Henry Moore: Sculptural Process and Public Identity

Presented by the artist to Tate in 1978 as part of the Henry Moore Gift.

This is a two-part bronze sculpture comprised of interlocking forms mounted on a shallow circular bronze base fixed to a cylindrical concrete plinth. It is attached to the base and plinth with bolts that run through its underside.

Moore made the original model for this sculpture in plaster, which was used to make the mould from which the bronze was cast. The model was made by applying successive layers of plaster to a supportive armature, which was probably constructed from lengths of wood. The texture of the plaster was replicated in the surface of the bronze, which reveals that Moore used various tools to exploit the properties of the plaster as it dried. Deep striations would have been made with sharp tools while the plaster was still slightly wet, whereas the smooth finish of the high points was creating by filing and sanding the plaster after it had hardened (fig.1).

The bronze was sand cast at the Noack Foundry in West Berlin. The maximum size of a cast piece of bronze is determined by the size of the crucible used at the foundry, for bronze must be cast in a single pour. To cast this monumental sculpture the plaster original had to be cut up into approximately fifty pieces, which were cast separately and subsequently welded together. The walls of the bronze are approximately 6 mm thick and it weighs 1800 kilograms. After it was assembled the welds were filed down and textured to integrate them with the surrounding surface, a process known as ‘chasing’. However, welding seams remain visible on the surface of the sculpture along with rectangular patches where faults in the cast have been repaired (fig.2). Once the various parts of the sculpture had been assembled abrasives were applied to the bronze to remove casting residues and to produce a reflective, polished surface.

The surface of the bronze was coloured with an artificial patina. This was achieved by applying chemical solutions to the surface of the bronze, which triggered a reaction that produced coloured compounds. A number of different chemical solutions were used to patinate Locking Piece (fig.3). Its slightly transparent, brown-black hues may have been produced using chemicals such as potassium or ammonium polysulphide, while the warmer orange-brown tones were probably created by applying ferric nitrate. There is also some evidence of an overlying green patina on the inside surfaces. The patina was probably rubbed back at the sculpture’s high points before diluted patination chemicals were applied to the exposed surfaces to produce their polished, almost golden appearance. Brightly finished bronzes can quickly become dull in an outdoor environment, and so the surface was then coated with lacquer to protect its range of colours. After some years of outdoor display the lacquer coat began to break down and was replaced in 1980.

In January 1990 the sculpture was blown off its base by what Tate conservator Derek Pullen described as ‘an extraordinary gust of wind’ and was severely damaged in the process (fig.4). The bronze was badly scored and buckled and a large crack was torn in the structure (fig.5). It was then sent back to the Noack Foundry in Berlin so that the bronze could be repaired and re-patinated before an acrylic lacquer coating was reapplied to the surface. The sculpture was then returned to its position in the centre of an ornamental pond where it stood until 2004, when the surrounding area was re-landscaped. At this point the decision was made to place the sculpture on a new concrete plinth and to paint the bronze base black. Tate also improved the sculpture’s fixings to make it more secure.

Locking Piece is made up of two large interconnecting forms stacked one on top of the other. It is one of Henry Moore’s best known public sculptures and has been on display near Tate Britain in Riverside Walk Gardens, Millbank, since 1968, having been gifted to Tate by the artist a year earlier. Tate’s work was the third of three bronze casts of this sculpture produced between 1964 and 1967, and was originally the artist’s copy.

The two large pieces that comprise the bulk of Locking Piece are formed of amorphous protrusions that connect individual parts of the sculpture together or project into space at various angles, although the overall shape is quite compact. A hollow space at the centre of the sculpture is created where the upper piece arches over the concave piece below (fig.1). At one end a third, flatter, disk-like piece is wedged between the facing edges of the two larger pieces like cartilage between two bones. Here, both the upper and lower projections are short, tubular and have straight edges on one side. The lower form also has an irregular surface that slopes at a diagonal, causing the disk-like piece to rest unevenly upon it. The form projecting from the upper piece arches up and over the hollow space into a second, thinner protrusion with a curved face and tall, broad sides. This form projects almost horizontally to overhang the lower piece (fig.2).

At the other end of the sculpture a thin spur from the upper piece appears to hook into a crevice in the lower piece. This cavity is formed by a rounded, twisting mass crossing the outer edge of the sculpture at a diagonal angle and a thin, faceted wedge that rises up from the base (fig.3). From one side, in between the bulkier forms joined by the disk at one end and the interlocking spurs at the other, is a tall, narrow, vertical gorge created by the curvature of the upper and lower pieces.

In 1966 Moore’s biographer Donald Hall described Locking Piece as follows:

In 1964 Moore traced the origins of the two interlocking forms that comprise Locking Piece to a specific moment, stating:

Moore reiterated the sculpture’s indebtedness to two interlocking pebbles in 1980 by telling a similar anecdote.3 However, in 1968 he provided a slightly different account of the sculpture’s origins, stating that ‘the germ of the idea originated from a sawn fragment of bone with a socket and joint which was found in the garden. Given this theme, I made the complete sculpture’.4 Despite their differences, it is possible that both of these explanations are true, and that Moore found an equivalent to the interlocking pebbles in bone joints, working from both sets of objects to develop his sculptural ideas.

A mounted bone fragment in Moore’s studio may have provided the source for Locking Piece (fig.4). The bone, believed to be a vertebra, features a thin spur curving into two rounded forms on either side. The footprint of Locking Piece takes a similar shape (fig.5), which suggests that Moore may have begun making his maquette for the sculpture by creating a plaster reproduction of the bone, which he then modified.

Moore looked increasingly to bones and skeletal structures during the 1960s, not only for their formal qualities but for their symbolic properties as well. The critic Albert Elsen recalled that, during a visit to the artist’s studio in 1967, ‘Moore clenched his fist making his knuckles white and pointed out how he wanted to show the force of the bone’s pressure on the skin’.5 Moore’s interest in exposing the structural tension and strength of bones may serve to explain the arrangement of forms in Locking Piece. As Moore told Elsen, ‘the real skeleton becomes the outer shell of the body in my work. If a work was all flesh and no bone, it would have no architectural structure’.6

Having settled upon the design of his maquette for Locking Piece, Moore probably gave it to his studio assistants so that it could be enlarged to a three-foot working model (fig.6).7 None of the small maquettes for Locking Piece have survived and according to Hall, ‘the maquette was never cast and was destroyed, because the revisions in the three-foot version improved upon it’.8 Moore often amended his designs once they had been transferred to a larger scale, with the working model providing an opportunity to more accurately envisage how the full-size sculpture would look. By systematically charting and measuring specific points on the surface of the maquette it was possible to produce a scaled-up version of the sculpture that retained its original proportions. This process was probably carried out in the White Studio in the grounds of Moore’s home, Hoglands, in Hertfordshire. In 1962 Moore’s assistants included Isaac Witkin and Ron Robertson-Swann, both of whom also worked on the full-size plaster for Locking Piece.9 Moore regularly delegated the enlargement work to his assistants, acknowledging that ‘to have their help saves me a great amount of time’.10 The plaster Working Model for Locking Piece is held in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and was cast in an edition of nine bronzes. A bronze version of the working model was exhibited before Moore scaled up the design to full size; however, he had always intended to make a further enlargement to the sculpture.11

In order to make the full-size Locking Piece Moore’s assistants would have used the working model as a guide. According to Hall, Moore began work on the full-size plaster in October 1963 and completed it by February 1964 (fig.7). Hall recorded that:

Having constructed the armature, the hollow structure was then draped in scrim, a bandage-like fabric onto which layers of plaster could be built up. Moore’s assistants generally worked autonomously, but when it came to Locking Piece Witkin observed that, ‘I’ve never seen Henry so involved as with this one’.13

Hall recounted that by late December 1963, although it looked finished, the plaster still required significant work. While working on it in the studio Moore could only stand a few feet away from the sculpture and was therefore unable to obtain a full view of its forms as they would be seen in the round (fig.8). Bad weather had prevented him from taking the plaster outside, where he could view it from a distance. Hall visited Moore on 20 December and recorded that Witkin and Robertson-Swann pushed the plaster out of the studio and onto the concrete patio on a wooden base with casters before slowly rotating it for Moore’s benefit. The working model was placed alongside the larger plaster so that Moore could compare the two at each rotation. Moore did not replicate the working model exactly but chose to make various adjustments to account for the increased height of the full-size sculpture. Hall described how, ‘after Moore had stared hard at the two Locking Pieces from each new angle, he started giving directions for revision, sometimes making rapid pencil sketches in a notebook while Isaac Witkin looked over his shoulder’.14

After the plaster had been built up to the required size Moore worked into the surface using an array of tools including spatulas, cheese graters and chisels. These tools could be used to produce a variety of textures depending on the consistency of the plaster as it dried, and the different types of markings, grooves and cuts Moore made were reproduced in the cast bronze. The outer surfaces of Locking Piece are generally smooth and highly polished, while the inner areas have been heavily textured with short, shallow incisions. Deeper and longer horizontal gouges have been made in the thin face of the overhanging projection (fig.9).

According to Hall, the full-size plaster version of Locking Piece was completed on 26 January 1964. Tate’s bronze cast of this sculpture was made at the Noack Foundry in West Berlin using the sand casting technique.15 This would have required the foundry technicians to carve up the plaster sculpture into sections and take moulds from each individual piece. These moulds would then be filled with molten bronze, which hardened into cast pieces of the sculpture. Once all the individual pieces had been cast in this way they were welded together and their casting seams were filed down until the joins between them were barely perceptible. However, some casting seams on Locking Piece have partially re-emerged over time (fig.10). This usually occurs when the metal used to weld the sections together has a different composition to the bronze. A number of small, square patches on the surface indicate where the bronze has been replaced or repaired (fig.11). These patches may have been inserted where the surface had a fault or was damaged at a later date.

After it had been cast and assembled the bronze sculpture was patinated. A patina is the surface colour of a sculpture and can develop naturally when the sculpture is displayed outdoors; bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, and exposure to chemicals in the air causes the copper to oxidise and turn the surface green over time. However a patina is usually achieved and controlled artificially by applying chemical solutions to the preheated bronze surface. Moore usually patinated bronze sculptures at his studio. However, during the 1960s and early 1970s he regularly travelled to the Noack Foundry and patinated his larger sculptures there to avoid the cost of transporting them. It is uncertain where Locking Piece was originally patinated but it has since been re-patinated several times. It has a variegated brown patina punctuated with reddish-amber and dark green shades. These colours are maintained by a wax coating which has been reapplied on multiple occasions (fig.12).

Although Locking Piece appears to be an abstract sculpture, in 1977 the curator Alan Bowness suggested that it offered ‘a paradigm of the human relationship, with figures groping, touching, embracing, coupling, even merging with each other ... in the Locking Piece the forms are gripped in a tight embrace’.16 Moore had long believed that non-representational works of art could reveal deeper truths about humanity, stating in 1934 that:

In an article for the journal Art International published in 1967, the critic Albert Elsen proposed that Locking Piece, along with other works such as Three Way Piece No.2: Archer 1964 (Tate T02299) and Two Piece Sculpture No.7: Pipe 1966 (Tate T02300), revealed a newfound freedom in Moore’s approach to abstraction. For Elsen, by the late 1960s Moore’s reputation was such that he allowed himself to move beyond ‘his signature themes of the reclining figure or the mother and child’ to undertake a more considered and sustained engagement with abstract forms that surpassed his earlier experiments of the 1930s. Elsen suggested, ‘late in his career Moore seems to have become more boldly and consistently inventive rather than interpretive, without withholding his natural generosity of spirit or the fullness of intellect and feeling with which his figural work has always been endowed’.18

While most critics, including Bowness, Herbert Read and Robert Melville, agreed that Locking Piece was best understood with reference to Moore’s interest in bones and the structures of skeletons, others have acknowledged the open-ended nature of Moore’s sculpture.19 For example, the artist and writer William Packer has argued that Locking Piece ‘has the massive monumentality of a mill, fraught with that sense of the imminent, heavy horizontal turn. It has the domed form of a skull, that seems to clip and hinge together, jaw and cranium. Here are the smoothed and hollowed declivities and opportune points of pressure of the Venetian rowlock, here the deep cavity to hold the ball of hip or shoulder’.20 The multiple ways of perceiving Locking Piece reflected Moore’s belief that good sculpture invited divergent interpretations:

In 1968 Moore declared that ‘“Locking Piece” is certainly the largest and perhaps the most successful of my “fitting-together” sculptures’.22 Nine years later he elaborated why he considered it a success:

Following Moore’s account of the work, the ‘universal touch’ of Locking Piece might perhaps be identified in the balance between ‘unity’ and ‘variety’ to which Moore claimed to aspire, and specifically in his use of natural forms to attain it. Although the critic John Russell argued that the sculpture was ‘grim-faced’, Bowness concluded that works such as Locking Piece made between 1964 and 1973 ‘represent, in my opinion, not only the culmination of Moore’s achievement but the most original and challenging sculpture being produced anywhere in the world today’.24

Prior to entering the Tate collection Locking Piece was exhibited at the Montreal Expo in 1967, where it was positioned in a moat surrounding two sides of the British Pavilion, designed by architect Basil Spence (fig.13). This event provided a platform for participating countries to champion their unique cultural and technological achievements. Architect and designer Theo Crosby curated the ‘Industrial Britain’ section of the British Pavilion and in 1968 contended that the visual arts had been underrepresented in the British displays. Although Crosby reserved praise for exhibited works by younger artists including Tess Jarry, Joe Tilson and Malcolm Carder, he concluded that overall ‘the inclusion of works of art in the pavilion is disappointing. The French pavilion has lots, including an hilariously funny roof garden by Niki St Phalle and Tinguely. We managed only the standard Henry Moore’.25

Crosby’s dismissal of Locking Piece as a ‘standard Henry Moore’ reflects an attitude towards Moore’s work that became increasingly pervasive during the late 1960s and 1970s. According to the art historian Iain Boal, by this time Moore had established himself as ‘the open-air sculptor par excellence’ through his commissions for urban spaces and corporate headquarters.26 In the context of the British Pavilion and its overt focus on youth, innovation and fashion, these associations and the monumental nature of the sculpture itself may have made Locking Piece appear outmoded.

Upon its return from Montreal Locking Piece was displayed outdoors in Riverside Walk Gardens, Millbank, close to the Tate Gallery. In January 1966 Tate Director Norman Reid had received a letter from A.G. Dawtry, town clerk for the City of Westminster, informing him of the city council’s intention to build a walkway along Millbank terminating in a small public garden next to Vauxhall Bridge. The inclusion of a piece of modern sculpture had been a feature of the initial plans for the garden and by the end of 1966 the architects commissioned to design the garden had contacted Moore to enquire about the availability of Locking Piece. Moore confirmed that the sculpture was due to return from the Montreal Expo at the end of 1967 and would thus be available for the completion of the garden in 1968. Moore then gifted Locking Piece to the Tate, who in turn agreed to loan the sculpture to Westminster City Council.

The sculpture was displayed on a hexagonal pedestal finished in a dark aggregate, surrounded by a pool crossed by arcing jets of water (fig.14). It was unveiled on 19 July 1968 as part of Moore’s seventieth birthday celebrations. Following a visit to Hoglands in December that year, Norman Reid noted that the artist ‘expressed his particular satisfaction at the siting of the Locking Piece’.27 When Locking Piece entered the Tate collection in 1967 Moore regarded the sculpture as part of a larger gift that he intended to make to the gallery. The sculpture was thereby formally presented by the artist to the Tate in 1978 and was included in the exhibition The Henry Moore Gift, which was held that same year.

Locking Piece has remained in the Riverside Walk Gardens since 1968, although in 1976 Moore expressed reservations about its original plinth. In photographer David Finn’s anthology of his outdoor sculpture, Moore said of Locking Piece, ‘The location isn’t bad, but I don’t like the idea of the fountain – nor that great big thing the sculpture is standing on, its pedestal is too powerful for the sculpture; it knocks the strength out of the sculpture’.28

In January 1990 the sculpture was blown off its base by what Tate conservator Derek Pullen described as ‘an extraordinary gust of wind’ during a fierce storm and was severely damaged (fig.15).29 Pullen reported that ‘the hollow bronze has suffered a severe impact resulting in structural and surface damage requiring foundry repairs and restoration’.30 The bronze was badly scarred and dented, with welding seams opening up and a large hole torn in the sculpture near its base. In order to repair the damage Locking Piece was sent back to the Noack Foundry in Berlin. Its surface was also re-patinated and given a protective acrylic lacquer coating.

In November 2002 Westminster City Council began to draw up plans for re-landscaping Millbank Garden and considered relocating Locking Piece. Moore’s concerns about the size of the pedestal and the surrounding pool were debated at length. It was eventually agreed by Tate and the council that a tall pedestal should be retained as its height would not only allow the sculpture to be seen from all directions, but would also discourage climbing and vandalism. Although the position of the sculpture within the garden was not significantly changed, the pool surrounding the pedestal and its water jets were removed. In addition, a new pedestal was constructed, which, unlike the original, was cylindrical and had a smooth finish. The re-landscaping of the garden and the re-installation of the sculpture were completed in the summer of 2004 (fig.16).

Locking Piece was cast in an edition of three plus one artist’s copy. The first bronze cast was exhibited at Documenta 3 in Kassel, Germany, in the summer of 1964 before it was relocated to its designated site at the Banque Lambert in October 1964.31 During that same summer a second full-size plaster version of Locking Piece was exhibited at the Tate Gallery as part of the Gulbenkian exhibition.32 At this time the Friends of the Tate considered acquiring the plaster for the gallery. It was priced at £1,400, which the gallery’s director Norman Reid observed was ‘the cost of the cast and transport’.33 Although the Friends were generally in favour of purchasing a sculpture by Moore, the majority elected to wait until a large outdoor bronze became available and purchased René Magritte’s painting L’Homme au Journal 1927 (Tate T00680) instead. The second bronze version of Locking Piece was also cast in the summer of 1964 and was acquired by the Gemeente Museum in The Hague, Netherlands. The third cast, now owned by Tate, was the artist’s copy, although the casting date is unrecorded. A fourth was produced at an unknown later date and is held in the collection of the Henry Moore Foundation. It is likely that the original plaster used by Noack was destroyed after the bronzes had been cast, while the other full-size plaster was destroyed in 1971 and replaced with two fibreglass casts, both of which are now owned by the Henry Moore Foundation.