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Lot Essay
‘The ‘primitivism’ of Moore and Hepworth was less about ‘strangeness’ and ‘foreignness’ (ritual, magic, pilgrimage), and more about finding a humanist universalism through sculpture – a ‘common world-language of form’, as Moore himself put it. It is this version of direct carving that provided the solid, even native, foundations upon which the genealogy of ‘British sculpture’ has been built’ – S. Victoria Turner
‘To me, carving direct became a religion and I have practiced it during my career as a sculptor. I like the fact I begin with the block and have to find the culture that’s inside it. You have to overcome the resistance of the material by sheer determination and hard work’ – Henry Moore
Henry Moore is one of the most important and celebrated sculptors of the 20th Century. His large-scale works can be seen in public buildings and squares across the world, yet it is often his smaller intimate carvings which prove popular to loyal followers, representing a pivotal moment in the practice of the artist.
As the sole member of the sculpture department, Moore attended Leeds School of Art in 1919, moving to London to attend the Royal College of Art in 1921. Figure, carved in 1932, is the culmination of a period of re-education and reflection Moore independently underwent in the 1920s and 1930s after moving to London. It was during this time Moore made his first visit to London’s British Museum where he encountered African and Central American art, whose emotive forms were a far cry from the Graeco-Roman tradition he was more familiar with. Over and over, Moore would return to the British Museum during his weekends, drawing and writing about different parts of the collection. Starting with the Ancient Egyptian rooms, he soon tired of the repeated dynastic focus of the works, and turned instead to the other rooms, with particular interest in the collection of Mexican art. It was during this time that his work began to gain the simple graceful forms we now closely associate with his work. Present in Figure are many of the principles he had outlined in his first published article A View of Sculpture in 1930, drawing conclusions and prescriptions from his observations during these London years. His epiphany in the halls of the British Museum held strong, and this article reflected his new-found manifesto. Points of action included staying true to the materials used, making use of asymmetry, constructing emotive shapes without strict realistic representation, and instigating a closer relationship between the sculptor and the material, which manifested as ‘direct carving’.
During this time, Moore also developed an interest in the full three-dimensional presence of the so-called ‘primitive’ sculptures he observed. Such fullness of form, and priority of artistic freedom over reality of representation was not as strong in European traditions, which tended to focus more on the frontal view of sculptures. In discussing the rise in interest among early 20th Century sculptors of non-western forms of representation and the moves towards direct carving this engendered, Sarah Victoria Turner wrote of Moore’s place in this period of innovation: 'The ‘primitivism’ of Moore and Hepworth was less about ‘strangeness’ and ‘foreignness’ (ritual, magic, pilgrimage), and more about finding a humanist universalism through sculpture – a ‘common world-language of form’, as Moore himself put it. It is this version of direct carving that provided the solid, even native, foundations upon which the genealogy of ‘British sculpture’ has been built' (S. Victoria Turner, ‘Stone, Sex and Empire: Direct Carving and ‘British’ Sculpture’, in exhibition catalogue, Modern British Sculpture, London, Royal Academy, 2011, p. 105).
Modernist ‘direct carving’ originated with sculptor Constantin Brancusi in 1906, who had begun to work directly with the material, following its natural forms and all the time responding to the ripples and properties encountered within the stone or wood. This was taken up by Moore and his contemporaries and expanded upon as a conceptual doctrine: that of reclaiming sculpture as a full process, responding to the material directly, but also combining the roles of craftsman and ‘artist’. In Western art, from the Renaissance period to the Victorian era the sculptor would usually model an object, often in clay, cast it into plaster and send it to the professional carver who would use a pointing machine to copy the model into the final material. This enabled the artist to capture detail in more malleable clay first before transferring the whole thing to stone or wood. These machines allowed carvers to reproduce the model in the exact dimensions, accurate to within a sixteenth of an inch. Modern sculptors, including Moore, argued that working in this way, the sculptor lost a sense of connection with the final material; carving directly into the stone or wood allowed for intuition and response to the properties of the material during the entire process of composing the sculpture. Moore has reported how pivotal this was for his practice: 'to me, carving direct became a religion and I have practiced it during my career as a sculptor. I like the fact I begin with the block and have to find the culture that’s inside it. You have to overcome the resistance of the material by sheer determination and hard work' (H. Moore, Henry Moore Wood Sculpture, London, 1983, p. 17).
In Figure, the development in Moore’s continuing education can be seen in the variation of shapes different viewpoints of the sculpture allow for. From one angle, you can see shadow created by the concave face; from another viewpoint, the figure is seen completely anew. A strong line cuts vertically down the figure’s back, captivating the eye when seen from the right-hand side; yet it is the intimate pinch of the waist that proves so enchanting when viewed from the back. Figure was made in the same year as several other wooden figures of a similar size, all showing the characteristic curved limbs: forms leaning towards abstraction. The figure has a truly spatial quality, with arms that wrap lightly around the body, bringing together the slight twist of the upper body with the strong rooted legs. Two small expressive eyes sit in the smoothly carved-out face, looking almost like natural features in the wood. These circular eyes reoccur in later, larger sculptures, a motif to which Moore was evidently well-disposed.
One of a handful of wooden sculptures made in 1932, Figure is made from boxwood, a material Moore was fond of because the trees were native to England. Box trees grow very slowly, therefore forming a close grain, and strengthening the wood by making it hard and dense, allowed Moore to make small detailed sculptures such as this, and truly celebrate the complexities of the material, a task that would have been unruly and less subtle in a wide-grain wood. Moore makes a feature of the natural lines of the wood: bringing the right hip out gently in line with a darker streak. The figure turns, as though by chance rather than construction, so that the natural grain of the wood flow down its face and torso.
Moore credited African wood carvings with playing a part in the birth of Cubism and abstract sculpture. The artist was indebted to African carvings, which he reported helped him 'to realise the intrinsic emotional significance of shapes as distinct from their representational values' (H. Moore, quoted in A. Wilkinson (ed.), Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Los Angeles, 2002, p. 99). Figure is undoubtedly the culmination of many years of studying world sculpture, and refining his technique and ideas accordingly. It is a fascinatingly creative approach to combining figuration with abstraction, a path that Moore would follow for many years to come.
‘To me, carving direct became a religion and I have practiced it during my career as a sculptor. I like the fact I begin with the block and have to find the culture that’s inside it. You have to overcome the resistance of the material by sheer determination and hard work’ – Henry Moore
Henry Moore is one of the most important and celebrated sculptors of the 20th Century. His large-scale works can be seen in public buildings and squares across the world, yet it is often his smaller intimate carvings which prove popular to loyal followers, representing a pivotal moment in the practice of the artist.
As the sole member of the sculpture department, Moore attended Leeds School of Art in 1919, moving to London to attend the Royal College of Art in 1921. Figure, carved in 1932, is the culmination of a period of re-education and reflection Moore independently underwent in the 1920s and 1930s after moving to London. It was during this time Moore made his first visit to London’s British Museum where he encountered African and Central American art, whose emotive forms were a far cry from the Graeco-Roman tradition he was more familiar with. Over and over, Moore would return to the British Museum during his weekends, drawing and writing about different parts of the collection. Starting with the Ancient Egyptian rooms, he soon tired of the repeated dynastic focus of the works, and turned instead to the other rooms, with particular interest in the collection of Mexican art. It was during this time that his work began to gain the simple graceful forms we now closely associate with his work. Present in Figure are many of the principles he had outlined in his first published article A View of Sculpture in 1930, drawing conclusions and prescriptions from his observations during these London years. His epiphany in the halls of the British Museum held strong, and this article reflected his new-found manifesto. Points of action included staying true to the materials used, making use of asymmetry, constructing emotive shapes without strict realistic representation, and instigating a closer relationship between the sculptor and the material, which manifested as ‘direct carving’.
During this time, Moore also developed an interest in the full three-dimensional presence of the so-called ‘primitive’ sculptures he observed. Such fullness of form, and priority of artistic freedom over reality of representation was not as strong in European traditions, which tended to focus more on the frontal view of sculptures. In discussing the rise in interest among early 20th Century sculptors of non-western forms of representation and the moves towards direct carving this engendered, Sarah Victoria Turner wrote of Moore’s place in this period of innovation: 'The ‘primitivism’ of Moore and Hepworth was less about ‘strangeness’ and ‘foreignness’ (ritual, magic, pilgrimage), and more about finding a humanist universalism through sculpture – a ‘common world-language of form’, as Moore himself put it. It is this version of direct carving that provided the solid, even native, foundations upon which the genealogy of ‘British sculpture’ has been built' (S. Victoria Turner, ‘Stone, Sex and Empire: Direct Carving and ‘British’ Sculpture’, in exhibition catalogue, Modern British Sculpture, London, Royal Academy, 2011, p. 105).
Modernist ‘direct carving’ originated with sculptor Constantin Brancusi in 1906, who had begun to work directly with the material, following its natural forms and all the time responding to the ripples and properties encountered within the stone or wood. This was taken up by Moore and his contemporaries and expanded upon as a conceptual doctrine: that of reclaiming sculpture as a full process, responding to the material directly, but also combining the roles of craftsman and ‘artist’. In Western art, from the Renaissance period to the Victorian era the sculptor would usually model an object, often in clay, cast it into plaster and send it to the professional carver who would use a pointing machine to copy the model into the final material. This enabled the artist to capture detail in more malleable clay first before transferring the whole thing to stone or wood. These machines allowed carvers to reproduce the model in the exact dimensions, accurate to within a sixteenth of an inch. Modern sculptors, including Moore, argued that working in this way, the sculptor lost a sense of connection with the final material; carving directly into the stone or wood allowed for intuition and response to the properties of the material during the entire process of composing the sculpture. Moore has reported how pivotal this was for his practice: 'to me, carving direct became a religion and I have practiced it during my career as a sculptor. I like the fact I begin with the block and have to find the culture that’s inside it. You have to overcome the resistance of the material by sheer determination and hard work' (H. Moore, Henry Moore Wood Sculpture, London, 1983, p. 17).
In Figure, the development in Moore’s continuing education can be seen in the variation of shapes different viewpoints of the sculpture allow for. From one angle, you can see shadow created by the concave face; from another viewpoint, the figure is seen completely anew. A strong line cuts vertically down the figure’s back, captivating the eye when seen from the right-hand side; yet it is the intimate pinch of the waist that proves so enchanting when viewed from the back. Figure was made in the same year as several other wooden figures of a similar size, all showing the characteristic curved limbs: forms leaning towards abstraction. The figure has a truly spatial quality, with arms that wrap lightly around the body, bringing together the slight twist of the upper body with the strong rooted legs. Two small expressive eyes sit in the smoothly carved-out face, looking almost like natural features in the wood. These circular eyes reoccur in later, larger sculptures, a motif to which Moore was evidently well-disposed.
One of a handful of wooden sculptures made in 1932, Figure is made from boxwood, a material Moore was fond of because the trees were native to England. Box trees grow very slowly, therefore forming a close grain, and strengthening the wood by making it hard and dense, allowed Moore to make small detailed sculptures such as this, and truly celebrate the complexities of the material, a task that would have been unruly and less subtle in a wide-grain wood. Moore makes a feature of the natural lines of the wood: bringing the right hip out gently in line with a darker streak. The figure turns, as though by chance rather than construction, so that the natural grain of the wood flow down its face and torso.
Moore credited African wood carvings with playing a part in the birth of Cubism and abstract sculpture. The artist was indebted to African carvings, which he reported helped him 'to realise the intrinsic emotional significance of shapes as distinct from their representational values' (H. Moore, quoted in A. Wilkinson (ed.), Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Los Angeles, 2002, p. 99). Figure is undoubtedly the culmination of many years of studying world sculpture, and refining his technique and ideas accordingly. It is a fascinatingly creative approach to combining figuration with abstraction, a path that Moore would follow for many years to come.