Calder

Auteur

Alexander S. C. Rower is founder and president of the Calder Foundation. Since 1987, Rower has documented more than 22,000 works by Calder and established an extensive archive dedicated to all aspects of the artist's career. He has curated and collaborated on over 100 Calder exhibitions worldwide.

Jed Perl was the art critic for The New Republic for twenty years and a contributing editor to Vogue for a decade. He is currently a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. Among his many books are Calder: The Conquest of Time, Magicians and Charlatans, Antoine's Alphabet, New Art City, and Paris Without End. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and teaches at the New School in New York.

Susan Braeuer Dam is Director of Research and Publications for the Calder Foundation.

Texte du rabat

Chess Knightmares is a cycle of nearly four dozen unbridled drawings by Calder of wild chess scenarios. Bawdy female knights, conspiring bishops, and misbehaving queens engage clueless rooks, lewd pawns, and mating kings.

Chess Knightmares, the cycle of nearly four dozen frequently savage and sometimes downright salacious drawings that Alexander Calder dedicated to the game in 1944. They unleash an otherwise regulated game into frenzied conflicts of immorality, with executions and sexual mishaps Calder's King, Queen, Knights, Bishops, Rooks, and Pawns don't give a damn about the rules. They've kicked off all constraints. They move any way they like. They pose, preen, and prance across the chess board, giddily engaging in gossip, backstabbing, sex acts, mayhem, even murder. Marcel Duchamp, who was passionate about the game, added alternate titles to many of Calder drawings.