Spirals and Stars c. 1974

This is Alexander Calder’s ‘Spirals and Stars’, an exciting image on textile. Calder plays around with this playful language of stars and spirals that appear again and again in his work. The colors are nice and bold, really immediate; blue, red, yellow and orange against a white background, they are given a lot of space to breathe. The heavy outlines are really interesting, they’re not fussy, just thick lines in black, really cartoon-y in some ways, almost like the confidence of a kid, drawing something. Look at the red star on the left-hand side; the colour doesn’t even fill the outline, it’s like he’s barely there, or he doesn’t care. The black outlines, the flatness of the block colours, reminds me a little of Joan Miró, they’re both working with that same visual language. I feel the same playful sensibility from both. It doesn’t take itself too seriously. It's fun!