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LONDON TRIP TO THE V&A AND THE TATE

BRITAIN

Barbara Hepworth

Pelagos ('sea' in Greek) was inspired by a view of the bay at St Ives in Cornwall, where two arms of land enfold the sea on either side. The hollowed-out wood has a spiral formation resembling a shell, a wave or the roll of a hill.

Hepworth wanted the taut strings to express 'the tension I felt between myself and the sea, the wind or the hills'. She moved to Cornwall with her husband Ben Nicholson in 1939, and produced some of her finest Sculpture in its wild landscape.

Henry Moore Recumbent Figure 1938 is a large sculpture of a reclining female figure carved from a rectangular block of Green Hornton stone. The sculpture was commissioned by Russian émigré architect Serge Chermayeff (1900–1996) in 1938 for the grounds of Bentley Wood, his house in Holland, Sussex. In 1955 Moore recalled that Chermayeff:‘wanted me to say whether I could visualize one of my figures standing at the intersection of terrace and garden. It was a long, low-lying building and there was an open view of the long sinuous lines of the Downs. ‘

The sculpture did not need to be on the terrace at ‘Bentley Wood’ but it fitted in well.

In Tate Britain the ‘Recumbent Figure’ sits easily within the gallery’s environment.

Peter Lowe Peter Lowe has constantly used simple (as opposed to complex) arithmetic forms to layer and develop his work, which he then might subject to an ordered change.

‘Diagonal Grey Relief’ is one of the first group termed by the artist ‘Volume and Void’.

This work – painted a grey monochrome – is formed from the rational and structured placement of positive and negative space side by side which means he has cut out squares within the main square shape and layered to create a 3-D piece.

The missing square are the negative space and the solid and layered are the positive space. The layers spaces represent growth.

FN Souza Francis Newton Souza, born in the Portuguese colony of Goa to Indian parents, was brought up as a strict Catholic. In 1949, having become a well-established artist in India, he moved to Britain. After six difficult years living in London, he began to build a considerable reputation as a writer and painter.

This piece ‘Crucifixion’ 1959 oil paint of board, moves away from the image of Christ as a blonde white man and shows him as a dark skinned man with the wounds and blood of crucifixion

Frances Bacon

‘Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion’ by Frances Bacon which he later related them to The Eumenides, vengeful furies of Greek myth. Bacon typically drew on various sources, including photography where he tried to recreate the sense movement and brushstroke direction . The exhibition of the work in April 1945 coincided with the release of the first photographs and film footage of the Nazi concentration camps and for some it reflected the pessimistic world brought in by the Holocaust and the beginning of age of nuclear weapons.

King Crimson

King Crimson are an English rock band formed in 1968 in London. The band has had over 20 different musicians in the line up as they went through numerous formations. The constant member of the band is Robert Fripp. The band disbanded in 1974 and reformed in 1981 and produced 3 albums in 4 years and then had another dip for 10 years until Fripp revived the band again in 1994.The band has influenced lots of other bands such as Nirvana and even Iron Maiden.The album cover was painted by Barry Godber, a computer programmer who died after the album’s release. It was the only album cover he designed and Robert Fripp owns the original painting.

Some of my initial ideas

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Using Sketch-Up I recreated Peter Lowe’s ‘Diagonal Grey Relief’

Another artist that I have looked at is Jim Phillips who is a skateboard artist for the skateboard company ‘Santa Cruz’.Jim Phillips artwork appears on skateboard, surf boards, rock posters and has produced books of his art and designs.Jim Phillips was the major influence for my hand and King Crimson design because the palm of the hand has an open mouth that appears to be screaming. The King Crimson ‘the Schizoid Man’ painting of the was intriguing and haunting and I saw a synergy with the open mouth of Phillip’s ‘screaming hand blue’.The cultural influence of art on such play items as surf and skateboard is a playful but significant art form. The technology in the application of the art has gone from simple tattoo art to highly illustrated art and actual photographs.

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I have hand drawn the hand of ‘screaming hand blue’ with the face of the King Crimson ‘Schizoid Man’ and plan to do a triptych of monochrome, blue and crimson .

Photoshop the King Crimson ‘Schizoid Man’ on to the figure of the middle painting of Francis Bacon’s ‘Three Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion’. This is the mixture of two abstract pieces to make an absurd image. Francis Bacon’s painting is turned in to an Hieronymus Bosch style image (‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ and the ‘last judgement’ panel)

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The Recumbent figure with a mask of the King Crimson after the style of Marcel Duchamp’s Mona Lisa with a Moustache. The aim of this was to juxtapose the cartoon face of the ‘Schizoid Man’ with the smooth abstract form of Henry Moore’s figure.

My Intensions:

1. To create a triptych of the ‘Schizoid Man in the Hand’ in monochrome, blue and crimsonI shall draw freehand the hands and face of the Schizoid Man and colour with acrylic paint.

2. To create a 3-D sculpture papier-mache with a mask of the King Crimson ‘Schizoid Man’ made from card and fixed to the sculpture. The papier-mache would be newspaper with a thin wash of yellow ochre over to leave the newsprint exposed. The mask would in the style of Peter Lowe to create a 3-D layered effect.