repeated theme of wood and stone pierced by strings reflects the medical suturing in the drawings and emphasises biomorphic elements of Hepworth’s work. The solidity of stone and wood strangely evoke the softness, warmth and vulnerability of flesh, particularly in the fossil-like piece ‘Small Stone with Black Strings’ (1952), its pinkish alabaster stitched with string. This representational plasticity challenges straightforward distinctions between abstraction and figuration, reflecting back onto medicoethical considerations of the human body as subject and object. The string-pierced forms also resemble musical instruments, anticipating the exhibition’s exploration of the importance of music, dance and movement in Hepworth’s art in spaces dedicated to her stage designs for Electra in 1951 (including ‘Apollo’, a beautiful wire sculpture seemingly entangled with its own shadow), and her set and costumes for The Midsummer Marriage in 1955. The circular insists emblematically throughout this exhibition, offering spaces to look through or traces engraved on the surfaces of forms, imprinted in lithographs, or drawn and painted. Circles exert a continuous gravitational pull on the viewer’s eye, establishing lines of force linking Hepworth’s art and life with the historical and political contexts on which she drew. The final room cements
this centrality in the circular image of the moon, connecting her work with movements such as pop art, and affirming in lunar imagery her conception of the function of sculpture (and art more widely) in relation to human perception, a view which is central to this beautiful exhibition: ‘A sculpture might, and sculptures do, reside in emptiness; but nothing happens until the living human encounters the image. Then the magic occurs – the magic of scale and weight, form and texture, colour and movement, the encircling interplay and dance occurs between the object and the human sensibility.’ Patricia Allmer is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Edinburgh Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two) 75 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DR T: (0)131 624 6200 | nationalgalleries.org Open: Daily 10am–5pm
‘Circles exert a continuous gravitational pull on the viewer’s eye, establishing lines of force linking Hepworth’s art and life with the historical and political contexts on which she drew’
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1 Barbara Hepworth, Mother and Child, 1934. Purchased by Wakefield Corporation in 1951. Photo: Jerry Hardman-Jones 2 Barbara Hepworth, Genesis III, 1966. Photo: Jerry Hardman-Jones 3 Barbara Hepworth, Spring, 1966. Photo: Jerry Hardman-Jones 4 Barbara Hepworth, Tibia Graft, 1949. Image courtesy of Wakefield Permanent Art Collection, Purchased 1951
5 Barbara Hepworth, Sun Setting (from the Aegean Suite), 1971 6 Barbara Hepworth at work on the plaster for Single Form, January 1962, at the Morris Singer foundry. Photo: Morgan-Wells All image © Bowness, Hepworth Estate
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