Henry Moore Institute
Newsletter Spring 2011 The next issue of the Henry Moore Institute’s Newsletter launches the on-line version, which continues to announce news from the Institute’s exhibitions, collections and research programmes. The June/July issue will see the introduction of a new series of regular columns by Institute staff, highlighting our current research into the study of sculpture. During April and May, the changing exhibition Dear Henry Moore continues in the Sculpture Study Galleries, while in Gallery 4, Savage Messiah: The Creation of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, investigates the changing art-historical and biographical interpretation of the French-born artist Gaudier-Brzeska (18911915). In 1930 the collector H.S. Ede published a biography of the sculptor, first published as A Life of Gaudier-Brzeska and re-issued a year later with the title Savage Messiah. The manuscript version of this book, held in the Archive here at the Henry Moore Institute, forms the centre of this display, which coincides with a new edition of Savage Messiah, produced in collaboration with Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge. This significant publication brings the original text back into print alongside the original illustrations with new scholarly essays. Jean-Marc Bustamante: Dead Calm opens in the Main Galleries on 21 April, the first solo exhibition of the French artist in the UK. Curated by Penelope Curtis, Director of Tate Britain and former Curator at the Institute, the exhibition examines the ways in which Bustamante’s artistic practice tunes perception to the unremarkable in order to reorientate the ways in which we attempt to understand our place in the world. The carefully made selection focuses on sculpture and photographs made between 1978 and 1997, paying attention to the problems of ‘things’ and ‘pictures’ to address the complex relationship of image to object. Dead Calm is accompanied by a catalogue produced in collaboration with Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery. In the same week as Bustamante’s exhibition opens in Leeds, the artist discusses Dead Calm with Penelope Curtis at the Whitechapel Gallery (www.whitechapelgallery.org) and presents a series of drawings and paintings made in the last five years at Timothy Taylor Gallery; see below for details. May-June conferences include a seminar on 22 June discussing Gaudier-Brzeska’s work and its reception in the context of the Vorticists, followed by a screening of the 1972 film adaptation of Savage Messiah, introduced by its director Ken Russell. On 11 May a one-day workshop, Constructivism and its Shadow, coincides with the Leeds Art Gallery collections display curated by artist Andrew Bick as an outcome of his Institute research fellowship in 2008. On 21 May The Hepworth Wakefield opens its doors to the public. This internationally significant museum underlines the importance of Yorkshire as a home for the study and presentation of sculpture both nationally and internationally. On 3 and 4 June, we present the first in a series of collaborative events, programmed with Leeds Art Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and Arts Council Collection, Longside, in a two-day conference bringing focused attention to the work of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth in Yorkshire. Lisa Le Feuvre, Head of Sculpture Studies
April/May 2011 Issue No. 95
Savage Messiah: The Creation of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska Gallery 4, 16 March - 31 July 2011 2011 marks the centenary of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska’s move from Paris to London, where he played an important role in the development of modern sculpture in this country, collaborating with figures such as Ezra Pound and Roger Fry, and participating in the Vorticist group and Omega Workshops. In the summer of 1914 Gaudier-Brzeska volunteered for the French army, and was killed in action the following year, aged twenty-three. The exhibition highlights the ways in which the life of this Frenchborn sculptor entered the history of modern British sculpture and then mainstream culture. The new scholarly edition of Savage Messiah, produced in collaboration with Kettle’s Yard, includes texts by Sebastiano Barassi, Evelyn Silber and Jon Wood.
The exhibition presents the original manuscript of H.S. Ede’s book about Gaudier-Brzeska’s life and looks at the ways in which the life and work of this sculptor was constructed through biographical narratives and, in turn, through film. The Ede manuscript is displayed alongside Gaudier-Brzeska’s representations of Ezra Pound and Horace Brodzky. We also show various editions of Ede’s Savage Messiah that have been published over the last eighty years. Each shows a different approach to cover design and in turn to the image and concept of the book itself. All of this will be exhibited alongside film stills and posters from Ken Russell’s Savage Messiah film of 1972. The role of the film will be emphasised on 22 June, when Russell introduces Savage Messiah, before a screening at the Hyde Park Picture House in Leeds (www.hydeparkpicturehouse.co.uk), as part of a one-day symposium that looks at the broader historiography of the work and life of Gaudier-Brzeska. The event focuses attention on the testimonies of other artists and writers, including Jacob Epstein, Wyndham Lewis and Richard Aldington. Symposium places are limited but can be booked by email: kirstie@henry-moore.org Jon Wood, Research Coordinator
Take Something Hot and Cool It Down Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, 20 April - 27 May 2011 Timothy Taylor Gallery presents the fourth exhibition at the gallery of new works by Jean-Marc Bustamante. The exhibition focuses entirely on a new body of works, in which Bustamante continues his exploration of the boundaries between painting, sculpture and photography. Square in format, these paintings are a proposition for the future possibilities of the medium: semi-transparent, subject to effects of light and shade, re-worked on the computer, and industrially produced. Sometimes abstract, sometimes representational, they suggest a twenty-first century mode for that most ancient and persistent of media: painting. www.timothytaylorgallery.com
New Acquisition Brian Catling, ‘Standing Bow’ and Archive We are delighted to announce the acquisition of Brian Catling’s ‘Standing Bow’ (1970), an extraordinary early sculpture that is part-ploughshare, part-weapon and part-trap, and of a substantial body of archival material relating to his sculpture and performance work. Professor of Sculpture at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford, and in recent years Acting Head, Brian was the first ever recipient of a Henry Moore Foundation Artist Fellowship, which he undertook at Norwich in the mid-1980s. His relationship with The Foundation has continued into the present, with contributions to the Institute’s lecture series on sculpture and ventriloquism, and most recently to our Sculpture and Performance conference staged here and at Tate Liverpool. The archive contains texts for performances, notes, sketches, plans and correspondence relating to a wide variety of Catling’s performances, projects and exhibitions, both in Britain and abroad. As well as containing catalogues and reviews, the archive is also rich in photographs and includes many of his early sculpture, including his degree show work. Amongst the projects the archive documents are: ‘La-Bas’ (1993), ‘Blindings’ (1993-94), ‘The Reading Room’ (1994) and a number of his ‘Cyclops’ performances. The archive will be accessible later this year and will prove invaluable for researchers interested not only in Brian’s work, but also in the intersections between sculpture and performance. Jon Wood
Library Opening Hours From 3 April 2011 the Henry Moore Institute Library opening hours will be: Monday - Saturday Wednesday Sunday
10am - 5.30pm until 9pm 1pm - 5pm
Archive The Henry Moore Institute Archive recently closed for the refurbishment of the strong-room. This involved the upgrading of shelving and the air-conditioning system, which has improved the conditions and space for current collections. The archive is now open, Monday - Friday 10.00am - 5.00pm, by appointment with Claire Mayoh, Archivist (claire@henry-moore.org)
Conferences Call for Papers: Sculpture and Comic Art Henry Moore Institute, 16 November 2011 As historical and theoretical interest in comic art continues to grow, we plan to explore the relationship between sculpture and comic art, looking at how formal and thematic concerns migrate, and have migrated across the last hundred years or so, between these practices. Comic figuration, like caricature, is a regular influence on much modern and contemporary sculpture allowing the body to be reinvented and restaged in new and fantastical ways beyond anatomical norms. We can also find the direct appropriation of comic and cartoon characters (often animals or superheroes) in recent artistic practices, including those of Paul McCarthy, Maurizio Cattelan, Mark Dion and Thomas Schütte.
The role of narrative (both sculptural and sequential) is significant here, and is echoed in sculpture’s intriguing place in many comics and graphic novels, where it is often given special powers and dynamic plot-determining roles within the visual narratives. Sculpture has been caricatured since the earliest cartoon strips, with tensions between high and low often emphasised. As sculptors have turned to comic art, so too comic artists (such as Robert Crumb, Chris Ware and David Shrigley) have turned to three-dimensions. This move underlines the power and popularity of the small-scale figurine, and in turn the collectible, to stand as a three-dimensional demonstration of characters articulated in two dimensions, whether on the page or in animated film. We invite proposals for 25-minute conference papers, from academics and artists from all fields, that focus on any aspect of the above. Please submit a 250 word abstract and short CV to Kirstie Gregory, kirstie@henry-moore.org. Deadline for submissions is Friday 20th June 2011.
Conference Report: Antiquity Multiplied. Artistic Itineracy and Sculpture Making in Rome (c.1750-1850) Henry Moore Institute, 19 January 2011 This one-day seminar aimed to explore the transnational ideals of neoclassical sculpture, examining in detail the work and interactions of sculptors, collectors and materials across England, Germany, France, Scandinavia, Russia and Italy in the period 1750-1850. Chaired by Henry Moore Postdoctoral Fellow Tomas Macsotay (University of Leeds), the study day was programmed to coincide with the current Leeds Art Gallery exhibition, Joseph Gott in Leeds and Rome. Alison Yarrington’s (University of Glasgow) discussion of the formation of the 6th Duke of Devonshire’s sculpture collection at Chatsworth foregrounded the international nature of both collecting and facture, encompassing a range of sculptors and setting the scene well for the papers focussing on individual sculptors that followed. Eckhart Marchand (Warburg Institute) spoke about John Flaxman’s Italian Journals and Sketchbooks, showing the various hats worn by the sculptor tourist as he travelled Europe, and documenting Flaxman’s interests across engineering and town planning, as well as art works. Canova’s impact on the contemporary art world was discussed by the final two speakers. Johannes Myssok (Kunstakademie Düsseldorf) considered the relationship between Canova, classical sculpture, and contemporary German sculpture, while Daniela Gallo (Université Pierre-Mendès-France Grenoble 2) asked how sculptors in Rome survived in the wake of Canova’s enormous popularity. As respondent, Viccy Coltman (University of Edinburgh) drew out several new avenues for research that expanded on the day’s detailed focus on sculptural practice. The seminar then moved to Leeds Art Gallery, for an exploration of Joseph Gott in Leeds and Rome, introduced by Dr Terry Friedman, the show’s curator. Participants were left with a sense both of the international outlook of neoclassical sculpture, and of the scope for future research in the field. Joseph Gott in Leeds and Rome is on show in Leeds Art Gallery until 11 November 2011. Dr Kate Nichols, University of York
Fellowships Henry Moore Institute 2011 Fellows We are pleased to announce the new Henry Moore Institute Research Fellows for 2011-12. Each will spend a month in Leeds developing research: Robert Slifkin (New York University): Incidental Cenotaphs: The Renewal of Monumentalism in Post-war Sculpture (and Beyond) As part of a larger book project Robert Slifkin will examine Henry Moore’s sculpture ‘Nuclear Energy’ and situate it alongside contemporaneous work addressing the same subject. Drawing upon the theoretical writings of Paul Virilio, it is Slifkin’s hypothesis that the logic of nuclear weapons may provide a powerful means to historicise the widespread interest in an embodied or phenomenological understanding of post-war sculpture, as well as post-humanist approaches to cultural production. Gülru Çakmak (Western Michigan University): Jean-Léon Gérôme: The Innovative Years (1851-1859) Gülru Çakmak will expand upon her doctoral dissertation, which focuses on the work of the nineteenth-century French painter and sculptor Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), by giving an account of the artist’s transition from painting to mixed-media and polychromatic sculpture in the late 1870s. Çakmak takes the artist’s work as a case study to explore the controversial emergence of polychromatic and mixed-media sculpture in French art in the second half of the nineteenth century. Daniel Zec (University of Zagreb): Life and Work of Oscar Nemon (1906 – 1985) Daniel Zec will investigate to what extent Oskar Nemon 'belongs' to Croatian art history, and how much to English culture - within which Nemon spent the greater part of his life and completed the majority of his artistic work. Zec will continue his ongoing research, with particular focus on Nemon's lost work and portrait sculptures. Pil and Galia Kollectiv (Goldsmiths/University of Reading): The Role of Faith in Sustaining the Fiction of Capital Pil and Galia Kollectiv will explore the notion of capitalism as a faith system founded on the abstract concept of money, considering the relationship between decorative sculpture and post-religious iconography. In this context, they are especially interested in Oscar Nemon’s proposal to construct a Temple of Universal Ethics. They will be working towards realising a project as a series of ritual objects pertaining to a cult of finance. Francesco Pedraglio (Independent): Writing as a Medium for the Production of and Reflection on the Idea of Abstract Objects Francesco Pedraglio employs written words as nonrepresentational tools to trigger a visual result aiming to ‘corner’ the nature of a carefully chosen series of objects – redefining language and the written word as active tools freely to imagine and produce abstract sculptures. Pedraglio will develop a series of written works that, starting from an abstract reading of selected objects, will apply different strategies to research the abstract potentiality of these same objects, subsequently translating these writings in live events.
Paul Becker (Independent): The Life of Anton Lesseman Paul Becker’s research will lead to a written fabrication of the life of an imaginary artist, a contemporary of Henry Moore, as a method of examining accepted histories in an original way, refiguring those histories and perhaps offering a correlative, an antithetical or parallax view on a familiar subject: in this case the life and work of Moore himself. Three senior fellows have also been appointed: Allan Antliff (University of Victoria): From Vorticism to Dada Allan Antliff will be developing his theories on anarchism’s central role in the formulation and reception of early twentiethcentury modernism by examining the activities of Dadaists in New York between 1915 and 1923, part of a publication in progress: Reconfiguring New York Dada. Antliff will spend his fellowship specifically researching an argument for an American variation of Vorticism, independent of, but influenced by, the British-based movement. Jeremy Howard (University of St Andrews): Vladimir Markov: The Painter Who Changed Sculpture Jeremy Howard’s research is part of a wider collaborative project exploring the ideas of Vladimir Markov (1877-1914), an artist whose research into sculptural principles led him to undertake, and publish, groundbreaking research into the sculpture of Easter Island, North Asian peoples and Africa. The ultimate intention of this project is to create an exhibition and monograph/catalogue dedicated to Markov’s provocative approach to art. Jon Thompson (Independent): During his stay in Leeds this summer, Jon Thompson will take the opportunity to return to his longstanding interest in Arte Povera and, in particular, in the work of Mario Merz, whom he knew. Jon's interest in returning to this artist is wonderfully timely for us since it coincides with the Institute’s forthcoming exhibition Mario Merz: What Is to Be Done? (28 July-30 October 2011) which looks at Merz's work from the period 1963-1977. Jon will also take part in a conference about Merz's early work in October.
Post-doctoral Research Fellowship Annual Grant: £21,000 per annum on a fixed two-year nonrenewable contract The Henry Moore Institute invites applications for a two-year post-doctoral research fellowship. Based at the Institute in Leeds, the focus of the Fellow’s research should be the study of pre-twentieth-century sculpture in the expanded field, paying particular attention to the ways in which history is engaged with in the present. The Research Fellow will initiate public events relating to their own specialist research and take an active role within the Institute. Deadline for submissions: 30 June 2011. For more information and full application details visit www.henry-moore.org/hmi/research
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Henry Moore at Leeds Art Gallery Henry Moore, organised by Tate Britain in collaboration with Leeds Art Gallery, continues to 12 June. Throughout the exhibition, there are occasional talks on Sundays at 2pm on aspects of Moore: 3 April 8 May 15 May 22 May 12 June
Sarah Brown, Curator of Exhibitions, Leeds Art Gallery John Thorp, Leeds Civic Architect Rebecca Wade, University of Leeds Chris Bailey, Leeds Metropolitan University Sheila Gaffney, Leeds College of Art
Free, but booking advised. Visit www.leeds.gov.uk/artgallery or call 0113 247 8256.
NIRVC Research Seminars – Spring 2011 Seminar Room A21a, Visitors’ Centre, 4 May, 4.30-6pm The Nottingham Institute for Research in Visual Culture is a forum for research in art-historical and visual culture studies, drawing on a range of disciplines within and beyond the university. Each Wednesday, an invited speaker presents a one-hour seminar on the subject of their current research. 4 May
Dr Susanna Avery-Quash (National Gallery, London): Eastlake, Wornum and Ruskin: a study in conflict?
Henry Moore Institute The Headrow Leeds LS1 3AH Open daily 10.00am – 5.30pm, Wednesdays until 9.00pm Closed Bank Holidays Enquiries: +44 (0) 113 246 7467 / 9469 Located in the centre of Leeds adjacent to Leeds Art Gallery, a short walk from the rail station.
Exhibitions Guided Tours Free guided tours of the current Henry Moore Institute exhibitions are available on Wednesdays at 7.30pm and on Saturdays at 2.30pm. It is not necessary to book in advance; please enquire on the day at gallery reception. To book a tailormade tour of any part of the Institute contact 0113 246 7467.
Main Galleries To 3 April 2011 Henry Moore: Prints and Portfolios 21 April – 26 June 2011 Jean-Marc Bustamante: Dead Calm
Gallery 4 16 March - 31 July 2011 Savage Messiah: The Creation of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Library To 13 May 2011 Hair and blood: towards an amateur anthropology of primitivism
Seminars are free and open to all but please book in advance on 0115 951 3185 or email elizabeth.jennings@nottingham.ac.uk
Now online: British bronze sculpture founders and plaster figure makers, 1800-1980 The directory, British bronze sculpture founders and plaster figure makers, 1800-1980, is now available online on the National Portrait Gallery website at: www.npg.org.uk/research/ programmes/british-bronze-founders-and-plaster-figure-makers1800-1980-1.php
The End of 16mm? Soho Film Lab – the last commercial 16mm lab in the UK - is ceasing to print 16mm film. 16mm continues to be an important medium for artists and filmmakers, and is frequently on show in major venues nationally and internationally. There has also been a huge revival of interest in 16mm within the visual arts in the last ten years by a new generation of artists, and this renewed use of 16mm continues to expand significantly. An online petition has been set up aimed at persuading the lab's new owners – Deluxe - to reverse the decision. Signing the petition is very quick and easy, go to www.gopetition.com/petition/43288.html and click 'sign the petition' at the bottom - the process takes about 30 seconds.
Leeds Art Gallery Sculpture Study Galleries: Mezzanine To 26 June 2011 Dear Henry Moore: Connections and Correspondence
Sculpture Galleries To 5 June 2011 Construction and its Shadow To 1 October 2011 The Practice and Profession of Sculpture: Objects from the Leeds Collection To 11 November 2011 Joseph Gott in Leeds and Rome
Leeds Art Gallery is open daily 10.00am – 5.00pm Wednesday 12.00pm – 5.00pm, Sunday 1.00pm – 5.00pm
The Henry Moore Foundation in partnership with Leeds City Council
www.henry-moore.org ISSN 1363-1152
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Newsletter co-ordinated by Gill Armstrong. This newsletter can be provided in your preferred format, please contact gill@henrymoore.org. If you would be happy to receive it by email, please help us reduce our environmental impact by letting us know.