BELT 1935

This belt by Alexander Calder, made with metal and woven string, seems like a real departure from painting, but it is not, it is just another way of making marks. I can just picture him, in his studio, bending the wire, feeling its resistance. It has such a handmade, intimate feel. Calder is probably figuring out what happens when a line becomes three-dimensional, what happens when you weave it through colored string. The wire spirals are springy and dynamic, like a doodle in space. What a line! It's like, "I'm going to coil this wire again and again and again!" But the line never stops, it morphs into something else. Artists like Calder are always in conversation, exchanging ideas across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. Here, painting embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations and meaning over fixed readings.