Dream Figments 1964

Alexander Calder made this gouache, Dream Figments, probably in his studio, sometime around 1964. It's a playful arrangement of shapes, like a circus in your head. There is something very immediate and intuitive about Calder’s work. Look at how he deploys color and form - the solid red and yellow circles that pull your eye around the image, contrasted with the linear arrangement of black and white in the bottom left. The cloud-like forms surrounding the red circle at the top seem to soften the overall effect, but they are also contrasted by the bold target shape of the other red circle, contained within a field of blue. I keep thinking about how the relationship between these shapes can be seen as a dance, or a balancing act. Calder's playfulness reminds me of Joan Miró, another artist who wasn’t afraid to let his imagination run wild. Ultimately, it’s up to us to decide what these figments mean, or whether they need to mean anything at all.