Alexander Calder’s Archive Goes Online: Explore 1400 Works of Art by the Modernist Sculptor

Like all great artists, Alexan­der Calder left his medi­um quite unlike he found it. Near­ly 45 years after his death, Calder’s expan­sion of the realm of sculp­ture in new direc­tions of form, col­or, and engi­neer­ing remains a sub­ject of volu­mi­nous dis­cus­sion, includ­ing crit­ic Jed Per­l’s Calder: The Con­quest of Time and Calder: The Con­quest of Space, a two-part biog­ra­phy pub­lished in full last year. More recent­ly, a wealth of mate­r­i­al has come avail­able that enables us to con­duct Calder­ian inves­ti­ga­tions of our own: the Calder Foun­da­tion’s online research archive, which as Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Valenti­na Di Lis­cia reports includes “over 1,300 Calder works across dif­fer­ent media.”

But wait, there’s more: the archive also offers “1,000 pho­tographs and archival doc­u­ments,” “48 his­toric and recent texts by the artist, his con­tem­po­raries, and present-day schol­ars,” and “over 40 microsites explor­ing Calder’s exhi­bi­tion his­to­ry.” (This in addi­tion to the Calder Foun­da­tion’s Vimeo chan­nel, where you’ll find the films seen here.)

Pace Gallery, which rep­re­sents Calder, high­lights the “new inter­ac­tive map fea­ture called ‘Calder Around the World,’ which allows view­ers to find pub­lic instal­la­tions of his mon­u­men­tal sculp­ture in 20 states domes­ti­cal­ly and 21 coun­tries inter­na­tion­al­ly, includ­ing muse­ums with impor­tant Calder hold­ings and per­ma­nent and tem­po­rary exhi­bi­tions ded­i­cat­ed to the artist.”

As that map reveals, much of Calder’s work cur­rent­ly resides in his home­land of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, pri­mar­i­ly in the north­east where he spent most of his life, but also the Cal­i­for­nia in which he did some grow­ing up — not to men­tion the Paris where he lived for a time and met fel­low artists like Mar­cel Duchamp and Fer­nand Léger, infor­ma­tion about whom also appears in the online archive. You may locate a Calder near you, even if you live in anoth­er region of the world, entire­ly: liv­ing in Seoul as I do, I now see I’ll have to pay a vis­it to 1963’s Le Cèpe and 1971’s Grand Crinkly. Though this ever-more-exten­sive Calder Archive can help us under­stand this most opti­mistic of all Mod­ernists, there’s noth­ing quite like being in the pres­ence of one of his sculp­tures.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Alexan­der Calder’s Cir­cus, One of the Beloved Works at the Whit­ney Muse­um of Amer­i­can Art

Watch Alexan­der Calder Per­form His Cir­cus, a Toy The­atre Piece Filled With Amaz­ing Kinet­ic Wire Sculp­tures

Watch Dreams that Mon­ey Can Buy, a Sur­re­al­ist Film by Man Ray, Mar­cel Duchamp, Alexan­der Calder, Fer­nand Léger & Hans Richter

178 Beau­ti­ful­ly-Illus­trat­ed Let­ters from Artists: Kahlo, Calder, Man Ray & More

The Guggen­heim Puts 109 Free Mod­ern Art Books Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.