Spirals, Two White One Black 1969

This is Alexander Calder's Spirals, Two White One Black, made with gouache and ink on paper. What strikes me is how Calder makes something so simple, almost childlike, feel so dynamic. It’s all about the making; the ink lines wobble, the colours are flat and bold, and the composition teeters on the edge of chaos. Look at the way the black ink bleeds slightly into the paper, giving those spiral shapes a real sense of weight. You can almost feel Calder’s hand moving across the page. The black and white stripes create this vibrating ground, a kind of visual hum that really makes your eyes dance. That solid block of red and the smaller square of blue, feel arbitrary, like he was just playing around, seeing what happened. Calder, like Miro, knew how to make the most out of simplicity. It is like art is a conversation between friends and over time, it builds into something more. There’s no right or wrong way to read it, just a feeling, a kind of openness that I find really inviting.