SABOT 1963

This is Alexander Calder’s ‘Sabot,’ I imagine forged from blackened steel. Here’s a guy who understood how to make forms playfully interrupt space, transforming it with his shapes. Calder seemed to me like he was always playing, always testing the limits of how something could balance or move. Look at the upward thrust of that blade-like form against the swoop of the tail! There's a strange grace in how these heavy materials seem to float. It must have been a real trip for him to figure out how to weld them together. Can you picture him bending and shaping the metal, maybe even dancing around it, trying to get it just right? And the name: Sabot – is it a shoe, a boat, or something else entirely? Calder, like so many artists, built on the work of those who came before, but he also paved the way for so many others. His playful sense of inquiry comes through in his sculpture, encouraging us to question how we see and what we expect from art.