1/4 Abstract Artists In Their Own Words

[Music] abstraction was one of the most significant developments in the story of 20th century art by Breaking Free from the direct representation of the world around us abstract artists created a new visual language and transformed the possibility of what art could be the story of abstraction in Western Art spans the radical geometric paintings of revolutionary Russia to post-war America and the largescale drips and splodes of Jackson poock and New York's abstract expressionists while in Britain artists responded to this visual Revolution with an astonishing variety of groundbreaking new art from bar Barbara hepworth's naturally inspired forms to Bridget Riley's hard-edged geometric painting and Anthony caros Industrial Steel sculptures British artists created some of the most pioneering and internationally acclaimed abstract art of the 20th century and along the way the BBC has been there to both capture them at work and record their words I got more and more involved this idea that it I wasn't making a human being but I was making a place where you could go in this film we'll delve into the archives to reveal the passionate and dedicated personalities behind the art it's a life or death thing you know I mean there are good things in it it's just that I don't quite know how to do it Rhythm and repetition are at the root of movement they create a situation within which the most simple basic forms start to become visually active and we'll see how abstract art sometimes confounded and even angered those who encountered it to spend £15,000 on a sculpture that no one really understands is a complete complete waste of money so how did the artists that created this challenging new form of art explain their work to the world if abstract art doesn't describe the world around us what is it about it's a question that's often been asked of abstract artists and one which they've all tried to answer in their own [Music] words by the middle of the 20th century British abstract artists were among the the most original working anywhere in the world be art rewrote the [Music] rules captured the public imagination came to stand for the highest of ideals and used a new language of art that represented a dramatic break from what had gone before for centuries people presumed that a painting or a sculpture had to be of something whether that something was a person or a landscape or an event but in the 20th century that idea was turned on its head artists began to say no our artworks don't need to represent anything they stand [Music] alone in the first Decades of the 20th century artists in Europe began to create radical forms of abstract art from malevich's suprematist paintings to mandrian simplified Arrangements of line and color but this wasn't just a new style of painting it was believ that this kind of art could change society both malovich and mandrian speak about this desire to create a dynamic kind of uh Society of equal value so these non-human forms squares circles triangles lines seemed to offer a kind of Purity and also a universality it was something they felt could be legible to anyone regardless of their language or their nationality or their place in society but while Europe was going through one of the greatest art upheavals in history Britain had largely clung to a romantic figurative tradition there were however a few radic iCal exceptions and leading them were Ben Nicholson and Barbara heworth at first artistic allies they became lovers and married in 1938 I mean Barbara heworth and Ben Nicholson came together in the early 1930s together they moved towards abstraction and really pretty much exactly the same time they both arrived at pure abstract art you know Barbara pure abstract sculpture Ben Nicholson at pure abstract painting and reliefs so absolutely they were in intrinsically linked in the 1930s and Beyond in their journey into abstraction while much of British art looked back Ben Nicholson had forged many links with Continental avangard artists and developed his own distinctive form of abstract art in response he was a consumate Image Maker and every picture was a new problem that required a new solution and by the mid 1930s he has made the purest abstract works you'll almost ever see these white relief with just a couple of circles and squares and rectangles and when I look at those reliefs I think wow those are audacious those are [Music] beautiful Nicholson was extremely camera shy in fact this rare footage of him with heo and their three children is perhaps the only in existence but it was heworth who arguably went on to make a greater impact in the public imagination as an abstract artist and she was a far more willing participant in front of the camera in 1961 the BBC traveled to hepworth's home and studio in St IES to film her at [Music] work the shapes of her sculptures May remind one of the shapes of hills and trees their Contours flow in The rhythms of the Sea of the beach of sand dunes of birds in flight or of the human figure her sculpture may call these things to mind but it never describes them their meaning is ambiguous it took a long time for me to find my own personal way of making sculpture a long time to discover the purest forms which would exactly evoke my own Sensations and to visualize images which would Express the timelessness of primitive forces which I felt and the constant urges towards survival and growth which I knew to be fundamental both to the human being and to the landscape in which we stand [Music] Barbara Hepworth was born in 1903 in Wakefield in Yorkshire she studied with Henry Moore at leads College of Art in the mid 1920s and the two remained friends and Rivals throughout their lives Hepworth began by making figurative sculpture but in the first half of the 1930s she made the move into abstraction in an interview recorded decades later she described the process she went through so they gradually became more and more um abstract in so far as anatomically I took great latitudes sooner and tried to get everything that was not necessary to my idea until I got got to 29 when I did this torso which I can't find called averywood and that was entirely a suggestion of a figure it was a form which simply had strange undulations nothing else and then I thought suddenly I've got my own calligraphy now I know what I have to do from that point on hepworth's art was almost exclusively abstract and yet her art always remained influenced by the human form and the natural world she is seen as the maker of the most pure abstract forms and yet a human presence or the idea of a human figure exists through almost all of her sculptures when you see in the 1930s the later 1930s when she makes these sort of elegant tapering wooden forms they still hark back you they clearly they have evolved from the standing figure when you see two forms together um there's certainly a metaphorical reference to the idea of two figures in sort of harmonious composition if you like and I think one of the things that runs through U most of heth's art is the use of um harmonious spatial arrangements as a kind of metaphor or symbol for a human um Harmony many people select a stone or a pebble to carry for the day the weight and form and texture felt in our hands relates us to the past and gives us a sense of a universal Force she loved tactility the touch of a pebble she wanted to try and capture how the human form interacted with the wind with natural forces around it perhaps it's a great strength lies in the fact that it transcends those sources that she managed to evolve a purity of form which still resonates today I think any generation any society can look at those and somehow find a pleasure and a recognition in the textures the volumes he's very lyrical for are the poetic shapes that she's evolved through the 1950s and 60s hepworth's reputation grew and grew and in 1968 she had a major retrospective of her work at the Tate [Music] Gallery the BBC was there when a group of Yorkshire school children visited the exhibition and met the artisten Fate was like a spider we because the strings AR much too thick yes the cross effect is looks wonderful yes I agree with you there the first question the children asked her was why do your sculptures have holes in them well I found out as I worked and that's a long time ago now about 1931 that um by carving right through with a hoe I was able to see the landscape through the hill and see what was happening behind the sculpture and be able to put my fingers in my hands around it in another room you have a piece of sculpture called Square form this reminds me of being energetic because the squares are ping on top of one another as if it was a race to try and reach a sky and see you became the highest am I right or am I wrong place you're quite right absolutely right yes I didn't realize I liked abstract art until when I was about 15 I was on my own at the edra festival and I got up early one morning a beautiful sunny morning and went down to the botanic gardens in Edinburgh and there's a huge exhibition of Barbara heworth there and I was completely bowled over I don't think art has to be very complicated or has to be very difficult and I think it was the purity of her image her shapes in that lovely dappled Green Landscape that just completely entranced me and I spent hours and hours and hours just walking around staring at the holes at the shapes the kind of those beautiful biomorphic forms and the complex little lates in IDE them and so on but that was the moment I realized I loved abstract painting or abstract art I should say and it's never left me Barbara heworth has had a huge impact I mean she was a really pioneering artist making the first completely abstract sculpture she's pretty much as close to a household name as a modern artist can be you know Henry Moore of course was a hugely important figure uh in the PO War years but so too was Barbara heworth and together I think they did more than almost anyone to to to to bring British art to the world but also to popularize abstraction and I think a perfect symbol of her importance in the postwar years is if you uh look at um in the early 1960s the United Nations commissioned a huge 21t High abstract sculpture to stand in front of the United Nations and what's interesting about that is they chose Barbara heworth they choose a female artist from Britain living in Cornwell and they choose something abstract and I think that says a [Music] lot Barbara heworth was one of the first British artists to go abstract but she was soon joined by a very different kind of abstract artist Victor parore filmed here at his house in Malta by the BBC in 1979 gave up making figurative art

Channel: Art Documentaries

Views: 188,974

Keywords: Abstract Art (Art Period/Movement), Barbara Hepworth

Id: 05L_INjOl-U

Length: 15min 0sec (900 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 08 2014