He looks bemused, the man in the middle, which is often how we react to his own art. He’s Alexander Calder, master of mobiles. And his expression is probably no reflection on the artwork that the guy on the right is solemnly holding up for judgment: Calder was often bemused, “evidently always happy,” as his college yearbook described him, “or perhaps up to some joke, for his face is always wrapped up in that same mischievous, juvenile grin…he is one of the best-natured fellows there is.”
When the MIA opened its new Target Wing in the mid-2000s, largely dedicated to 20th and 21st-century art, its first exhibition featured the early surreal work of Calder—“one of America’s greatest modern artists,” according to then-MIA president William Griswold. In September 1947, when a photographer for the Minneapolis Times snapped this image, Calder was jurying an art show at the MIA, along with Bernard Arnest, at left, an instructor in the MIA’s art school.
Calder was then at the peak of his powers, devising popular exhibitions of mobiles around the world, their catalogs featuring essays by the likes of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. He was the epitome of the popular intellectual. Not a bad person, really, to have judging your art.
Watch for more Once at MIA flashbacks every Monday at MIA Stories.
Photo courtesy of Hennepin County Library.