The laconic Calder downplayed theory, but Perl treasures it. And that works out strangely well, for who but a bold, incredibly knowledgeable critic such as Perl would have the guts to, in essence, read the mind of a sculptor who preferred bending wire to batting around high-minded jargon? … Perl does persuade us that Calder, although inspired by isms — modernism, cubism, abstractionism, surrealism — somehow evaded their constricting clutches and pioneered new forms that evolved from playful to beautiful to monumental. Like Monet, Matisse, Picasso, Duchamp and Mondrian, Calder widened the vocabulary of perception … Those looking for a sleek life story will sometimes be maddened by Perl’s digressions...My recommendation? Relax. Bathe in Perl’s erudition. Enjoy his enthusiastic cat-chasing-butterflies side excursions.

In the first of two planned volumes spanning the life and career of Alexander ‘Sandy’ Calder, the art critic Jed Perl argues that Calder’s greatness sprang from his canny ability to harness time and movement to explore form. Here Perl is following the lead of John Richardson, doing for Calder what Richardson, in his definitive, multi-book opus, has done for Picasso. Exhaustively researched, exuberantly written, Calder: The Conquest of Time captures in exquisite detail the first half of Calder’s life … Calder: The Conquest of Time is a dense but fulfilling read, enriched by an abundance of anecdotes and Perl’s command of art history, making a persuasive case for Calder as a colossus who blended American self-reliance with French intellectualism, looming (literally) over Europe’s avant-garde.

In this volume we meet first Calder the child, then Calder the engineer and, finally, Calder the emerging artist. Mr. Perl describes Calder’s life in mostly chronological order, to a degree of detail that has not previously been achieved … Mr. Perl tells much of the story of Calder’s engineering education and practice in two chapters, one titled ‘The Stevens Institute of Technology’ and the following, ‘Engineering’...But Mr. Perl curiously stops short of pursuing in any depth the influence of engineering study and practice on Calder’s art. Among the aspects of Calder’s engineering career that Mr. Perl plays down is his design of children’s toys, especially those that moved in amusingly animated ways when pulled … Mr. Perl does an excellent job of placing Calder’s work in the context of that of his artistic contemporaries, all the while moving the biographical narrative forward.

The young Calder and his middle-aged counterpart are almost identical: self-assured, hard working, constitutionally cheerful — and that’s about it. If you view biographies as, by definition, accounts of psychological development, you may find this one puzzling. To readers in search of dark-minded revelations, it will be a page-turner in the wrong way ... there’s the matter of Calder’s personality. When Perl calls it 'fundamentally imperturbable,' he may be saying most of what there is to say. We’re assured that the artist had hidden depths, though we never convincingly see them ... What the book gets absolutely right — thanks in part, actually, to the pacing — is its demonstration of Calder’s staying-in-place-while-flying move from toy-making to art-making, and how profound that move was.

The first in a foundational two-book inquiry into the unusually sunny life and exuberantly radical work of sculptor Alexander Calder … Graced with 400 photographs, Perl’s dynamic and illuminating biography, as buoyant and evocative as Calder’s sculptures, concludes with the ebullient and cosmic artist poised for ever more creative adventures and renown.

...Jed Perl, one of America’s most insightful and thoughtful art critics, has written a comprehensive and marvelous biography that clearly establishes Calder as one of the artistic giants of the 20th century. A gifted writer and a meticulous researcher, Perl’s rich prose brings Calder alive, both as an artist and person ...at this point – just as Calder enters his early 40s – that this important, rich and engrossing book ends. There is a second volume to come and it will be eagerly and deservedly anticipated ... Thanks to Perl’s superb book, Calder’s ubiquitous mobiles and stabiles will soon be regarded with far more insight, understanding, and appreciation than ever before.

...granted access to the Foundation’s enormous tranche of Calder letters, papers, photos, sketches, and ephemera without which only a very thin and strained biography could possibly be written ... Perl is a fine writer on art and artists, and in this big book he demonstrates also a tremendous effectiveness at describing the broader world into which Calder was born in 1898 and the eccentric nature of his family, which was full of artists and strong-willed iconoclasts...he nevertheless works hard to make his readers like and admire Calder in these pages, following him through childhood, schooling, and into his burgeoning career as an avant-garde artist... Readers are told that Calder 'had a way of absorbing everything that was going on around him,' although those readers will search the whole length and breadth of the book’s 600 pages for any hint that this was ever even slightly true, and they won’t get many supporting indications even from Perl himself... Fans of this artist’s work have been waiting for volumes like these for decades, and they’re the ones who’ll most appreciate the portrait Perl creates.

Epic describes Jed Perl’s immersive and erudite biography of the man who transformed sculpture by making it move. In the first 42 years of a journey that went back and forth between America and France, Calder was shaped by everything from Arts and Crafts to astronomy, and so much that Calder touched found its way into his art … What we don’t get in Calder is the man’s dark side, if he ever had one. Married happily to the grand-niece of Henry James, he lacked vanity, and his peccadilloes seemed limited to eating too much and bumping into things.

...in middle age as he looked back on his childhood and his failed attempt to escape sculpture, the family profession. This is how Jed Perl begins his biography of Calder, which—surprisingly, given his towering stature—is the first ever written on the US artist ... Calder: the Conquest of Time traces how the artist (1898–1976) made mobiles, stabiles, and a mechanical circus cutting-edge Modern art ...more than 600-page volume... The book focuses on the first 42 years of the artist’s life, ending just before his major survey at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1943 ... But neither Calder nor Picasso’s work was to the taste of hard-line Communists, who preferred their propaganda with a capital 'P' and social realist in style. Being an abstract artist 'was a political act,' Perl says.

...meticulously researched … Most triumphant is the way in which Perl explains how to read Calder’s challenging forms; he clearly discusses the ‘difference between a volume and a void’ and ‘the disparity that exists between form, masses and movement’ … Not only an essential record of the first 40 years of Calder’s life, but an exceptional chronicle of the genesis of modernism.

Perl delivers a hulking and exhaustively researched biography of American sculptor Alexander Calder, focusing on the first four decades of his life … The biography ends when Calder has entered his ‘classical style,’ characterized by large-scale mobiles of arresting complexity. Perl throughout emphasizes Calder’s debt to the Arts and Crafts movement, particularly in his ability to blend fine art with everyday objects such as children’s toys. Generously illustrated and delivered in vibrant writing.