Page 50 - Studio International - November 1966

folded metal sheets. The material and its properties are bleak room with Calder's characteristic emblems, and
used with some wit. One work consists of a group of especially his ever-present sun-symbol. What they lack
waving aluminium streamers, standing upright like is the delicate rigour of his best mobiles and stabiles—the
blades of grass. The way the metal is cut and folded gives imagination, here, isn't kept on a tight enough rein.
it strength and spring. I wish I thought one could simply What the show does prove about Calder himself is some-
admire the elegance and the cleverness, and leave it at thing in a way irrelevant, and yet—at least to me—
that. However I suspect, though perhaps unjustly, that a interesting. Calder is the most successfully European of
claim to total originality is being made; and this won't, American artists. He makes Tobey (whom in some ways
even for one instant, stand up to examination. Mr he resembles) look provincial. This European quality
Morgan owes as much to Calder and Caro as Mr de may lead us, perhaps, to underrate him.
Grey does to Cezanne and de Staël.
It's easy enough to test the hypothesis by going direct Finally, a painter who isn't, as it happens, having an
from the show at Indica to the one at the I.C.A. Here exhibition, but whose work seems to fit in with some of the
there's a big group of watercolours by Calder himself. things which I've just been talking about. John Kaine,
Bold, bright, decorative, the drawings light up a rather whose studio I visited recently, is an artist who has been

Tony Morgan
Twice four spiked 1966
Height from 3 ft to 8 ft
Eight red-painted aluminium
right-angled triangles