Henry Moore with his
totemic sculptures across the world has been hailed as the greatest
British Sculptor creating over 900 sculptures.
He left thousands of
drawings and had 40 exhibitions at the same time, when he was in his
80's.
It was said that he
broke down traditions and moved barriers.
Awards from all directions,
honour after honour piled as high as the hills that showed off his
work in landscapes near and far.
It was said that he
followed the 19th Century sculptors.
To this I disagree.
He walked the walk and certainly could talk the talk and his theories
were championed by academics and historians.
The most famous being
Kenneth Clark who was indeed a clever man. He understood the
principles of design architecture and form and function, so it seems
when you listen to his preachings on the subject.
Art is subjective and
who would argue with the scholars who proclaimed that Henry Moore was
leading us to the promised land of sculpture.
But what if they were
wrong?
He certainly, in my
opinion created some rubbish.
If work cant be questioned for every
individual piece then it becomes a 'Henry Moore' or a 'Picasso'.
He was later given the freedom of the city.
Born in 1898 in Castleford in Yorkshire. in
a terrace house he was good at pottery and was encouraged by his art
teacher. Sunday school morals.
He said he was inspired at an early
age by a story he heard about Michaelangelo (sic) who took advice
from a passer by whilst carving in Florence.
I don't recall
Michaelangelo creating sculpture theme parks, but there you go.
He had a strict routine
starting at 8 with breakfast and then instructing his staff at nine.
He would then read the Times. Lunch was important and everyone had a
bottle of Guinness one commentator John Read who recorded six
programmes about his life said it was a joy to watch him carving a
sirloin of beef. “It was one of the small joys in life” he
proclaimed in sycophantic admiration.
He had a team of men
working for him.
In the court of balding
middle aged men he was king. They would hang on his every word.
He taught and loved
making films using the television as his medium. Most people who
lapped up his words could not even paint a wall such was the lack of
practical experience from those that wrote about him.
Most art of primitive
form was at the time placed in ethnological sections in museums and
was thought of as some crude form or function from the ancient past.
Then with advent of modern art the likes of Moore with his
interpretations of ethnic art it suddenly became clever to cross
reference these old cultures and make the new art.
Was he the man who made
sculptures with a hole in or did he really understand the figure?
His out of chaos
drawings to me are poor at best. He was asked to be a war artist and
he took the easy way out. His drawings are bereft of emotion in my
opinion. They lack clarity and scale. He said “There stretched out
in front of me the rows and rows of reclining figures.
Henry Moore
reclining figures.” They are weak sketches at best and a cop out.
He may as well have
just sketched a load of sacks in the dark. What credible artist sketches.....sheep. Where is the skill in that?
John Read says
“It was something of
a paradox......... and his greatest single contribution to the art of
sculpture was the idea of being able to combine ones feeling of
landscape and that of the figure not as two separate things but as
one single image he saw the figure as landscape and the landscape as
a figure.
Romantic ideas and a
romantic tradition of English literature in English paintings
combined now in one single body of work.”
Is this rubbish? Is
this gobbledegook from a sycophant who could be sold anything?
Does it kid me? No.
I think his feeling of
the figure and the landscape being inspired from a rock with a hole
in it being turned into a mother and child in bronze now seems
absurd.
Some people will believe anything. And so they did students
and tutors followed him. With his every twist and turn of the mallet
they bestowed more accolades on him.
More commissions. He
littered a remote valley in Scotland with poor quality work that was
sucked up by the people to whom he could do no wrong.
I laugh at the King and
Queen sitting atop a hill looking out to a Loch.
They lack detail and
skill and emotion. The Emperor is not wearing any clothes.
I would
not walk 10 feet to look at these never mind travel hundreds of
miles.
They are talked about
by educated people in terms of tortured souls. He did a huge
cruciform that looks like a giant leg bone.
In a BBC Moniter
programme made in 1960 it is easy to see how his images beguiled the
masses, well those that could afford a TV in the post war depression
era where his sort of people.
Mrs Moore collected
Aztec work and filled the house with art. He spoke about the
sculptures from the collection with BBC English that made him an
acceptable authority.
He admits that he watched the Moniter programme
about Lawrence Durrel.......and suddenly his books meant more to him.
He became closer to him.
He shows shapes and
bones that inspire the beginnings of his work. There are scores of
Mother and Child sculptures some plaster maquettes others cast in
bronze.
They are not Madonna
and Child though he says there is a distinction. He talks about the
Cezanne that kept him awake for three nights trying to decide whether
to fork out the monumental amount to purchase it.
There is a painting
in his studio. Bathers Composition. “It gives me tremendous joy to
have. Its not perfect it is a sketch but then I don't like absolute
perfection, I believe one should make a struggle to something one
cant do rather than do the thing you can do easily. It had my kind
of figure in it.”
He spoke about dividing
up his sculptures and seperating some of his work and how some have
more variety than others and that they are a mixture between human
form and landscape amalgamating both. He says talking about these
reclining figures of 1928 whilst showing photographs. “It is a kind
of metaphor, err like in poetry, you would say, err, the mountains
skipped like lambs and here the figure is connected with the earth,
with rocks mountains, metaphor.
He was given the Order
of Merit.
His sculpture Atom Piece, in my opinion, implodes so much on itself that it
should be renamed Damp Squib. Yet he still kept up the charade and he
went to quarry Carrera marble from the same place Michaelangelo got
his.
He then ruined a good
bit of rock with a carving that is so beneath any reference to the
great man.
I am sure he would not
have been allowed to carve a toenail of a work by the Michaelangelo.
He would not even be allowed the job of polishing Michelangelo shoes
he was not skilled enough.
He chose the marble and
thought, wrongly, that he was fulfilling his destiny.
Yet the TV programmes
kept on coming. Kenneth Clark was a collector of his work....hugely
discounted for sure, so it was definitely in his interests to mention
his in his epic series Civilization.
He was invited by the
Mayor of Florence to display work. 400,000 people went to the outdoor
exhibition and the faith of the Mayor was vindicated.
No doubt
tourism increased and it became the most talked about exhibition of
the year. What would Vasari have said about his uneasy figures set
against Brunellesci Dome. Florence with Museums full of works by Botticelli.
The Florentine public
took it to their heart.
Oval with points now
looks a childish gimmick and his bronze crucifiction form, a version
of his Scottish mountain weighed heavily along side a King and Queen
1952, another version, or edition.
Square Form With Cut
1970 made from Carrera marble. Michaelangelo would be turning in his
grave.
Retrospectives
continued year after year.
Then he turned to
drawing sheep. I tried reading a book illustrated with his sheep once .....….and I fell asleep.
He talks about understanding the skeleton of a
sheep.
Why did he not draw
from life the human form the biggest test.
You wouldn't want to draw
a fat man with a woolly jumper on, would you?
I think he was a
fashion item in a new age.
But I don't think he has worn well and I
fear to say what is wrong with his work after so many scholars and
writers have poured praise on his creations without searching thier own souls..
Stolen
and sold for scrap
The
value of Moore’s Reclining
Figure was
also low in the eyes of the thieves who stole
a different cast of the same sculpture in
December 2005. When it was filched from the Henry Moore Foundation in
Perry Green, police initially feared that the sculpture had been
stolen to order. Further investigations suggested, however, that it
had been taken by a
team of traveller who
sold the work as scrap metal. The two-tonne Reclining
Figure was
worth £3 million, but melted down it would only have been worth
£1,500.
The real legacy is that
he helped create a new generation of sculptors such as Arthur Dooley
that did not need to understand the anatomical form that had shaped
the world of art for centuries.
He gave an opportunity to a
generation that did not require the talent or meticulous study of the
human form.
Anyone could now, get away with amateurism that claimed it provoked
an emotion.
Well, I hear you say, that is good. But not at the
expense of craftsmanship I reply.
There are some works by
Moore that I like. Sometimes it works. But really.
I WANT LESS NOT MOORE.
