Back in the winter
of 2010, the Seattle Art Museum had two side-by-side exhibits, Alexander Calder:
A Balancing Act and Michelangelo Public and Private.
The first celebrated twentieth-century
American sculptor Calder, whose sense of play and joy comes through in every
jot-and-tittle of his wire sculptures, his "joolry", and his mobiles
--- a form he invented. Daughter Alexandra and I were reminded of the winter
day we spent in the National Gallery half-a-dozen years ago, where we chatted
with the guards about Calder's work, and they encouraged us to lie underneath Calder’s
mobiles and watch them from below as they moved in the air currents. And
certainly, we've also wandered the hills and fields of Storm King Art Center in
the Hudson River valley and absorbed their
collection of Calder's massive stabiles sitting among other sculptures. This
Calder-only show gave us a chance to see his work in isolation, to see pictures
of him at work in his studios in New York and Massachusetts, to see the range
in size from tiny to nearly room-filling. We get to see Calder's sense of play,
expressed in metal just as Brendan Gill expressed his sense of play in words
below. Calder's fun shows through like the sunlight breaking through the
Seattle cloud cover.
On the other hand, the Michelangelo show
was a stupid idea. It was a scraped-together collection of Michelangelo's
letters and sketches mostly aimed at showing his craftsmanship, but when viewed
in contrast to Calder's work, it merely showed that Michelangelo was as much
about self-promotion as artistry. Compared to Calder's light-hearted and
literally light abstract ideas, Michelangelo's emphasis on
anatomically-detailed painting and sculpture comes across as beautiful, but
ponderous, particularly coupled with letters to and from him worrying about his
reputation and legacy. We fled quickly.
Sometimes, and with reason, I boast of
never having done an honest day's work in my life. An honest day's play,
oh, that I have accomplished on a thousand occasions or ten thousand. But work
implies a measure of drudgery and fatigue and these are states as yet unknown
to me.
--- Brendan Gill on writing.
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