Calder - just think mobile

Alexander Calder, The Brass Family, 1929.
© 2018 Calder Foundation, New York /
Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SOCAN, Montréal.
Photo courtesy Whitney Museum, New York.

Rebecca and I went to the Musée des Beaux Arts today. I thought we were seeing a Picasso Exhibit.

Instead it was the Calder Exhibit. It is not that see the Calder Exhibit is a mistake.  I was just surprised to have made a mistake of that enormity.

Just a surprise that we were at an unintended (for us) space.

I signed up for an individual year's pass -- entrance and all of the shows for $85.  When I asked where the coat lounge was the woman told me that now I am a member I can use the VIP lounge.  I can use it and so can my guest, which really made Rebecca laugh.  A lovely place with windows over looking Sherbrooke Street and coffee tables where exhibition catalogues from former exhibits are artfully placed.  That was worth the price of the museum yearly pass alone.

And so was the wrought iron staircase on the stairwell leading up to the museum.  I was reminded of the one floor in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London where there are so many examples of wrought-iron bannisters.

I told Rebecca Jarvis I was unleashing my full feminist critique on our experience and that she should watch out for the new me she was about to encounter.

Alexander Calder, Little Spider, about 1940.
© 2018 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York / SOCAN, Montréal.
Photo courtesy the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

What shocked me right away is that just as she was about to talk, I could feel the same words going to come out of my mouth.

In fact, after a few minutes I told her, just be still and I will say the words and see if they are not just exactly what you are thinking.

My suspicion was true.

We are like two minds in total synchronicity.  We have no need to talk to one another.  It is like mental telepathy.

I haven't had that experience with any other person on earth.  Just a slight glance and she can know what I am thinking, and I can know what she is thinking, even though I don't believe in such things happening.

Photo MMFA, Denis Farley

The picture with the red horse in the middle of the room doesn't give justice to the real colour of the walls. It seemed as though the whole room was engulfed in white light.

 The floor was white. The small risers underneath the artwork, kept my feet from getting to close to the mobiles -- keeping me just far enough away to enjoy their beauty.

We went directly to watch a film that was running -- Calder with some of his earliest wire artwork, reminiscent of a circus.

The artwork is about motion, and it is such a treasure to have these small clips of film that can take us back to a place in time where artifice is at is minimum.

Alexander Calder, Circus Scene, 1926, 
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
 © 2018 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), 
New York / SOCAN, Montréal. Photo Benjamin Blackwell.

I didn't know that Calder was the inventor of the mobile.  He even invented the word which later found its way into Webster's Dictionary.

Now every child's crib has a mobile.

Every child has probably made one in a craft unit during art at school.

I had never thought about someone taking art and making it into a form that had three dimensions and moved -- not sculpture, but moving sculpture.

A terrific time -- even in the gift shop!

Arta