“I think best in wire,” Calder once commented. The artist bent, pinched, and twisted strands of wire to fashion this tribute to Josephine Baker, one of the most celebrated performers of her day. For Calder, wire’s appeal was that it “moves of its own volition” and “goes off into wild scrolls and tight tendrils”—a description that suits this portrait particularly well.
But, while Josephine Baker III was innovative in its formal qualities, the exaggerated features of Calder’s depiction were in keeping with harmful caricatures of Black people in popular entertainment. Though Calder eventually dedicated himself entirely to abstract art, this figurative work—likely one of his first in wire—was a critical touchpoint for his lifelong interest in motion and shadow.
Alexander Calder: Modern from the Start, 2021
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1966, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, acquired as gift from the artist.
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Alexander Calder
American, 1898–1976 294 works onlineAlexander Calder conceived of sculpture as an experiment in space and motion. Ranging from delicate, intimate, figurative objects in wood and wire, to hanging sculptures that move, to monumentally scaled abstract works in steel and aluminum, Calder’s art suggests the elemental systems that animate life itself.
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