#Hepworth Gallery

[revault]

The Hepworth

[selfindulgenttwaddle]

Wife imitates art

S.I. Twaddle, 2023

[mirellabruno]

Eileen Agar, Adam’s Apple, 1949, watercolor on paper The Hepworth Wakefield

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St Ives.

The trip to St Ives was today, covering the Tate Gallery and the Barbara Hepworth Museum. Having lived near the Tate and visited once when I was a small boy with Primary School shortly after it's opening in the early 90s I have been aware of it's impact and the art community of St Ives for many years. That said, I have never attempted to look again at them with adult eyes. Admittedly I struggle sometimes with modernist art and similar forms on display at the St Ives Tate. I can't explain fully how it makes me feel; I have an old soul and sometimes it is more than I am capable of comprehending. That said there were a few pieces that caught my eye and my imagination.

Since my focus lately has been on oils and impasto, pieces of a similar nature catch my eye almost instinctively now. This piece by Joan Eardley really spoke to me, it's rough brushwork and layered effect really hit me. The viewer can clearly see it's subject but the roughness of it ties in with how rough fishing is as a profession and the wildness of the sky definitely tie in with the Scottish landscape in which it was painted. I love the feeling of comfortable isolation I get from this piece.

As mentioned in the card to accompany this pottery piece, what caught my eye were the mermen depicted in the painted work. As someone who loves Ancient Greek urns and their storytelling motifs, I was drawn to the similarity between the colour palettes also, almost in reverse orange and black. I was also taken aback by when this piece was made, as it speaks of a much older tradition of pottery. Even though it's depiction of mermen speak of the ongoing current LGBTQIA+ dialogue, it could easily be referring to an Ancient depiction of lovers from a time before the norm of same sex relationships became viewed as wrong. For example, there are several mentions of same sex lovers in Ancient Greek art, literature and history - the word Platonic for instance, not meaning relationships without a sexual component, but named for the philosopher Plato, as he, like many in his society, was most interested in the same-sex relationships between older and younger men.

I selected this piece as a genuine attempt to understand abstract art. I was aesthetically familiar with Piet Mondrian, having seen pieces of his line-works in popular culture and used for all sorts of advertising and gift shop works. Paying close attention to the way the card describes this piece, I tried hard to fathom the connection between mathematics and space and the colours and lines on the canvas, alas, I am afraid my brain is not yet ready to receive the secrets of this form of art.

I spent a few moments with this piece of sheer comfort. Snow scenes always portray a bleakness which I have always found deeply comforting in a strange way that invokes in me a sadness that somehow makes me happy. Almost like a catharsis of some sort. It also helped that Park's brushwork was textured in a similar way to my recent foray and experience with impasto.

Not my first firsthand experience with a Picasso painting, but they always catch the eye no matter how famous they are. What drew me to this was not the work itself, but the note at the bottom of the card "Accepted in lieu of tax"! I had to remark on this as slightly humorous in it's way - there are worse things to accept in lieu of monies owed than a Picasso painting!

I enjoyed this piece on first viewing aesthetically, but what really struck me was finding out when it was painted. The stereotype of the early 20th century is that most portrait art would be very realist, painting exactly what is in front of the painter. I admired the greens and teals in painting the facial expressions and in the skin tones, a choice by the artist that I deeply enjoy.

I know that there was a large part of our day at the Tate and subsequent visit to her studio museum dedicated to Barbara Hepworth, but I must confess I struggled to understand both her space and her art. Much in the same way I struggled with Marlow Moss' work with abstraction, I couldn't see the correlation between Hepworth's work in sculpture and discs and her love of Greek Mythology for instance. I might not be ready artistically to receive the understanding of such art or I might just be close-minded to that which I don't want to understand. I will try again in time nonetheless.

I took the rest of the afternoon to create some pieces of my own. First I sat on the harbourside and drew in my sketchbook, after this I headed to the beach. Playing with the idea of the temporary, I wrote some phrases in the sand, knowing that they would not last. Given the topic of this current module, transitory things are very present in my mind, including ways of life and life itself. I saw some rocks near the harbour area and took some time to create Cairns. Cairns were traditionally used as way markers or memorial sites, but in my mind, they act like a sort of primitive selfie. A way in which to say "someone was here", I like the anonymity of cairns and the mindfulness they bring in the making. Stones make up so much of our planet and they will be here long after we are gone from this Earth.

I also found a piece of driftwood on Porthmeor Beach - I later discovered that the painter Alfred Wallis used scrap panels of wood to paint on, so this will be useful in my later planned painted pieces.

All in all - not the day I expected, but a very beautiful winters day nonetheless.

[mx-phoenix-nixon]

#textiles #art #display #exhibit #hepworthwakefield #hepworth #gallery #unedited #nofilter https://www.instagram.com/p/Cgpma5vsqUX/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[bluecote]

Barbara Hepworth,

Penwith Gallery /June 23

[optikes]

1 Cyril Power (1872-1951) UK The Eight  reduction lino cut print (1930) 32.3×23.4cm

2 photographer unknown

economist.com  

IT HAS become the custom nowadays,” wrote Claude Flight, a British artist, in 1926, “to go to a shop for the tools of one's trade.” Flight was scornful of shoppers and liked to make things for himself. He kept his own bees and championed the art of the linocut, believing that the use of cheap materials would help democratise art and bring it to the attention of the masses. For his own linocuts he insisted on “a sharp penknife—such a very rare thing among art students” and a gouge he fashioned by fitting a small wooden handle onto a rib he cut from an umbrella.

Hard to imagine health and safety regulations allowing children today to have such fun. But Flight, who was a friend to Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth, inspired many pupils at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art, where he taught, wrote and organised exhibitions on linocuts.

Among the most famous was Cyril Power, an extraordinarily creative printmaker, born in 1872, who soaked up Flight's enthusiasms and gave them new force. Power drew on many influences—of the German Expressionists (who invented linocutting before the first world war), the Italian Futurists, the Vorticist prints and paintings of Wyndham Lewis—and the enthusiasm for speed and movement that marked the work of so many artists of the period, from Natalya Goncharova to Marcel Duchamp.

While the work of the Germans, Italians, French and Russians has become very well known, the prints and linocuts made by Power and his fellow British artists have lingered in the shadows. An inspired little exhibition—the first major show of Modernist British prints in America, which began earlier this year at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and is now at the Metropolitan Museum in New York—will help change that. So too will a newly opened show at a private gallery in London that gathers together for the first time prints of all 46 of Power's linocuts. Some are for sale; others have been lent by museums and private collectors, of which the most important are two New Yorkers, Leslie and Johanna Garfield.

The first impression of the Power show is that he lived his life in reverse. Until he was almost 50 he followed in the professional footsteps of both his father and his grandfather and practised as an architect, making a name for himself also as the author of an erudite study entitled “English Medieval Architecture”. Then, as Philip Vann explains in an elegant essay that accompanies the show, he “embarked on a kind of Gauguin-esque adventure”, leaving his wife and four children to enrol in art school in the company of a 24-year-old artist, Sybil Andrews.

The early prints in the show were made by a middle-aged man and it shows. In black-and-white there is a bridge at Rickmansworth, a street corner in the sleepy Suffolk town of Lavenham. Then suddenly the movement of the windmill in “Elmers Mill, Woolpit” gives an indication of what is to come. Starting in 1930, when he was already 58, Power takes to speed as if he had taken personal charge of the Futurist manifesto, which C.R.W. Nevinson co-signed with an incendiary Italian, Filippo Marinetti, in 1914, with the words “Forward! HURRAH for motors! HURRAH for speed!…HURRAH for lightning!”

Power allows light, noise and speed into everything he sees. Using a series of easily recognised colours, particularly “Chinese orange”, “chrome orange”, “viridian” and “Chinese blue”, he created images of merry-go-rounds, rowers, acrobats, dancers, runners, hockey players and, of course—given that some of his influences were Italian—beautiful cars.

The most successful are those, like “The Eight”, in which the element of formal design is most visible. But Power's vision as an artist really comes to the fore in works containing a hint of menace. The bourgeois-assaulting spirit of Italian Futurism, Mr Vann explains, had fallen into the malign hands of Mussolini and was about to give way to Fascism, while Freud's and Jung's obsessions with the unconscious were increasingly helping to throw up visions of fears, hopes and dreams.

“Monsignor St Thomas” (1931, pictured at left) is a brilliant working of the murder in the cathedral of Thomas à Beckett, but it is technically skilful rather than edgy. The really potent, and most modern-looking, of Power's linocuts are those that lead the viewer right to the edge. These start with “Tennis” (1933, below), a magnificent rendering not just of the energy of the centre court, but of the physical and psychological effects of slicing and spinning—sport at its most gladiatorial.

As the 1930s move towards totalitarianism and then war, Power's work takes on a darker hue. The tube trains and the escalators of the London subway system provide ample opportunity for exploring man's addiction to the rat race. Two further works seem remarkably prescient. In 1934 Power made a linocut which he called “Exam Room”, full of hunched-up concentration and a complex set of figures that show, in turn, fear, nerves, gloating, dreaming—and one who is slyly distracting a neighbour. Watching over them is the overbearing timekeeper and the all-seeing eyes in the ceiling.

Similarly, “Air Raid”, which Power made in 1935 and which has been lent to this show by the RAF Museum in Hendon, is an extraordinarily filmic response to a period of history the artist had not yet even seen. It would be another five years before the start of the Battle of Britain would make such imagery routine. Cyril Power was not just an artist, he was a visionary

[earhartsease]

this is one of Barbara Hepworth's sculptures called Orpheus - by which we mean she made more than one of them

we deeply love this, and we saw it at her house in St Ives, Cornwall - so imagine our amazed delight the first time we visited Australia and saw its sibling in an art gallery in Sydney

the more delight because we were in the process of trying to write a novel that featured the lyre of Orpheus, and also the necessity of keeping certain of his body parts at opposite sides of the planet

and no, we haven't finished the bloody thing yet - it's been 24 years so far and executive dysfunction/performance anxiety is a bugger

[15beads]

Barbara Hepworth (1903 -1975)

Barbara Hepworth, Head (Mykonos), 1959-60 | Offer Waterman

Barbara Hepworth, Zennor, 1966 | RWA Bristol

Educator Resource Packet: Two Figures (Menhirs) by Barbara Hepworth | The Art Institute of Chicago

BARBARA HEPWORTH, Elegy III, 1966-67 | Mira Godard

Barbara Hepworth | Pace Gallery

[johnlinneyphotography]

Approaching. On the footbridge over the River Calder to the Hepworth in Wakefield. Always a pleasure visiting this gallery. #fujixt4 #fujifilmxt4 #fujifilmxf16mmf28 #hepworthwakefield #architecture #artgallery #yorkshire #yorkshirephotographer https://www.instagram.com/p/Cott8iFIj7G/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[chris-mga2022mi5015]

Reg Butler's Visual style and meaning of his work.

Sitter in 12 portraits Butler trained as an architect and worked as a blacksmith before becoming Henry Moore's assistant and developing his own talent as a sculptor. His first solo exhibition was held in 1949 at the Hanover Gallery in London and two years later he was appointed as a teacher at the Slade School of Fine Art. In 1952 he exhibited at the Venice Biennale and in the same year won a much publicised competition for a Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner which, however, was never made.

THE UNKNOWN POLITICAL PRISONER

The Institute of Contemporary Arts organised a world-wide sculpture competition to commemorate or symbolise the theme of The Unknown Political Prisoner.

The intention in suggesting such a theme was to pay tribute to those individuals who, in many countries and in diverse political situations, had dared to offer their liberty and their lives for the cause of human freedom.

The Competition was undertaken on a truly international scale, in the hope that it would prove to be an inspiration not only to artists, but to all those in positions great or small who may give support to the arts.

BIOGRAPHY

Reginald Cotterell Butler (28 April 1913 – 23 October 1981) was an English sculptor. He was born at Bridgefoot House, Buntingford, Hertfordshire to Frederick William Butler (1880–1937) and Edith (1880–1969), daughter of blacksmith William Barltrop, of The Forge, Takeley, Essex. His parents were the Master and Matron of the Buntingford Union Workhouse. Frederick Butler, formerly a police constable, was a relative of the poet William Butler Yeats; Edith was of Anglo-French descent.

Butler studied and lectured at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London from 1937 to 1939. He was a conscientious objector during the Second World War, being exempted from military service conditional upon setting up a small blacksmith business repairing farm implements. After winning the 'Unknown Political Prisoner' competition in 1953 he became one of the best known sculptors during the 1950s and 1960s, and also taught at the Slade School of Art.

Butler's later work consists of lifelike models of female figures, such as Girl on a Round Base, that have something in common with Hans Bellmer and the sculpture of Allen Jones and prefigure the work of Ron Mueck.

Many of his works are held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and Tate Gallery in London.

Butler was featured in the 1964 documentary film, "5 British Sculptors (Work and Talk)", by American filmmaker Warren Forma.

Butler married Joan Child in 1938; by his second wife, Rosemary (née Young; 1930–2019), a sculptor, who had been his student and later assistant, he had a son, Creon Adrian John Cotterell Butler, later a diplomat, and daughter, Cortina Maxine Ann Cotterell Butler, a director of literature for the British Council. He died in Berkhamsted.

British sculptor. He trained as an architect and did not take up sculpture full-time until 1950. In 1953 he suddenly came to prominence on being awarded first prize (£4,500) in an international competition for a ‘Monument to The Unknown Political Prisoner’ (beating Calder, Gabo, and Hepworth among other established artists). The competition, financed by an anonymous American sponsor and organized by the Institute of Contemporary Arts, was intended to promote interest in contemporary sculpture and ‘to commemorate all those unknown men and women who in our times have been deprived of their lives or their liberty in the cause of human freedom’. Butler's design was characterized by harsh, spindly forms, suggesting in his own words, ‘an iron cage, a transmuted gallows or guillotine on an outcrop of rock’. The monument was never built, but the competition established Butler's name and he won a high reputation among British sculptors of his generation. He had learned iron-forging when he had worked as a blacksmith during the Second World War (he was a conscientious objector) and his early sculpture is remarkable for the way in which he used his feeling for the material to create sensuous textures. His later work, which was more traditional (and to many critics much less memorable), included some bronze figures of nude girls, realistically painted and with real hair, looking as if they had strayed from the pages of ‘girlie’ magazines. Butler was an articulate writer and radio broadcaster and he vigorously argued the case for modern sculpture. Five lectures he delivered to students at the Slade School in 1961 were published in book form the following year as Creative Development. He was a widely read man, who numbered leading intellectuals among his friends, and his liberal sympathies were shown by his donation of works to such causes as the campaign against capital punishment.

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[stellabarak]

Performance with clay

I have been thinking about the relationships between ceramics and performance. The very nature of clay, its long trajectory and history, but especially the way ceramics are produced, makes it a material amenable to performance.

It isn't a coincidence, then, I think that there is a significant link between pottery, ceramics and performance.

If we look back at the recent history of modern and contemporary artists, we find a significant list of those that have employed ceramics and expanded its qualities on a performative level.

First, the one name that undeniably springs to mind is the American Lynda Benglis. Although not necessarily associated directly with ceramics, at first glance, Lynda's work comprises links between feminist art and performance, foremost. Her large oeuvre encompasses wax and latex casts, metal and of course, ceramics. The imaginative and tactile forms of Benglis's creations are at the core of her investigation and experimentation. Clay, also allowing her to bend and manipulate it in a free-form expression, also gave her the opportunity to explore it in what I see as a performative way.

The abundance of her works, the sheer sensual and gravity defying nature of the knotted works and draped fabrics, as well as her sparkles are at the centre of her idea of sculpture as "frozen moments" or frozen gestures.

The MoMA in New York has an exceptional piece of Benglis of 1998, GhostDance/PedMarks, that for me encapsulates the ongoing fascination with gestures and mark making.

In her ceramics, specifically, Benglis continued on one of her favourite motifs, the knotted bow. In a poignant retrospective of her work at the Hepworth Wakefield museum in 2015, I had the chance to experience these in person. Below you can see images of the ceramic works, which attest to the ever-shifting nature of the knots.

Second, of course American but of Greek heritage, Peter Voulkos.

I have always enjoyed watching the videos of him throwing on the wheel but even more, the ones where he is creating large sculptures out of clay, that are intentionally badly handled.

I was ecstatic when I visited one of these large sculptures and got the chance to see it in person, as part of the Victoria and Albert museum's extensive ceramics collection.

"Pinatubo" (1994) is a wood fired, stoneware sculpture, and it is currently on display in Room 142 of the Lydia and Manfred Gorey gallery at the V&A.

[irishgop]

Portrait of Frances Hodgkins, Cedric Morris, Oil on Canvas, 1928 (Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki)

She arrived in London in the spring of 1901 at the age of 32. By June she was sketching in Normandy before decamping to Paris and Italy. Hodgkins became an incessant traveler including within England and the British Empire, among the Low Countries, around the Mediterranean as well France on the Continent, and eventually The United Stares; who embraced “en plein air” sketching and painting.

As World WR I consumed continental Europe, Hodgkins settled in the village of St.Ives, Cornwall, having given up on a studio in Kensington which she had leased but found cold and cramped. She leased it to Cedric Morris and his friend Lett-Haines. They were the first of numerous English artists drawn into her circle. Ten years later Morris would paint the portrait of Hodgkins posted here. A year earlier Morris had introduced Hodgkins to Ben Nicholson, an abstract artist who had assumed the leadership of the Seven & Five Society of avant-garde artists in 1926, and began frequenting St.Ives in Cornwall in 1928.

Hodgkins would join other preeminent artists like Winifred Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore in the Seven & Five Society. She exhibited her work in the Society’s 10th and 11th exhibitions and with the Society in their 1932 showing at the Leicester Gallery in London.

In 1938 her only lithograph, “An Arrangement of Jugs,” was produced and published by the Curwen Press of Plainfield, East London along with images done by Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell, and John Piper. Kenneth Clarke, Director of the National Gallery in London had her exhibit at the British Pavilion of the 1939 NEw York World’s Fair, and subsequently she was invited to show at the 22nd Venice Biennale alongside Duncan Grant, Edward Wadsworth, Frank Dobson, Glyn Philpot, and Alfred Munnings.

In November of 1946, six months before her death, 64 of Hodgkins’ paintings and 17 drawings were shown in a critically acclaimed retrospective at the Lefevre Gallery. Francis Hodgkins passed away in May of 1947.

[Abstracted from writing by Jonathan Gooderham & Richard Wolfe, and edited by Grace Alty.]