Discover the art of Saint-Paul-de-Vence through three essential stops: Fondation CAB, Fondation Maeght and Galerie Catherine Issert, with modern masters, contemporary art and a little Côte d’Azur magic.
Read More
Some artists you admire for years, before you ever get the chance to see their full range.
Calder has been one of my faves for a long time. I caught some of his work at MoMA in New York a few years back, and again in the South of France, Copenhagen and Madrid, where his shapes always seem to belong outdoors, in the light. So when I heard the Fondation Louis Vuitton was giving him acomprehensive show, I did not need much convincing. I had been meaning to visit the building itself for ages anyway. Two birds...
The show is called Calder. Rêver en équilibre, which means Dreaming in Balance. It runs until August and marks two anniversaries at once. A hundred years since Calder first arrived in France in 1926, and fifty years since he died. The Fondation has done something it has never done before. It has handed over its entire space, and for the first time the lawn outside, to a single artist. Almost three hundred works across more than three thousand square meters.
I thought I knew what to expect. I did not expect the scale.
What impressed me most was how complete it felt. The show moves through everything. The early wire pieces, the famous circus, the moment in the early thirties when he invented the mobile and a whole new kind of sculpture came into being, the big still stabiles, the huge late public works. There is jewelry and there are paintings too. It is the whole arc of a life, laid out in order, and you understand him better for seeing it all in one room after another.
We spent a few hours and did not rush.
My favourites were the mobiles, of course, the way they turn so slowly you are not sure they are moving until they already have. But what I really loved was the wire sculptures. The faces especially. Each one gives you two things at once, the actual wire and its shadow thrown on the wall behind it. The line and its reflection. The thing and its echo. I was really drawn to them.
Calder spent much of his later life in France and always called it his second home. Standing inside Gehry's glass sails, watching his shapes turn in the light, that made complete sense to me.
If you are in Paris before 16 August, give it an afternoon. Not an hour. An afternoon.
Fondation Louis Vuitton, Bois de Boulogne, Paris. Calder. Rêver en équilibre, until 16 August 2026.