Tag Archives: sculpture

The force of ambition standing in Kensington Gardens

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CAST IN BRONZE, he sits aside a rearing horse. He looks west towards Kensington Palace and uses his right hand to shield his eyes from the setting sun. I am describing a cast of a sculpture by George Frederic Watts (1817-1904), which bears the name “Physical Energy”. The sculptor was born on the birthday of the conductor George Frederic Handel – hence his two first names.

Watts began work on an equestrian sculpture in 1870, when it was commissioned by Hugh Lupus Grosvenor, who became 1st Duke of Westminster. It was to depict Hugh Lupus, 1st Earl of Chester. This was at Eaton Hall near Chester. In the early 1880s, Watts began working on “Physical Energy”, which was inspired by this sculpture. The first bronze casting of “Physical Energy” was made in 1902, and transported to southern Africa.   

Watts had been principally a painter until the 1870s, when his interests moved towards sculpture. “Physical Energy” was the high point of his efforts. A plaque next to the bronze horse and rider explained that this sculpture depicted:

“… a universal embodiment of the dynamic force of ambition …”

One man for whom these words might well be applied was the mining magnate and a Prime Minister of the South African Cape Colony, Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902), who ruthlessly let nothing get in the way of his ambitions. Therefore, it was particularly appropriate that one of the casts of Watts’s “Physical Energy” (that made in 1902) was placed at Groote Schuur (in Cape Town) as part of a memorial to Rhodes after Rhodes’s death. Unlike a bust of Rhodes placed nearby, which was vandalised recently, the equestrian statue has survived … so far.

An article published by Artnet News (https://news.artnet.com/art-world/watts-sculpture-royal-academy-ideological-baggage-1155971) made the following remarks:

“Watts, like Rhodes, believed in British imperial might to back its right to rule … the artist “plied” a leading politician with suggestions that military service should be introduced. (The colonial statesman Lord Grey was the man who suggested Watts turn the equestrian sculpture into a memorial to Rhodes after he died…)

… Watts’s imperialism was “liberal” and that the sculpture’s ideological meaning is open-ended. Socialists used the image, too. In fact, Watts had multicultural references in mind when he first conceived the statue: It was due to be dedicated to great empire builders including Mohammed, Attila the Hun, and Genghis Kahn. (Trowmans adds that May Watts, the artist’s second wife and a fellow artist, was much more sceptical of Rhodes.)”

The quotation mentions that Watts married twice. His first wife was the young actress Ellen Terry (1847-1928). They married when she was 16 years old. They separated after 10 months. During that brief period, she met, and was photographed by the Victorian pioneer of artistic photography, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879). I have written about both Watts and his young bride in my book about Mrs Cameron (“BETWEEN TWO ISLANDS: JULIA MARGARET CAMERON AND HER CIRCLE”).

In addition to the cast in Cape Town, at least two others were made. One of them was produced in 1959. It now stands outside the National Archives in Harare (Zimbabwe). The cast which stands in Kensington Gardens was cast by AB Burton (a founder) in Thames Ditton in 1905, and was put in its present location in 1907. It stands on a line that runs between a Henry Moore sculpture on the bank of the Serpentine and Kensington Palace. Another cast was made in 2017 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Watts’s birth. Briefly, it stood in the courtyard at the Royal Academy. Now, it stands at the Watts Gallery near Guildford.

We pass “Physical Energy” on our frequent strolls through Kensington Gardens. From it, there is a fine view of Henry Moore’s tall concrete sculpture across the Serpentine Lake. Watts was a contemporary of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). However, sadly, neither Watts nor Moore produced works as fine as those of Rodin.

[My book about Julia Margaret Cameron is available from Amazon, e.g.,

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BZFCVLX9/ ]

Creating art with wood and a chainsaw

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BORN IN WHAT BECAME EAST GERMANY in the town of Deutschbsaselitz, the artist christened as Hans-Georg Kern (b. 1938), is better known by the name of Georg Baselitz. His first education in art was at Hochschule für Bildende und Angewandte Kunst in East Berlin, commencing in 1955. After two semesters, he was expelled from this academy because of his lack of compliance with the socialist diktats of the German Democratic Republic. By 1957. he was a student at the Hochschule der Künste in West Berlin. In 1961, he changed his name to Georg Baselitz in honour of the town where he was born. In 1979, he began creating sculptural works, some of which are on display at London’s Serpentine South Gallery until the 7th of January 2024.

The works being shown at the Serpentine are all made of wood. They were created between 2011 and 2015 as models (maquettes) for finished works, and as such were not originally intended for public display. The wood has a rough finish and is pitted with many saw marks. After making preliminary drawings, some of which are displayed at the exhibition, Baselitz used axes, chisels, and chainsaws to fashion huge bits of timber into intriguing sculptural forms. These works are beautifully displayed in the various spaces of the gallery.

Although Baselitz’s timber sculptures are more figurative and much more complicated than those produced by my mother, seeing them reminded me of her. After leaving the sculpture workshops of St Martins School of Art, my mother hired a garage near Golders Hill Park, and used it as her studio. There, she worked on huge pieces of wood, creating abstract sculptures. Unlike Baselitz, she had no power saws, but only chisels and a power drill. I recall that when she wanted to create a ring-shaped piece of timber, she would first trace circles on the wood and then using a power drill she would drill holes around the circumference until the circle was complete. After that, she had to smooth the edges to produce a perfect circle. It was laborious, and lifting the heavy timber (without lifting gear) damaged her back.

The works on display in the Serpentine  (and one outside it) appear to be crudely finished when looked at closely, but as semi-abstract sculptures they seem to mock the grandeur of classical Greek or Roman sculptures. Born a rebel, the artist has produced attractive works that comfortably go against the grain of traditional sculpture.

Visiting an exhibition of outdoor sculptures in a London park

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I ALWAYS ENJOY seeing sculptures displayed in the open-air. Until the 29th of October (2023) the annual outdoor Frieze Sculpture exhibition is being held in the south-east corner of London’s Regents Park. As with all the Frieze Sculpture exhibitions I have seen, this one is no exception – it displays a ‘mixed bag’ of artworks. Although many of this year’s exhibits are colourful, creative, and often playful, few of them are exceptional.

Two works struck me as standing out from the crowd. One of them, created in 2023 by Yinka Shonibare, is a folded work called “Material (SG) IV” (see photograph). This shape of this work resembles a flickering flame frozen in time. Covered in colourful patterns, the artist wanted to depict a piece of printed fabric, such as a sail, blowing in the breeze.  According to the Frieze Sculpture 2023 website, this artist:

“… creates work that explores issues of race and class through the media of sculpture, painting, photography, film, pictorial quilts and public works.”

The website explained that in the work in Regents Park:

“The fabric was originally inspired by Indonesian designs, mass-produced by the Dutch and eventually sold to colonies in West Africa. In the 1960s the material became a signifier of African identity and independence and, in Shonibare’s hands, the ‘perfect metaphor for multi-layered identities’.”

Even though it is interesting to know what was in the artist’s mind when he created the sculpture, it is a visually fascinating and satisfying piece in its own right.

The other work that particularly attracted me was created in 1976 by the artist Louise Nevelson (1899-1988). Born in a city now in Ukraine, she emigrated to the USA in the early 20th century. It was in the States that she studied art, and then created most of her artworks. Painted black, and called “Model for Celebration II”, it is a tall abstract piece, which was:

“… Inspired by the cubist innovations of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, Nevelson reimagines painterly cubism as a sculptural opportunity.” (see https://viewer.mapme.com/frieze-sculpture-2023/location/ca758a4f-1328-48d2-a3cf-6c6b65edf794).

Unlike the other works on display in the park, Nevelson’s work has stood the test of time. So, maybe it was unfair of the curator to include such a work amongst the works of so many newcomers to the ‘art scene’. However, I was pleased to see it, as it is one of the only exhibits that I felt had profundity rather than the immediate and often short-lasting aesthetic appeal of many of the other exhibits.

A rook with a book in a Cornish town

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THE AUTHOR DAPHNE du Maurier (1907-1989) was born near London’s Regents Park, but spent much of her childhood in Hampstead. In the summer, she travelled with her family for holidays in Cornwall. They also lived there during WW1. In 1926, the family bought the still extant Ferryside, a house next to the ferry landing at Bodinnick. The eye-catching blue and white house can be seen across the River Fowey from many points in Fowey. I believe that one of her descendants still owns, and lives in, the house.

In the centre of Fowey, on the waterfront, there is a modern sculpture of a bird holding a book with one of its claws. Called “The Rook with a Book”, it was created by the Thrussels, a father and son team of sculptors based in Bodmin Moor at a point near to the source of the River Fowey. The sculpture was unveiled in 2018 by Daphne’s son Christian. The book being held by the rook bears the title of one of Daphne’s short stories – “The Birds”, published in 1952. The story was inspired by seeing a flock of gulls attacking a farmer working on a field. It was set in Cornwall soon after WW2. What makes this short story particularly significant is that it inspired Alfred Hitchcock to create his horror film “The Birds”, which was first released in March 1963.

Survivors in Suffolk

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IN 1975 I WENT to the town of Prizren in Kosovo, which was then part of the former Yugoslavia. I visited an old church in the town. Once, its internal walls had been covered with frescos. However, they had been badly defaced up to a certain height above ground level. Above that height and on the ceiling, they were intact. When the Ottoman soldiers arrived in Prizren, they used their spears to destroy the frescos, but only did so as far as they could reach. Being lazy, they did not use ladders to reach the higher parts of the church. So, the frescos beyond their reach survived.

In England, both the Dissolution of the Catholic religious establishments by Henry VIII, and later the defacement of churches by Oliver Cromwell and his followers, resulted in the destruction of many fine works of religious art. During a recent visit to Suffolk, we saw a few fine artefacts, which like the frescos in Prizren, have survived.

Bardwell

In accordance with Cromwell’s decree, many of the 15th century carved wooden angels that overlooked the nave of the parish church in Bardwell were destroyed. But, a few were left intact. Why was that? Did the workmen lose interest, or were they not paid enough? Who can say? And why was some of the 14th century stained glass left intact? Again, nobody can remember.

Over in the sleepy little town of Eye, the Parish Church contains a wooden rood screen containing beautifully painted panels that should surely have been destroyed by Cromwell’s iconoclastic vandals. Were they covered up with, say, wood panelling before the wreckers arrived, or were they removed and hidden? Luckily for us, these wonderful mediaeval paintings have survived.

Near Eye, there is a tiny church with a thatched roof in the village of Thornham Parva. It contains a rectangular wooden frame containing several mediaeval paintings that were created the 14th century. It was once the retable of an altar. Most likely, it was originally part of an altar in the Dominican Thetford Priory, which was dissolved during the reign of Henry VIII.

It is most probable that when the priory was dissolved, the retable was rescued by a Catholic family who put it in their private chapel. It passed through two other families before it was donated to the church at Thornham Parva in 1927. It is a rare surviving example of 14th century British religious painting. Interestingly, there is another series of painted panels in the Musée Cluny in Paris that resembles the Thornham Parva retable. Comparison of detailed aspects of these two sets of paintings suggests that they were both painted by the same team of artists, and were originally designed for the same location – most probably Thetford Priory.

In the space of three hours, we visited the churches at Bardwell, Eye, and Thornham Parva. All three contain artefacts of great interest and beauty which survived the religious upheavals orchestrated by Henry VIII and later by Cromwell. Once again, touring around in England has opened our eyes to its treasure house of history.

Touchy feely: tactile art from Czechoslovakia in London

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PAINTINGS, PRINTS, AND drawings cannot be fully appreciated by the partially sighted, and not at all by those who are blind. In contrast, sculptures can be enjoyed by those who have problems seeing if they are permitted to touch them. Sadly, most sculptures by famous artists are not allowed to be touched. Today (7th of June 2023), I visited an exhibition of works by the Czechoslovak artist Maria Bartuszova (1936-1996) at London’s Tate Modern gallery.

Many of Bartuszova’s intriguingly original sculptures, often with highly organic shapes are too fragile to be touched. In 1976, the 1st Sculpture Symposium for blind and partially sighted children was held at the Elementary School for Partially Sighted Children in Levoca (Slovakia). A second such event was held at the school in 1983. Bartuszova created a series of hand-sized sculptures, some of which could be taken apart and then re-assembled by the children attending the workshops. The idea was to get the visually handicapped children to appreciate shapes and textures by handling her sculptures. The exhibition at the Tate Modern shows photographs of the youngsters at these workshops, most of them with happy expressions on their faces.

Some of the artworks that these children were encouraged to touch are displayed in glass cases. However, visitors to the exhibition at the Tate Modern are not permitted to touch them.

An interesting intersection

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WHERE BURLINGTON GARDENS meets the south end of New Bond Street and the north end of Old Bond Street, there are two things that reminded me of my late mother.

One of them is a shop in a colourfully decorated building. This edifice used to be the home of Atkinson’s – a firm that sold perfumes and beauty products. Founded in 1799, it moved to the building on the corner of Burlington and Old Bond Streets in 1832. The decorative building is surmounted by a carillon of 23 bells, which is played by hand occasionally – to celebrate both public and private special occasions. Currently, the ground-floor is occupied by a branch of Ferragamo’s. And this firm has a connection with memories of my mother.

Salvatore Ferragamo (1898-1960), born in Italy, was a designer of luxury shoes. His clients included the Maharani of Cooch-Behar, Eva Peron, and Marilyn Monroe. He died in Florence (Firenze), where he had a shop on the Via dei Tornabuoni. This shop was close to Via del Giglio, where we as a family used to spend a fortnight in the city every year until I was about 15.

One of my clearest memories of our sojourns in Florence was not the Uffizi or the famous Duomo or the Medici Chapels, or even Michelangelo’s statue of David, but Ferragamo in Via dei Tornabuoni. You might wonder why. It was not that I have a shoe fetish or any great interest in footwear. It was because of my mother. Hardly a day passed without us having to enter Ferragamo’s to watch my mother trying on several pairs of shoes. For a youngster like me this was not an interesting way to spend my precious school holidays. And what is more, I cannot recall my mother ever buying a pair of shoes in that shop.

Facing Ferragamo’s on the corner of New Bond Street and Burlington Gardens, there is a small paved open space. In the middle of it, there is a bronze sculpture of a horse and rider. This was sculpted by Elisabeth Frink (1930-1993). My mother was also a sculptor and met Frink (or ‘Liz Frink’, as we knew her) at St Martins School of Art (in Tottenham Court Road), where they both worked in the Sculpture Department. They became close friends. I used to meet Liz Frink when she was invited to our house for dinner occasionally.

The Frink sculpture has been on Bond Street since 2018. Before that, it was located at the corner of Dover Street and Piccadilly, where it was placed in about 1975. As for the branch of Ferragamo’s that faces it across Burlington Gardens, I am not sure how long it has occupied its present site. However, it was only today that it occurred to me that the intersection of the two Bond Streets with Burlington Gardens has a connection with recollections of my mother.

A spike in Stamford

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ELEANOR OF CASTILE (1241-1290) was the first wife of King Edward I. They married in 1254. The pair were devoted to each other. She even travelled to the Middle East with her husband, to the battlefields of the Crusade of 1271-1272. When she died of (possibly) a malarial disease, after having survived sixteen pregnancies, at Harby in Nottinghamshire (close to Lincoln), her husband was at her bedside for the last three days of her life.

Her body was embalmed in Lincoln, and then transported ceremoniously to Westminster Abbey – a journey that took several days. At each of the places where her corpse stopped overnight, Edward ordered memorial crosses to be erected. These became known as Eleanor Crosses. They were placed at: Lincoln, Grantham, Stamford, Geddington, Hardingstone near Northampton, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St Albans, Waltham, Westcheap, and Charing (now a part of central London, but originally a small hamlet close to the Thames). Of the original crosses, only significantly large remnants of three survive.

The cross at Stamford in Lincolnshire was demolished but a small fragment of it is in the local museum. Not much is certain about where the cross stood in Stamford. It is believed that it might have been destroyed between 1646 and 1660 by zealous Parliamentarians (http://stamfordlocalhistorysociety.org.uk/queen-eleanor%E2%80%99s-cross).

Currently, a tall tapering sculpture – a tall, sharp spike with a circular base – stands on the place that was most likely where the Eleanor Cross stood. It was designed by Wolfgang Buttress (born 1965) – a sculptor from Nottingham. His creation, completed in 2009 and made of local Ketton stone, incorporates the kinds of decorative motifs that might have been on the original cross. It is surrounded by a ring of benches. Both the seats and the spike are studded with circular bronze discs, each of which contains a word from a Japanese haiku, so I have read. Sadly, I did not examine the object closely enough to see them because we were close to the expiry time of our parking space.

A surprise in Stamford

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WHEN I WAS A YOUNG child, I remember going with my parents to south London to visit a Spanish sculptor, who had escaped to Britain as a refugee during the Spanish Civil War. Although we only visited him once, I recall that his name was something like ‘Alberti’. That is all I can remember, and I do not believe that my parents ever spoke about him much since that visit made maybe more than 60 years ago.

Today, the 20th of May 2023, we spent a couple of hours in the Lincolnshire Town of Stamford. This attractive place has several lovely old churches, one of which is St Martins. This edifice contains a chapel filled with glorious funerary monuments of members of the Cecil family, which was of great importance during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and other Tudors.

When we were about to leave the church, I spotted a modern wood carving of the head of a man with a beard and moustache. Although it was not nearly as attractive as the Cecil monuments, I decided to examine it. I do not know why I did, but I am glad that I did.

I was surprised to discover that the carved head was created by Jose Manuel de Alberdi Elorza (1922-2008). Beneath the head there is a notice with the following words written by Alberdi:
“A kind of anti-war protest… The face at the moment just when Christ died on the cross … The deed is done. We have killed.”

The sculptor was two years younger than my mother, also a sculptor. All that I can discover about Alberdi on the Internet is that he was Basque and a refugee from the Spanish Civil War. Also, he taught sculpture at the St Martins School of Art in London from 1948 to 1958 , which is where my mother made sculptures during that time.

Although I cannot be certain, I am pretty sure that this head in Stamford was made by the Spanish sculptor we visited in South London so many years ago.

Seeing the world inside out

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THE ARTIST RACHEL Whiteread (born in Essex in 1963) sees the world from an original perspective. Her sculptures depict the spaces contained within or around objects. One of her sculptures currently on show in an exhibition in London’s Tate Britain Gallery illustrates her approach well.

The artist has made a plaster cast of the space enclosed by the staircase in the building housing her studio. When you look at the artwork carefully, it can be seen to consist of sections of plaster, rather than one single piece. I am guessing that what Whiteread did was to make plaster casts of parts of the staircase, its walls, and ceiling, and then assembled them to create what is effectively the shape of the space enclosed by them. The result is something that at first glance makes one think of staircases, but after a few moments realisation, you notice that it is not what it first seemed to be.

One of the artist’s first and maybe best known works was created in October 1993. Called “House”, it was a plaster cast of the interior of a whole house, which was about to be demolished, on Grove Road in the East End of London. I remember going to see this unusual artwork during the short time it existed; it was tragically demolished by the local council in January 1994.

In addition to large projects such as described above, Whiteread has created many smaller works, such as plaster casts of the insides of containers (e.g., hot water bottles) and the spaces surrounding objects (e.g., chairs and doors). However, it is the larger works like the staircase and the house that I prefer.

Some people may criticise Whiteread’s work as being, to quote Hans Christian Andersen, the stuff of “Emperor without clothes”, but that is a simplistic view of her creations. What artists like Whiteread (and other much criticised artists such as Picasso) make us do, is to see and consider things in a new way – you might say “with new eyes”.