display in Frank Lloyd Wright’s beautifully curved rotunda: “The Guggenheim has never looked so good… Calder…has never been so well displayed… With its walls painted white the museum sparkles with reds, blacks, yellows and blues of the Calders that stand, hang, and float about you” (J. Canaday, “Art: A Blissful Marriage; Display Unites Calder and the Guggenheim,” The New York Times, November 6, 1964, p. 34).
With works such as Blue Among Yellow and Red, Calder helped to change the trajectory of the medium of sculpture—from a static and monochromatic genre, rooted to the earth, toward new sculptural concepts that take flight and move through space. It was Calder’s experience of Piet Mondrian’s studio environment that signaled his shift to abstraction in Paris in 1930, and soon after, he introduced the fourth dimension of time into sculpture. In contrast with traditional sculpture, Calder’s mobiles do away with the base or pedestal a sculpture would typically have, are unbounded by gravity, and extend dynamically into space. The mobiles are utterly fascinating and complex creations that move in response to touch or to subtle, random currents of air. Movement is so central to Calder’s oeuvre that art historians consider it to be the primary force that defines his efforts. “By its very nature, the mobile has no fixed form, no ultimate or ideal state, but exists as a sequence of motions that, cumulatively, make up an open-ended composition in a state of constant change” (M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, Washington D.C., 1998. p. 138).
Blue Among Yellow and Red comes with the exceptional provenance of having been part of the legendary collection of Leonard and Ruth Horwich for the past five decades. The couple were leading figures in the Chicago art community who assembled a collection that celebrated the extraordinary range and breadth of human creativity in twentieth century art. Their passion for collecting began soon after their marriage in 1942 and grew as they became close friends with other legendary Chicago collectors such as Joseph and Jory Shapiro and Lindy and Edwin Bergman. Ruth Horwich became an enthusiastic supporter of many of the city’s art institutions, realizing that it provided her not only with an ideal opportunity to indulge her own passion, but also to give back to the community that she loved so much. In the 1980s, Ruth created the Leonard and Ruth Horwich Family Loan to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, which was comprised of a significant group of fifteen Calders from their collection that formed the foundation of the MCA's 2010 exhibition, Alexander Calder: Form, Balance, Joy. The Horwich Calders now form part of the institution's permanent collection, a legacy gift which has helped to transform the MCA Chicago into one of the world's largest museums dedicated to contemporary art.
Measuring over five feet across at its widest point, the present work consists of a cascade of fifteen colorful elements suspended gracefully in midair. Located at the end of a red metal armature, each element acts independently of each other, yet also in concert of the composition as a whole. Activated by the movement of the air that surrounds it, the sculpture is a constantly changing structure filled with color, form and dynamism.
In addition to its elegantly balanced elements, the present work is also distinguished by the chromatic range and intensity of the colors that Calder selected. Color was an important expressive device for the artist and an important factor in his compositions. For Calder, vibrant pigment was not a representational force, but rather one used for “differentiation,” as he once stated it. (A. Calder, in Katharine Kuh, ed., The Artist’s Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists. New York and Evanston, Illinois: Harper & Row, 1962, p. 41). Color in Calder’s work can carry an emotional force, much as Henri Matisse and André Derain, the historical pioneers in non-traditional use of color, regarded it. Here, Calder exploits the optical effect of the shifting intensity of color by carefully placing the opposing colors in close proximity to each creating a dramatic sense of opposition.
Blue Among Yellow and Red was first exhibited in 1964 in a retrospective curated by Thomas M. Messer, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The exhibition was a huge critical success with the New York Times gushing that Calder was the perfect artist to display in Frank Lloyd Wright’s beautifully curved rotunda: “The Guggenheim has never looked so good… Calder…has never been so well displayed… With its walls painted white the museum sparkles with reds, blacks, yellows and blues of the Calders that stand, hang, and float about you” (J. Canaday, “Art: A Blissful Marriage; Display Unites Calder and the Guggenheim,” The New York Times, November 6, 1964, p. 34).
With works such as Blue Among Yellow and Red, Calder helped to change the trajectory of the medium of sculpture—from a static and monochromatic genre, rooted to the earth, toward new sculptural concepts that take flight and move through space. It was Calder’s experience of Piet Mondrian’s studio environment that signaled his shift to abstraction in Paris in 1930, and soon after, he introduced the fourth dimension of time into sculpture. In contrast with traditional sculpture, Calder’s mobiles do away with the base or pedestal a sculpture would typically have, are unbounded by gravity, and extend dynamically into space. The mobiles are utterly fascinating and complex creations that move in response to touch or to subtle, random currents of air. Movement is so central to Calder’s oeuvre that art historians consider it to be the primary force that defines his efforts. “By its very nature, the mobile has no fixed form, no ultimate or ideal state, but exists as a sequence of motions that, cumulatively, make up an open-ended composition in a state of constant change” (M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, Washington D.C., 1998. p. 138).
Blue Among Yellow and Red comes with the exceptional provenance of having been part of the legendary collection of Leonard and Ruth Horwich for the past five decades. The couple were leading figures in the Chicago art community who assembled a collection that celebrated the extraordinary range and breadth of human creativity in twentieth century art. Their passion for collecting began soon after their marriage in 1942 and grew as they became close friends with other legendary Chicago collectors such as Joseph and Jory Shapiro and Lindy and Edwin Bergman. Ruth Horwich became an enthusiastic supporter of many of the city’s art institutions, realizing that it provided her not only with an ideal opportunity to indulge her own passion, but also to give back to the community that she loved so much. In the 1980s, Ruth created the Leonard and Ruth Horwich Family Loan to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, which was comprised of a significant group of fifteen Calders from their collection that formed the foundation of the MCA's 2010 exhibition, Alexander Calder: Form, Balance, Joy. The Horwich Calders now form part of the institution's permanent collection, a legacy gift which has helped to transform the MCA Chicago into one of the world's largest museums dedicated to contemporary art.