HENRY MOORE AT THE TATE BRITAIN, MARCH 2010
HENRY MOORE AT THE TATE BRITAIN, MARCH 2010
The new exhibition at the Tate Britain is a relatively condensed retrospective of the life and work of Henry Moore (1898-1986). The exhibition traces the origins of Moore's art in his interest in the very early history sculpture which he saw at the British Museum while a student in London before WW1. Moore's work was shaped by pre-Columbian art, sculpture especially, but also by the architectural sculpture of the Sumerian and Biblical era. Moore served in the trenches during WW1, narrowly escaped death, was traumatised by the experiences, as was his entire generation. WW1 politicised Moore, pushing him to the Left in politics. Moore supported the Republican side against Franco during the Spanish Civil War, opposed the rise of fascism generally, later helped to found CND, providing it with its quintessential image of a mushroom cloud formed into a human skull.
Moore's Modernism evolved out of an unusual set of interests, for at the time of his earliest artistic development Victorian sculpture imitated an inert realism or shallow neo-classical design. Moore made the break from Victorian art and design and, like the literary Modernists, was influenced by some of the very earliest art, design and sculpture, rather as James Joyce and Ezra Pound, for instance, adopted the formal design of Homer's 'Odyssey', even if only to parody it ( for instance, 'Ulysses', 'The Cantos').
The exhibition follows the chronological development of Moore's art, from early work that is located within generic movements in sculpture such as his depictions of mother and child (which some critics see as a consequence of the childlessness of his own marriage, although he and his wife did have a daughter after about ten years...) which must have evolved from Moore's interest in Renaissance sculpture and stereotypical depictions of Madonna and Child made by many artists of that time, or even from the pieta, the Madonna cradling the dead Jesus. His other realist location is his reclining figure, a typical Henry Moore theme, which seems to take on a monumental quality as much located in pre-Colombian art as in Modernism. The human figure takes on a superhuman power and concentration, as found in depictions of Aztec God Kings in pre-Columbian Aztec art where the figure neither sits nor quite lies down. The exhibition details Moore's leap into abstraction, his varied influences from the Surrealists to Freudian psychoanalysis.
Everywhere Moore is tight lipped about his work, he doesn't want to speculate about its meaning which he sees as essentially threatening the mystery of his art. This quality propels him forward. In being asked about the mystery of art, Moore feels, quite rightly, that this is hardly something that can be talked about without crushing loss of insight. So Moore feels satisfied with more modest themes, such as the form his work takes, how it begins to play upon our expectations of form, how our expectations about the shape of things are formed by deeply innate unconscious motives, ideas. These often have no intellectual foundation, but an emotional or even irrational one. Obviously this thinking brought about his alignment with the Surrealists and Freudians. Works like The Helmet, completed just before WW2, mix up the conceptual and abstract. Moore was willing to reflect on the nature of war in order to celebrate the resistance of Britain in the face of the rise of Nazism and fascism on the continent, since he was obviously deeply involved in this resistance in the WW1 era.
Also Moore became an art celebrity at a time when 'celebrity culture' was unheard of. He clearly formed a link between all sorts of people from very diverse fields. Some of the most moving of Moore's images are his mixed media sketches of miners at the coalface and depictions of sleepers in the Tube during WW2. Moore's father was a miner, so he never quite disowned the working class melieu he evolved out of. Moore is a unique figure, like D.H.Lawrence, moving among elites, heirarchies but never becoming a member of them, evolving a complex artistic practise averse to theorising and rooted in practical, everyday experiences that are commonplace yet simultaneously unique. Every new sculpture is worked out with plastecine and clay firstly, later a plaster model is developed. At every point of the art process Moore is a practitioner, experiencing the physicality of his materials. Moore's drawings are hard etched sculptor's drawings with a uniquely sophisticated use of light. There's absolutely no doubt that his paintings and drawings would stand up today had there never been any sculpture.
This exhibition is expertly curated, each sculpture fits its own space in the open areas of The Tate Britain. The exhibition is informative, but allows unique space for the viewer to develop a relationship with Moore's works. Its best to bring a sketch pad and pencils to this event in order to facilitate that.
Paul Murphy, The Tate Britain, London, March 2010
The new exhibition at the Tate Britain is a relatively condensed retrospective of the life and work of Henry Moore (1898-1986). The exhibition traces the origins of Moore's art in his interest in the very early history sculpture which he saw at the British Museum while a student in London before WW1. Moore's work was shaped by pre-Columbian art, sculpture especially, but also by the architectural sculpture of the Sumerian and Biblical era. Moore served in the trenches during WW1, narrowly escaped death, was traumatised by the experiences, as was his entire generation. WW1 politicised Moore, pushing him to the Left in politics. Moore supported the Republican side against Franco during the Spanish Civil War, opposed the rise of fascism generally, later helped to found CND, providing it with its quintessential image of a mushroom cloud formed into a human skull.
Moore's Modernism evolved out of an unusual set of interests, for at the time of his earliest artistic development Victorian sculpture imitated an inert realism or shallow neo-classical design. Moore made the break from Victorian art and design and, like the literary Modernists, was influenced by some of the very earliest art, design and sculpture, rather as James Joyce and Ezra Pound, for instance, adopted the formal design of Homer's 'Odyssey', even if only to parody it ( for instance, 'Ulysses', 'The Cantos').
The exhibition follows the chronological development of Moore's art, from early work that is located within generic movements in sculpture such as his depictions of mother and child (which some critics see as a consequence of the childlessness of his own marriage, although he and his wife did have a daughter after about ten years...) which must have evolved from Moore's interest in Renaissance sculpture and stereotypical depictions of Madonna and Child made by many artists of that time, or even from the pieta, the Madonna cradling the dead Jesus. His other realist location is his reclining figure, a typical Henry Moore theme, which seems to take on a monumental quality as much located in pre-Colombian art as in Modernism. The human figure takes on a superhuman power and concentration, as found in depictions of Aztec God Kings in pre-Columbian Aztec art where the figure neither sits nor quite lies down. The exhibition details Moore's leap into abstraction, his varied influences from the Surrealists to Freudian psychoanalysis.
Everywhere Moore is tight lipped about his work, he doesn't want to speculate about its meaning which he sees as essentially threatening the mystery of his art. This quality propels him forward. In being asked about the mystery of art, Moore feels, quite rightly, that this is hardly something that can be talked about without crushing loss of insight. So Moore feels satisfied with more modest themes, such as the form his work takes, how it begins to play upon our expectations of form, how our expectations about the shape of things are formed by deeply innate unconscious motives, ideas. These often have no intellectual foundation, but an emotional or even irrational one. Obviously this thinking brought about his alignment with the Surrealists and Freudians. Works like The Helmet, completed just before WW2, mix up the conceptual and abstract. Moore was willing to reflect on the nature of war in order to celebrate the resistance of Britain in the face of the rise of Nazism and fascism on the continent, since he was obviously deeply involved in this resistance in the WW1 era.
Also Moore became an art celebrity at a time when 'celebrity culture' was unheard of. He clearly formed a link between all sorts of people from very diverse fields. Some of the most moving of Moore's images are his mixed media sketches of miners at the coalface and depictions of sleepers in the Tube during WW2. Moore's father was a miner, so he never quite disowned the working class melieu he evolved out of. Moore is a unique figure, like D.H.Lawrence, moving among elites, heirarchies but never becoming a member of them, evolving a complex artistic practise averse to theorising and rooted in practical, everyday experiences that are commonplace yet simultaneously unique. Every new sculpture is worked out with plastecine and clay firstly, later a plaster model is developed. At every point of the art process Moore is a practitioner, experiencing the physicality of his materials. Moore's drawings are hard etched sculptor's drawings with a uniquely sophisticated use of light. There's absolutely no doubt that his paintings and drawings would stand up today had there never been any sculpture.
This exhibition is expertly curated, each sculpture fits its own space in the open areas of The Tate Britain. The exhibition is informative, but allows unique space for the viewer to develop a relationship with Moore's works. Its best to bring a sketch pad and pencils to this event in order to facilitate that.
Paul Murphy, The Tate Britain, London, March 2010
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