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Calder: The Conquest of Space: The Later Years: 1940-1976
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About This Book
The concluding volume to the first biography of one of the most important, influential, and beloved twentieth-century sculptors, and one of the greatest artists in the cultural history of America--is a vividly written, illuminating account of his triumphant later years. The second and final volume of this magnificent biography begins during World War II, when Calder--known to all as Sandy--and his wife, Louisa, opened their home to a stream of artists and writers in exile from Europe. In the postwar decades, they divided their time between the United States and France, as Calder made his first monumental public sculptures and received blockbuster commissions that included Expo '67 in Montreal and the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Jed Perl makes clear how Calder's radical sculptural imagination shaped the minimalist and kinetic art movements that emerged in the 1960s. And we see, as well, that through everything--their ever-expanding friendships with artists and writers of all stripes; working to end the war in Vietnam; hosting riotous dance parties at their Connecticut home; seeing the "mobile," Calder's essential artistic invention, find its way into Webster's dictionary--Calder and Louisa remained the risk-taking, singularly bohemian couple they had been since first meeting at the end of the Roaring Twenties. The biography ends with Calder's death in 1976 at the age of seventy-eight--only weeks after an encyclopedic retrospective of his work opened at the Whitney Museum in New York--but leaves us with a new, clearer understanding of his legacy, both as an artist and a man.
Reviews
"Perl similarly gives vivid life to his subject, discerningly and lovingly bringing to the stage of his page Calder's colossal daring."
"He seems to have seen every work that Calder made and writes about them with verve and insight."
"...the influence of Calder's contemporaries shouldn't undercut the originality of the artist's vision."
"Perl completes his zestfully expert two-book biography of exuberantly radical sculptor Calder in a volume every bit as scintillating and substantial as the first ..."
"We dally around with Calder's and his wife's to's and fro's and then we realize there are still 500 pages to go and the weight of the book starts to make our arms stiff."
"Cumulatively, these episodes form a complete picture of an exceptional artist and all the significant developments of his oeuvre."
"lavishly illustrated ..."
"This surprisingly first full-length biography of Calder (an autobiography was published in the mid-1960s) offers a wealth of detail about the artist's family life, social circle, and voluminous production."
"Like most biographers, Mr."
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