Revered as one of the great sculptors of the twentieth century, a wide-ranging collection of sculptures, drawings and sketches by Henry Moore has been brought together at the Tate Britain. Works span his entire career from the 1920s to the early 1960s.
Moore emerged on the art scene with the concerted intention to place himself apart from classical sculptural tradition and its restrictions of academic modelling. Maintaining the integrity of the materials he worked with – stone, plaster, bronze and wood – he engaged in direct carving.
His sculptures are all at once beautifully simple and complex. There is a duality about them. On the one hand, their fluid forms seamlessly punctuate the gallery spaces, but on the other hand, they are evidently the culmination of meticulous anxiety-ridden workings at the hands of Moore, who explores themes of apprehension, claustrophobia and the violated in much of his work. Bryan Robertson, the exhibition’s curator has commented, “His work is grim, and on occasion tragic. There is no easy reassurance in it. It is anything but gentle.”
Whilst I do not wholly agree with this as a generalized statement of all the work on display, it is true that some pieces are imbued with a great sense of the agonizing processes undertaken to nurture the sculptures to completion. His forms are sinewy and very deliberate.
The exhibition’s breadth means that we see how Moore’s artistic processes change and develop. The works in the first two rooms are figurative and cement his principle and enduring interest in the human form. This is revisited at the end of the exhibition with a focus on the reclining female figure. In the interim, Moore’s work departs in a Modernist direction, and two rooms are dedicated to work that reflects a concern for the abstract, the allusive and the suggestive. Sculptures in this phase of his career have sensuously undulating surfaces and subtle protuberances. They are sexy and evocative.
What follows is Moore’s lesser-known work. The outbreak of the war marked a switch in Moore’s medium of choice from sculpture to drawing. Using a combination of pencil, wax crayon, watercolour washes and ink, Moore produced an array of drawings, diversifying his artistic repertoire. His ‘Shelter Drawings’ depict the hostile environment faced by the masses as they huddled in the London Underground, away from the full force of the bomb attacks above ground. Moore also made drawings of coalmine workers and like his official ‘war art’, these reflect the artist’s tremendous sensitivity towards his subject matter.
The exhibition ends on a high with a room of Moore’s sculptures made out of elmwood. The recumbent female forms are complemented by the use of the warm, smooth wood. Moore once said, “Trunks of trees are very human… To me they have a connection with human life.” These sculptures bear associations with sexuality and fecundity. They have an all-encompassing presence that pervades the whole room and the viewer is drawn into the admiring their every curve.
I’d be hard pressed to say what I liked most about this exhibition. Moore’s early figurative work is executed with such great tenderness particularly those sculptures that reference his ‘Mother and Child’ motif, whilst his wartime drawings are wonderfully nuanced and reveal the artist’s affinity with political and intellectual issues of his time.
His works are profoundly resonant, and though it’s a shame that there is a limited display of his larger scale work (which admittedly are often placed outdoors), I shall be going back to see more of Moore before the exhibitions closes in the summer.
Four stars.
This exhibition runs until 8th August.
Admission is £11 for students. Full price tickets cost £12.50.
Image: Henry Moore – Reclining Figure (1939), Detroit Institute of Arts © Reproduced by permission of The Henry Moore Foundation
