Alexander Calder was one of the most innovative and original American artists of the twentieth century. In 1926, Calder arrived in Paris and devoted himself to a project called the Circus that occupied him for over five years. This contains characters and animals made out of wire, scraps of cloth, wood, cork, labels, bits of scrap metal and pieces of rubber. Calder transported his little theater in suitcases and performed it for his friends. During his performances, Calder invented ways to simulate the flight of birds: "These are little bits of white paper, with a hole and slight weight on each one, which flutter down several variously coiled thin steel wires which I jiggle so that they flutter down like dovesÂ…" (Alexander Calder, An Autobiography with Pictures [New York: Pantheon, 1966], p.92) The Circus is the laboratory of Calder's work; in it he experimented with new formulas and techniques. "By 1930," sculptor historian Wayne Craven has written, Calder's "Circus had......
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