Henry Moore honoured at 80

Press, 24 October 1978, Page 18

Henry Moore honoured at 80

By

CHARLES SPENCER,

former editor of “Art and Artists,” London

The eightieth birthday of Henry Moore, Britain’s best known living artist end indisputably her greatest sculptor — indeed, arguably the first important sculptor produced by the country — is being appropriately celebrated. There are exhibitions at the Tate Gallery (which one day will incorporate a Henry Moore Room) and in the open air at. Hyde Park, displays at the Marlborough and Fischer galleries, and a charming group of recent photographs by Errol Jackson at the Camden Art Centre. Interviews in the media, including extensive television programmes, have also marked the anniversary.

To understand Henry Moore one must understand his background, the special -quality of Yorkshire in the north of England where he was born. Almost everything refers back to his origins. “Mexican sculpture,” he once said, “as soon as I found it, seemed to be true and right, perhaps because I at oace hit on similarities in it with eleventh century carvings I had seen as a boy in Yorkshire churches.” He was born at Castleford, on July 30, 1898, son of a miner, in a family where the men had always worked above the ground as farmers, or below it. Somewhere in the paternal line there are Irish origins, which may have contributed to Moore’ B charming articulacy and his instinct for dramatic forms. He trained as a teacher and entered Leeds College of Art on a grant only after World War I. In his early twenties he went to the Royal College of Art in London, and in 1925 won a travelling scholarship which took him to Paris and to Italy — Venice, Ravenna, Rome and Florence. Forty-seven years later the famous Tuscan city of the Renaissance honoured him with a great exhibition A feature of Moore’s personality and career is his ability to absorb differing cultural influences within the definition of his own character. We have noted the equation of Yorkshire and Mexican art; Greece, the Italian Renaissance, notably the sculpture of Michaelangelo, have all played their parts; later came Picasso and Surrealism and then, through his friendship with Naum Gabo, aspects of Russian Constructivism and abstraction. Despite this, Moore has remained constant to a central theme — the fenvTe form and the family group. Moore once wrote: “In my opinion, long and intense study of the human figure is the necesary foundation for a sculptor. “The human figure is the most complex and subtle and difficult to

grasp in form and construction, and so it makes the most exciting form for study and comprehension.” On another occasion he continued on this humanist theme: “Each particular carving I make takes on in my mind a human, or occasionally an animal, character and personality, and this personality controls its design and formal qualities, and makes me satisfied or dissatisfied with the work as it develops.” Without stretching the comparison too far, it is interesting to discuss Moore’s personal history and themes in relation to the write. ,D. H. Lawrence, also the son of a miner who became a teacher. A far more controlled and down-to-earth character, the sculptor nevertheless is basically concerned with the structure of the female body, and especially in the carvings gives the impression of the creative hand lovingly moving over the bare limbs, through crevices and folds of the body, a mixture of eroticism and spirituality. He has sublimated both instincts by giving the forms a symbolic relationshin to nature and landscape, extending his humanism to a sympathetic response to all growing things. Yorkshire has produced many artists (among them Barbara Hepworth and David Hockney), and romantic mystics such as the Brontes. One of Moore’s most impressive talents is the ability to produce almost endless

variations on a few themes, all of which relate directly to an essential centrality, while exploring materials and techniques. His early fame rested on carving in stone and wood, usually simple mother-and-child groups, which owed much to Renaissance art yet were clearly expressive of his own ‘ childhood relationship, and later that of his own family. These forms appeared in his early London exhibitions, from 1928, when he was teaching at the Royal College and the Chelsea School of Art. Foreign travel and influences provided the syntax of variation —notably Mexico in the lying forms and Naum Gabo in the abstracted figures.

By the outbreak of World War 11. in 1939, Moore had greatly matured as a sculptor and his appointment as an official war artist can be said to have brought him back to humanism; his sketches of Londoners during the bombing raids, sheitering in the Underground railway stations, are among his most intimate and moving images, a permanent record of British history. ■ Shortly afterwards he affirmed: “I think the most ‘alive’ painting and sculpture from now on will go more ‘humanist,’ although at present there are more abstract artists than ever — there is a natural time lag in the work of the majority, who are following past experimental artists.”

It was the first Venice Biennale after the war, in 1948, which brought him international fame. The first British sculptor to win the major Biennale Prize, he was an inspiration to future generations, so that unexpectedly Britain produced a group of remarkable sculptors, from Robert Adams, Armitage, Caro and Paolozzi to young practitioners who were given a new self confidence and a world audience. Many of these sculptors, such as Caro, have acted as assistants to Moore, who, while not producing a “school,” has undoubtedly been a potent influence. In recent years honours have showered on Moore;

after the great Florence exhibition, the accolade of Paris at the Musee de L’Orangerie, Leeds in his native Yorkshire, the Museum of Modern Art in Toronto, which now has a salon entirely devoted to his work. And once its new extension is completed, London’s Tate Gallery will also be able to display the magnificent group ’ of works which the sculptor has donated to the nation. His sculptures can be seen in museums and public sites throughout the world, but nowhere more appropriately than in the meadows which adjoin his country home and studio at Much Hadham, near London, which is destined to become a permanent museum.