Alexander Calder, Portrait for Joan Miró. Private Collection; 2017 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Successió Miró, via Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, via ADAGP, Paris 2017.

Calder/Miró: Constellations, on view through June 30, 2017, presents the work of Alexander Calder and Joan Miró at Pace Gallery and Acquavella Galleries, respectively, a two-venue exhibition aiming to present the distinct bodies of work and complementary concepts shared between the two artists while they were separated on either side of the Atlantic during World War II.  Presenting approximately 60 sculptures, paintings, and works on paper, the show presents a dialogue highlighting formal, social and political concerns informing the processes of both artists at a distinct conceptual and aesthetic high point for both their careers. (more…)

The New York Times profiles The Whitney Museum’s new Alexander Calder exhibition, and the logistics behind getting the artist’s moving sculptures and mobiles properly activated.  The museum is currently employing its art handling team to occasionally step out from behind the scenes to set the works in motion. “You’re actually holding something that has this almost spiritual quality to it,” says Tom Kotik, one of the workers charged with moving the pieces. “It does have this playful side to it, but then again, you think about it in terms of the cold and the snow, and there’s almost a — I wouldn’t say grittiness, because snow is not gritty — but there’s a yin and a yang.” (more…)

The Calder Prize 2005-2015 (Installation View)

The Calder Prize 2005-2015, now on view at Pace Gallery in London, explores the influence of artist Alexander Calder in relation to the work of six contemporary artists, each of whom were awarded a prize in the former’s name.  Now through March 5, the five winners of the Calder Prize to date are featured in conversation with Calder’s own work.  The artists awarded the Calder Prize are seen to be continuing Calder’s legacy by imagining new and innovative directions for sculpture, among them Tara Donovan (2005), Žilvinas Kempinas (2007), Tomás Saraceno (2009), Rachel Harrison (2011), Daren Bader (2013), and Haroon Mirza (2015). Working in impressively divergent media, the artists are united by their common vision to push the limits of material through variations on space and time in their work, a point that unifies them with Calder’s vision.   (more…)

Alexander Calder, Antennae with Red and Blue Dots (1953), © 2015 Calder Foundation, New York and DACS, London

Alexander Calder’s work as the originator of the mobile, and his free-flowing, languid techniques have long established him as a distinct pioneer of mid-20th Century sculpture.  His floating, kinetic sculptures and more grounded, static works were iconic elements of the post-war movements towards the abstract and expressive in sculptural practice.  Yet presentations and explorations of Calder’s work frequently obscure his early interest in the theatrical and performative, threads which were long instrumental to the artist’s practice, and to the development of much of his later work.  It’s these same threads that receive express emphasis in the Tate Modern’s Performing Sculpture, an exhibition of work culled from the length of Calder’s career, and which places his interests in performance, movement and time back into the proper context his later sculpture is so strongly rooted in.

Alexander Calder, Vertical Foliage (1941), Calder Foundation, New York © 2015 Calder Foundation, New York / DACS, London

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Louise Bourgeois, Spider (1997), via Rae Wang for Art Observed

Christie’s continued its impressive run of record-setting sales last night, with a steady, competitive sale tonight that ultimately brought a final tally of $331,809,000, with 13 of the 70 lots offered passing (barring several withdrawn, high-priced lots).  (more…)

Willem de Kooning, Untitled XXVIII (1977), via Phillips

Sales resumed for New York’s fall auction weeks yesterday evening, as a Sunday sale at Phillips combined early 20th Century works and contemporary artists in a brisk sale that began strong but stumbled towards the later half of the sale, as 9 of 52 lots ultimately went unsold, achieving a final tally of $66.9 million (just within estimate). (more…)

Christie’s has announced plans to auction the collection of Arthur and Anita Kahn this fall, a series of 400 works that are valued collectively at $50 million, including 80 works by Alexander Calder, a friend of the family.  “For years and years, I went by [their] apartment and I never knew what was up there, and when I learned, it was, ‘Well, I’ll be darned,’ ” said Paul R. Provost, deputy chairman of Christie’s Americas. (more…)

Pace Gallery has announced that it will be installing three late Alexander Calder sculptures at the foot of the Seagram Building.  Calder’s work was always intended to be installed in the plaza of the International Style icon, but financial reasons prevented his work from making a permanent home there.  “So in our minds, it’s always been a Calder plaza,” says the artist’s grandson Alexander S.C. Rower, “and it’s always nice to see works back there again.” (more…)

The New York Times reports on the controversial decision made by the Delaware Art Museum to put two pieces up for sale. The first is “Milking Time” (1875), a painting by Winslow Homer, will be sold at a Sotheby’s auction this fall or possibly sooner, if the museum can find a private buyer. An Alexander Calder mobile titled “The Black Crescent” will also be put up for sale. In hopes of clearing some of its $19.8 million debt, the museum has already sold a William Holman Hunt canvas this past spring, a decision for which it received censure from other institutions and the Association of American Art Directors.  (more…)

The Tate has unveiled their 2015 lineup, which will include sculptor Alexander Calder‘s first retrospective at the Tate Modern, from November 2015 to the spring of 2016. The Tate Modern will also present an a large exhibition of works by the South-African artist Marlene Dumas in Spring 2015 in addition to the show “The World Goes Pop,” an exploration of Pop Art in the ’60s and ’70s. At the Tate Britain, Cornish sculptor Barbara Hepworth will be featured during Summer 2015, and the museum will also present exhibition of works by painter Frank Auerbach during the following autumn season. At the Tate Liverpool, the late work by Jackson Pollock will be exhibited in a summer show titled “Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots”. (more…)

Alexander Calder, Occident (1975) all images courtesy Gagosian Gallery

On view at Gagosian Gallery in London is the second segment of a two-part exhibition of American sculptor and painter Alexander Calder’s gouache paintings. The first part was held in New York at Gagosian’s Madison Avenue location through June 14th, and on June 10th the second part opened in London, slated to continue through July 26th, 2014.

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Calder and Abstraction: From Avant-Garde to Iconic, (Installation View), all images courtesy LACMA

Currently on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is a landmark exhibition of from American sculptor Alexander Calder, including his iconic series of mobiles, as well as his later stabiles. Titled Calder and Abstraction: From Avant Garde to Iconic, the exhibition will remain on view at LACMA for over half a year, from November 24, 2013 through July 27, 2014.

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The fraud lawsuit filed by the estate of Alexander Calder against the late artist’s longtime friend and dealer Klaus Perls has been rejected by New York State Supreme Court.  The ruling, announced this week, cited many of the claims in the case as “an incoherent stew of irrelevance and innuendo,” and Justice Shirley Kornreich went so far as to state that: “these allegations are so patently inadequate that the court can only conclude that they were brought solely for the purpose of harassment or embarrassment.”  (more…)

The recent Sotheby’s auction of jewels designed by sculptor Alexander Calder broke all estimates at auction last week, selling for the total of $8 million, far beyond the works’ estimated $1.5 million price tag.  “This is a major development in the market for artists’ jewellery,” says specialist dealer Louisa Guinness. (more…)

The family of sculptor Alexander Calder have filed a complaint that Klaus G. Perls, the artist’s longtime dealer and friend, held onto tens of millions of dollars of the artist’s art after his death, and sold forgeries of the artist’s work.  The Perls family has asked that the claims be dismissed.  “It gives me no pleasure to talk about this,” said Calder’s grandson, Alexander S. C. Rower, but “there is just example after example after example after example of misdeeds.”   (more…)

Following pressure from both Michigan art-lovers and the broader art world, an ArtPrize installation has been removed from the surface of Alexander Calder’s La Grande Vitesse.  Fleurs et Riviere, a magnetic work by David Dodde, had been attached to the surface of the sculpture, in an attempt to add “whimsy,” but instead received harsh criticism from the Alexander Calder Foundation in New York.  “The Calder Foundation wasn’t pleased, and the relationship with the foundation is important to us, so it’s a lesson learned,” said Grand Rapids city manager Greg Sundstrom. (more…)

Alexander Calder, Rouge Triomphant (Triumphant Red), (1959–63) © 2013 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Jean Prouvé, Chaise Métropole n°305 (1953), courtesy Galerie Patrick Seguin.  Courtesy Gagosian Gallery and Galerie Patrick Seguin.

Currently on view at Larry Gagosian’s Paris location is an exhibition focusing on the communications, collaborations, and creative dialogues shared by two of the pioneering minds of art and design: Alexander Calder and Jean Prouvé.  Exploring the pair’s elegant distillation of sculptural and architectural forms, the show catalogues a moment of shared concerns that helped to define the path of mid-20th century modernism.

Installation view, Calder | Prouvé, Gagosian Gallery, Le Bourget, Paris. Artwork by Alexander Calder © 2013 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Artwork by Jean Prouvé, courtesy Galerie Patrick Seguin. Photo by Thomas Lannes, courtesy Gagosian Gallery and Galerie Patrick Seguin. (more…)

Xavier Veilhan, Mobiles (Installation View), via Galerie Perrotin

Galerie Perrotin in Hong Kong is currently presenting a solo exhibition by French sculptor, photographer and painter Xavier Veilhan, the first exhibition by the artist to focus exclusively on his mobiles.  Combining a selection of past work with a series of new installations created specifically for the exhibition, Veilhan explores the mobile as a fluid continuation of his work on the intersections of geometric form and three dimensional space. (more…)

Alexander Calder, Calder After the War (Installation View), courtesy of Pace London

Currently on view at Pace Gallery London, from April 19th through June 7th, is an exhibition of over fifty works by Alexander Calder, created between 1945 and 1949, one of his most well-known periods during which he pioneered many of his sculptural abstractions through movement in three dimensions, particularly via his mobiles and stabiles.

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Stuart Davis, Egg Beater No. 1 (1927), via The Whitney Museum of Art

On view currently at the Whitney Museum is a showcase of some of the museum’s deeper holdings of American artwork from the first half of the twentieth century, exploring the years before the mid-century advent of Abstract Expressionism. This part of the rotating exhibition, which began in December 2012, will continue through May 2013 before moving on to a new selection of works.

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Sean Kelly Gallery, Los Carpinteros, Kosmaj Toy (2012).

All images by A.M. Ekstrand for ArtObserved, on location at Art Basel Miami Beach Fair.

Art Basel returned once again in Miami Beach this past week for the 11th annual Art Basel Miami Beach Fair. Featuring over 300 galleries representing 36 countries around the world, the show has exhibited marked growth from last year’s event, with well over 2,000 artists flocking to exhibit at what has become the internationally-renowned closing party for the world art market each year.  It is of course always an irony that tens of thousands will fly down for the events and parties, with many of them never visiting the vast aggregation of what it said to be roughly $1.5 billion worth of art in one (large) room, a collection that few museums in the world could compete with.   Below is a selection of some of the works we thought to be notable from the fair.

Helly Nahmad Gallery, Mark Rothko No. 1 (1957) and Alexander Calder, installation view

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Phillips de Pury saleroom photo by ArtObserved

On Thursday night, boutique auction house Phillips de Pury & Co. hosted the final Contemporary Art Evening Sale in a blockbuster week for the art market. Tallying $79.9 million against its projected estimate of $73 to $110 million, Phillips de Pury’s Chief Executive Officer, Michael McGinnis, stated “we’re happy with the competition and prices,” especially after the third consecutive night of Contemporary Art sales. McGinnis reflected on the evening saying ” it was a small and deliberate sale, with works specifically chosen to compliment the week.”

Andy Warhol Mao courtesy Phillips de Pury & Co.

Despite achieving just over its low estimates for the sale, Phillips de Pury had a sell by value of 98% and a sell by lot of 83%. With a very carefully selected 35 lots offered, only six artworks failed to find a buyer. However, all of the lots had third party guarantees, of which there were five guarantors.

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Christie’s saleroom photo by ArtObserved

Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale broke the record for the highest ever grossing Contemporary Art auction in history, totaling over $412 million in sales. The auction came on the heels of Sotheby’s Postwar & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, which broke its own record for highest-grossing auction in Sotheby’s long history ($375 million). Christie’s achieved an astounding 92% sell by lot and 93% sell by value – of the 73 lots offered only 6 failed to sell.

Records at auction were broken for Richard Diebenkorn, Jeff Koons, Richard Serra, Franz Kline, George Condo, Jean- Michel Basquiat, and Mark Grotjahn. Additionally, Jean Dubuffet, Cy Twombly and Jean-Michel Basquiat set new records for their artworks on paper. A record was set for an Alexander Calder wire sculpture at auction with Policeman, which sold for $4.2 million.

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Grand Palais, courtesy FIAC

FIAC, or the 39th International Contemporary Art Fair, will open tomorrow (Thursday) in Paris, with a VIP preview today, with 184 galleries exhibiting at the Grand Palais, and this year utilizing the restored Salon d’Honneur as well, which lies at the center of the structure. As in past years, galleries will exhibit sculpture at the Tuilieries Garden nearby. Approximately 65,000 visitors are expected to attend.

Tuilieries Garden courtesy FIAC (more…)