Calder's Circus and the Paris Art World
The activations of the Cirque Calder—among the first works that Calder began making in Paris during the 1920s—was crucial to the development of the mobiles and stabiles that are more commonly associated with the artist’s legacy. Developed between 1926 and 1931, the complex and performative Cirque Calder is described by the art historian L. Joy Sperling as the artist’s “first truly significant sculpture,” [i] while critic Jed Perl writes in his biography of the artist that the artwork was “the beginning of an animation of the inanimate that would climax some years later, with the magisterial lyricism of his greatest mobiles.” [ii]
Not only does the Cirque Calder provide an insight into the development of Calder’s later work, its story also sheds light on how the artist became a renowned figure in Paris. As the artwork grew in complexity and conceptual sophistication, so too did Calder’s reputation as a pioneering artist, and a man whose generosity of spirit later made him such a beloved figure by Ellsworth Kelly, Jack Youngerman, and other artists who went to Paris after the war.
Calder’s interest in circuses had been seeded in the United States; after seeing the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus at Madison Square Garden in 1925, while on assignment as an illustrator with the National Police Gazette, Calder spent two weeks in Sarasota, Florida, at the renowned circus’s winter grounds, taking particular interest in the tent and rigging. [iii] Calder’s recollection of this time in a 1964 interview with Cleve Gray makes clear that it was not simply the pageantry of circuses that captured his interest, but the way their structures occupied space:
“I love the space of the circus. I made some drawings of nothing but the tent. The whole thing of the—the vast space—I’ve always loved it.” [iv]
Predating Calder’s development of Cirque Calder was his embellishment of a popular wooden toy, the Humpty Dumpty Circus. [v] In winter 1926, while renting a room in the apartment of Alexander Brook, then assistant director of the Whitney Studio Club, New York, Calder added movement and articulation to the set of store-bought toys for Brooks’ children. As he recalled in his Autobiography with Pictures, “There was an elephant and a mule. They could be made to stand on their hind quarters, front quarters, or heads. Then there were clowns with slots in their feet and claws in their hands; they could balance on a ladder on one foot or one hand. I [articulated] these things with strings, so the clown would end up on the back of the elephant.” [vi] In fall 1926, soon after moving to Paris, Calder began crafting his own circus figures out of wire, wood, cork, and a spectrum of found materials.
Perl describes the early days of the Cirque Calder as “an extremely casual affair,” with performances initiated as though “he was not so much preparing for a performance as he was getting ready to work with his creations and allowing a friend or a friend of a friend to watch as he did—to play along, if you will.” [vii] What began as a simple performance whereupon Calder sat on the floor and maneuvered his wire figures into feats of dramatic and athletic prowess to musical accompaniment from a Victrola, [viii] gradually became one of the Parisian art world’s most sought-after invitations. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, performances in New York and Paris were heralded by linoleum-printed invitations, guests enjoyed snacking on peanuts as they sat on makeshift bleachers, and a spotlight illuminated the circus “ring.” [ix] Alexander S. C. Rower, President of the Calder Foundation, makes clear the significance of the increasing levels of sophistication Calder introduced to the experience:
“Calder’s innovation was to immerse his audience in a live experience with wit, adrenaline, music and action. Retrospectively, it has become acutely clear that the Cirque was the premiere of performance as art.” [x]
The Parisian art world was fascinated with the Cirque Calder—even if it wasn’t entirely sure what it was experiencing. As Perl notes, the first time the work was discussed in print, it was not reviewed by an art critic, but rather by André Legrand, whose remit focused on “popular theatrical entertainments.” [xi] Nevertheless, Perl credits Legrand with having “the largeness of spirit to grasp the idiosyncratic brilliance of Calder’s still nascent gifts,” [xii] describing the various figures Calder had fashioned to populate his circus as “stylized silhouettes” and comparing the effect of the performance to that experienced by viewing the prehistoric cave drawings that had been discovered in caves in the South of France not long before. [xiii]
Cirque Calder eventually grew to fill five large suitcases, and its reputation spread beyond Paris and New York to Berlin and Barcelona. Rower describes how the artist’s steadily growing network of artist colleagues—many of whom Calder met when they attended Cirque Calder performances—opened up his practice in multiple ways: “Calder developed close associations with the artists Jean Hélion, Joan Miró, Jean Arp, Fernand Léger, Piet Mondrian, and Marcel Duchamp, who came to experience his Cirque Calder; they in turn exposed him to modern notions of art while providing support for his own innovations.” [xiv]
The avant-garde writer and artist Jean Cocteau became quite taken with the Cirque Calder, going so far as to indicate a desire to mentor the American artist. However, as Perl explains, “Calder was far too independent-minded to allow himself to be taken under anybody’s wing.” [xv] Indeed, when Cocteau began exhibiting small sculptural figures out of pipe cleaner after attending a performance of the Cirque Calder, the true nature of the dynamic between the artists—specifically, who was inspiring whom—was made clear. [xvi]
Clearly the art world politics of interwar Paris could be heated, but Calder steadfastly remained outside of allegiances and petty feuds. James Johnson Sweeney put it thus: “He was an American not emulous of the accents of the boulevard. He was an American who spoke in his art with his own personal accent.” [xvii]
Calder’s practice retained its independent spirit throughout the war and in the years immediately after, as he and his wife once more began living between France and the United States. By the early 1950s, Calder’s reputation as an artist was international, and this, combined with that instinct for independence, made him a natural choice for inclusion in the 1953 Paris exhibition 12 Modern American Painters and Sculptors.
Read about “12 Modern American Painters and Sculptors.”
[i] L. Joy Sperling, “Calder in Paris: The Circus and Surrealism,” Archives of American Art Journal 28, no. 2 (1988): 16.
[ii] Jed Perl, Calder: The Conquest of Time: The Early Years: 1898-1940, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017, 232.
[iii] Rahel Schrohe, “The Circus A Laboratory,” in Theodora Vischer, ed., Alexander Calder & Fischli / Weiss. Basel: Fondation Beyeler, 2016. Exhibition catalog, 47.
[iv] Alexander Calder, quoted in Cleve Gray, “Calder’s Circus,” Art in America 52, no. 5 (October 1964), 23, excerpted in Alexander S. C. Rower, “Cirque Calder,” in Theodora Vischer, ed., Alexander Calder & Fischli / Weiss. Basel: Fondation Beyeler, 2016. Exhibition catalog, 56.
[v] Sperling, “Calder in Paris…” 17.
[vi] Alexander Calder, Calder: An Autobiography with Pictures, New York: Random House, 1966, 80.
[vii] Perl, Calder: The Conquest of Time…, 214.
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] Sperling, “Calder in Paris…” 19.
[x] Rower, “Cirque Calder,” in Vischer, ed., Alexander Calder & Fischli / Weiss, 56.
[xi] Perl, Calder: The Conquest of Time…, 216.
[xii] Perl, Calder: The Conquest of Time…, 216-17.
[xiii] Perl, Calder: The Conquest of Time…, 217.
[xiv] Alexander S. C. Rower, Calder Sculpture, New York: Universe, 1998, 9.
[xv] Perl, Calder: The Conquest of Time…, 224.
[xvi] Ibid.
[xvii] James Johnson Sweeney, “Alexander Calder,” in James Johnson Sweeney, ed., Alexander Calder. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1951. Exhibition catalog, 67.
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