Great Artists in Their Own Words TV - Jon Snow TV - Tim Marlow TV - Henry Moore - Fake or Fortune? TV -
Henry Moore: the son of a Yorkshire coal miner ... Three hundred sketches: the shelter drawings ... Moore had become a global phenomenon ... Moore produced over six thousand sculptures. Great Artists in Their Own Words II: Out of the Darkness 1939–1966, BBC 2013
So visceral are Moore’s drawings that to this day they are our defining image of Britain in World War II. A time of silent dance. The war a deathly ghostly presence. A startling meditation on fear. And man’s inhumanity to man. Jon Snow, The Genius of British Art: War, Channel 4 2010
Epstein’s work was no stranger to controversy ... What he did was throw down a gauntlet that was pivotally picked up by younger British sculptors not least Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. The sculptural language of Moore and Hepworth was developed in the 20s and 30s through the use of direct carving. Tim Marlow on ... British Sculpture 2011
Her [Hepworth] and Moore are forging a dialogue between sculptural space and form and sculpture in a public space ... Hepworth and Moore very much leading the way, and making it clear that the idea of a British modern sculptural tradition had very much been established and was existing in an international context. ibid.
All art should have a certain mystery and should make demands on the spectator. Giving a sculpture or a drawing too explicit a title takes away part of that mystery so that the spectator moves on to the next object, making no effort to ponder the meaning of what he has just seen. Everyone thinks that he or she looks but they don’t really, you know. Henry Moore
Sculpture in stone should look honestly like stone … to make it look like flesh and blood, hair and dimples, is coming down to the level of the stage conjurer. Henry Moore
The first hole made through a piece of stone is a revelation. Henry Moore, cited Listener 18th August 1937
Since the Gothic, European sculpture had become overgrown with moss, weeds – all sorts of surface excrescences which completely concealed shape. It has been Brancusi’s special mission to get rid of this overgrowth, and make us once more shape-conscious. To do this he has had to concentrate on very simple direct shapes, to keep his sculpture, as it were, one-cylindered, to refine and polish a single shape to a degree almost too precious ... it may now be no longer necessary to close down and restrict sculpture to the single (static) form unit. We can now begin to open out. To relate and combine together several forms of varied sizes, sections, and directions into one organic whole. Henry Moore, The Sculpture Speaks, 1937
I have always paid great attention to natural forms, such as bones, shells, and pebbles etc. Sometimes for several years running I have been to the same part of the seashore – but each year a new shape of pebble has caught my eye, which the year before, though it was there in hundreds, I never saw ... Pebbles show Nature’s way of working stone. ibid.
The first hole made through a piece of stone is a revelation. The hole connects one side to the other, making it immediately more three-dimensional. A hole can itself have as much shape-meaning as a solid mass. Sculpture in air is possible, where the stone contains only the hole, which is the intended and considered form. The mystery of the hole – the mysterious fascination of caves in hill sides and cliffs. ibid.
Can we prove that this is a sketch by the great 20th century sculptor Henry Moore? Fake or Fortune? s7e3: Henry Moore
Every piece in Cornelius Gurlittt’s horde has to be researched. If it was art stolen or looted from Jewish families in World War II, it should be returned. ibid.
‘The review panel were delighted to accept this drawing into the catalogue raisonne.’ ibid. Henry Moore Foundation geezer