Red Boomerang, Blue Orb 1971

Editor: So, this acrylic painting, “Red Boomerang, Blue Orb,” was created by Alexander Calder in 1971. It’s giving me playful geometry – the shapes are simple but their interaction feels surprisingly dynamic, almost like a snapshot of a Calder mobile in mid-swing. What captures your attention when you look at it? Curator: It feels almost… jazzy, doesn't it? Like notes in a syncopated rhythm. I think Calder is riffing on something fundamental about how we perceive balance and movement, flattening it onto the canvas with these blocks of pure colour. It is really an example of what modernism and abstraction tried to achieve - expressing the inexpressible, so to say. Do the colour choices resonate with you? Editor: Definitely. The primary colours are so bold and unapologetic. Red, blue, and… well, almost a bone white for the background. It's kind of like a visual power chord, and it is striking because these hues are very different from what other painters such as Rothko chose to convey such themes. Curator: Yes, but there is a lightness, too, don't you think? Even humour. It makes me wonder, with Calder’s background in engineering and, well, with him also making actual mobiles, how much of that understanding informs his static works. Is this dynamism trapped or unleashed here? Editor: That's a fascinating thought – dynamism trapped! I guess I was seeing it as unleashed, but I can totally see how the canvas acts like a constraint, a defined space for these energetic forms. They could fly right off, couldn't they? Curator: Exactly! Like capturing a fleeting moment of pure, childlike joy… before gravity wins! Editor: This has been incredibly enlightening! I walked in thinking, "Oh, it's just some simple shapes", but now I am considering the playfulness, constraint and underlying dynamism. Curator: That is why, perhaps, this mobile of colours remains so joyous after all these years, offering just a different vantage point for how things exist.