A Miro-Calder reunion

WASHINGTON — For almost a half-century, the American sculptor Alexander Calder and the Spanish painter Joan Miro looked on each other as good friends. When apart, as they often were, they sometimes exchanged a letter or postcard of greeting. "A good smack on the butt for you," wrote Calder in French in 1934. "A hug, kisses, and see you soon, you big stud," wrote Miro in Spanish in 1945. They liked to embellish the postcards. Miro, for example, added underarm hair to the portrait of a Spanish dancer. But one thing they never did. Their correspondence has no discussion of theories or techniques or movements of art.

This lack of serious art talk makes sense. There are strong similarities in the work of Calder and Miro. Both artists have an impish quality, a sense of play, a love of adventure and a penchant for creating colorful spheres and biomorphs. But they did not try to imitate each other. Nor did they try to compete. They were simply at ease, like good buddies, and their art somehow fit together. There was no need for pronouncements.

This interplay of Calder and Miro is displayed in an unusual exhibition -- brimming with some of their finest mobiles and paintings -- that opened Oct. 9 at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. Titled simply "Calder Miro," the exhibition, which has already been shown at the Fondation Beyeler near Basel, Switzerland, closes in Washington on Jan. 23 and goes nowhere else in the United States.

Miro shows always attract me. One of the great privileges of my career as a foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times was the chance to interview Miro on his 85th birthday at his home and studio in Palma de Mallorca. Another correspondent and I spent several hours with him that day in 1978, and it was easy to be impressed by his energy, good feelings and shy smile. Yet, though I have seen many Miro shows over the years, this was the first time I had seen him sharing an exhibition with Calder.

Elizabeth Hutton Turner of the Phillips, the curator who conceived the show, believes the floating mobiles of Calder and the fanciful paintings of Miro complement each other. "Calder called himself a painter, not a sculptor," she says. "He said he was drawing in space." Calder was challenging the definition of a painting as something limited by the borders of a canvas. Miro, Turner adds, tried to do the same by painting figures as if they could float away from a canvas.