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拍品专文
Conceived in 1931, Reclining Figure marks an important turning point in the early career of Henry Moore. Inspired by the radical developments of his Surrealist contemporaries, Moore transformed the reclining figure into a daringly abstracted composition of solid and pierced forms. Curving, sinuous lines make up the structure of the figure, interspersed by linear rods that link the limbs together. This biomorphic fluidity was entirely novel in Moore’s work at this time, paving the way for many of the stylistic developments that would come to define his oeuvre.
Until this time, Moore had been primarily creating monumental, totemic sculptures. Volumetric and stylized, these works demonstrated Moore’s interest in Aztec and Mayan carvings. From the beginning of the 1930s however, his work became progressively distorted as he looked to the Surrealists, and in particular the work of Pablo Picasso. Stimulating artistic exchanges were occurring between artists of the Parisian avant-garde and their London counterparts at this time. Moore traveled to Paris where he met the self-styled Surrealist leader, André Breton, as well as Joan Miró, Jean Arp and Alberto Giacometti, who had become the leading Surrealist sculptor. He admired the creative liberation of these artists, regarding their art as the antidote to the pure abstraction that many of his British contemporaries were pursuing at this time. As he wrote in 1937, “I find myself lined up with the surrealists because Surrealism means freedom for the creative side of man, for surprise and discovery and life, for an opening out and widening of man’s consciousness, for changing life and against conserving worn out traditions, for variety and not a uniformity, for opening not closing—” (quoted in A. Wilkinson, ed., Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Aldershot, 2002, p. 123).
It was the biomorphic qualities of these artists’ work, particularly Picasso’s, that most inspired Moore at this time. In 1930 he had bought an edition of the Surrealist periodical, Documents, which was dedicated to Picasso’s recent work, including his abstracted scenes of bathers from 1929. In these works the female body is transformed into strange composites, the forms broken apart and reconstructed in surreal configurations. In the present sculpture, Moore similarly stretched, twisted and broke apart the human form, opening up the torso of the figure to expose what appears to be the rib cage. The pierced form would later become one of the defining features of Moore’s sculpture. As a result of this, space itself is engaged as an active part of the sculpture, as Christa Lichtenstern has described of the present work, “He shaped the space within the figures by articulating them as a loosely rhythmic alteration of tense, compact masses with relaxed, expansive ones, giving the interior a three-dimensional life of its own and granting it an emotional quality” (Henry Moore: Work, Theory, Impact, London, 2008, p. 67).
Moore cast Reclining Figure in lead, and chose to include this version in the landmark 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London. There it was shown near to Miró’s La terre labourée and Salvador Dalí’s Le Rêve, entering into a dialogue with the dreamlike worlds these artists had created. “Moore’s figure also inhabits this domain, with its biomorphic fluidity, its attenuated volumes and its rods subverting in a distinctly surrealist way the realism traditionally associated with sculpture,” Lichtenstern has written (ibid., p. 67).
Moore’s use of lead at this time was both practical and aesthetic. The daring formal construction of Reclining Figure could not have been achieved from carving stone, so Moore turned to this more malleable medium: “The lead figures came at a stage in my career when I wanted to experiment with thinner forms than stone could give and, of course, in metal you can have very thin forms. So this thinness that one could make and this desire for making space became something that I wanted to do. Yet I couldn’t afford in those days to make plasters and have them cast into bronze because I would have to send them and pay a huge fee to the bronze foundry. Whereas lead I could melt on the kitchen stove and pour into a mold myself. In fact I ruined my wife’s saucepans because the lead was so heavy that it bent the handles and the pans were sometimes put out of shape. But I could mold it myself and do the casting myself and it was soft enough when cast to work on it and give a refinement; I could cut it down thinner, and finish the surface, so for me lead was both economically possible and physically more reliable” (quoted in D. Mitchinson, op. cit., 1981, p. 75).
Until this time, Moore had been primarily creating monumental, totemic sculptures. Volumetric and stylized, these works demonstrated Moore’s interest in Aztec and Mayan carvings. From the beginning of the 1930s however, his work became progressively distorted as he looked to the Surrealists, and in particular the work of Pablo Picasso. Stimulating artistic exchanges were occurring between artists of the Parisian avant-garde and their London counterparts at this time. Moore traveled to Paris where he met the self-styled Surrealist leader, André Breton, as well as Joan Miró, Jean Arp and Alberto Giacometti, who had become the leading Surrealist sculptor. He admired the creative liberation of these artists, regarding their art as the antidote to the pure abstraction that many of his British contemporaries were pursuing at this time. As he wrote in 1937, “I find myself lined up with the surrealists because Surrealism means freedom for the creative side of man, for surprise and discovery and life, for an opening out and widening of man’s consciousness, for changing life and against conserving worn out traditions, for variety and not a uniformity, for opening not closing—” (quoted in A. Wilkinson, ed., Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Aldershot, 2002, p. 123).
It was the biomorphic qualities of these artists’ work, particularly Picasso’s, that most inspired Moore at this time. In 1930 he had bought an edition of the Surrealist periodical, Documents, which was dedicated to Picasso’s recent work, including his abstracted scenes of bathers from 1929. In these works the female body is transformed into strange composites, the forms broken apart and reconstructed in surreal configurations. In the present sculpture, Moore similarly stretched, twisted and broke apart the human form, opening up the torso of the figure to expose what appears to be the rib cage. The pierced form would later become one of the defining features of Moore’s sculpture. As a result of this, space itself is engaged as an active part of the sculpture, as Christa Lichtenstern has described of the present work, “He shaped the space within the figures by articulating them as a loosely rhythmic alteration of tense, compact masses with relaxed, expansive ones, giving the interior a three-dimensional life of its own and granting it an emotional quality” (Henry Moore: Work, Theory, Impact, London, 2008, p. 67).
Moore cast Reclining Figure in lead, and chose to include this version in the landmark 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London. There it was shown near to Miró’s La terre labourée and Salvador Dalí’s Le Rêve, entering into a dialogue with the dreamlike worlds these artists had created. “Moore’s figure also inhabits this domain, with its biomorphic fluidity, its attenuated volumes and its rods subverting in a distinctly surrealist way the realism traditionally associated with sculpture,” Lichtenstern has written (ibid., p. 67).
Moore’s use of lead at this time was both practical and aesthetic. The daring formal construction of Reclining Figure could not have been achieved from carving stone, so Moore turned to this more malleable medium: “The lead figures came at a stage in my career when I wanted to experiment with thinner forms than stone could give and, of course, in metal you can have very thin forms. So this thinness that one could make and this desire for making space became something that I wanted to do. Yet I couldn’t afford in those days to make plasters and have them cast into bronze because I would have to send them and pay a huge fee to the bronze foundry. Whereas lead I could melt on the kitchen stove and pour into a mold myself. In fact I ruined my wife’s saucepans because the lead was so heavy that it bent the handles and the pans were sometimes put out of shape. But I could mold it myself and do the casting myself and it was soft enough when cast to work on it and give a refinement; I could cut it down thinner, and finish the surface, so for me lead was both economically possible and physically more reliable” (quoted in D. Mitchinson, op. cit., 1981, p. 75).