Henry Moore - Draped Reclining Woman
1957-58Acquired by Sir Robert and Lady Sainsbury in 1960, it was first sited in the gardens of Bucklebury, their country home. Thence to its present site facing the restaurant at the Sainsbury Centre. Half-reclining female figure with large body and small head oriented to look across the lawn away from the trees, raised on a simple concrete pedestal. The head is simplified with two holes for eyes while the body is covered with drapery, folds accentuating the form. One arm is supporting the torso's upright position while the other rests on the uppermost thigh. There is a gap between the two legs but the feet are joined, with hand and legs set on a rectangular bronze base The sculpture has its origins in the 1957-8 commission for a major sculpture to stand outside the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Moore produced a wide range of figures before settling on the final Roman Travertine Reclining Figure LH416. Some of his variations looked back to the Shelter drawings made during the Second World War, represented by the 1940 Group of Shelterers in the Sainsbury collection, perhaps prompted by the idea that UNESCO's wide range of activities includes protection, of buildings, rather than people. One of these variations was a full scale plaster model of 1957-58 now in the Henry Moore Sculpture Center, Toronto, Ontario, part of Moore's gift in 1974. Another of this group was the bronze Draped Seated Figure also of 1957-58 (LH428) now in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, where both the pose and the dapery were derived more directly from the Shelter drawings. Moore's use of drapery illustrates his views that ‘Drapery played a very important part in the shelter drawings I made in 1940 and 1941 and what I began to learn then about its function as form gave me the intention, sometime or other, to use drapery in sculpture in a more realistic way than I had ever tried to use it in my carved sculpture. And my first visit to Greece in 1951 perhaps helped to strengthen this intention . . . Drapery can emphasise the tension in a figure, for where the form pushes outwards, such as on the shoulders, the thighs, the breasts, etc., it can be pulled tight across the form (almost like a bandage), and by contrast with the crumpled slackness of the drapery which lies between the salient points, the pressure from inside is intensified . . . Drapery can also, by its direction over the form, make more obvious the section, that is, show shape. It need not be just a decorative addition, but can serve to stress the sculptural idea of the figure.’ In addition to the work which Moore saw in Greece he must have been influenced by the great 5th century BC Elgin marbles, from the Parthenon in Athens and housed, now with considerable controversy, in the British Museum since 1816.
Henry Moore - Two Piece Reclining Figure No. 3
1961Part of Moore's gift of thirty-five sculptures to the Tate Gallery in 1978. At the suggestion of Sir Robert Sainsbury, a trustee of both the Sainsbury Centre and the Tate, loaned to UEA. Sited to south east of Sainsbury Centre Easter 1979, on the advice of Henry Moore and Norman Foster; moved on 30 May 1989 to north, in front of main entrance to allow for the Crescent Wing extension; moved nearer to the School entrance 2008, to allow for revised paths Larger than life-size dark-bronze reclining figure in two parts, on an integrated rectangular bronze base, raised on a concrete plinth. The surface is largely rough finished and the overall impression is more of two very enlarged bones than of a single female form The two piece reclining figure series was commenced in 1959 although in dialogue with earlier multi-part figures made in the 1930s. The broken composition was used by Moore to emphasize the importance of space as a vital sculptural element. He is quoted as saying of the series: ‘the Two-Piece Reclining Figures must have been working around in the back of my mind for years, really. As long ago as 1934 I had done a number of smaller pieces composed of separate forms, two- and three-piece carvings in ironstone, ebony, alabaster and other materials. They were all more abstract than these. I don’t think it was a conscious or intentional thing for me to break up the figures in this way, but I suppose those earlier works from the thirties had something to do with it. I didn’t do any preliminary drawings for these. I wish now I had... I did the first one in two pieces almost without intending to. But after I’d done it, then the second one became a conscious idea. I realised what an advantage a separated two-piece composition could have in relating figures to landscape. Knees and breasts are mountains. Once these two parts become separated you don’t expect it to be a naturalistic figure; therefore, you can justifiably make it like a landscape or a rock. If it is a single figure, you can guess what it’s going to be like. If it is in two pieces, there’s a bigger surprise, you have more unexpected views; therefore the special advantage over painting - of having the possibility of many different views - is more fully exploited... The front view doesn’t enable one to foresee the back view. As you move round it, the two parts overlap or they open up and there’s space between. Sculpture is like a journey. You have a different view as you return. The three-dimensional world is full of surprises in a way that a two-dimensional world could never be.’ Moore, born and educated in Castleford in Yorkshire, would have been conscious of the striking rock formations the Bridestones, near Scarborough and Brimham Rocks near Harrogate, evoked so powerfully here.
Henry Moore - Reclining Woman
1956Sited first at Bucklebury, the country home of Sir Robert and Lady Sainsbury, and moved to the SCVA 20 August 1980, facing World Art and Museums Studies School entrance, to the north west of the site; moved in 1991 near the bridge entrance to the SCVA to avoid the building work for Rick Mather’s Constable Terrace, and then again in 2007-2009 inside the foyer of the Crescent Wing to avoid the upgrading work on Lasdun's ziggurats, returned in November 2009. The sculpture, one of an edition of eight, was prepared in 1956 in a maquette, preserved in a series of ten small bronzes in private collections (Henry Moore Foundation LH 401) while the original plaster (now in the Art Gallery of Ontario - AGW119) was cast in bronze between 1961-2. Moore also produced an upright wooden version of the figure, LH403. Moore said of the series: ‘I want to be quite free of having to find a ‘reason’ for doing the Reclining Figures, and freer still of having to find a ‘meaning’ for them. The vital thing for an artist is to have a subject that allows him to try out all kinds of formal ideas – things that he doesn’t yet know about for certain but wants to experiment with, as Cézanne did in his ‘Bathers’ series. In my case the reclining figure provides chances of that sort. The subject-matter is given. It’s settled for you, and you know it and like it, so that within it, within the subject that you’ve done a dozen times before, you are free to invent a completely new form-idea.’ Moore had first experimented with the theme of the reclining woman – his equivalent of Cezanne’s bathers – in his stone 1927 Reclining Woman now in a private collection, where the simplified block like forms, the twisting pose and the relationship of the figure’s knees reveal his interest in Mexican sculpture, notably Chacmool in the Yucatan Regional Museum. He continued with the theme throughout his career and here in 1956 the attenuated forms, simplified head and stump like legs betray his absorption of Picasso’s post cubist figure style – the Three Dancers of 1925 for instance, handled with a confident mastery of form. The statue had to be removed during the building works on upgrading the nearby Lasdun Ziggurats from 2005-2009. A new site was needed because of the revised network of paths and the choice was further constrained since a sculpture of this size could not be placed on the lawn above the Crescent Wing, the extension added to the Sainsbury Centre by Foster Associates in 1991.
Ian Tyson - Proximity
2005-6Large metal abstract sculpture finished in matt black mounted on a low concrete base. The steel tubing is 30cm high and wide, and this gives the multiple for the construction. The smallest blocks are 30cm square, the next are 90cm long (x3), followed by 120(x4), 150(x5), 210 (x7) and 240 (x8). The resulting geometry, which is site specific and was developed for this location at the side of the Sainsbury centre and in front of Lasdun's famous Ziggurats, meant that the two small blocks on the front should nearly meet, without touching (Proximity). That they are welded together is down to the difficulty of transporting a sculpture of this size from Tyson's workshop in the south of France, with the danger of a major dislocation in loading and unloading. The sculpture was also intended to allow the spectator a view through. The work was commissioned as a large sculpture for Anne Dilman. At the suggestion of Ian Tyson it commemorated her husband, the distinguished philosopher Ilham Dilman (1930-2003),and because she did not have room to house it, Proximity was sited at UEA, where Ian Tyson had curated an exhibition of Book Art in the Elizabeth Fry Building in 1999. Ilham Dilman had been professor of philosophy at Cardiff University, where he had developed one of the leading departments of Wittgensteinian philosophers, but which the university was in the process of closing, hence the choice of UEA. The work's title - Proximity - might also refer to the closeness, both physically and conceptually, between the sculpture and the architecture in the background. A connection might also be made between the work's title and the principle of proximity involved in advanced mathematics and abstract philosophical thought
Liliane Lijn - Extrapolation
1962Large abstract design based on the extrapolation of three sets of triangular steel plates fixed to three central steel shafts. The whole arrangement is fixed within a triangular tubular steel base. Now housed on a raised concrete base whereas formerly it sat on the pavement. The brief for the competition was to design a sculpture for the inner courtyard of the Norwich Central Library Esperanto Way. There were 147 entries and Lilian Lijn’s was chosen since it suggests the leaves of a book as she had ‘played with the idea of layers or leaves as in the pages of a book.’ The sculpture is site-specific to the library context. It was originally accompanied by a memorial fountain to the 2nd Air Division USAAF 8th Air force, designed by Laurel Cooper. Continued development of the library meant that the courtyard had to be remodelled in 1993 when Extrapolation was removed to UEA and thus spared the disastrous fire which destroyed the library in August 1994. In 2000 the remains of the mosaic were displayed at t
Henry Cline - Variations on a Square
1964Abstract sculpture made from a welded steel frame clad with brazed copper sheet mounted on a simple pedestal. The sculpture presents a cage-like set of variation on the theme of squares. There is one complete square on the main, south-facing side, but the rest of the sculpture is made up of an ingenious set of variations, of partial squares, which produce a fascinating interlocking pattern. The copper cladding would originally have been orange turning to bright green marking the work out from its concrete surroundings. While Lasdun's buildings for the main site were under construction the University was housed on a nearby site, the University Village, with well designed and spacious temporary buildings, the responsibility of a local firm of architects Feilden & Mawson. The buildings were in place by 1962-3 and continued in use while staff ere moved to the main site later in the 1960s and early 1970s. By the late 1970s the village was no longer in use, and was demolished by 1990. The date of the removal of Clyne's sculpture to the main campus is not recorded, but its discrete siting behind the Library and the ziggurats reflects Lasdun's refusal to allow any public sculpture on campus. At the time of the commission, Clyne, a scottish sculptor, was a lecturer in sculpture the Norwich School of Art. David Mawson presented the sculpture to the university while the sculptor presented the Vice Chancellor, Frank Thistlethwaite, with the welded maquette now in the Thistlethwaite Archive in the UEA Library, inscribed on the base with the title 'Variations on a Square' 1964 and a dedication to the Vice Chancellor. Clyne was fond of incorporating letter shapes into his works and words can sometimes be discovered revealing hidden meanings. In this case the text is unclear but H and E seem to be prominent. An architectonic inspiration however is just as likely most probably from the published aerial photographs of Lasdun's 1963 models for the campus, notably 'Draft I'
John Hoskin - One For Bristol
1968Large abstract sculpture comprised of four rectangular aluminium sheets, mounted at an angle in a parallel arrangement between two blue-painted steel supports on a wedge-shaped concrete base. The siting, at an angle to the Music Centre, offers the major viewpoint from the path leading through to the University Plain, which emphasizes the debt to Anthony Caro in the geometry of the blue painted steel frame, to which Hoskin adds his own personal note in the aluminum panels. The title One for Bristol refers to its exhibition in the group show at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol. The siting of the piece near Suffolk Terrace was agreed by the family with the then Vice-Chancellor, Elizabeth Estève-Coll, since the sculptor's daughter had previously had stayed there.
