Page 43 - Studio International - June 1966

importance in defining the new sensibility. The ideas of
these foreigners gave intellectual substance to much 'per-
sonal' English art. Design began to concern itself with
eternal principles; sublimity was discovered in sheer craft.
British romanticism took on fundamentalist doctrines.
For instance, Ben Nicholson was able to write both that
' "painting" and "religious experience" are the same
thing' and that '. . . a good idea is exactly as good as it can
be universally applied, that no idea can have a universal
application which is not solved in its own terms and if
any extraneous elements are introduced the application
ceases to be universal.' (London: Circle, Faber, 1937.)
It strikes me that Barbara Hepworth alone of important
British artists who came of age in this period is immune
to this crisis of sensibility. (Her sympathies for Gabo and
Mondrian's ideas were natural sympathies of tempera-
ment.) Her problems lay elsewhere—in discovering a
viable classical ideal that is not merely bookish or art-
historical. Her position at the time must have been an
extremely difficult one. She shared Yorkshire origins with
Henry Moore and she trained, too, in part where he did.
Above left Their respective breaks with academism were related—
Maquette for dual form 1965 an accident of history, a matter of appearances. Tem-
Bronze
Height 19 in. peramentally, they are at a considerable remove. Their
Edition of nine work is founded upon different and distinct values. In-
deed, in some sense their approaches are mutually exclu-
Above right
Plaster for bronze of sive. Yet criticism has succeeded in linking their names
Dual form at every turn and in making their work seem interde-
Height 721 in. pendent.
No doubt Barbara Hepworth's being a woman has con-
Right
Dual form 1965 tributed to the fiction of artistic 'togetherness'. An im-
Bronze portant woman artist was unthinkable in England only
Height 72 3/8 in.
Edition of seven a few years ago. Miss Hepworth's marriage to Ben
Nicholson must have offered another confusion to the
public mind.
Now, perhaps, it is possible to recognize the inde-
pendence of this artist, her atypicalness— even as an artist
who came of age in the thirties. Her work, almost from
the first, was classical in spirit. She might write romanti-
cally about sculpture, but her work was visibly not
romantic. Its severity does not result from a series of
checks delivered to an exhuberant temperament, to keep
it within bounds, but is the expression of a formal vision.
I should say that the classical response to nature is to
offer a counterweight to its sheer variability. The classical
artist's intuitions relate to forms that have a permanent
emblematic significance— that are of and in nature, but
that are independent of the sense of flux. The emphasis
will be upon the form and not upon its skin.
Barbara Hepworth's sculptures are almost invariably
close to the block. They impose a vision upon matter.
The image—figure in landscape, landscape in figure—is
not an imitation or a reminiscence. The response, 'Oh, it
looks like . . .' is never appropriate to this work. If the
form is biomorphic or figurative, it will often have the
force of summary. That, perhaps, is its true character: it
is an essence, a distillation and not a symbol. Its dynamic
quality—its passion, if you will—is formal. The form re-
lates to the block that is no longer there, but that con-
tinues to live in the form.
The geometry implicit in the block is Miss Hepworth's
preoccupation. She makes it be there, whatever it is; it
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