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Lot Essay
Looking at Gaudier-Brzeska’s carvings today, we realise just how much pleasure and inspiration this precocious young artist received from the materials he deployed. Lack of money meant that Gaudier could not afford to buy the block of marble which he used for his monumental carving Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound. So his devoted sitter purchased the marble himself, and Gaudier ended up producing a masterpiece out of the largest block he had ever worked with. But he was equally capable of creating admirable sculpture from diminutive pieces of stone. The polished green Irish marble Gaudier deployed in his 1914 carving Charm is only 4¼ inches high, and the result can be counted among the most memorable works he produced. Indeed, the artist himself wore it on a string around his neck before gifting it to his close friend, Ezra Pound.
The truth is that Gaudier derived an enormous amount of pleasure and satisfaction from using vastly different materials for his sculpture. An impressive 1914 carving called Stags, now owned by the Art Institute of Chicago, is cut out of veined alabaster, whereas a tiny Fawn is carved from brown stone. The imaginative form is directly influenced by the material it was made from, and Gaudier even created an unforgettable sculpture by using a toothbrush which was afterwards smoked. Proudly exhibited in Gaudier’s poignant 1918 Memorial Exhibition, it was called with disarming frankness Carved Toothbrush Handle. He regarded small sculptures as significant enough to be placed on display in public, and the outstanding critic T.E. Hulme purchased Gaudier’s Ornament/Toy as a sculpture he loved carrying around in his pocket to play with. Gaudier pierced this carving in three places, and he adopted the same procedure with Charm.
Charm is one of the few surviving works that was exhibited in the seminal Vorticist Exhibition, held at Doré Galleries, London, in June 1915. This was to be the only exhibition organised by the group in London with a second exhibition taking place in New York in 1917. This delightful little lump of marble invites us to pick it up and run our fingers over the smooth, polished surface as well as through the cavities. Viewing it close-to, we realise that the upper part is carved with a mysterious oval face gazing out at us through very elongated eyes. The mouth appears to be open, and two large cavities below persuade us that the arms are thrust out to left and right respectively. Below them, the third cavity represents a space between the legs, which terminates in forms suggestive of bunched toes. Like so many of his contemporaries, Gaudier had enormous admiration for the most ancient forms of primitive art. In March 1914 he wrote an impassioned letter to The Egoist magazine, declaring that ‘the modern sculptor’ focuses on ‘instinct as his inspiring force’. Gaudier identified himself as an artist whose ‘work is nothing more nor less than the abstraction of this intense feeling.'
Richard Cork
The truth is that Gaudier derived an enormous amount of pleasure and satisfaction from using vastly different materials for his sculpture. An impressive 1914 carving called Stags, now owned by the Art Institute of Chicago, is cut out of veined alabaster, whereas a tiny Fawn is carved from brown stone. The imaginative form is directly influenced by the material it was made from, and Gaudier even created an unforgettable sculpture by using a toothbrush which was afterwards smoked. Proudly exhibited in Gaudier’s poignant 1918 Memorial Exhibition, it was called with disarming frankness Carved Toothbrush Handle. He regarded small sculptures as significant enough to be placed on display in public, and the outstanding critic T.E. Hulme purchased Gaudier’s Ornament/Toy as a sculpture he loved carrying around in his pocket to play with. Gaudier pierced this carving in three places, and he adopted the same procedure with Charm.
Charm is one of the few surviving works that was exhibited in the seminal Vorticist Exhibition, held at Doré Galleries, London, in June 1915. This was to be the only exhibition organised by the group in London with a second exhibition taking place in New York in 1917. This delightful little lump of marble invites us to pick it up and run our fingers over the smooth, polished surface as well as through the cavities. Viewing it close-to, we realise that the upper part is carved with a mysterious oval face gazing out at us through very elongated eyes. The mouth appears to be open, and two large cavities below persuade us that the arms are thrust out to left and right respectively. Below them, the third cavity represents a space between the legs, which terminates in forms suggestive of bunched toes. Like so many of his contemporaries, Gaudier had enormous admiration for the most ancient forms of primitive art. In March 1914 he wrote an impassioned letter to The Egoist magazine, declaring that ‘the modern sculptor’ focuses on ‘instinct as his inspiring force’. Gaudier identified himself as an artist whose ‘work is nothing more nor less than the abstraction of this intense feeling.'
Richard Cork