Calder: The Conquest of Time
By Jed Perl
By Jed Perl
By Jed Perl
By Jed Perl
Part of A Life of Calder
Part of A Life of Calder
Category: Art | Arts & Entertainment Biographies & Memoirs
Category: Art | Arts & Entertainment Biographies & Memoirs
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$55.00
Oct 24, 2017 | ISBN 9780307272720
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Oct 24, 2017 | ISBN 9780451494214
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$55.00
Oct 24, 2017 | ISBN 9780307272720
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Oct 24, 2017 | ISBN 9780451494214
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Praise
âCalder is an artist whose influence is so ubiquitous that you sometimes completely lose sight of him. Jed Perl, one of our most brilliant art critics, has remedied this in a superbly researched, illustrated, and crafted biography of his early years. We can now savor Calderâs accomplishment fully and see where his genius lies, and how it matters to us today.â âJohn Ashbery
âIn this richly satisfying biography, Calder appears as charming as ever, but he is also a much more powerful figure than the beloved teddy bear of legend. He becomes a modern philosopher-king, unpretentious but serious, who takes the true measure of a world that never stops moving.â
âMark Stevens, co-author with Annalyn Swan of De Kooning: An American Master
âAll artists are critics but very few critics are artists. Jed Perl is one of those few. He has the critical imagination to imagine Calderâs imagination, and the rare ability to engage that of the reader.â âFran Lebowitz
âCalderâs magic brilliantly captivated by an astute biographer.â âJohn Richardson, author of A Life of Picasso
âNot all brilliant studies are definitive, and not all definitive studies are brilliant: Jed Perlâs Calder succeeds at being both. Itâs a masterwork account of the life of one of Americaâs greatest artists thatâs also an account of America coming into its own. Passionate, learned, playful and ranging, itâs as solidly-grounded as a stabile, but like a mobile it appears to defy gravityâand float.â âJoshua Cohen, author of Book of Numbers and Moving Kings
âPerlâs vibrant, driving prose distills a detailed, captivating and multigenerational history into a lucid and useful biography that miraculously eschews excess. He reveals how Calderâs magnetic personality and synthetic thinking determined a radical new course for 20th-century art.â âAdam D. Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Director, âȘWhitney Museum of American Art
âAn immensely erudite work, meticulously thorough, painstakingly researched, and lavishly illustrated. Its grasp of detail and breadth of knowledge, especially of the American art scene, would be hard to match.â âHilary Spurling, The New York Review of Books
âWhat the book gets absolutely rightâthanks in part, actually, to the pacingâis its demonstration of Calderâs staying-in-place-while-flying move from toy-making to art-making, and how profound that move was. Calderâs suspended mobilesâby far his most interesting workâare baby-crib toys that are also experiments in the mechanics of gravitational balance. That they can hang high means everything; itâs what makes them serious. Because height automatically implies depth, and you feel that when you see them. Thatâs the wow part, and Perlâs book captures it as well as a book can.â âHolland Cotter, The New York Times Book Review
âEpicâŠimmersive and erudite.â âSan Francisco Chronicle
âFascinatingâŠ.Perl persuades us that Calder, although inspired by ismsâmodernism, cubism, abstractionism, surrealismâsomehow evaded their constricting clutches and pioneered new forms that evolved from playful to beautiful to monumental. Like Monet, Matisse, Picasso, Duchamp and Mondrian, Calder widened the vocabulary of perceptionâŠ.Come 2019, Perl plans to publish the concluding volume, as Calder becomes an international superstar. Expect that continuing saga to be every bit as unruly and instructive. Perl will undoubtedly orbit around his expository center of gravity with a confident Ă©lan that Calder might occasionally chuckle at but also recognize and appreciate.â âThe Washington Post
âMr. Perl, a former art critic for the New Republic and now a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, is eminently knowledgeable about artists, art movements and galleries, as well as the influences of the 1920s and 1930s that are the focus of this book. Just about every well-known artistâand many obscure onesâis mentioned, because Calder interacted with so many of them socially and creativelyâŠ.Mr. Perl does an excellent job of placing Calderâs work in the context of that of his artistic contemporaries, all the while moving the biographical narrative forward.â âThe Wall Street Journal
âNo one doubts that Calder is a remarkable artist, and in Jed Perl he has found a scrupulous chroniclerâŠ.Terrific.â âAdam Gopnik, The New Yorker
âA rich exploration of [Calderâs] life, loves and myriad influences as well as a delightful dive into the birth of modernism.â âLos Angeles Times, âBest Books of 2017â
âA comprehensive and marvelous biography that clearly establishes Calder as one of the artistic giants of the 20th century. A gifted writer and a meticulous researcher, Perlâs rich prose brings Calder alive, both as an artist and person. The book is certain to be required reading for anyone with an interest in modern artâŠ.Superb.â âThe Christian Science Monitor
âThis literate and beautifully illustrated book does precisely what the definitive biography of an artist is supposed to do: tell the life in a way that lets us see the work more fully and richlyâŠ.Perl paints a winning portrait of Calder, an immensely appealing and gregarious artist who never quite grew up.â âCommentary
âThe writing practically hums as Perl describes Calderâs work, which he clearly adores, and the text has reams of novel insightsâŠ.Illuminating.â âBloomberg Business Week
âA meticulously researched biography of one of the most important sculptors of the 20th centuryâŠ.Not only an essential record of the first 40 years of Calderâs life, but an exceptional chronicle of the genesis of modernism.â âKirkus Reviews *starred review*
âA hulking and exhaustively researched biography of American sculptor Alexander Calder (1898â1976), focusing on the first four decades of his lifeâŠ.Perl throughout emphasizes Calderâs debt to the Arts and Crafts movement, particularly in his ability to blend fine art with everyday objects such as childrenâs toys. Generously illustrated and delivered in vibrant writing (he describes one of Calderâs tabletop standing mobiles as âthe spiderweb strength and delicacy of an Emily Dickinson poemâ), Perl offers what will be without question the authoritative source on the man whom the French affectionately nicknamed le roi du fil de ferââthe wire king.ââ âPublishers Weekly *starred review*
âArt critic Perl joins the select ranks of multivolume arts biographers, among them Hilary Spurling on Matisse and John Richardson on Picasso, with the first in a foundational two-book inquiry into the unusually sunny life and exuberantly radical work of sculptor Alexander CalderâŠ.Graced with 400 photographs, Perlâs dynamic and illuminating biography, as buoyant and evocative as Calderâs sculptures, concludes with the ebullient and cosmic artist poised for ever more creative adventures and renown.â âBooklist *starred review*