Sow

Alexander Calder, 1928 · Gallery 519 · Floor 5

Paris. A studio, furniture shoved against the wall. Five suitcases, open on the floor. The gramophone starts. The lights go down. A grown man gets on his knees. Wire acrobats. A knife-thrower. A lion. Wire, cork, string, thread, and pulleys. Calder works them all by hand. Does the noises. Does the voices. He's dead serious through all of it. The whole thing can run two hours. With rent due, he buys planks, swipes boxes, makes bleachers, and charges thirty people a night. Miró came to one of the Paris shows. Léger was there too. “I liked the bits of paper best,” Miró said. Little weighted scraps of white paper, fluttering down a wire onto a performer’s shoulder. That little trapeze really works. The man running it had a degree in mechanical engineering. While building the circus, Calder starts making animals that don’t need him at all. Like this one. Made in 1928. Seventeen inches long, bent out of steel wire. One line for the back. A curl for the tail. A coil for the eye. Along the belly, a zigzag of loops. That’s the udder. That’s where the title comes from. How little can you use and still get a whole animal? You can see straight through it. Half of it is air caught inside the wire. By then, the French were calling Calder le roi du fil de fer. The king of wire. Fifteen years later, he opens the suitcases again. Here at MoMA for his retrospective. Two nights, for friends and staff. Same man. Same knees. Same wire. Calder had made a wire donkey too. MoMA’s checklist puts the two together. “Sow.” Then “Ass.” After the show, Calder gives this one to the museum. The circus moves on. But she stays.

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