Tag: Sculpture

In Barbara Hepworth’s Garden…

...Hepworth’s life and work is soaked in the genius loci, so it is no surprise that her garden, with its carefully curated selection of her works, is potent with that magical intangible energy. Wondrously, her studio and garden have been preserved as a museum (run by Tate) exactly as they were left in 1975. The plaster and clay splattered overalls still hang on the back of the door, the rows of chisels lie patiently and unstirred, half-finished sculptures litter the workshop, the potted succulents still bask in the greenhouse. The rich green planting of palms, grasses, and ferns remains as laid out by Hepworth and her friend the composer Priaulx Rainier, and nestled amongst the leaves and fronds sit her own selection of her work as if grown there from the soil under her watchful care…I suppose in many ways they were...

Review: ‘The Making of Rodin’, Tate Modern

★★★☆☆: After more than a year of semi-solitary existence, interspersed with the occasional out-door meeting with select family and friends, the appearance of other people has become increasingly alien. And with the government mandated distance to be maintained at all times, the usual interactions of hands and arms and the close-up reading of each other's faces have become not only a distant memory but even, at times, a life threatening action. And so, it was a delight to find that my first exhibition visit out of the trap after the (hopefully) final lockdown was one filled with such humanity and tactility. 

Review: Picasso on Paper at the Royal Academy.

★★★★☆: Works on paper can often be seen as room-filler when a gallery can’t quite muster enough ‘proper works’, paintings and sculptures, to fill their space. They are normally objects that exist primarily in the realm of art historians, tools for them to unlock the secrets of an artist’s grander works. However, in the eternal struggle to find an original angle on that godfather of modernism, Pablo Picasso, the RA have dedicated an enormous show just for his works on and using paper.