In this post, I continue on with writing up the talks I gave at Tate Britain in London a few years back. In 2015, the gallery held an exhibition entitled ‘Barbara Hepworth. Sculpture for a Modern World’ which opened to the public on June 24th and ran until October 25th. It was a retrospective of the sculptor’s work in bronze, wood and stone, and also included work on paper. I’d chosen to put together a talk about Figure for Landscape, a work which was created by Hepworth during 1959 – 1960 and of which seven bronze casts were made. One of them, cast number 6, was on loan to the gallery from a private collector and appeared one morning on the front lawn of the building beside the grand portico entrance. I was keen to talk about a work by the sculptor whilst the exhibition was on and this was perfect. The talks were free of charge and of course there was a fee to enter the exhibition. I wanted to make sure that anyone who was interested was able to listen and join in regardless of whether they were visiting the exhibition or not, or more importantly, if they could not afford the cost of paying for an entry ticket. There are drawbacks in arranging to talk about artworks which are displayed outside, mainly the British weather. With that in mind, I also prepared a talk about the sculpture using images taken from all angles, most of which are shown in this post, which could take place inside if it was raining. However, I need not have worried. Rain or shine, people were happy to go outside. It even snowed that October here in London. I remember the rather freak weather that month. But still the group waiting was happy to stand outside. This in fact was ideal as the sculpture should be experienced in all types of weather.
The sculptor was born Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth in January 1903 in Wakefield, Yorkshire, and died in St Ives, tragically in a fire at her studio, in May 1975 at the age of 72. She attended Leeds Art School where she met fellow sculptor Henry Moore, and then won a scholarship to go on to the Royal College of Art in London where she was awarded a diploma in 1924. Afterwards the artist travelled to Italy where she met and married her first husband, the sculptor John Skeaping in 1925. At this time she also learned how to carve marble from master sculptor Giovanni Giardini. Later in 1938, she married the artist Ben Nicholson, although they had known and worked together several years before that. They lived in London, in Hampstead, and in 1949 moved to St Ives, like many artists at the time, where she lived until her death. She lived at Trewyn Studios and said of finding the studios;
”Finding Trewyn Studio was a sort of magic. Here was a studio, a yard, and garden where I could work in open air and space.”*
Later the sculptor greatly increased her studio space. By 1960, her work had become much more prolific and she purchased the Palais de Danse, a cinema and dance studio which was across from her own studio. She used this new space to work on large scale commissions like Figure for Landscape.
During the 1950s, after she had moved to St Ives, Hepworth moved away from working only in stone or wood and began to work with bronze. She often used her garden in St. Ives which she designed with the South African composer Priaulx Rainier, to view her large scale bronzes. It now forms part of the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden.
Figure for Landscape, which is from 1960, stands 9 feet or two and a half meters high and is of course cast in bronze. Hepworth had started to do casts of her work as it was becoming more prolific and there was a demand for it internationally. There are seven casts of Figure for Landscape. As I mentioned previously, the one which was on loan to Tate in 2015 is owned by a private collector, and is cast number 6. It sold at Christie’s in London in 2014 and was previously owned by the Kunsthall Stavanger in Norway who had bought it directly from the sculptor. You an see her signature and cast number on the bottom right of the cast – see illustration below. Casting was done by the Morris Singer Foundry here in London which at that time was in Vauxhall, housed in a building which was directly opposite the area where I was standing talking about the sculpture in Pimlico. The first cast is owned by Tate and is in the sculpture garden in St Ives, others are in major collections in the States, and in Exeter University here in England. During the previous retrospective of her work at Tate, Figure for Landscape stood on the portico stairs greeting people as they arrived.
As the day of the first talk approached, I was struggling somewhat with what I wanted to say about the sculpture. Yes, there was plenty of information about it but how could I get over to those listening why I had chosen to talk about it and what it was exactly that drew me to it? I’d long had a love and fascination for stone circles and megaliths and this was the type of landscape which the artist was living and being influenced by. It was important when talking about artworks to emphasise what it was that drew you to them. Part of the aim of the talks was to encourage people to think about that for themselves. How many artworks do we love but have never really stopped to think about why? What draws us to them and what is the story behind them? My interest in the Neolithic world and the Bronze Age was obviously important here. So I took a trip back to Avebury, a place I had visited many times. I admit that it is not as remote as most stone circles but it is relatively easy to get to from London and it is a vast landscape. After walking for a half hour or more, you soon find yourself completely alone within the vastness and silence. Figure for Landscape reminded me of some of my favourite Avebury stones. I sat down by one of them and what I wanted to say started to flow out, and I wove the words together with, what I thought, were the most important things she herself said regarding the work. The stones of Avebury and other stone circles which I’d visited, were familiar like old friends. I could feel their protection and walked around them, touching them, in the way I would later learn that the sculptor herself advised us to approach looking at sculpture.
The relationship between the figure and the landscape was especially poignant for Hepworth who explored this connection throughout her career. In 1954, after the death of her son Paul who tragically died in a plane crash (she had four children, her son Paul and triplets) she spent time in Greece. She remembered a moment there when she saw that the figure and the landscape were integrated, seeing the figure as central to the environment. She saw a solitary figure on the Greek island of Patmos and recalled:
”I was coming down a mountainside when I saw a single black robed Greek Orthodox priest standing beneath me in a snow white courtyard, with the blue sea beyond and, on the curved horizon, the shores of other islands. This single human figure then seemed to me to give scale to the whole universe, and this is exactly what a sculpture should suggest in its relationship to its surroundings: it should seem to be at the centre of the globe, compelling the whole world around it to rotate, as it were, like a system of planets around the central sun. This is why each sculpture should be contemplated by itself.’**
The sculptor spent much time walking around the Cornish landscape where she lived. This may be a good time to watch this short film available for free from the BFI which gives us a good sense of this landscape before reading on. The film was made in 1953, earlier than the date of the work we are looking at here and before the sculptor started to cast in bronze but it sets the work in context against the Cornish landscape and sea, and also includes footage of Hepworth sculpting in her studio garden.
https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-figures-in-a-landscape-1953-online
This short video here created by the BBC is definitely worth watching. Here, the sculptor talks about moving through the hollows of the landscape and touching and feeling the different textures. You can also see her working on the plaster cast for Figure for Landscape about three minutes in:
And here, former Senior Curator of British Art at Tate Britain Chris Stephens, talks about Hepworth’s work in this short Tate Shots film made at the time of the retrospective in 2015. onlinehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv77WKiUxm8
Of Figure for Landscape, the sculptor noted that ”it combines not only the inner and outer form….but it is also a compelling cave within which one can stand. In an open landscape this form would be maternal. Near to – it becomes a refuge.’ ***
She mentions the word maternal which is perhaps what gives it that protective feel. It could be one figure – a Christ like shrouded figure image – or looking more closely, you can see an arm and on the other sided holding what could be a child. The Mother and Child. Or two children? The Great Mother Protecting. At times it reminds me of the Virgin of Mercy works from the Renaissance, which show Mary holding the dark blue mantle she is wearing open wide and protecting her flock beneath it. Or is it two figures standing side by side? Or two holding one another? It is a very haunting image depending on where you stand and can at times take on a rather sinister feel. Try standing right up close to it and looking up. Experience the mysterious nature of it. Shrouded, obscuring any identity and as one source suggests, allowing it to stand for everyone. The Hermit figure of the tarot comes to mind.
One of the sculptor’s most successful techniques at establishing the relationship between landscape and figure was her interplay between hollow and solid. The openings in the sculpture mean that light filters through to the heart of it and brings an inner life to the enclosed form. Hepworth described this process as conveying ‘a sense of being contained by a form as well as containing it.’ Without the hollows the form would be imposing and heavy and the energy would change completely.
It is important to walk around the sculpture to get a sense of it. The sculptor herself said;
”I think every person looking at a sculpture should use his own body. You can’t look at a sculpture if you are going to stand stiff as a ramrod and stare at it. With a sculpture you must walk around it, bend towards it, touch it, walk away from it.”
Long before creating this piece, she spoke about the landscape and figures as being vitally important to the shaping of her work. Figure for Landscape was not merely created to be in landscape but for it. The use of bronze is deliberate. It was meant to be exposed to the elements, rained on, covered by snow, eroded by wind and bear the marks of hands that touched it. I invited those listening to imagine the sculpture in a different setting, perhaps an open moor or stormy hillside covered with snow, not situated on a lawn with a large gallery building behind it. Imagine it in different light at different times of day, I said. It is very different seeing it first thing in the morning to late in the afternoon for example, depending on the light. Arriving first thing in the morning and seeing the early morning sun catch it was a different experience to seeing it in the late afternoon light. The photographs which I’ve used here are obviously taken on an overcast, grey day, but when there was sun, the bronze patina shone. On one of those sunny days, someone noted that the words from some notes I was holding were reflecting in the bronze. The water which collected inside the hollow reminded another listener of a well, and once a small bird flew in to quench their thirst. It seemed to take on a shrine like quality. A giver of life. Healer. Protector.
I think that with those last few words this would be a good place to finish. A short talk could never be enough to describe an artwork fully. There are always so many different aspects to cover. I found reading ‘Barbara Hepworth, Writings and Conversations’, edited by Sophie Bowness and published by Tate to be an invaluable resource. It is always worthwhile reading and listening to the artists themselves if the content is available to us. The Hepworth quote on the back of the book states that ”It would be very difficult to explain in words the full content of a sculpture….you can open the door, however, to a fuller understanding.”
*Quote by Hepworth from ‘Barbara Hepworth: A Pictorial Autobiography. Published by Tate 1978. P.52 and also cited on p.6 of ‘Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Garden’ by Miranda Phillips and Chris Stephens. Published by Tate 2002. There have been many reprints since then.
**Quote by Hepworth taken from an interview with Edouard Roditi in 1960 entitled ‘Dialogues on Art’. Reproduced in ‘Barbara Hepworth Writings and Conversations’ p.134. Published by Tate in 2015. Copyright Bowness, Hepworth Estate.
***Quote by the artist commenting on Figure for Landscape. Reproduced in ‘Barbara Hepworth Writings and Conversations’ p. 160. Published by Tate in 2015. Copyright of Bowness, Hepworth Estate.
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