Modern Magician: Calder's Circus and the Invention of the Mobile

Alexander Calder's Circus is an avant-garde artist's reimagining of a great popular tradition. Constructing his pint-sized figures out of wire, wood, cloth, and whatever else came to hand, Calder created a comic meditation on life under the big top. Paris, London, and New York—including Cocteau, Mondrian, and Miró. In this conversation Jed Perl and Joan Simon discuss the artistic milieu in which Calder created his Circus and its status as an essential work of the modern imagination, which combined the high-wire excitement of the circus and the poetics of experimental puppetry, setting the stage for Calder's invention of the mobile in the 1930s. Part of the Gallery Programs series at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City. For more information, visit http://www.bgc.bard.edu/