Le Cirque de Calder (1961)
By Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder’s fascination with the circus began in his mid-twenties, when he published illustrations in a New York journal of Barnum and Bailey’s Circus, for which he held a year’s pass. It was in Paris in 1927 that he created the miniature circus celebrated in this film - tiny wire performers, ingeniously articulated to walk tightropes, dance, lift weights and engage in acrobatics in the ring. The Parisian avant-garde would gather in Calder’s studio to see the circus in operation. It was, as critic James Johnson Sweeney noted, `a laboratory in which some of the most original features of his later work were to be developed.’ This film exudes the great personal charm of Calder himself, moving and working the tiny players like a ringmaster, while his wife winds up the gramophone in the background. The Circus is now housed at the Whitney Museum in New York. —The Roland Collection of Films & Videos on Art ---- Le Cirque as made in 1961 by Carlos Vilardebó, and it's been shown widely around the world--and in the lobby of the Whitney Museum--ever since. Since the Circus's actual figures are now too fragile to leave the Whitney, the film usually serves as a proxy, providing a wind…
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