America Is Hard to See

May 1–Sept 27, 2015

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The decade after the First World War brought the United States new material prosperity and unparalleled social freedom, fueling a massive appetite for entertainment that grew unabated throughout the mid-twentieth century. Cinemas and theaters opened at a rapid pace, tabloid newspapers exploded in circulation, and celebrity photographs and gossip columns became the common currency of a booming spectacle culture. “The celebrities in New York,” writer David Cort quipped in 1925, “outnumber the nonentities about 100,000 to one.”

Largely inspired by these mass amusements and their audiences, the works on view in this chapter play with the entwinement of voyeurism and exhibitionism, seeing and being seen. Nearly all are set in dim interiors or under the cloak of night, rendered in lurid colors or the high contrast lent by spotlights, signs, and the flashbulb’s glare. Some present striking portraits of great performers such as John Coltrane, Paul Robeson, and Jessica Tandy, while others depict ordinary people strutting and posing or caught unawares by one another and by us. Classes, races, and genders mix within an atmosphere of physical pleasure or menace. Photographs by Lisette Model and Weegee capture the underbelly of mainstream culture, presenting a world at once seductive and discomfiting. Alexander Calder combined live spectacle with sculpture in Calder’s Circus, a motley crew of daredevils, animal acts, and scantily clad dancers that the artist would personally bring to life to the delight of his rapt observers.

Below is a selection of works from this chapter.

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Alexander Calder, Calder’s Circus, 1926–31

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Narrator: Actor Bill Irwin.

Bill Irwin: Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, mes dames et messieurs, to the circus. Beginning in 1926, Calder combined his fascination with movement, animals, and caricature into Le Cirque Calder.

What you see here are a number of acts, each consisting of different characters—acrobats, a bearded lady, a lion tamer and his lion. When performed, Calder would manipulate the parts and figures before you—in one ring, one act at a time.

He would make bleachers from wood crates and planks; erect two tall poles for the high wire and trapeze; hand out cymbals and other noisemakers; cue up records on his gramophone and give his guests a full evening’s entertainment. It was what could be described as the first instance of performance art.

Through the Circus, Calder became good friends with an impressive list of artists, including Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miró, Fernand Léger, Edgar Varèse, Le Corbusier, and Piet Mondrian. These members of the Parisian avant-garde appreciated Calder’s love of play and spectacle—a performance of the Circus meant a very good time. But the artists were also drawn to the serious side of the Circus. Fun mixed with death and danger: the knife thrower aiming to hit a target perilously close to his favorite assistant sometimes missed—with tragic results. But Calder would use the same female figure in the next act, a clever touch his audiences appreciated.

In the first decades of the twentieth century, modernist artists across Europe were searching for ways to merge art and life, technology and design. As playful as Calder’s performance may seem, it beautifully exemplifies these avant-garde impulses. The fact that he put his objects in motion, the characteristic state of modernity, wouldn’t have been lost on any of his observers. And the individual acts were engineered with a great deal of technical skill.

Alexander Calder originally trained as a mechanical engineer, but he was an aspiring artist when he arrived in Paris in 1926. Working as a newspaper illustrator in New York the previous year, he had been sent to make sketches of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, sparking a lifelong interest. In Paris he began Calder’s Circus, an ensemble work of dozens of small movable figures and props crafted from wire and found objects. Adding acts over several years and transporting the miniature circus in several suitcases, he gave performances in his studios and at the homes of friends—including artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miró, and Fernand Léger and art patrons in Paris and New York. Calder acted as both stagehand and impresario: he constructed makeshift bleachers from wood crates and planks, handed out cymbals and other noisemakers, and cued up records on his gramophone. Narrating the acts in English and French, he manipulated acrobats, a bearded lady, a lion tamer and his lion, and other figures.

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America Is Hard to See

The Circus

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ALEXANDER CALDER (1898-1976), CALDER’S CIRCUS, 1926-31

Alexander Calder, Calder’s Circus, 1926–31

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On the Hour

America Is Hard to See

The Circus

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ALEXANDER CALDER (1898-1976), CALDER’S CIRCUS, 1926-31

Alexander Calder, Calder’s Circus, 1926–31

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection