Strolling through Calder-Picasso without paying heed to any of the wall text, one might think the two giants of modern art were great friends, so clearly do their artworks seem to echo and respond to one another over the many decades of their careers. But in fact, Alexander Calder and Pablo Picasso only met in person a few times. They did not correspond or trade art. Calder even wrote of Picassoâs interest in othersâ work: âHe comes to new shows hoping to pick up something he can useâI guess.â Touché!
But their passing personal encounters (possibly accompanied, in Calderâs case, by a wary side-eye) are just a footnote in this highly engaging exhibition, on view at the de Young Museum through May 23. Thatâs because Calder-Picasso presents a discourse not between two artists, but between the artworks themselves.
First staged in 2019 at the MuseÌe Picasso in Paris and organized by Bernard Ruiz-Picasso and Alexander S. C. Rower (the artistsâ grandsons), the show is arranged in thematic groupings that include both modes of making (âFolding & Piercingâ) and artistic concepts (âThe Void & The Volumeâ). Calder-Picasso juxtaposes two practices that still have plenty to say about approaches to abstraction, color, composition, the transmutation of materials and the seemingly inexhaustible creativity that makes these artistsâ work so exciting to see nearly 50 years after their deaths.
Alexander Calder, ‘Hercules and Lion,’ 1928 on view in ‘Calder-Picasso’ at the de Young Museum. (Courtesy Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; photo by Gary Sexton)
The show begins with the start of Calderâs art career: his 1926 move, at the age of 27, from New York to Paris. Picasso, of course, was already internationally known and two decades older, but the earliest Calder works at the de Young are effortlessly self-assured.
In Calderâs large hanging piece Hercules and Lion (1928), the mythological heroâs burly shoulders are emphasized with loops of wire, his feet splayed in a dynamic pose to counterbalance the attack of a curly-maned lion. In the comparatively diminutive Acrobat from 1929, a simple coil becomes the triumphant athleteâs armpit hair. These are line drawings in three-dimensional space: expressive, playful and often gently kinetic. It makes sense that Calderâs nickname in Paris was âThe King of Wire.â
At the same time, Picassoâs interest in line and movement is represented in a delicate drawing of dancing women; a painting of a deconstructed female figure; and a small, crude body twisted out of thick wire. He too, loved acrobats, but here, they are contained within the rectangular bounds of a canvas surface. Even the maquette for Picassoâs proposed monument to the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, rendered in wire and sheet metal, maintains a rigid geometry.
L: Alexander Calder, ‘Acrobat,’ 1929. R: Pablo Picasso, ‘Figure (Project for a Monument to Guillaume Apollinaire),’ 1928. (Courtesy Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; L: Philip Charles; R: Béatrice Hatala)
Where Calderâs work is light and airy, Picassoâs is solid and dense. Calderâs renderings of figures give way to abstraction in 1931, which he described as âa more minute system of bodies, an atmospheric condition, or even a void.â Picassoâs 1932 painting Nu coucheÌ (Reclining Nude), flanked by Calderâs planet-like CroisieÌre and triangular-based stabile Object with Red Discs begins to look less like a lounging woman and more like a collection of spheres, S-curves and wavy, radiating lines. (This effect continues in Picassoâs Femme assise dans un fauteuil rouge, which could be a painting of a bronze sculpture of Platonic solids, and the eerie woman-as-robot Femme au fauteuil rouge.)
Wall text takes care to emphasize that though some of Calderâs painted metal mobiles may look like leaves, and though one of his sculptures may have the title Wooden Bottle with Hairs (delightful!), these objects are not representational. But neither are they wholly abstract. Both artistsâ work, in fact, rejects such strict demarcations. A catalog essay by Donatien Grau urges a more fluid view: âAbstraction is not a fixed format, separated from the human; quite the opposite, it is a process that keeps evolving.â
L: Alexander Calder, ‘Croisière,’ 1931. R: Pablo Picasso, ‘Nu couché,’ 1932. © 2021 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (Courtesy Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; L: Tom Powel Imaging; R: Adrien Didierjean)
In that vein, Jed Perl writes that Calderâs âradically minimalist sculptures … grew out of his feeling for the curve of a dancerâs thigh or the angle of a shotputterâs arm.â An interest in the shapes and movements of bodies became an interest in shapes and movements. Calder did not abandon the real world in 1931, Grau and Perl both argue, he expanded our understanding of it. While Picassoâs work returns constantly to the human form (in particular, the female form), Calderâs ranges outside human experience to encompass the forces of nature and the shape of galaxies.
As their careers grew and their artworks scaled up (even as women became shapes and cosmologies became crisp arrangements of wood and wire), a surprising sense of warmthâof the artistsâ handsâpersists. In 1944, Calder created models for an unrealized architecture project, represented in this show by three brass and aluminum pieces. They are uncharacteristically bulky, but still made with balancing, interlocking elements that would have been cast in concrete to hover (terrifyingly) 30â40 feet above the street.
Pablo Picasso, ‘Le Taureau (The Bull),’ 1945, on view in ‘Calder-Picasso’ at the de Young Museum. (Courtesy Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; photo by Gary Sexton)
Similarly, Picasso translated cut and folded paper into large sheet-metal sculptures that retained their hand-wrought-ness. His Woman with Outstretched Arms (1961) is angular and cheerful. Despite her pointy edges, she looks huggable.
Ultimately, the pleasure in Calder-Picasso comes from seeing connections and identifying echoes between artworks one might not have previously considered alongside each other. Calder may have revolutionized sculptures by making them move, but in this context, itâs clear that Picassoâs works are also active.
Thereâs the movement of his brushstrokes, and the movement of a viewerâs eye as it travels across a deconstructed form. His 11-part lithograph series Le Taureau (The Bull) repeats the image of a bull as it clarifies into just the few curves required to convey its essence. Itâs a storyboard, a series of still images in a stop-motion animation about the exciting space between figuration and abstraction.
âCalder-Picassoâ is on view at San Franciscoâs de Young Museum through May 23. Details here.
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