Formes 1970

Alexander Calder made this gouache on paper, "Formes," and what I see is that it has been brought into being with shapes that dance and play against each other. Orange sits against blue; the black lines act as armatures, organizing the space. The white is spare, allowing all the color to pop. I sympathize with Calder here, imagining him playfully arranging and painting these shapes, probably intuitively. He's a maker, known for his mobiles and stabiles; he's always thinking about forms in space. The paint here is smooth and the shapes are clean. There's a kind of joy in the careful placing of color; that red and yellow circle makes me happy. Calder certainly had his influences; he's in conversation with Miro and Matisse, always rethinking and rearranging forms in the painterly space. It’s a conversation that continues today as painters everywhere build on these ideas. It makes me want to run into the studio.