Henry Moore at Tate Britain
22 February, 2010
by: Lauren Romano
Sculptural excellence courtesy of the late Henry Moore comes to Tate Britain in an exhibition that definitely doesn't disappoint.
This impressive retrospective of one of Britain's greatest sculptors, Henry Moore at Tate Britain touches upon paranoia, political tension and erotically charged darkness. Set within an astounding labyrinth of gigantically disproportionate reclining women, mother and child figures and deeply evocative drawings of London during the Blitz, this exhibition of Moore's sculptures, carvings and drawings is deeply absorbing.
Renowned for reclining, reposed and supine figures, Moore's work is indebted to primitive art forms. The emphatically disproportionate and robust strength give the world-culture-inspired works of the 1920s a primal, almost atavistic, quality. The muscularly honed female figure in Maternity is, if anything, highly anti-maternal in sentiment – with a harsh featureless face, exaggerated arm span and bulky torso, the sculpture casts the woman in a highly expressionistic, masculine light. Woman with Upraised Arms, depicting a seemingly sinewy shot-put champion, again discards softly moulded grace and femininity in favour of an intensely corpulent conflation of authority and presence. Elsewhere, Moore's female figures possess a haunting, striking quality which encourages us to look again. The cadaverous, emaciated face and attention to detail in the Ancaster stone Girl is astonishing; the pronounced, tiny pin-prick eyes, narrow ridged nose and mouth are delicately posed but huge forearms and hands again makes this an underlying study of physical force.
Meanwhile Moore's fascination with the subject of the motherhood explores disjointed physical and emotional bonding. Physically entwined mother and child pairs are depicted with distanced intimacy. The white alabaster Mother and Child 1932 shows a woman holding her child but rather than being locked in an embrace, the faceless baby is awkwardly held at arms' length while the mother looks away. Moments of intimacy are approached and then diverted; in Suckling Child the mother seems to lose almost all recognisable identity, a truncated part of her body is all that remains and it becomes hard to differentiate between the baby and the mother's breast in the resultant mess of encoiled curves.
In the Modernism room curvaceously rippled sculptures mark Moore's stylistic transformation, and sensuous surfaces create highly evocative depictions of the human form. The beautifully displayed group of sculptures in the middle of the room, with their bulging biomorphic forms, are at once abstract and disassociated from the corporeal and nevertheless resonate with sensual, human quality in their curves and posture. Undulating suggestiveness is counterbalanced with the anxiety of the approaching war.
During the war, Moore abandoned sculpture for drawing, employing crayon, ink, charcoal and watercolour to depict uncanny, claustrophobic and fearful compositions. The darkly nocturnal setting of September 3rd, with its floating and highly disformed figures emerging from murky water, is a muted yet echoing cacophony of agony. Other drawings hit closer to home. The semi-opaque obscurity of Miner working with coal-cutting machine depicts the resistant, trapped quality of the solitary miner as he toils on, the muscular contours of his ashen body etched with soot. Miners resting during the stoppage of conveyor belt is so savagely and intensely shaded that the four figures themselves are hardly distinguishable, and become outlined squatting forms. The harrowing, faded quality depicted in Tube shelter perspective and other Blitz pictures depict a faceless mass of humanity. The regimental despair of the crowds lying against the sides of the tube tunnel until they disappear into its sweeping, cavernous bend and become faint white outlines is truly awful.
The Elmwood carvings 1935-1978 form an astounding crescendo of an exit to this magnificent exhibition. The scale and deft handling of material in these four huge reclining figure sculptures are earthy, fertile and organic contortions of recumbent ease whose eroded, weathered faces and highly stylised poses are deeply human, and provide apt confirmation that this really is an exhibition of epic proportions.
Henry Moore is at Tate Britain 24 February-8 August.
Click here to see all London exhibitions.
Click here for things to do in London.
Henry Moore at Tate Britain
22 February, 2010
by: Lauren Romano
Sculptural excellence courtesy of the late Henry Moore comes to Tate Britain in an exhibition that definitely doesn't disappoint.
This impressive retrospective of one of Britain's greatest sculptors, Henry Moore at Tate Britain touches upon paranoia, political tension and erotically charged darkness. Set within an astounding labyrinth of gigantically disproportionate reclining women, mother and child figures and deeply evocative drawings of London during the Blitz, this exhibition of Moore's sculptures, carvings and drawings is deeply absorbing.
Renowned for reclining, reposed and supine figures, Moore's work is indebted to primitive art forms. The emphatically disproportionate and robust strength give the world-culture-inspired works of the 1920s a primal, almost atavistic, quality. The muscularly honed female figure in Maternity is, if anything, highly anti-maternal in sentiment – with a harsh featureless face, exaggerated arm span and bulky torso, the sculpture casts the woman in a highly expressionistic, masculine light. Woman with Upraised Arms, depicting a seemingly sinewy shot-put champion, again discards softly moulded grace and femininity in favour of an intensely corpulent conflation of authority and presence. Elsewhere, Moore's female figures possess a haunting, striking quality which encourages us to look again. The cadaverous, emaciated face and attention to detail in the Ancaster stone Girl is astonishing; the pronounced, tiny pin-prick eyes, narrow ridged nose and mouth are delicately posed but huge forearms and hands again makes this an underlying study of physical force.
Meanwhile Moore's fascination with the subject of the motherhood explores disjointed physical and emotional bonding. Physically entwined mother and child pairs are depicted with distanced intimacy. The white alabaster Mother and Child 1932 shows a woman holding her child but rather than being locked in an embrace, the faceless baby is awkwardly held at arms' length while the mother looks away. Moments of intimacy are approached and then diverted; in Suckling Child the mother seems to lose almost all recognisable identity, a truncated part of her body is all that remains and it becomes hard to differentiate between the baby and the mother's breast in the resultant mess of encoiled curves.
In the Modernism room curvaceously rippled sculptures mark Moore's stylistic transformation, and sensuous surfaces create highly evocative depictions of the human form. The beautifully displayed group of sculptures in the middle of the room, with their bulging biomorphic forms, are at once abstract and disassociated from the corporeal and nevertheless resonate with sensual, human quality in their curves and posture. Undulating suggestiveness is counterbalanced with the anxiety of the approaching war.
During the war, Moore abandoned sculpture for drawing, employing crayon, ink, charcoal and watercolour to depict uncanny, claustrophobic and fearful compositions. The darkly nocturnal setting of September 3rd, with its floating and highly disformed figures emerging from murky water, is a muted yet echoing cacophony of agony. Other drawings hit closer to home. The semi-opaque obscurity of Miner working with coal-cutting machine depicts the resistant, trapped quality of the solitary miner as he toils on, the muscular contours of his ashen body etched with soot. Miners resting during the stoppage of conveyor belt is so savagely and intensely shaded that the four figures themselves are hardly distinguishable, and become outlined squatting forms. The harrowing, faded quality depicted in Tube shelter perspective and other Blitz pictures depict a faceless mass of humanity. The regimental despair of the crowds lying against the sides of the tube tunnel until they disappear into its sweeping, cavernous bend and become faint white outlines is truly awful.
The Elmwood carvings 1935-1978 form an astounding crescendo of an exit to this magnificent exhibition. The scale and deft handling of material in these four huge reclining figure sculptures are earthy, fertile and organic contortions of recumbent ease whose eroded, weathered faces and highly stylised poses are deeply human, and provide apt confirmation that this really is an exhibition of epic proportions.
Henry Moore is at Tate Britain 24 February-8 August.
Click here to see all London exhibitions.
Click here for things to do in London.
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