Henry Moore: On Being a Sculptor

By Henry Moore

Henry Spencer Moore (1898-1986) was arguably the most influential British sculptor of the twentieth century. Brought up in Castleford in Yorkshire, Moore ended his life completing commissions for large-scale public sculptures in countries around the world. The scale of Moore's success in later life has tended to obscure the radical nature of his achievement. Rejecting the influence of his teachers and inspired by works from other cultures he saw in museums, Moore championed direct carving, evolving abstract sculptures derived from the human body. He was involved in the modernist Seven and Give Society and later in Unit One. Written by Henry Moore in the 1930s, these three powerful, polemical texts lay out his ideas about sculpture, calling for truth to materials, openness to other sculptural traditions and understanding of the importance of scale. Illustrated with archival photographs and with an introduction by his daughter Mary Moore, this book gives new insights into Moore's working methods and inspiration and speaks directly to artists today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tate Publishing
• Release date: Sep 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781849761376

Book preview

HENRY MOORE

ON BEING A SCULPTOR

TATE PUBLISHING

CONTENTS

Title Page

FOREWORD

A VIEW OF SCULPTURE

THE SCULPTOR SPEAKS

FROM UNIT ONE

Copyright

FOREWORD

MARY MOORE

Though my father wrote in The Listener that it is a ‘mistake for a sculptor or painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work’, as Alan Wilkinson’s edited collection of HM writing and conversations points out, contradictorily the Henry Moore bibliography lists 598 entries including books, letters, exhibition catalogues, newspaper articles, periodical articles, interviews, sound recordings, films, and videos.

Certainly, from a very early age I was keenly aware that communication was a vitally important part of my father’s life, and therefore everyday family life. He took the most enormous time and care over writing anything, be it an article or just a letter. He even loved to scan the spelling and punctuation in my primary school essays. And we often played word games at lunch with the OED as referee. People came to our house all the time, from TV crews to architects, writers, world famous musicians, or just art students turning up, unannounced, on a bicycle. Our house was an open house. Astonishingly, the balance between the public and the private, the internal and the external, seemed to flow naturally and dynamically.

Without question, my father was a great communicator. It is often given