The Nest of the Egg 1960

Alexander Calder made this lovely little painting, The Nest of the Egg, sometime around 1960, using gouache on paper. I like the way Calder works with colour here, it’s almost like a child’s palette: bright primaries that are laid down quickly and intuitively. The blobs of black gouache look like stones, or maybe eggs, and they are clustered loosely around two larger circles: one a scribbled red, the other a dense web of black lines. The juicy red circle has a ring of blue peeking out from underneath, like an aura. The nest looks more like a birdcage to me, like some kind of trap. The whole thing has the joyful spirit of a mobile, that play between line and shape, colour and form. Maybe it's this sense of joyful play that connects him with someone like Joan Miró, another artist who made work that feels like a direct line to his inner child. And the idea of play reminds us that art, at its heart, is about openness and possibilities, not answers.