A new Alexander Calder exhibition is opening at the Tate contemporary. The Guardian was wowed by the gallery’s last retrospective for the master of the mobile More than any living summary artist,Alexander Calder is the one whose work I should most recommend the sceptic to see. It is now nearly twenty years since New York’s Museum of contemporary Art held the first Calder retrospective. It was organised by James Johnson Sweeney, whom we in London may now thank for the largest Calder retrospective ever - at the Tate Gallery until August 12. Mr Sweeney, or Mr Calder,and the Arts Council have done themselves - and us - proud.
Calder is of course known the world around as the Yankee inventor of the mobile, that so characteristically contemporary form of sculpture, or which yet owes as much to the art of the blacksmith as to the ambience of flight. Like Mondrian’s lines and squares,which have permeated the entire vocabulary of visual design, the conception of the mobile has sifted relentlessly downwards, and until every well thought of nursery has its version in ducks and drakes.
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Source: theguardian.com