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Lot Essay
Paddle Venus 1 is the first in a series conceived in 1986. With its subtle combination of formal simplicity and complex allegorical symbolism, it is an exemplary realisation of Turnbull’s defining artistic philosophy, that his work ‘should not be appreciated in formal/aesthetic terms, but experienced’ (R. Morphet, exhibition catalogue, William Turnbull, London, Tate Gallery, 1973, p. 9). The piece in question is arresting: standing at 145 cm., its long ovaloid form is lightly scored in places. These markings, likely inspired by Turnbull’s interest in tattooing and scarification – ‘from the very beginning of time, people have decorated their bodies. They tattoo themselves, they paint their eyes and lips.’ (the artist, in ‘Sculpture With A Presence’, Straits Times, quoted in A.A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in Association With Lund Humphries, Much Hadham, 2005, p. 68) – loosely suggest aspects of the female form (anatomical gestures of ribs, nipples, yonic valences), but with a pared-back solidity whose muteness is at once highly expressive and reserved, a fitting mould for the divinity to which it alludes.
The artefactual, totemic quality of Turnbull’s work is indebted to his fascination with ancient cultures outside of typical western tradition. As Roger Bevan observes, ‘[his] sympathies lie with Mesopotamia rather than Michelangelo, with the archaic rather than the arcadian’ (R. Bevan, exhibition catalogue, William Turnbull: Sculptures 1946-62, 1985-87, London, Waddington Galleries, 1987, p. 9) – hence the ethnographic quality of his work. While specifically inspired by ‘bull-roarers’, an ancient musical instrument swung overhead and used in ritual and for communication across ancient continents and cultures, shadows of swords, shields, and prehistoric fertility symbols are suggested in the present work, and in its complete series its metamorphosis encompasses many different facets of Venus as a deity. As Bevan notes, ‘from the fusion of her skills in offering protection, her powers for transportation, geographical or spiritual, and her dominance as a sexual cult emerges a highly complex web of responses through which the rich range of allusions of the Paddle Venus series is revealed’ (R. Bevan, ibid., pp. 8-9). Not only is Turnbull’s art interested in cross-cultural iconography – ideas which crop up in visual art, religion, and textual/oral literature across mythologies separated by oceans and eons – but it is itself concerned with mimicking the process of resurgence in the way his work is to be experienced. As he himself says of the making process, ‘each new excavation is another step into the future’: ‘the artist attempts to create a new object … this object then exists in the world as a part of nature, as the person who makes it is – its qualities never absolute but changing in relation to the participation of the spectator’' (the artist, statements in 1956 and 1957, in R. Morphet, exhibition catalogue, William Turnbull, London, Tate Gallery, 1973, p. 12). Turnbull’s potent forms, on engaging the attention and emotional response of the spectator, become a point of coalescence for exploring aspects of human sensibility which transcend place and time.
The artefactual, totemic quality of Turnbull’s work is indebted to his fascination with ancient cultures outside of typical western tradition. As Roger Bevan observes, ‘[his] sympathies lie with Mesopotamia rather than Michelangelo, with the archaic rather than the arcadian’ (R. Bevan, exhibition catalogue, William Turnbull: Sculptures 1946-62, 1985-87, London, Waddington Galleries, 1987, p. 9) – hence the ethnographic quality of his work. While specifically inspired by ‘bull-roarers’, an ancient musical instrument swung overhead and used in ritual and for communication across ancient continents and cultures, shadows of swords, shields, and prehistoric fertility symbols are suggested in the present work, and in its complete series its metamorphosis encompasses many different facets of Venus as a deity. As Bevan notes, ‘from the fusion of her skills in offering protection, her powers for transportation, geographical or spiritual, and her dominance as a sexual cult emerges a highly complex web of responses through which the rich range of allusions of the Paddle Venus series is revealed’ (R. Bevan, ibid., pp. 8-9). Not only is Turnbull’s art interested in cross-cultural iconography – ideas which crop up in visual art, religion, and textual/oral literature across mythologies separated by oceans and eons – but it is itself concerned with mimicking the process of resurgence in the way his work is to be experienced. As he himself says of the making process, ‘each new excavation is another step into the future’: ‘the artist attempts to create a new object … this object then exists in the world as a part of nature, as the person who makes it is – its qualities never absolute but changing in relation to the participation of the spectator’' (the artist, statements in 1956 and 1957, in R. Morphet, exhibition catalogue, William Turnbull, London, Tate Gallery, 1973, p. 12). Turnbull’s potent forms, on engaging the attention and emotional response of the spectator, become a point of coalescence for exploring aspects of human sensibility which transcend place and time.