Art doesn't have to be stuffy or sophisticated, the province of studious adults. It can be dynamic and playful, the delight of children (and their parents). Few artists illustrate this better than Alexander Calder, who made his first sculpture, a clay elephant, when he was 4 years old and continued playing and exploring for more than 70 years.
If you take your children to see the Seattle Art Museum's current exhibit, “Alexander Calder: A Balancing Act,” buy them some wire, string, disks, and odds and ends, and let them turn their own imaginations loose afterward. Remember that children 12 and younger get in free to SAM with adult admission.
This exhibit is organized in reverse chronological order in spacious, white-walled rooms that give the huge mobiles and stabiles (self-supporting, abstract sculptures) lots of room. You can look at the pieces from all angles and see the “secondary art” created by the shadows on the walls. Don't ignore the delightful miniature pieces also on display.
The show opens with a slowly moving, circular mobile with layers of white sails. Pieces in the second room, from the 1960s and 1970s, include funny animals – a painting of elephants and other creatures overlaid with blocks of primary colors, an abstract “Crinkly Crocodile” sculpture and a bird made out of tin cans with wire legs. An untitled mobile with red, yellow, blue and white sails thrusting upward was a prop for a ballet.
The third room showcases Calder's joyful proliferation of creativity after World War II. “Maybe he was happy the war was over,” says Jon Shirley, who stripped the extensive Calder collection from his home to create the bulk of the SAM exhibit. “Maybe he was happy because he could have metal again, after wartime shortages.” Look for a wondrous circling of wires and spirals entitled “Bougainvillier,” a whimsical grasshopper and a cabinet of “swell joolery.”
In the fourth room, filled with mid-century mobiles and other pieces, you can see Calder testing the cantilever – seeing how far out he could project his dangling disks and shapes. My favorite is “Gamma,” which looks to me like raindrops floating above a pool, but can also be seen as plants or subatomic particles.
Calder's earlier works, from the 1920s and 30s, use wood and rock, as well as metal, and show how much fun he had with his art. See “Jonah and the Whale” with a little man and a wide-mouthed whale suspended in a fish-shaped basket, “Vache (Cow),” a hilarious metal bovine, and “Animated Coat Hanger,” a sort-of female figure bent out of the familiar item.
Looking at these objects, your kids might say, “I could make a …” And indeed they can, if not with the skill of the mature Calder, then with the enthusiasm and imagination of the young artist. After all, he used copper he found in the street to make jewelry for his sister's dolls when he was a grade-schooler and sculpted three-dimensional kinetic animals when he was 11 years old.
The lesson of this Calder exhibit: Art is fun, and there are no limits.
Michelangelo Public and Private
SAM's second special exhibit, “Michelangelo Public and Private: Drawings from the Sistine Chapel and Other Treasures from the Casa Buonarroti,” is far less accessible to children, but includes another lesson: Art takes practice.
The Renaissance genius did not want people to know that. “This is nothing he wanted us to see – any of his work in progress,” says Gary Radke, curatorial advisor for this exhibit and dean's professor of humanities at Syracuse University. He quotes the artist's contemporary biographer, Giorgio Vasari, who tells us that Michelangelo burned most of his drawings and other preparatory works before his death “so that no one should see the labors he endured and the ways he tested his genius, and lest he should appear less than perfect.”
The small exhibit shows black chalk drawings of arms, heads, torsos and groupings created in preparation for the paintings on the ceiling and “Last Judgment” altar wall in the Sistine Chapel. There's also a self-portrait, a cast made from his death mask and a bronze replica of the “Madonna of the Steps,” which Michelangelo carved in marble at the age of 15. Notice a little “grocery list” for dinner written on the back of an envelope and illustrated with drawings of fish and vegetables and ravioli for the benefit of an illiterate servant.
Cell phone audio tours are available for the Michelangelo exhibit. Call 206-866-3222 and enter item numbers printed on the object labels next to the artworks.
Wenda Reed is a Seattle-area writer and art-lover.
IF YOU GO
Where: Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., downtown Seattle.
When: “Alexander Calder: A Balancing Act,” Oct. 15, 2009 through April 11, 2010; “Michelangelo Public and Private,” Oct. 15 through Jan. 31. Museum hours: Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., plus Thursday and Friday, 5 to 9 p.m.
Cost: Suggested admission Adults $15, students (with ID) and teens 13 to 17 $9, children 12 and younger free; first Thursdays free to all; second Fridays, 5 to 9 p.m., free to teens 13 to 19 with ID; cost includes regular museum admission and Calder and Michelangelo exhibits.
Special Events: “Me & Mike,” a kid-friendly tour and opportunity to sketch in the style of Michelangelo, Nov. 14, 10 a.m. to noon, free for kids with at least one adult admission; “Make It Move,” a chance for kids to learn about Calder and transform their line drawings into movable 3-D sculptures, Dec. 12,10 a.m. to noon, free for kids with adult admission; “Creating Copper Jewelry,” (for teens and older, not appropriate for young children) Dec. 12, 1 to 4 p.m. at Olympic Sculpture Park, $20, students and teens $16; “Art for All with the Early Music Guild,” Jan. 7, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., free; “Sketches in Motion,” teen workshops in figure drawing inspired by Michelangelo and artists in the permanent collection, Saturdays, Nov. 14 through Dec. 19, 1 to 4 p.m., free for high school students.
