Shovel by Alexander Calder
To experience and understand contemporary art, Ossian Ward — an ex-chief art critic of Time Out London — encourages viewers of art to use the “Tabula Rasa” method in his book Ways of Looking: How to Experience Contemporary Art. The root of the term “Tabula Rasa” literally means an “unblemished tablet or blank slate”, which refers to Ward’s perspective that traditional artistic media hardly ever follows what we expect of “art” any more, especially in a contemporary setting. To understand Calder’s intention and to experience Alexander Calder’s Shovel in a meaningful way, I will describe his background and the time period of when the artwork was completed, then approach the artwork with tabula rasa and observe the sculpture as if it was my first-time experiencing Calder’s specific medium and format.
Best recognized for his kinetic wire sculptures, Alexander Calder is an American sculptor and an artist from Pennsylvania, where he grew up surrounded by a family of artists; his father was a well-known sculptor and his grandfather and mother were also painters. In the late 1920’s and early 1930’s when Calder completed Shovel, modern art movements such as Impressionism, Abstract art, and Cubism were prominent, with artists like Jackson Pollock and Marcel Duchamp capturing the eyes as well as the brains of viewers and critics. During this time, Calder studied mechanical engineering and utilized his technical and artistic background to create kinetic sculptors and paintings that echoed his passion for engineering and arts. By understanding Calder’s background and the artistic trends during that period, viewers can better comprehend Shovel and associate it with the works of other artists of Calder’s time.
From a purely visual perspective, Shovel is a gold shovel made with brass wire and brass sheet. Although it seems functional, the thin brass wire that makes up the handle and the bar is very thin and seems unstable for a working shovel. The brass wire is twisted in its form, which makes the sculpture appear organic and spontaneous, as if Calder tried to fix a broken shovel by using the tools he has laying around in his studio. To further accentuate the shovel’s lack of functionality, the color gold makes this common, industrial tool look more luxurious and richer. While most of Calder’s structures are kinetic in nature, such as artworks in his famous Cirque Calder portfolio, Shovel is static and lies steadily on the 7th floor of the Whitney. However, unstable qualities that arise from the thin brass wires Calder uses for this artwork gives a similar feeling that a kinetic sculpture gives.
When revisiting the artwork, I thought about how much the Shovel resembled Marcel Duchamp’s Prelude to a Broken Arm. Visually, Prelude to a Broken Arm is merely a snow shovel that Duchamp created during his career that exemplifies Duchamp’s Dadaist ready-made sculptures; the most notorious example of that is the Fountain, which is a pseudo-urinal that he created under the name of “R.Mutt”, ironically humorizing modern artworks. The title of Duchamp’s sculpture implies that without this specific tool to shovel snow, one might end up breaking his or her arm. Throughout his career, Duchamp had challenged the norms of a modern artwork by giving a new meaning beyond its visual qualities, which is similar to what Calder’s Shovel did for me. Calder’s artwork somewhat felt visually uninteresting and even puzzling, but because of this, I was forced to think about the process of making the golden shovel and the material Calder used, which echoes the spirit of abstract art.
