"Barbara Hepworth: Sculpture for a Modern World"

It was in June, I believe, when I saw an item posted by Maureen Doallas on her blog, Writing Without Paper. If you know Maureen, she know she is all things art, and this item had to do with an exhibition  at the Tate Britain on the work of sculptor Barbara Hepworth. I checked the link and made a note of it, since we were planning a vacation in London and would be there while the exhibition was still on (it closed on Oct. 25).

I was not familiar with Barbara Hepworth’s work. I wasn’t familiar with 20^th century sculpture. And I wasn’t sure what I thought about the modernist / international style of sculpture. But these are actually good reasons to see an exhibition, and I did add it to the list of “possibles” to see.

Early one morning during the first week we were there, I was power-walking in Pimlico and went right by the Tate Britain. I saw the banner for the Hepworth exhibition, and decided I would try to make time for it. A few days later, I did. (Instead of walking, I took the tube from St. James’s Park to Victoria Station, and from Victoria Station to Pimlico.) Three blocks later, I was at the Tate, paid my admission for Hepworth, and went in.

Barbara Hepworth in 1934 with ‘Mother and Child’ (Getty Images)

Born in 1903 in Yorkshire, Hepworth was interested in art from a young age. By 17, she was studying at the Leeds School of Art, and moved to London shortly after, to study at the Royal College of Art. She fell in love with and eventually lived with sculptor John Skeaping, with whom she had a son. They shared studio space. The relationship lasted until she met and fell in love with Ben Nicholson, with whom she had triplets. In the years leading up to World War II, Hepworth was making a name for herself (along with sculptors like Henry Moore), and working in Modernism and what was called the International Style.

After the war, her reputation grew. She and Nicholson were divorced in 1951. She established her studio in St. Ives in Cornwall, and executed a number of commissions for the United Nations, art centers, sculpture parks and other organizations. She died in a fire in her studio in 1975.

Large and Small Form, 1934; the Piers Art Centre, Orkney.

The show was arranged in six largish rooms, and mostly (but not entirely) in chronological order. The first room was mostly smaller, table-top pieces, carvings in wood and stone. The larger pieces came at the end, but the exhibition was mostly organized by themes – carving, studio, international modernism, equilibrium, staging sculpture, and pavilion. Hepworth also worked in brass, especially for outdoor installations.

Walking from room to room, one could how she developed concepts of form, including the human form. Some of the wooden pieces suggested an African influence, but the spherical shapes she developed were captivating. I couldn’t tell you what they represented, but I was nonetheless captivated by several of the pieces, particularly in the international modernism and equilibrium rooms. And I was struck by the sheer beauty of many of the sculptures she produced. (For an extra cost, which I paid, the Tate had a very helpful audio guide.)

I bought a book about Hepworth, British Artists: Barbara Hepworth by Penelope Curtis, and I wish I had been able to read it before seeing the show. Curtis provides an overview of Hepworth-s life and work, a critical history, and the influence she’s had, all in less than 100 pages but filled with photographs of her sculptures. It’s an excellent introduction to the artist and international modernism.

I’m glad I went. I learned something about a period and its sculpture that I knew precious little about. And the Tate knows how to do an exhibition.

Barbara Hepworth at the Tate Britain

Top photograph: Sculpture with Colour (Deep Blue and Red) by Barbara Hepworth, 1940; Tate Britain.

Mr. Turner: The Movie That’s a Painting

When we visited London in 2012, one of our “sights” was the Tate Britain, and one of our “sights” at the Tate Britain was the collection of paintings by J.M.W. Turner (1775 to 1851), the British artist who changed landscape painting forever. You see his paintings and you think Impressionism, you think contemporary art. You don’t think the first half of the 19^th century.

Last fall, when we returned to London, we saw a special exhibition at the Tate Britain – Late Turner: Painting Set Free, which focused on his work from the latter part of his life. It’s a wonderful exhibition, and it’s still on through Jan. 25. Of all the paintings in the show, the one that appealed to me most was the watercolor pictured above – The Blue Rigi, Sunrise.

Last night we went to see Mr. Turner, the movie by Mike Leigh (he also wrote the screenplay). The movie, starring Timothy Spall in the title role, is almost “ekphrastic” – a film (or work of art) about another work of art. In many respects, watching the movie is like watching Turner’s paintings. From what I’ve read of Turner’s life and art, Spall captures the man almost exactly. Turner was not without controversy, some of it well deserved, and Spall plays the artist very well indeed. If you’re interested in Turner, his art, or early Victorian Britain, it’s a movie to see.

Here’s the movie’s trailer:

If you’re interested in reading about Turner, four books I’d recommend are:

Turner by Michael Bockemuhl (1991, republished in 2007)

J.M.W. Turner: The Man Who Set Painting on Fire by Olivier Meslay (2005; reprinted in 2011).

Turner by Peter Ackroyd (2006) (Ackroyd has written about virtually everything else in British history, and he does well with Turner and his art.)

J.M.W.Turner: Painting Set Free (2014) – the book that accompanies the exhibition at the Tate Britain.

Painting: The Blue Rigi, Sunrise, watercolor on paper by J.M.W. Turner (1842), Tate Britain, London.

Peter Ackroyd’s “Turner”

When we were in London in September for vacation, one of the first museums we visited was the Tate Britain. And the highlight of the Tate Britain was the collection of works by J.M.W. Turner.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 – 1851) was the foremost landscape painter of his generation, and early on he was recognized as such. Admitted to the Royal Academy of Art at a surprisingly young age, Turner had a significant impact upon his own generation, as well as the generations of artists to follow, including the Impressionists.

In Turner, author Peter Ackroyd sketches a life of the artist that provides basic information about the man, his family, his career and his major works. This is the kind of biography I wish I had had before viewing the collection at the Tate – short, straightforward and providing enough detailed information to provide some depth and understanding of collection (including how the collection came to be at the Tate).

The book, in fact, is one of Ackroyd’s “brief lives.” It is not exhaustive but then it is not meant to be. Instead, it is a chronological overview of its subject that gives an extended outline of his life and work. Other ‘brief lives” that Ackroyd has done include ones for Sir Isaac Newton and Geoffrey Chaucer. (Ackroyd knows how to do an exhaustive biography – just pick up his Charles Dickens, published in 1990.)

Don’t let the “brief life” description mislead. Ackroyd has done his homework. He pulls from letters, contemporary accounts, the writings of Turner admirer John Ruskin and others, and proceedings of the Royal Academy, among other sources.

In Turner, Ackroyd presents an artist who produced an astonishing number of works over his lifetime, one who worked almost feverishly – much like Dickens later worked in literature and magazine publishing. Turner and Dickens seem to share another important characteristic – self-awareness of their place in their respective fields and how they wanted to be known after their deaths. And both men were producing significant and important work up to the times of their deaths.

If you’re interested in a more in-depth discussion of Turner’s paintings, watercolors, engravings and other art works, then Turner: The World of Light and Color by Michael Bockemuhl is a succinct (96-page) resource. It is published by Taschen, one of the leading firms for art books and artist biographies (the one you usually find at art museums).

This would have been another good book to have read before viewing the Turner collection at the Tate, or perhaps viewing the collection, reading the book, and then visiting the collection again. It includes color reproductions of many of Turner’s major works. 

Painting: Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) - the Morning after the Deluge - Moses Writing the Book of Genesis by J.M.W. Turner (1843); Tate Britain.