Embracing Greatness: Moore's Monumental Sculpture
In
the late 1940s Moore approached the pinnacle of his success, both at home and
abroad. Sponsored by the British Council, Moore became Britain's most prominent
cultural export. His earthbound, reassuring themes--the reclining figures, family
ensembles, and abstract biomorphic forms--were suited to the ideals of the postwar
world; his work resonated with the philosophy stated by the organizers of the
1948 Venice Biennale: Art must speak in a common language, inviting all people,
beyond ideological barriers, into the family of man.
Moore's success allowed him to hire assistants and work on a larger scale, placing his sculpture outdoors, his lifelong dream. In 1955 he was chosen to create the most prominent sculpture for the much-heralded headquarters of UNESCO in Paris. Carved from white travertine marble, it was the first of many international commissions and his largest sculpture thus far. Size, as a defining element of his art, became increasingly important to him. "Most everything I do," Moore explained, "I intend to make on a large scale... Size itself has its own impact, and physically we can relate ourselves more strongly to a big sculpture than to a small one."
Shifting his energies away from the direct carving that had been the hallmark of his earlier style, Moore began to work increasingly in bronze. This durable material, ideally suited for outdoor sculpture, withstood his experiments with hollows and voids. Large outdoor bronze works, such as the 1971-1972 Sheep Piece in Much Hadham, bespeak Moore's ability to produce powerful work in any medium. Moore had now been firmly established as the sculptor for works in public places.
In 1968, to mark Moore's seventieth birthday, the Tate Gallery in London mounted a monumental retrospective of his work. Moore continued to work in countries around the world, with sculptures traveling to Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, and Japan. In 1978, he supervised the installation of Knife Edge Mirror Two Piece in front of the new East Building designed by architect I.M. Pei for the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Moore was a complex and deeply influential figure. His former student, the distinguished sculptor Anthony Caro, spoke for many younger artists when he noted in 1960 that Moore's picture "is not man-size, but screen-size." Yet, Caro also attested to the enormous impact Moore has had on an entire generation of British artists walking in his footsteps: "[He] provided an alphabet and a discipline within which to start to develop. His success has created a climate for all of us younger sculptors and has given us confidence in ourselves which without his effort we would not have felt."
A man both unassuming and driven by sparks of tremendous ego, Henry Moore made crucial contributions to the development of twentieth-century sculpture. Like many artists of his generation, Moore explored the boundaries between figuration and abstraction, inventing a formal language that celebrated the human figure at a time when representation was in crisis. After World War II, he altered our expectations about art in public places, experimenting with issues of scale and monumentality that transcended the efforts of most of his peers. His bold yet respectful handling of materials, his innovative treatment of form and space, and his deep conviction in the enduring significance of the human figure give his work unique stature in the history of modern art. In 1964, the critic Jean Clay observed that Moore's work reminds us of our umbilical cord with nature: "Moore sinks into the earth, archaic and immutable, closer to prehistory than the year 2000, even though he was born in the heart of the industrial world."