Calder's Circus at 100

Summary

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Podcast Summary: All Of It – "Calder’s Circus at 100"

Host: Tiffany Hansen (in for Alison Stewart)
Guests: Jenny Goldstein (Curator), Roxanne Smith (Assistant Curator)
Date: December 19, 2025
Episode Focus: Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Alexander Calder’s groundbreaking “Circus” installation and its current exhibition at the Whitney Museum.

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Episode Overview

In this episode of All Of It, host Tiffany Hansen welcomes Whitney Museum curators Jenny Goldstein and Roxanne Smith to discuss the legacy, innovation, and continued fascination with Alexander Calder’s “Circus” – a miniature, kinetic world created in the 1920s that is now recognized as a foundational piece in Calder’s career and the evolution of modern art. The conversation covers the origins, artistic significance, performance rituals, and the immersive new exhibition at the Whitney marking the centenary of Calder’s Circus.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Origins and Structure of Calder’s Circus

• Calder’s Early Influences: The circus originated in Paris (1926-1931) when Calder was experimenting with wire, fabric, and movement, intending to create a new type of performative art.

  “He really was consumed by this project from 1926 until 1931, making circus figures, adding to the spectacle of this performance, and then performing it for a whole host of fellow artists, gallerists, real kind of who's who of the Parisian avant garde.” – Jenny Goldstein [03:01]

• Description of Figurines: Doll-sized (roughly 8–12 inches), crafted from ordinary materials—wire, scraps of fabric, rubber, and leather—designed to be manipulated by Calder himself.
• Performance Mechanisms: Unlike puppets with strings, these figures were internally rigged with pulleys, wheels, or balanced parts—Calder directly manipulated each “performer” with his hands.

  “Each of the individual objects is rigged for motion internally in some way or another with wheels or pulley, just relying on balance.” – Roxanne Smith [02:22]

2. Calder as Performer and the Theatrical Experience

• Sole Ringmaster: Only Calder handled the performance; his wife’s main role was playing records for atmosphere.

  “He's the ringmaster. It was his performance.” – Jenny Goldstein [06:03]

• Audience: The circus was considered radical “performance art” for grown-ups, especially fellow artists and critics, performed in intimate, artistic gatherings in Paris and eventually in New York.
• Mobility: All components fit into five leather suitcases, allowing travelling performances.

  “You set it up and you perform it, and you take it down.” – Jenny Goldstein [08:17]

3. Cultural and Artistic Context

• Parisian & American Circus Influences: Calder drew from both traditions, crafting a miniature world that blended familiar archetypes (acrobats, lions, ringmasters) with his own unique flair.
• Lasting Inspiration: Circus themes continued to influence Calder throughout his career, especially in two-dimensional works, even as he moved toward abstraction and invented his iconic mobiles.
• Evolution Into Abstraction: Calder’s creative leap from detailed, representational figures to abstract mobiles paralleled his engagement with the radical art movements flourishing in Paris at the time.

  “… formative interactions with fellow artists … led him to similarly turn towards abstraction. … He started making his radical abstract sculptures that Marcel Duchamp would later call mobiles.” – Jenny Goldstein [07:13]

4. Preservation, Legacy, and Exhibition

• Fragility of the Original: The circus figures, now a century old, are extremely fragile and are no longer manipulated.
• New Exhibition Format: The Whitney’s current exhibition arranges the circus elements within a circular ring-like display, allowing visitors to observe all aspects.

  “The installation is really dedicated to the circus. It's displayed over a series of cases that almost feels like a ring, a circus ring in and of itself, but really spaciously installed …” – Jenny Goldstein [11:51]

• Archival Materials: On view: original archival drawings, handmade invitations, and rare photos, offering rich new context for Calder’s process and community.
• Public Fascination & Critical Acclaim: From the start, Calder’s Circus was a critical and popular success, even being covered by mainstream and circus-specific press.

5. Themes of Imagination, Contained Universes & the Artist’s Aims

• Imaginative Worlds: Roxanne links Calder’s approach to his fascination with universes and systems, seeing the circus as a microcosm of possibility.

  “He found a sort of perfect subject for that idea of this contained universe unto itself, where the ordinary and the Extraordinary could collapse.” – Roxanne Smith [10:49]

• Art in Motion: Calder intended for his works to remain animated and interactive, a vision the curators strive to honor even without his physical performance.

  “When you walk by a Calder that can move, that can be—you have an impact on it, just as it has an impact on you.” – Jenny Goldstein [14:27]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Materials and Preservation:

  “Calder made it out of really, really ordinary materials. So, like bits of rubber, bits of scraps of leather … all of these materials have degraded or lost their color over time … However, it was always Calder's artwork to perform anyway.” – Roxanne Smith [05:10]

• On Cultural Phenomenon:

  “The circus was wildly popular in a way that is hard to even understand now.” – Jenny Goldstein [10:03]

• On His Favorite Element (Suitcases):

  “You can just feel him present with them. You can imagine him holding them and packing them up and unpacking them.” – Jenny Goldstein [15:36]

• On Audience Reaction:

  “It was extremely well received at the time, and it was part of how he gained notoriety as an artist early in his career … an object of fascination not only to the art world at the time …” – Roxanne Smith [13:28]

• Curators’ Favorite Parts:

  • Roxanne: “The spear thrower act. I recommend to all of the listeners to spend some time with the spear thrower and his exotic dancer.” [15:22]
  • Jenny: “The suitcases.” [15:34]

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Important Timestamps

• 00:00 Introduction / Calder’s reputation and the circus’s historical context
• 01:10 – 04:50 Description of the circus, figurines, influences, and materials
• 05:56 – 06:18 Calder as sole ringmaster and the performance’s exclusivity
• 07:13 – 08:12 Calder’s artistic trajectory and the bridge to abstraction
• 09:20 – 10:03 Recurrence of circus themes in later works
• 11:39 – 13:11 Innovations in this exhibition and display techniques
• 13:28 – 14:27 Initial audience reception and Calder’s vision of lasting movement
• 15:10 – 15:49 Exhibition details, curators’ favorite elements

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Exhibition Details

• Title: High Wire: Calder’s Circus at 100
• Location: Whitney Museum, NYC
• On View: Until March 9th

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Tone and Style

The episode is warm, enthusiastic, and accessible, bringing both historical context and a palpable sense of wonder for Calder’s ingenuity and enduring appeal. The curators balance scholarly insight with personal reflection, inviting listeners to appreciate the artistry, imagination, and sheer fun of Calder’s Circus.

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Summary prepared for listeners who want a full sense of the discussion and its cultural context without needing to listen to the episode.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Tiffany Hansen in for Alison Stewart. Today, when you think of Alexander Calder, you're likely to think of his kinetic works of art, his mobiles, or his large scale public sculptures. You probably also see a lot of wire. In the mid-20s, as a young artist in Paris, Calder was beginning to play with all of these materials and these ideas in piece that would eventually become Calder's Circus. The circus features dozens of doll sized wire and fabric figures, acrobats, cowboys, lions, elephants. Calder himself would manipulate them and have them act out roles in his circus. It was a two hour show that constituted a pretty radical performance art for its time. The Whitney Museum calls Calder's Circus his most formative work of art. It's the subject of their current exhibition, Calder's Circus at 150. Joining us to talk about it are curator Jenny Goldstein and assistant curator Roxanne Smith. Jenny. Hi, Roxanne. Hi.

[B]

Hi. Thanks for having us.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, Jenny. So for people who aren't familiar with Calder's work, I did a little bit of an explanation there, but describe at least, you know, maybe one of the pieces that people might be most familiar with. I'm thinking maybe like a mobile. Would most people kind of know a Calder mobile?

[C]

Sure. Calder is incredibly famous for or his mobile sculptures. Totally abstract works that play with form and motion. They often are suspended from the ceiling. And many of the ideas that led to him discovering this way of working with motion really have their origin in Calder's Circus, which is part of what our exhibition sets out to tell Roxanne.

[A]

I mentioned there's like a dozen figurines here. They're doll sized. But what do we mean when we say doll size? Are we talking 8 inches, 12 inches?

[B]

Yeah, about there. They were all designed for Caulder to be able to hold them and to manipulate them so that they would move. I think doll size would be basically appropriate scale to think about.

[A]

And we're talking not manipulating like puppets, like on a, on a. You know, those little crisscross wooden things, right? Like, how is he manipulating them?

[B]

Well, this is part of Calder's ingenuity is that each of the individual objects is rigged for motion internally in some way or another with wheels or pulley, just relying on balance. Calder would hold these objects and make them move in their own right. And much like the real circus is just a spectacle of motion, that's what he was able to achieve with these really simple mechanics that all of the individual objects are rigged with Jenny, the.

[A]

Whitney website says it is his most formative work of art. Why do you think it deserves that distinction?

[C]

Well, because he made it so early in his career. It was really just as he was starting out. He moved to Paris in 1926 as a young artist wanting to experiment both with painting and with sculpture, to be among other kind of radical experimental thinkers. And he really was consumed by this project from 1926 until 1931, making circus figures, adding to the spectacle of this performance, and then performing it for a whole host of fellow artists, gallerists, real kind of who's who of the Parisian avant garde. And he would do this, as you said before, in these kind of long performances that would sometimes last hours, set to music that he would play on a Victrola, and audiences would come in and sit on the floor and really kind of engage with this performance.

[A]

We just were talking kids music in our last segment here. We're not talking. These were adults that were coming to see this. Right. This was considered performance art for grown up artists in Paris.

[C]

Yeah, he was performing it for his peers, for others in the art world.

[A]

Roxanne, what kind of influence of Paris do we see in these figures? Are there colors or sort of. I'm thinking like the Mon. You know, the Montmartre, kind of like.

[B]

Of course, yeah. And Calder was, throughout his life, but especially beginning in his 20s as an artist, deeply fascinated by the circus, which had a really special history, not only in the United States, but in France and in Paris in particular. So in his miniature version of the circus, he's pulling on really specific traditions from the American circus and from the Parisian circus that you can see play out in the individual characters that he renders in the. In the work.

[A]

Yeah. Roxanne, are these. You mentioned these little wheels on the inside and these characters, these are now how old?

[B]

They're now 100.

[A]

So are they in good shape? Well, I mean, is anybody moving them now? No, we don't.

[B]

Certainly not Jani and I.

[A]

No.

[B]

The work is extremely fragile. And part of what makes it so special is that Calder made it out of really, really ordinary materials. So, like bits of rubber, bits of scraps of leather, just ordinary wire that you could buy at the hardware store, you know, scraps of fabric. And all of these materials have degraded or lost their color over time or mean that we're to manipulate the objects as Calder once would have. However, it was always Calder's artwork to perform anyway. So our job as stewards of the work is to present it as best we can. To get at the idea of the performance. But without the performance artist, without Calder still alive, we can no longer do that in its entirety.

[A]

You know, Jenny, makes me wonder, did anybody besides him ever do it, or was he only ever the only one who did it?

[C]

He's the ringmaster, was his performance.

[A]

So it wasn't like he handed it off to somebody at some point? No.

[C]

His wife would play the records.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But otherwise, that's the only person allowed to get near it.

[C]

That was the collaboration.

[A]

Jenny, you mentioned that kind of where he was at the beginning of his career at that point. Was this a jumping off point for him? How do we see him artistically jump off at this point?

[C]

Well, he was working on his circus, but he was also making paintings and other wire sculptures, figures of other performers from, you know, popular culture and elsewhere, and was starting to show his art in Paris. And then he came back to New York in the early 1930s, and his career really took off from there. He had exhibits. He had a major exhibition at MOMA in 1943. He really was, you know, this was the early days of his career, but he was showing his work and gallery spaces and really building an audience.

[A]

So from that point in Paris in the 20s to New York in the 30s, he obviously, he was evolving as an artist. Did he just kind of cast the circus aside at that point?

[C]

Well, that's an interesting question. In fact, it was through this era of him working on the circus that he's in Paris and he's meeting all of these other artists, and he's exposed at the time to artists who are working in radical abstraction, just total rejection of the representational world. And it was some of these kind of formative interactions with fellow artists that really led him to similarly turn towards abstraction. And this is all happening almost at the exact same moment. So as he's finishing working on the circus or deciding for himself that he no longer wanted to add circus figures. He continued to perform it after this, but that he was no longer going to make the sculptural elements. He started making his radical abstract sculptures that Marcel Duchamp would later call mobiles. It's the exact same time in the early 1930s.

[A]

Got it. Okay. So did he ever. Do we know, did he ever perform it here in New York?

[C]

Oh, yeah, he performed it in Paris. He performed it in New York. He performed it in other places in Europe.

[B]

He performed it the night before his wedding.

[C]

Yeah, he performed it, you know, because.

[A]

That'S what you do.

[C]

He performed it many times in different contexts. But he stopped adding to the figure. So he reached a point where he filled five leather suitcases full of all of the circus elements, the materials themselves, and additional elements. And then he would use those suitcases to transport the circus and then set up the performance. It was really like a traveling circus. You set it up and you perform it, and you take it down.

[A]

Roxanne, do we see the circus in other places in his art later?

[B]

Yeah. It's a subject that he never really quits. He returns to it.

[A]

And I mean the circus, like, not the piece. I mean, like the circus.

[B]

Yeah. It's something that he continues to represent in his artwork through the 1970s, in fact.

[C]

But mostly in two dimensions.

[B]

Right.

[C]

Occasionally in wire as well.

[A]

Do we see any of those figures show up in other. Like I'm imagining. Is there a painting or something somewhere where there's, like, the face of the figure or something like that, or were they sort of contained to their own?

[B]

The Sir Calder. The Calder Circus is its own contained universe. We see the origins of it in some of the paintings that he made in the earlier 1920s, where he's making paintings representing circuses that he saw at that time. And you see some of these, like, the beginning of the ideas of those characters start to germinate. And he would make.

[C]

He made line drawings in the 30s based on circus acrobats and circus rigging, circus animals, and would return to those motifs.

[B]

And we're excited to have those drawings as part of the exhibition also.

[A]

Okay. But we're not going to say obsessed by the circus, just sort of like an influence for him.

[C]

The circus was wildly popular in a way that is hard to even understand now. It was hugely popular culture in the 1920s and 30s, and so it stayed with him, but he moved on to a lot of other concepts and ideas.

[A]

A lot of what we see is, you know, is the circus. But a lot of what we're seeing there is sort of Roxanne is his own imagination and how he took this thing and created this entire traveling show. Can you point to another one of his pieces of art where you really see sort of that, like. I mean, obviously, they're all his, but like, just such an explosion of imagination on the artist's part.

[B]

I think that Calder had this sensibility in his artwork of imagining every part of a system or universe in and of itself. He was very interested in constellations, for instance. And I think with the circus, he found a sort of perfect subject for that idea of this contained universe unto itself, where the ordinary and the Extraordinary could collapse. And by making his own circus, it was as though he could have his own universe in that way. And I think about how he returned to constellations and the idea of the universe throughout his work as related to this miniaturized circus universe that he produced early on.

[A]

Jenny, we have some texts here from folks who are curious how this exhibit is different from or what new is here, because they have maybe seen Calder's circus at the Whitney before.

[C]

Well, the Circus Calder Circus is really a beloved work from the Whitney's collection, and as such, it has been on view many times in many different configurations over the years. However, we've never shown it quite like this. The installation is really dedicated to the circus. It's displayed over a series of cases that almost feels like a ring, a circus ring in and of itself, but really spaciously installed so that you can really look at all of the elements of the circus in the round and engage with them in dialogue with each other across the floor. Similarly, we are including in the show some incredible archival material that is on loan to us from the Calder foundation that helps to really explain the origin story of this. How he started out drawing or covering the circus, really, as a commercial illustrator for the newspapers, and how he got so fascinated with it. Documents of the handmade invitations that he would give out to friends and others to invite them to his performances, as well as really interesting photographic documentation of him performing the circus when he was a young man, which really helps to bring this whole history into a kind of greater clarity for our audiences. And we've never been able to do something quite like that before.

[A]

I'm curious, Roxanne, if we know how audiences reacted to it. Obviously, a lot of people texting and say they've seen it, they love it at the Whitney, but initially, when he did it in Paris, when he first performed it, do we know where people like, okay, that's a little weird.

[B]

I think some were, surely, but it was extremely well received at the time, and it was part of how he gained notoriety as an artist early in his career was an object of fascination not only to the art world at the time, but he was also getting exposure in the mainstream press as well as even in the circus press, which existed back then. So popular interests from all over and help help make him a household name early in his career.

[A]

Jenny, I'm just curious because I was thinking about how, you know, Frank Lloyd Wright, as an architect, really wanted people to live in his vision. How did Calder imagine the movement of his vision in perpetuity, like Things would just keep moving, you know, did he imagine all of this movement would just keep going, you know, long after he was gone?

[C]

That's an interesting question. I think all artists want their work to move or create impact after they're gone. In the case of someone like Alexander Calder, that seems all the more possible because movement, motion, velocity, the currents of air, the relationship of the real world on the maid art, those are always in dialogue. So when you walk by a Calder that can move, that can be. You have an impact on it, just as it has an impact on you. So I do think that was part of how he thought about his kind of creative enterprise.

[A]

All right, Roxanne, just tell us. The exhibit is on now.

[B]

It's on now. High Wire Calder Circus at 100. It will be on view at the Whitney Museum until March 9th.

[A]

Okay, what's your favorite part?

[B]

Ooh, my favorite part.

[A]

I love putting people on the screen.

[B]

Okay, my favorite part is undoubtedly the spear thrower act. I recommend to all of the listeners to spend some time with the spear thrower and his exotic dancer.

[A]

Okay, Jenny.

[C]

Well, the suitcases.

[A]

Oh, yeah. These are the things he used to carry. And you love them because you can.

[C]

Just feel him present with them. You can imagine him holding them and packing them up and unpacking them.

[A]

All right, the subject is High Wire Calders Circus at 100. We've been talking with Jenny Goldstein and Roxanne Smith. Thanks so much for your time. We appreciate it.

[B]

Thank you.

[D]

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