Grid with Cross 1963

Alexander Calder made this watercolor painting in 1963 with loose brushstrokes and bold, graphic shapes. Looking at how the black and red inks bleed into the paper, I imagine Calder working quickly, almost playfully. I feel for Calder as I try to imagine what he was thinking when he made this; perhaps he was aiming for a balanced composition, but embracing the inevitable drips and imperfections. The grid is there, but it's disrupted by that squiggly, snake-like line. The cross and the dot add a sense of visual rhythm, like musical notes scattered across a page. You can really see Calder's background in engineering in the way he reduces forms to their essence. It reminds me a little of Kandinsky's early experiments with abstraction. The legacy of painting is a constant conversation; artists learn from and riff off each other. There are no right answers, and nothing is ever really finished.