At the Henry Moore Institute we are continuously developing research into the networks that produce sculpture, which stretch far beyond the studio. Tracing these connections constantly opens new avenues of research. In 2007 we worked with researcher Ann Compton, University of Glasgow and the Victoria and Albert Museum to develop the database Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951. This comprehensive study of sculpture charts the personal and professional connections underlying the production of sculpture, and it spans the period from the Great Exhibition of 1851 to the Festival of Britain in 1951.

One recent discovery made through Mapping is a series of car design drawings made by the sculptor Hamish (Henry) Basil Macpherson (1915-2005), who trained at Central School of Arts and Crafts (London) with John Skeaping (1901-80) from 1934-9. Skeaping’s work has been included in the 2008 exhibition Sculpture in the Home: Restaging a Post-War Initiative, the collections display Polychromies: Surface, Light and Colour (2012-13) and in a monograph (2011) in our British Sculptors and Sculpture series, published in tandem with Ashgate.

In the 1950s Macpherson worked in the motor industry and produced a set of remarkable drawings for cars, a selection from which can be seen above. Seven of these drawings and a scrapbook joined the Henry Moore Institute Archive of Sculptors’ Papers this year. They show full cars and details, such as insignia, and they were most likely to have been produced in 1956 and 1957. These drawings are important materials for tracking the work of sculptors within manufacturing and industry, and this acquisition has launched a new research topic for us: the role of sculptors within the motor industry. Our intention is to develop an archival display of this material, drawing both on our own collection and that of others in 2016.

The most productive way of finding information is by dedicating time to following routes suggested by publications and conversations. We welcome hearing from readers of the Newsletter who might be able to inform us on this topic and shed more light on Macpherson’s drawings. Our task at the Institute is to study sculpture and to produce new knowledge: this is only possible through networks and testing out ideas, an approach that informs all of our activities.

Lisa Le Feuvre, Head of Sculpture Studies

Image: Drawing of car designs, 1950s by Hamish (Henry) Basil Macpherson, Leeds Museums and Galleries (Henry Moore Institute Archive)

The Event Sculpture

Henry Moore Institute Façade and Galleries 1, 2 & 3

10 November 2014 – 8 March 2015

From autumn the Institute turns inside out as the outside of our building becomes a site for sculpture. The Event Sculpture presents nine sculptures that are events located in and around the surfaces of the building.  Embracing the live, fleeting format of the event and the place of sculpture in the city, each event sculpture is rooted in the present, demanding to be witnessed first-hand. A sculpture in the public realm is associated with permanence and memorial, as demonstrated by two sculptures situated directly in front of the Institute: Henry Charles Fehr’s Leeds War Memorial (1922) and Joseph Beuys’ ‘7000 Oaks’ (1982).

Turning the façade into a plinth and screen, The Event Sculpture invites Lara Favaretto, Urs Fischer, Ceal Floyer, Simone Forti, Simon Martin, Anthony McCall, Maria Nordman, Tino Sehgal and Roman Signer to join us in studying how transitory sculptures can be written into art history. The full schedule is available on our website. All events move across the threshold into Galleries 1, 2 & 3 on 3 February 2015, guided by Tino Sehgal’s ‘Kiss’. As each work passes from being bound by time to being situated in space, the artist is faced with the question of how an event is written into history.

Dorothy Annan and Trevor Tennant

Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

11 November 2014 – 1 March 2015

Our Sculpture Study Galleries offer a counterpoint to the temporality of The Event Sculpture, and continue to reflect the study of sculpture in the city. Dorothy Annan and Trevor Tennant reflects developments in British sculpture from the 1930s to the 1960s through two shared artistic practices, while Figure and Architecture: Henry Moore in the 1950s outlines three key architectural commissions undertaken by Henry Moore. Through models and archival material, we can both trace and document the making of sculpture within urban architecture.

Dorothy Annan and Trevor Tennant celebrates the generous donation of the archive by the family of artists Dorothy Annan (c. 1908-83) and Trevor Tennant (1900-80) in 2012 to the Henry Moore Institute Archive of Sculptors’ Papers. Annan and Tennant were members of the Artists International Association (AIA), established by artists in 1932, which sought to place artistic creativity at the heart of everyday life. Their involvement in the AIA is crucial to understanding their work, which is usually found in public spaces, embedded within an understanding of art as a force for civic good.

After 1945 Tennant produced small-scale figurative bronze sculptures, which were included in the Arts Council exhibition Sculpture in the Home that toured Britain between 1946 and 1959 – issue 60 of Essays on Sculpture is dedicated to this topic. The post-war years offered the artists the opportunity to work on several large-scale public commissions. Annan is widely recognised for her public commissions from this period, especially her ceramic tile mural for the Fleet Building, London’s largest telephone exchange.

This autumn we present two exhibitions at venues other than the Henry Moore Institute. Touring exhibitions nationally and internationally and presenting our rich collections in new contexts are important parts of the ways we develop the study of sculpture, and we welcome approaches from museums to develop partnerships.

Currently on show at Museion (Bolzano, Italy) is Carol Bove / Carlo Scarpa, which brings together works by American artist Carol Bove spanning 2003 to 2014 with vitrines, easels, sculptures and architectural prototypes by Venetian architect and exhibition designer Carlo Scarpa (1906-78). The exhibition will be at the Institute in April 2015, and at Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens (Deurle, Belgium) in October 2015. At the centre of the exhibition is a new setting by Bove for a rare moment when Scarpa created his own sculptures. A catalogue will be published in December.

Until February, Whitechapel Gallery (London) is showing Sculptors’ Papers from the Henry Moore Institute Archive. The exhibition presents seven case studies of sculptures planned for public sites made or proposed for London between 1908 and 2004 from our Archive. It features Jacob Epstein’s sculptures for the British Medical Association building on The Strand, Alfred Hardiman’s monument to Earl Haig on Whitehall, Oscar Nemon’s ‘Temple for Universal Ethics’, Laurence Bradshaw’s 'Karl Marx' Memorial in Highgate Cemetery, Paul Neagu’s ‘Starhead’ planned for Charing Cross, Rose Finn-Kelcey’s ‘Power For The People’ at Battersea Power Station, and Neal White’s ‘The Third Campaign’ exploring the troubled history of Epstein’s sculptures. The November issue of Essays on Sculpture focuses on these case studies.

Dr Eoin Martin (University of Warwick): Nationality Unknown: Jacob Epstein’s ‘Bust of Lady Gregory’ (1911)

Henry Moore Institute, 22 October 2014

Gabriel Williams (History of Art, University of York) reports on the first of our new series of lectures focusing on single works from the Leeds Sculpture Collection, which the Institute manages and curates.

'Dr Martin’s talk initiated a new series of Institute lectures that aim to stimulate fresh historical inquiries by studying single objects in the Leeds Sculpture Collections. This lecture’s object was Epstein’s bronze bust of Lady Augusta Gregory, a pivotal figure in the Irish literary revival and, at the time Epstein sculpted her, a leading advocate of Irish cultural and political independence from the United Kingdom. The central question involved the uncertain relation between object and context: to what extent does Epstein’s bust reflect the questions of nationhood that preoccupied both its sitter and British politics at the time of its commission?

Epstein himself distanced his work from issues of national identity, emphasising that great art should transcend historic borders - a position that complemented his international career path from New York and Paris to London. Yet Dr Martin outlined several ways in which Epstein’s sculpture was implicated in ‘the national question’, whether the sculptor liked it or not. It’s dynamic and unconventional pose, for example, reportedly arose through Epstein’s (literally) break-neck alteration of the model to capture Lady Gregory momentarily animated on the subject of Yeats and the Irish National Theatre. The presence of the bust itself in the seminar room prompted further deliberations on object and context, by furnishing a constant point of reference and juxtaposition with the historical circumstances detailed in the talk and slides.

The lecture as a whole revealed the bust’s commission as a nexus of multiple, often counter-intuitive intersections between cosmopolitanism and cultural nationalism. The post-lecture discussion encompassed wider relations between literary and sculptural modernism in an Anglo-Irish context, and led to fruitful observations about theatricality as a further point of connection between Epstein’s bust and its sitter.

Daniel Zec was a Henry Moore Institute Research Fellow in 2011-12, when he conducted research on Oscar Nemon’s life and work in England. Nemon is one of the case studies on show in Sculptors' Papers from the Henry Moore Institute Archive. He is currently Curator at the Gallery of Fine Arts, Osijek. Here he updates on his forthcoming publication: Osijek Sculptors of the first half of the twentieth century: Leović, Živić, Nemon, Švagel-Lešić.

'Published by the Museum of Fine Arts, Osijek, this book deals with sculpture in Osijek, now the fourth largest city in Croatia, in the first half of the twentieth century. This particular theme within the history of Croatian Sculpture until now has not been a topic of art history research.

The book studies the individual oeuvres of four Osijek sculptors: Josip Leović (1885-1963), Mihajlo Živić (1899-1942), Oscar Nemon (1906-85) and Rudolf Švagel-Lešić (1911-75). They were the main protagonists of sculpture in this period. My book is an analysis and evaluation of their works explaining the place sculpture occupies in the overall artistic creation in Osijek, and in the context of Croatian sculpture in the period between the two world wars.

A chapter is devoted to Oscar Nemon, revealing the sculptor's earliest period in Osijek and following his work through pre-war Vienna and Brussels. He left his trace in England during the second half of the twentieth century mainly as a portrait sculptor of the British politicial establishment.'

Dr Karin Kyburz (Courtauld Institute of Art, London), attended a discussion between Lisa Le Feuvre and Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro on Gego. Line as Object in September, and here reports on the event. Dr Kyburz is author of a PhD thesis: The Right to Indifference: Abstraction in the work of Gego and Jesús Soto, Courtauld Institute of Art, 2008. Available on academia.edu.

'We were a group of art enthusiasts who joined Lisa Le Feuvre and Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, Director and Chief Curator, Colleción Cisneros and co-curator of Radical Geometry at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, on an informal tour and discussion of the Henry Moore Institute exhibition Gego. Line as Object. I know Gego’s oeuvre well from a research project completed a few years ago and this invitation to Leeds seemed a good opportunity to hear different responses to her work. 

Lisa Le Feuvre opened the discussion with a brief introduction to the artist and her own approach in curating this exhibition. Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro then presented his own visual analysis, highlighting Gego’s brilliance in creating subtle illusions of phenomenological space. As our small group moved away from the highly structured works of the middle period to the intimate drawings and prints on the upper floors, it became evident that the curators had been particularly attracted to Gego’s individualistic trends. A number of observations from the group echoed the curator’s concern with Gego’s individualism. Personally, I was particularly happy about Lisa Le Feuvre’s intervention that Gego’s sculptures often contained ugly elements and were not beautiful in the conventional sense of being harmonious or well-proportioned. 

As the discussion drew to a close and we slowly wandered back to the exit, I felt that everyone in the group had sensed the great ambivalence in the discourse on Gego’s art. I for my part would have liked to be able to measure Gego’s liberal individualism against works by fellow Venezuelan artists, many of whom were communists and often, sadly, had only brief careers. I’m not thinking of wonderful artists inspired by Russian Constructivism: Mateo Manaure, Pascual Navarro, Carlos Gonzáles Bogen, Narciso Debourg. For the moment, this encounter is postponed to a different, perhaps utopian exhibition project, but my afternoon tour through Gego. Line as Object had offered a welcome reminder that abstract art, far from occluding the real, allows us to understand more fully its infinite complexity.'

Sculpture and Mathematics: The Role of Beauty

Henry Moore Institute, 4 October 2014

Last month we presented a one-day conference dedicated to links between sculpture and mathematics. Convened by Chris Yetton (Art Historian), who reports on the event below, the event brought together mathematicians Professor Andrew Parry and Dr Tom Coates of Imperial College with artists Till Exit and Gary Woodley.The speakers focused on the ways beauty is a factor in their decision-making.

‘Both mathematicians were attracted to mathematics by its beauty. Professor Parry had attempted to solve a difficult problem in physics by introducing more complexity into the answer, making it ‘uglier, dirtier’ - and more incorrect - as a result. Some years later he realised if he increased the difficulty of the problem by introducing a symmetry of complexity in all its aspects, he could write a simple, clear equation in a new diagrammatic language. Its beauty immediately convinced him and all observers (and now, this audience) of its truth.

Dr Coates described his current work on Fano shapes – the basic shapes out of which all others are made. In four dimensions they are too difficult to visualise geometrically, but the technique ‘mirror symmetry’ translates the problem into differential equations, which can be solved. Beauty lay in both the fundamental purity of the idea and the quest, which stretched on into higher and higher dimensions.

Till Exit discussed how he was guided by the complex and melancholy beauty of the now-failed optimistic vision of the future presented in both East and West in the early 1960s.

Gary Woodley described how he continually purified and minimised his materials and interactions in the world. He showed how he rejected some solutions because they were too seductively glamorous, the materials not plain or simple enough.

The audience saw how the two disciplines were linked by aesthetic considerations, with the practitioners using a combination of intuition and hard reasoning to tackle problems chosen for their intrinsic difficulty.’

Jenny Dunseath, (Artist and Senior Lecturer, Fine Art, Bath Spa University) reflects on Collaborating with Caro, a one-day seminar on 10 October 2014 at Central Saint Martins, London.

'Organised by Mark Dunhill (Dean of Academic Programmes, Central Saint Martins) and Sam Cornish, this one-day symposium celebrated Anthony Caro’s long and influential contribution as a sculptor and teacher.

Across five sessions, the event variously addressed collaboration through Caro’s influence on education, sculptural lineage and production from many different perspectives and generations.

The introductory session ‘Making Sculpture – Views From The Studio’ located us in Caro’s studio. Hamish Black, Olivia Bax, Neil Ayling, John Wallbank, and Jenny Dunseath (Chair) discussed their experience of working for and with Caro.

Elena Crippa (University of the Arts London and Tate Research) presented ‘Teaching The New Sculpture: St Martins in the Sixties’ articulating the discursive pedagogies used by Caro at St Martins. Generous discussions with William Tucker and Tim Scott reflected their experience as students and teachers at Central Saint Martins. The absence of Phillip King, scheduled but sadly unable to attend, was felt.

Ian Dawson’s (Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton) significant paper about sculptural pedagogy introduced a project run with Winchester School of Art students to make a facsimile of Caro’s seminal sculpture ‘Early One Morning’.

Professor Rebecca Fortnum (Middlesex University) introduced the international organisation Triangle Workshops, which Caro founded to promote studio discussion and artistic alliances. Workshop participants Frances Richardson and Anna Best provided insight into the far-reaching impact of Caro’s ethos.

Peter Hide, David Evison and Robin Greenwood who all studied at Saint Martins gave presentations on sculptures by Caro and their relationship to them. Sam Cornish (Research Grant Paul Mellon Centre) eloquently chaired discussion on the continuing legacy of Caro’s sculpture.

The event was recorded and is held in the archive at CSM.

Unless otherwise noted, events are free and take place at the Henry Moore Institute.

Bookings via www.henry-moore.org/hmi

From Wednesday 10 November

Events Schedule: The Event Sculpture

Wednesday 19 November, 2-6pm

Seminar: Visualising and Exhibiting T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’

Led by Mike Tooby (Bath School of Art & Design, Bath Spa University / Henry Moore Institute Senior Research Fellow 2014-15), with a screening by artist William Raban

Wednesday 26 November, 2-6pm

Seminar: Sculpture Creatures

With Michael Asbury (Chelsea School of Art), Cornelia Butler (The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles), Briony Fer (University College London), and artists Richard Deacon and Gareth Jones

Saturday 29 November, 12 noon

Walking Tour: Sculptors’ Papers from the Henry Moore Institute Archive

Led by Lisa Le Feuvre and Jon Wood (Henry Moore Institute), starting at Whitechapel Gallery, London

Tickets via www.whitechapelgallery.org

Wednesday 24 December: Gallery 4 and Sculpture Study Galleries close 1pm; Library closes 5.30pm

Thursday 25, Friday 26 December: closed

Saturday 27, Sunday 28 December: Library and Gallery 4 open; Sculpture Study Galleries closed

Monday 29 December: closed

Tuesday 30 December: open

Wednesday 31 December: close 4pm

Thursday 1 January: closed

Friday 2 January and thereafter: open

A series of talks in partnership with Leeds Art Gallery and the University of Leeds

4 November 6-7pm, Leeds Art Gallery

Alice Correia: Insufferable Agony: Henry Moore and Reverberations of the First World War

Moore said little about his war experience and he made a few public comments about it. The assumption has been that in the immediate post-war period it simply wasn't addressed in his work. Yet do his ‘masks’ of the late 1920’s carry echoes of the horror of being gassed; the carvings of the early 1930s reflect suppressed anxieties? He was always careful to offer interpretation of his mutilated and fallen warriors through Greek myth rather than contemporary events; and, as Alice Correia proposes, were his carved female figures vehicles or ciphers for other, inexpressible, preoccupations?  His experiences did inform his personal and artistic response to the Second World War, in his well-known ‘Shelter’ drawings and later, in the Cold War, yet throughout there were never overt references to War itself.

Dr  Alice Correia was The Henry Moore Foundation Research Fellow at Tate where she catalogued and researched Tate's collection of seventy-four Moore sculptures as part of a larger research project: Henry Moore: Sculptural Process and Public Identity, an online scholarly publication of commissioned essays addressing a range of issues concerning Moore's materials, working practices, critical reputation and public persona.

Admission free; booking not necessary

Leeds University School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies holds weekly Visiting Artists talks during the academic year.

The series hosts talks by an exciting range of arts practitioners from around the world every Wednesday afternoon during teaching weeks. Speakers last year included Stelarc, David Batchelor and Penelope Curtis. Visitors this semester will include Richard Forster, Disinformation and Grace Schwindt.

All the talks are compulsory for Fine Art students but open to anyone else who'd like to attend.

More information: http://www.fine-art.leeds.ac.uk/events/

Hans Arp (1886-1966) and Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889-1943) are among the most remarkable artists of the twentieth century. They galvanised the movements of Dada and Surrealism, and influenced the development of concrete art and organic abstraction. Since 1977 the Stiftung Arp e.V. has overseen the greater part of both artists’ estates. It holds one of the most comprehensive collections of their work and manages most of their written and photographic archives. The Foundation also has an extensive research library, which holds primary literature and catalogues of the work of Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Hans Arp as well as many publications of their broader artistic and cultural context.

In autumn 2014, the Stiftung Arp e.V. is awarding up to four research- and archive-fellowships to both junior scholars as well as to established researchers and curators whose work addresses the work of Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber Arp.

The Archive and Library Fellowships are intended for junior scholars as well as established Researchers and curators whose research project or exhibition addresses the work of Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber and who wish to research the collection, the archive and the library in person. Depending on the scope of the research project, fellowships will be awarded for the duration of one to six months. The monthly stipend ranges from 900 to 1,200 Euros and the amount is determined by the researcher’s qualifications. Residency is required.

The Research Fellowships are intended for junior scholars (pre- and postdoctoral), whose research engages with the work of Hans Arp and/or Sophie Taeuber-Arp. The period of support is one year, witha monthly stipend between 900 and 1,200 Euros, depending on the applicant’s qualifications. Residency is not required. However, the fellow is expected to consult the foundation’s collection and archive during the fellowship period. As a prerequisite to the application, the research project in question must be tied to a university or a research institution.

To apply, please send a CV, publication list and a 3-5 page research description and plan to Dr Maike Steinkamp – steinkamp@stiftungarp.de – who can also provide further information.

Deadline: 30 November 2014

Leeds Beckett University Faculty of Arts, Environment and Technology is currently offering a UK/EU fees only PhD bursary in Architecture at the School of Art, Architecture and Design, for entry in February 2015.

The Faculty offers a unique environment for integrating research across a range of areas covering culture, creativity, design, sustainability and digital domains. This environment provides opportunities for developing exciting multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary research projects.

The School of Art, Architecture and Design is interested in receiving applications in the field of architectural research addressing the relationship between architecture theory and the design process in the urban environment, and the influence on the specifically architectural of other spatial and critical practices.

Particularly welcome are research proposals that aim to explore the state of theory in architecture, through critical reconsiderations and current practices.

For more information see http://cagd.leedsmet.ac.uk/public/architecture/phd/ or contact Professor Teresa Stoppani, Head of the Leeds School of Architecture: t.stoppani@leedsbeckett.ac.uk

Closing date for applications: midnight on 30 November 2014.

The Department of Art History & Visual Studies at the University of Manchester is offering one EW Usher Scholarship in the History of Sculpture for PHD students commencing their studies in September 2015.

The Scholarship funds the equivalent of two years of home/EU fees, but is not restricted to home/EU students. Cases can be made for research on sculpture in its widest understanding.

To be considered for the Usher Scholarship, applicants should apply for School and/or AHRC funding from the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures (University of Manchester) by Friday 13 February 2015. For further information contact Carol.Mavor@manchester.ac.uk