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Lot Essay
'You could argue that sculpture is a dramatisation of the space between your eye and the world, between looking and recording, between what you see and feel and memory. I try to allow as much as possible to happen while I'm working on the piece and yet keep it contained within a single object. That seems to get the most truthful results' (T. Houseago quoted in R. Rosenfield Lafo, 'Speaking: A Conversation with Thomas Houseago', pp. 25-31, Sculpture, November 2010, p. 29).
Towering over the viewer, Thomas Houseago's Figure 2 appears like a bashful giant, hiding defensively behind outstretched hands. Created through the use of raw, organic materials, the surface of the monumental sculpture is deliberately rough-hewn, balancing on the knife's edge between figuration and abstraction. Across its massive white body, Houseago has sketched outlines and details including staring, wide and anxious eyes which engage the viewer directly. The resulting effect is one which not only celebrates the process of making, but provides a sense of relational humility. Through his use of scale, materiality and figuration, the artist has created an artwork which provides a visceral insight into the human condition while also probing the role of sculpture in the contemporary era. With nods towards modernism including the prancing figures of Pablo Picasso's 1907 masterpiece Les demoiselles d'Avignon, as well as to Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Jacob Epstein, this sculpture paradoxically serves both as an investigation of the figurative tradition and an intense, deeply personal insight into existence itself (T. Houseago, Public Art Fund Talks, The New School of Design, New York, 12 May 2010, at www.youtube.com).
Born and raised in Leeds, Houseago studied at St. Martin's in London and De Ateliers in Amsterdam before spending several years living in Belgium. It was when he moved to California that his work was exposed to a wider, highly receptive audience, propelling him to the forefront of the art scene in Los Angeles and indeed internationally; in 2010, he was given the formal recognition of a place at the Whitney Biennial. Perhaps his most recognised works are the deliberately crudely-worked sculptures such as Figure 2, which take as their subject the human figure. Like another former resident of Leeds, Henry Moore, Houseago finds some of the strongest means of expression in the human figure. The body is, after all, the common denominator that links us all. In Figure 2, he condenses some of the anxiety of exposure into the shirking posture, conveying a sense of alienation that is almost tangible.
In a sense, that alienation is a reflection of Houseago's own position in the art world during his years in Europe. It was in Amsterdam, while studying in a predominantly conceptual environment, that Houseago went against the tide of the institution and indeed of the contemporary art world, seeking a means of reconciling the human figure and thereby locating himself within his work. 'In my approach to making sculpture, I try to be honest to the experience of looking and recording,' he has explained in terms that link him both to Moore and to Alberto Giacometti, two vital predecessors. 'You could argue that sculpture is a dramatisation of the space between your eye and the world, between looking and recording, between what you see and feel and memory. I try to allow as much as possible to happen while I'm working on the piece and yet keep it contained within a single object. That seems to get the most truthful results' (T. Houseago quoted in R. Rosenfield Lafo, 'Speaking: A Conversation with Thomas Houseago', pp. 25-31, Sculpture, November 2010, p. 29).
Houseago's Figure 2, then, perfectly conveys a deeply subjective sense of experience; this is made all the more direct by the incredible workings of the exterior itself, which shows the traces of many of the processes that have been used to bring this work into existence. Drawings, usually applied to the flat surfaces by transfer, hint at the artist's hand while also showing the origins of the work - Houseago finds the process of turning a drawing into a monumental sculpture almost mystical. At the same time, parts of the armature peek through, providing teasing glimpses of the substance of the sculpture, of the flesh under the skin. As Houseago has said, 'A good sculpture really tells you how it's made' (T. Houseago, Public Art Fund Talks, The New School of Design, New York, 12 May
2010, at www.youtube.com).
Houseago's entire oeuvre is a celebration of the artistic urge. This is both primitive and distinctly human, something to be treasured and celebrated as it allows us to reappraise and learn about ourselves and the world around us. Houseago has said that the first work of art that he loved was the ancient chalk outline fertility figure at Cerne Abbas, incised into the side of a hill in Dorset; certainly, the uncouth and mysteriously-proportioned figure can be seen as an antecedent to Figure 2. Meanwhile, Houseago's association with the human figure in art enjoyed a distinguished and highly twentieth-century lineage: seldom visiting museums during his youth, he came to the works of Picasso and Epstein through the filter of popular culture such as cartoons and science fiction movies. The visual equivalency between these various artforms has served as fertile grounds for Houseago's imagination, as he has explained:
'I guess this is the thing of being artists of the 21st Century. The 20th Century comes to us without this linear index. Where Picasso, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Hanna-Barbera, Star Wars and modernism, all kind of co-exist. We can make of it what we want... I still think it is a visually fascinating time we are living in' (T. Houseago, quoted in Houseago & A. Curry, 'Conversation: Aaron Curry Thomas Houseago: Standing Figures', pp. 86-89, FlashArt, March-April 2010, p. 89).
Towering over the viewer, Thomas Houseago's Figure 2 appears like a bashful giant, hiding defensively behind outstretched hands. Created through the use of raw, organic materials, the surface of the monumental sculpture is deliberately rough-hewn, balancing on the knife's edge between figuration and abstraction. Across its massive white body, Houseago has sketched outlines and details including staring, wide and anxious eyes which engage the viewer directly. The resulting effect is one which not only celebrates the process of making, but provides a sense of relational humility. Through his use of scale, materiality and figuration, the artist has created an artwork which provides a visceral insight into the human condition while also probing the role of sculpture in the contemporary era. With nods towards modernism including the prancing figures of Pablo Picasso's 1907 masterpiece Les demoiselles d'Avignon, as well as to Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Jacob Epstein, this sculpture paradoxically serves both as an investigation of the figurative tradition and an intense, deeply personal insight into existence itself (T. Houseago, Public Art Fund Talks, The New School of Design, New York, 12 May 2010, at www.youtube.com).
Born and raised in Leeds, Houseago studied at St. Martin's in London and De Ateliers in Amsterdam before spending several years living in Belgium. It was when he moved to California that his work was exposed to a wider, highly receptive audience, propelling him to the forefront of the art scene in Los Angeles and indeed internationally; in 2010, he was given the formal recognition of a place at the Whitney Biennial. Perhaps his most recognised works are the deliberately crudely-worked sculptures such as Figure 2, which take as their subject the human figure. Like another former resident of Leeds, Henry Moore, Houseago finds some of the strongest means of expression in the human figure. The body is, after all, the common denominator that links us all. In Figure 2, he condenses some of the anxiety of exposure into the shirking posture, conveying a sense of alienation that is almost tangible.
In a sense, that alienation is a reflection of Houseago's own position in the art world during his years in Europe. It was in Amsterdam, while studying in a predominantly conceptual environment, that Houseago went against the tide of the institution and indeed of the contemporary art world, seeking a means of reconciling the human figure and thereby locating himself within his work. 'In my approach to making sculpture, I try to be honest to the experience of looking and recording,' he has explained in terms that link him both to Moore and to Alberto Giacometti, two vital predecessors. 'You could argue that sculpture is a dramatisation of the space between your eye and the world, between looking and recording, between what you see and feel and memory. I try to allow as much as possible to happen while I'm working on the piece and yet keep it contained within a single object. That seems to get the most truthful results' (T. Houseago quoted in R. Rosenfield Lafo, 'Speaking: A Conversation with Thomas Houseago', pp. 25-31, Sculpture, November 2010, p. 29).
Houseago's Figure 2, then, perfectly conveys a deeply subjective sense of experience; this is made all the more direct by the incredible workings of the exterior itself, which shows the traces of many of the processes that have been used to bring this work into existence. Drawings, usually applied to the flat surfaces by transfer, hint at the artist's hand while also showing the origins of the work - Houseago finds the process of turning a drawing into a monumental sculpture almost mystical. At the same time, parts of the armature peek through, providing teasing glimpses of the substance of the sculpture, of the flesh under the skin. As Houseago has said, 'A good sculpture really tells you how it's made' (T. Houseago, Public Art Fund Talks, The New School of Design, New York, 12 May
2010, at www.youtube.com).
Houseago's entire oeuvre is a celebration of the artistic urge. This is both primitive and distinctly human, something to be treasured and celebrated as it allows us to reappraise and learn about ourselves and the world around us. Houseago has said that the first work of art that he loved was the ancient chalk outline fertility figure at Cerne Abbas, incised into the side of a hill in Dorset; certainly, the uncouth and mysteriously-proportioned figure can be seen as an antecedent to Figure 2. Meanwhile, Houseago's association with the human figure in art enjoyed a distinguished and highly twentieth-century lineage: seldom visiting museums during his youth, he came to the works of Picasso and Epstein through the filter of popular culture such as cartoons and science fiction movies. The visual equivalency between these various artforms has served as fertile grounds for Houseago's imagination, as he has explained:
'I guess this is the thing of being artists of the 21st Century. The 20th Century comes to us without this linear index. Where Picasso, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Hanna-Barbera, Star Wars and modernism, all kind of co-exist. We can make of it what we want... I still think it is a visually fascinating time we are living in' (T. Houseago, quoted in Houseago & A. Curry, 'Conversation: Aaron Curry Thomas Houseago: Standing Figures', pp. 86-89, FlashArt, March-April 2010, p. 89).