The Jousters

Alexander Calder

1963

Steel plate stabiles, painted black, white and red

J. Paul Getty Museum

The violent, adversarial imagery of the medieval joust is transformed into a playful meeting of two fanciful abstract forms. The large and small "knights" do not confront one another, but rather stand at oblique angles--more a composed than confrontational. Both of the stout, tank-like forms are equipped with a long lance that terminates not in a pointed tip but with a benign flat form--a feature that further undermines the traditionally brutal conception of this medieval court spectacle. Of differing sizes, the two forms are united by a shared color scheme of red, white, and black. Alexander Calder committed the latter part of his