Being in dialogue

Twenty years ago, I was whisked to an exciting art exhibit at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC titled “Calder/Miró.”

Alexander Calder was an American sculptor who is known for inventing the mobile, a type of kinetic art made of abstract sculpture that moves.

Joan Miró was a Catalan surrealist painter known for his exploration of the subconscious mind.

The two met in Paris in 1928 and became lifelong friends. Though an ocean apart, they maintained close contact up until 1939 when the war broke out.

Both of their styles convey whimsy and childlike sense of wonder, and offered an opportunity to escape the austere conditions of wartime.

What is striking about the works they created during WWII, later named “Constellations,” is that they bear an uncanny resonance with each other, although the mediums are quite different.

Their friendship and on-going dialogue bears witness within the art they created.

They were obviously quite influential on each other.

After spending a week this summer touring museums in NYC and Washington DC with family friends, I see many other examples of the power of friendship and dialogue on shaping one’s life work.

Photo by Aad van der Klaauw on Pexels.

As members of the Bloomsbury Group, writer, Virginia Woolf, and economist, John Maynard Keynes, shared not only close friendship but also a belief in the power of ideas to reshape society. Woolf’s experimental fiction and Keynes’s groundbreaking economic theories developed in parallel were each shaped by a culture of bold, interdisciplinary critique and aesthetic sensibility that challenged Victorian values.

Mary Cassatt, an American artist, was a friend and frequent companion to many of the French Impressionists. Edgar Degas was her friend and mentor. And she is now considered one of art history’s most famous female painters.

The list is endless. Any great artist, composer, writer, thinker, or philosopher has been shaped by those that came before them and those that surround them.

We are, as Stanford Professor Brian Lowery says, created and shaped by communities.

So who influences you?

Who are the communities that shape you?

And who are you in dialogue with?

And what is the impact on you and your work?

Love,

Audrey