A Deeper Dive - On Alexander Calder

ON ALEXANDER CALDER

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Memento For A Friend

by Shani Toledano Calder’s Coils

By Martha Garcia Galactic System

By Cynthia Klein

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A MEME

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ENTO FOR A FRIEND

BY SHANI TOLEDANO

Born into an artistic family – his mother a painter and his father, Alexander Stirling Calder, a sculptor – Alexander Calder (1898-1976) was encouraged from an early age to create.

Although his initial studies were in mechanical engineering, after a short while in the industry Calder’s interest abruptly turned to painting and he enrolled himself at the Art Students

League in New York. His early training in realism did not hold his attention very long, however, and he left for Paris in 1926. There his circle of friends included artists Joan Miró, Fernand

Léger, Marcel Duchamp and James Johnson Sweeney, a curator, writer and devoted advocate of abstract Modern Art who went on to become curator for the Museum of Modern Art, as well as the Director of the Guggenheim Museum. After a visit to the studio of Piet Mondrian, Calder was inspired to pursue abstraction, a pivotal moment for his career.

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lthough Calder considered himself more sculptor than painter, his use of the two-dimensional medium to explore ideas of space, form, composition, color and movement were all integral to the creation of his sculptures. His desire was always to create movement; and although painting presented inherent limitations to that goal, he nevertheless continued to use the medium to explore new ideas and compositions throughout his career. Indeed, Untitled, 1946 is full of the whimsy and playfulness that we recognize in his three-dimensional works.

Calder presented Untitled as a gift to his friend the architect and interior designer Benjamin Baldwin around 1946. At that time Baldwin was working at the renowned architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in New York and had been tasked with designing the interiors for the Terrace Plaza Hotel in Cincinnati. The hotel, commissioned by the real estate developer John J. Emery, was a Modernist masterpiece, not only in design, but in innovation. It was the first hotel to have a fully automated elevator and a television set in every room; it was also one of the first public buildings in America to commission site-specific works of contemporary art for its interiors.

The Terrace Plaza Hotel 6

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Baldwin attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art, the prestigious institution of creative design, during its Golden Age. His fellow Alumni and instructors included Charles and Ray Eames, Harry Bertoia, Florence Knoll, Marianne Strengell, Eliel and Eero Saarinen, Ralph Rapson and Harry Weese, each a titan of American Modernist design. Located in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, twenty-five miles north of Detroit, Cranbrook, a modern arts colony, was an experiment in education whose philosophy taught that each student should understand all aspects of design, from architecture to furniture to metalwork.

The Academy encouraged experimentation in design and process, research and cross-disciplinary thought.

The “sky lobby� at Terrace Plaza Hotel. https://aeqai.com/main/2019/03/the-terrace-plaza-hotel-recognizing-greatness/ 8

The Gourmet Room featuring a mural by Joan Miro. https://aeqai.com/main/2019/03/the-terrace-plaza-hotel-recognizing-greatness/6-47/

For the Terrace Plaza Hotel, Baldwin commissioned Calder to create his mobile Twenty Leaves and an Apple to hang in the eighth-floor Sky Lobby opposite the elevator doors. Composed of piano wire and sheet metal and painted entirely in black save for its one red apple, the seventeen-foot sculpture greeted every guest who emerged from the elevators with its ever-changing, elegant form, constantly recreating itself with the slightest breeze. Baldwin also commissioned Saul Steinberg to create a mural for the main dining room; Jim Davis to design the long wall behind the back bar in The Terrace Garden restaurant and lounge; and Joan Miro to paint the mural for The Gourmet Room, whose thirty-foot curved wall faced the arched wall of glass offering its diners a stunning panoramic view of the city.

Since Calder’s work during this period was very reminiscent of Miro’s, it was fitting that both artists’ works were chosen to complement the design of this new modern hotel.

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The hotel was eventually sold in 1956 to the Hilton Hotel Corporation. The one stipulation set forth by Emery ahead of the sale was that the artwork remain in the hotel until the new owners decided to redecorate. During the negotiations, however, Hilton did not wish the art to be a part of the purchase due to the high cost of insuring it. When Hilton decided to redecorate the hotel almost a decade later, Emery donated all four works to the Cincinnati Museum of Art.

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Untitled, 1946, stands as a memento of a warm friendship between two important Modernist artists, and a brilliant expression of Calder’s genius at a particularly creative moment in his career.

IMPORTANT PAINTINGS - THURS, SEPT 17 Lot 201 Alexander Calder American, 1898-1976 Untitled, circa 1946 Oil on canvas mounted to board 5 3/4 x 15 3/8 inches (14.6 x 39.05 cm) Provenance: Gift from the artist to Benjamin Baldwin, circa 1946 Private collection, Montgomery AL, 1993 Sale, Christie's, New York, Contemporary Art, Feb. 23, 1994, lot 4 Purchased from the above by the current owner

Literature: Benjamin Baldwin: An Autobiography in Design, W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 1995, llus. p. 29 This work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York, under application number A11199.

C The Collection of Dorothea Benton Frank $70,000-90,000 11

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BY MARTHA GARCIA Prolific and synonymous with his ballistic mobiles and stabile monumental structures, Alexander Calder created lesser-known jewelry works that evoked the same sense of whimsical freedom that is so recognizable in his sculptures.

Jewelry by Calder was first seen adorning the necks of his sister’s dolls in the early 1900s, though he produced the majority of his over 1,800 jewelry works later in life.

Cal de eme r’s not ab r 30s ged du le arti st in ring amo Paris, the ic style w ng t 20s here h a Fer nan e likes o he soc nd d f Pie i Mar Lég t M alized ce e It w l Ducha r, Jean ondrian as d mp , Arp a u , Cal der, ring th nd Joan is nick Miró met nam time t his hat . ed ‘ par Lou t S is ne a of H a Jame r and ndy’, wife s, g enr r y Ja , mes andnie ce .

Important Jewelry - Thurs, Oct 29 Alexander Calder American, 1898-1976 ’RL’ pin, circa 1949 Silver and steel wire 2 5/8 x 4 ¾ inches Provenance: Gift of the artist to Shirley Kinspel Manley New York, 1949, passed to Susan Lopeman, Hastings on Hudson, 2020 This work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York under application number A29209.

C Property from the Estate of Shirley K. Manley $15,000-20,000

The artist spiraled back toward jewelry after 1933, when he and Louisa returned to the United States and landed in Roxbury, Connecticut. His jewelry works from this time, often made for family and friends, are a purposeful and natural accompaniment to his art. Calder was deeply inspired by the women in his life. Not only his wife and muse Louisa, but also his mother and friends such as Peggy Guggenheim, Georgia O’Keefe, Angela Huston and Mary Rockefeller, among others.

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Calder made his jewelry as gifts, their impractical forms mirroring the brave and strong women for whom he constructed them. These pieces were not intended to be exclusive or expensive. If he charged for them at all, it was only about $25. Often formed out of a single piece of steel wire, such as you might find holding a coat on a rack, or perhaps bracing teeth, motifs of coils, spirals, waves, zigzags and hearts made their way from his anvil and hammer onto the necks, ears, hands and wrists of his adorned. Using common materials to

produce uncommon forms, our Sandy was not a jeweler and therefore used no torches to achieve his desired result -quirky boldness. The wedding ring he made for his wife Louisa is a simple bronze spiral, an incredibly ancient symbol often associated with themes of fertility and eternity. [Similar to our silver ring]

from his stay in Brazil. He had Brazilian music going on and food in the kitchen and his jewelry all over the place, and I guess he… And he showed us, of course, around his barn and all his mobiles that were being made and so forth. And I think he was a very generous man because he just gave away these pieces.”

Visitors would often arrive to Calder’s Roxbury workshop and laugh in delight at the sight of his jewelry works hung along the walls. Such was the case for the consignor of the pieces in our upcoming Important Jewelry auction. On a trip to Calder’s workshop with a friend in the late 1940s, our consignor was the lucky recipient of these three works, which Calder simply took off the wall and handed to her. She recalls that “he had just returned

Freedom and generosity and joy. These are the adjectives that describe Alexander Calder’s jewelry, which transformed from little mementos to works of art in their own right, some going on to achieve auction results over $100,000.

They serve as insight into the artist that defined a category, but also speak to man behind the mobile, and the friend he was to many.

Important Jewelry - Thurs, Oct 29 Alexander Calder American, 1898-1976 Spiral ring, circa 1949 Silver wire 1 x 1 x 1 inch.

Size 7 1/2 Provenance: Gift of the artist to Shirley Kinspel Manley New York, 1949, passed to Susan Lopeman, Hastings on Hudson, 2020 This work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York under application number A29206.

C Property from the Estate of Shirley K. Manley $20,000-30,000

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Important Jewelry - Thurs, Oct 29 Alexander Calder American, 1898-1976 Spiral pin, circa 1938 Brass and steel wire 3 x 3 x 1/4 inches.

Provenance: Gift of the artist to Shirley Kinspel Manley New York, 1949, passed to Susan Lopeman, Hastings on Hudson, 2020 This work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York under application number A29207.

C Property from the Estate of Shirley K. Manley $30,000-50,000

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CYNTHIA KLEIN EXPLORES

GALACTIC SYSTEM

BY ALEXANDER CALDER

Before turning to art, Alexander Calder applied his engineering degree to various related jobs after graduation. At one time he was employed as a fireman in a ship's boiler room. While working aboard the ship, he awoke one morning to witness on deck simultaneously a sunrise and full moon, each visible on opposite horizons.

This experience made a powerful impression on the artist. The sun and moon, as well as other cosmological imagery, became recurring themes he would explore in his art throughout his career.

In addition to creating sculptures, paintings, jewelry and set designs, toward the end of his life Calder became an avid printmaker. With its energetic interplay of overlapping imagery made up of primary colors, bold black lines and flattened biomorphic forms, Galactic System, a color lithograph created in 1974, two years before his death, conveys the energy and movement of his iconic sculptural work.

PRINTS & MULTIPLES - OCTOBER Alexander Calder GALACTIC SYSTEM Color lithograph, 1974, on Arches paper, signed and n umbered 74/100 in pencil, numbered 32/100, published by Éditions de la DiffÊrence, Paris, the full sheet, unframed.

Sheet 20 1/2 x 28 1/4 inches; 521 x 718 mm.

C $1,500-2,500

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Meet the Specialists Our team of Specialists welcome the opportunity to share their vast expertise and experience with you. They are available by telephone, email and even videochat to provide free auction estimates in all categories. Discover the value of your collection!

Shani Toledano, VP

Martha Garcia, F.G.A., VP

Associate Director, Paintings

Appraiser, Jewelry

Director, Modern & Post-War Art

212-427-4141, ext 262

212-427-4141, ext 249

Jewelry@Doyle.com

Paintings@Doyle.com

Cynthia L. Klein, SVP

Alexis Gyateng

Director, Prints & Multiples

Cataloguer, Prints & Multiples

212-427-4141, ext 246

212-427-4141, ext 246

Prints@Doyle.com

Prints@Doyle.com

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