Henry Moore: Sculptural Process and Public Identity

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

This sculpture was cast in bronze from an original model made of plaster. Moore would have made this model by building successive layers of wet plaster over a supportive armature constructed from lengths of wood wrapped in scrim, a bandage-like fabric (fig.1). After the plaster had been built up to the required depth and left to harden Moore used various files and abrasive papers to smooth the surface. The finished plaster model was then sent to a foundry where a mould was made from which the sculpture was cast in bronze.

After it was cast the surface of the bronze was finished with fine abrasives to give it a smooth, reflective surface that left little evidence as to how it was made. In contrast, the bronze base has a granular surface, which suggests that it was created using the sand casting technique. A large square patch of bronze can be seen around halfway up the curved edge of the D-shaped vertical form, and was probably inserted to repair a flaw in the cast (fig.2).

Following the completion of the casting and finishing process the sculpture was artificially patinated by applying chemical solutions to its surface, which reacted with the bronze to produce coloured compounds. The sculpture has a variegated brown patina that was probably achieved by using at least two different chemical recipes in varying concentrations. In certain areas the patina is transparent, which allows the lighter original colour of the raw bronze to shine through (fig.3). After patination the surface of the sculpture was lacquered to prevent the bronze from oxidising and changing colour. However, the lacquer has broken down in certain areas, which has speckled the patina and allowed the colour of the bronze to become duller over time (fig.4). A slight green haze can also be seen on one part of the sculpture. This may not have been induced artificially but may have been caused by chemicals in the air when the sculpture was displayed outdoors. In contrast to the sculpture’s variegated patina, the bronze base is a uniform dark brown.

The stamped foundry mark ‘H.NOACK BERLIN’ can be seen on the vertical column near where it meets the base (fig.5), while the artist’s signature and edition number, ‘Moore 0/7’, are inscribed on the side of the base (fig.6).

Working Model for Three Way Piece No.2: Archer 1964 is a bronze sculpture with smooth reflective surfaces comprising irregular rounded forms, sharp edges and points arranged into a seemingly organic, albeit abstract composition.

The sculpture is made up of two upright elements of roughly the same height – an elliptical, crooked column and a D-shaped wedge – connected in the middle by a curvaceous horizontal bridge that creates an arched space beneath (fig.1). The top of the column-like form is flat and smooth and appears truncated, while the bottom of the wedge-shaped form, which terminates in a sharp point, does not quite meet the base (fig.2).

Two cantilevered protrusions project from one side of the horizontal bridge at right angles to the other elements of the sculpture. One has a rounded elliptical face and emerges smoothly from the joint between the wedge and the bridge, while the other, which has a flat, circular face, extends out from a swelling close to the midway point of the crocked column (fig.3).

From the side it is clear that the wedge is tilted at a slight angle so that it is not entirely vertical (fig.4). Indeed, the asymmetrical composition of the sculpture, whereby different elements project and twist in different directions, imbues it with a sense of dynamic tension, counterbalanced by the structure and solidity provided by the combination of equally weighted vertical and horizontal forms.

Working Model for Three Way Piece No.2: Archer originated from a small hand-held maquette, made in the small sculpture studio on the grounds of Moore’s home, Hoglands, in Perry Green, Hertfordshire (fig.5). By the time Moore made this maquette in 1964 it was common practice for him to begin work on a new sculptural idea with a small plaster model. In 1978 he explained:

Instead of formulating his ideas on paper and then translating them into sculptures, Moore found that by making small models in plaster he could test and develop his designs in three dimensions from the outset. When working on his ideas for Three Way Piece No.2: Archer Moore was particularly focused on the work’s three dimensionality, later stating that ‘the ideas behind a piece like The Archer simply cannot be drawn; its spatial existence is altogether complex. So there are no preliminary drawings for The Archer: the work exists from start to finish in three dimensions’.2 Moore thus sought to create a work that existed in the round, without a definite front or back.

In addition to serving as a private space in which to create his small models, the maquette studio housed Moore’s ever growing collection of natural objects. According to the filmmaker John Read, Moore liked to ‘shut himself away here, rummaging around, pondering and exploring’ his collection of bones, shells and flint stones, the shapes of which often served as starting points for Moore’s sculptures.3 The curator Alan Wilkinson asserted in 1987 that the maquette for Archer was inspired by his collection of flint stones, and in particular the way in which some of the stone fragments balanced on three points (fig.6).4 In an interview with the critic David Sylvester in 1963 Moore explained his approach to working with such objects:

It is likely that Moore developed the maquette for this sculpture in just this way, pressing stones into clay and taking plaster casts from the impressions left behind. Once it was dry, he could then modify the plaster by adding and subtracting forms and smoothening or sharpening edges. In 1978 Moore explained why he preferred working in plaster: ‘I use plaster for my maquettes in preference to clay because I can both build it up and cut it down. It is easily worked, while clay hardens and dries, so that it cannot be added to.’6 Unlike many of Moore’s maquettes Archer was never cast in bronze, although Wilkinson recalled that in the early 1970s he ‘found in Moore’s studio a fragment of this maquette for The Archer. Only the top half could be located. The maquette had been broken across the centre, the lower section was missing’.7

Discussing the cast of Working Model for Three Way Piece No.2: Archer held in the Cleveland Museum of Art, the curator Edward B. Henning suggested in 1971 that ‘the three ways of the title clearly refer to the three main elements of the work’: the irregular vertical form, the horizontal beam with twin projections and the large, curved wedge.8 However, Wilkinson refuted this explanation, suggesting that the ‘three ways’ in fact indicated the number of different positions in which the sculpture could be placed. Wilkinson supported this proposition with reference to Errol Jackson’s photographs of Moore experimenting with the maquette in his studio. In one photograph Moore holds the maquette in its final position (fig.7), while in another it is resting on its side, with the tip of the wedge tilting upwards to form the sculpture’s tallest point (fig.8).

Once it was complete Moore would have used the plaster maquette as a template for Working Model for Three Way Piece No.2: Archer. By systematically charting and measuring specific points on the surface of the maquette it was possible to enlarge the design while retaining its proportions. This scaling-up process was probably carried out in the White Studio at Hoglands, by one of Moore’s assistants, who in 1964 were Geoffrey Greetham, Robert Holding, Derek Howarth, Roland Piché, Ron Robertson-Swann, Hylton Stockwell and Yeheskiel Yardini. Moore could allocate the bulk of the enlargement work to his assistants because, as curator Julie Summers has noted, it was ‘a scientific rather than artistic process’.9 After calculating the measurements of the enlarged sculpture, a wooden armature was made to the required size and shape (fig.9). Each rod was precisely measured so that its outward-facing end corresponded with a ‘landmark’ or specific point on the surface of the sculpture as measured from the maquette.10 It is notable that Moore attached a strut running from the horizontal section to the base when constructing the armature. This provided additional support for the curved wedge as it was built up in plaster.

The wooden armature was then draped in scrim, a bandage-like fabric (fig.10). Layers of plaster were then applied on top to achieve the final form. It was at this point that Moore began to work into the plaster surface, using an array of tools including chisels, files and sandpaper. These tools could be used to produce a variety of textures depending on the consistency of the plaster as it dried (fig.11), which were in turn reproduced in the cast bronze. In 1977 the curator Alan Bowness noted that ‘most of the post-war bronzes had rough, variegated textures, but from 1963 or so Moore began to introduce smooth and polished bronze surfaces’, as seen in this work.11 Once Moore was satisfied with the overall shape and surface finish of the plaster it was deemed ready for casting. At this point it is likely that the supporting length of wood was removed and the hole left behind in the plaster was filled in.

Working Model for Three Way Piece No.2: Archer was cast in bronze at the Noack Foundry in West Berlin in 1965, and the foundry mark ‘H.NOACK BERLIN’ is stamped on the supporting leg (fig.12). In 1967 Moore stated, ‘I use the Noack foundry for casting most of my work because in my opinion, Noack is the best bronze founder I know ... Also, the Noack foundry is reliable in all ways – in keeping to dates of delivery – and in sustaining the quality of their work’.12 The sculpture was probably made using the sand casting technique, but the finely polished surfaces obscure definitive evidence as to which casting method was used.

A rectangular welding seam on the curved wedge of Tate’s Working Model for Three Way Piece No.2: Archer indicates that a patch of bronze was inserted into the sculpture, probably to repair a flaw in the bronze (fig.13). The repair may have originally been imperceptible but welds often become more prominent over time when the metal used to secure the patch has a different chemical composition to the surrounding bronze.

After it was cast and finished the bronze sculpture was probably then returned to Moore so that he could inspect the quality of the casting and decide how it should be patinated. A patina is the surface colour of a sculpture and is usually achieved by applying chemical solutions to the pre-heated bronze surface. In 1963 Moore asserted, ‘I always patinate bronze myself’, explaining that since he had conceived the sculpture it would be unlikely that anyone else would be able to replicate the exact colour he wanted.13 However, it is known that over time, as Moore increased his rate of production, technicians at Noack would sometimes patinate his sculptures at the foundry. In these instances Moore was nonetheless able to make later adjustments to the patina in his studio if necessary.

The patina of Tate’s version of Working Model for Three Way Piece No.2: Archer is made up of a range of black-brown, reddish-brown and golden shades (fig.14). These colours were probably achieved by using at least two different chemical patina recipes in varying concentrations. At the ‘high points’ or prominent areas of the sculpture, such as the flat faces of the protrusions and curved edges, the patina has been rubbed back to reveal golden tones. The bronze was also lacquered to preserve its range of colours, although the lacquer has broken down over time, causing the patina to appear speckled in certain areas.

Working Model for Three Way Piece No.2: Archer was cast in an edition of seven plus one artist’s copy. The artist’s signature and the edition number ‘0/7’ are inscribed on the base, the zero indicating that this work was the artist’s copy (fig.15). A bronze cast of the sculpture was first exhibited in Moore’s solo exhibition at Marlborough Galleria d’Arte in Rome in May 1965. The original plaster is housed in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Other examples of the working model are held in the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; the University of Florida Libraries, Gainesville; the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland; and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Other casts are believed to be held in private collections. In 1965 Moore produced a slightly larger version of the sculpture in white marble, which is held in the Didrichsen Art Museum in Helsinki.

In 1958 the Finnish architect Viljo Revell won an international competition to design a new city hall and civic square in Toronto, and recommended that Moore be invited to provide a public sculpture for the development. On 23 November 1964 Revell visited Moore at Hoglands to discuss ideas for the sculpture. Moore rarely designed sculptures to a specific brief; instead he would invite commissioning parties to choose from a selection of maquettes or mid-sized working models already in development, which allowed him to retain artistic control over a commission and develop ideas for his work independently of others. During his visit Revell saw Working Model for Three Way Piece No.2: Archer and discussed with Moore its suitability for the site in Toronto. Moore recalled, ‘we agreed that the sculpture I was doing at the time, if enlarged, would be suitable. As soon as Revell saw it he said it was right’.14 Moore completed the full-size sculpture in early 1966 and on 26 October that year Three Way Piece No.2: Archer was unveiled in Nathan Phillips Square as Toronto’s first major public sculpture (fig.16). Two days later the Toronto Star newspaper published the responses of twenty local people to ‘The Archer’. Norman Penturn, a realtor, said, ‘I agree with my seven-year-old who thinks it looks like a pair of ears. But it changes as you move around it. It’s perplexing – and overwhelming’. Abu Mohamed, a law student, stated, ‘It reminds me of birth, of something coming to life. It’s appropriate for Canada. The angular structure appeals to me. I think it’s magnificent’. Housewife Lorna Ross asserted, ‘I think it’s gorgeous and very impressive. It has beautiful lines, and reminds me of a woman. What’s money? Money is nothing’.15 In 2010 John Warkentin, author of Creating Memory: A Guide to Outdoor Public Sculpture in Toronto, wrote ‘despite initial public complaints, this sculpture, one of the few masterpieces in Toronto, has had a great impact on the city. In time it was adopted by Toronto citizens and led the way in Toronto’s increasing accommodation and acceptance of abstract art’.16 A second cast of the full-size Three Way Piece No.2: Archer is held in the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

As with Working Model for Three Way Piece No.1: Points (Tate T02298), this work was only given its subtitle, ‘Archer’, after its completion. According to the editor of Moore’s catalogue raisonné Alan Bowness, ‘the sub-titles bestowed on these sculptures by the artist ... [are] names of convenience, applied after the work is made, to help distinguish one piece from another’.17 However, Moore later recalled that:

Moore’s identification of a ‘stretching’ and ‘pulling’ motion inferred by the sculpture’s composition not only accounts for its subtitle, but concurs with the ‘modern preference’, noted by art historian Herbert Read in 1964, for ‘forms in dynamic rather than static relationship’.19 For Read, such forms possessed an ‘order’ or inherent logic ‘that proceeds from the balance or significant arrangement of irregular elements’ and enabled the sculptor to convey power and dynamism in static materials.20

In 1964, the same year Moore made his working model, Read identified him as a sculptor principally concerned with the creation of a ‘vital image’,21 and supported this claim with reference to Moore’s 1934 statement for the publication Unit One:

Read similarly defined vitality as ‘the quality the Chinese call ch’i, the universal force that flows through all things, and which the artist must transmit to his creations if they are to affect other people’.23 For both Moore and Read the term denoted a localised energy, the sculptural expression of which was bound by a set of criteria unrelated to qualities usually associated with conventional aesthetic ‘beauty’ such as harmony, regularity and symmetry. Moore’s concern for the expression of vitality is perhaps reflected by the ‘perplexing’ shapes and impression of ‘something coming to life’ identified by members of the Toronto public when they came to view Three Way Piece No.2: Archer for the first time.

In 1968 the critic and curator David Sylvester concurred with this assessment, noting in Moore’s work of the later 1960s a persistent vitality and ‘pent-up energy’.24 However, he also argued that the dynamism displayed by these works differed from the ‘pent-up energy’ of Moore’s pre-war sculptures, which Sylvester claimed was always ‘firmly contained’.25 What Read identified as a ‘modern preference’ for dynamic forms was in fact, in Sylvester’s view, a development of the 1960s and not directly synonymous with ‘vitality’ as it was defined by Moore in 1937. As such, a work like Recumbent Figure 1938 (Tate N05387) could convey a latent, evenly-distributed force in its large and gently undulating masses, whereas Working Model for Three Way Piece No.2: Archer utilises forms that appear to be in constant, active tension. For Sylvester, this ‘emphasis on dynamic rather than static qualities’ in Moore’s work of the later 1960s ‘represented a radically new way of thinking’.26 Sylvester cited Moore at length to support these claims:

Sylvester identified the phrases ‘key points’ and ‘pushing through’ as illuminating Moore’s newly articulated interests. He identified ‘passages where the surface is straining to contain something “pressing from the inside trying to burst” suddenly alternate with passages where the pressure is relaxed’.28 Sylvester attributed this shift to ‘a new extreme concentration on tactile and motor rather than visual sensations – on what is experienced in running one’s hands over the body, responding more sharply to its hardness and softness, its hollows and bumps, than when looking at them’.29 For Sylvester, the dynamic variations in the surfaces of the ‘hard and soft’ sculptures demand to be experienced in tactile rather than optical terms, resulting in a sequential, fragmentary experience. He concluded that ‘in no other works has Moore taken such risks. And this reflects a further change of attitude – a growing acceptance, indeed, a positive courting, of imperfection, incompleteness’.30

Critical responses to Working Model for Three Way Piece No.2: Archer have generally focused on its relationship to naturally occurring forms, its evocation of pressure and energy, and its possible resemblance to the figure of an ‘archer’. When a cast of the sculpture entered the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1970 the curator Edward B. Henning wrote that:

This relief is held in the British Museum, and as a student in the 1920s Moore drew significant inspiration from its collections. In 1947 he recalled that ‘one room after another in the British Museum took my enthusiasm’, and he went on to record this experience in a publication titled Henry Moore at the British Museum in 1981. ³² In this book, which contained images of fifty objects from the museum’s collection that had had some influence on his work, Moore explained that he associated relief sculptures with painting, since they were not sculpted in the round, and noted, ‘my personal choice in this book does not include relief sculpture, such as the wonderful Assyrian friezes or the Parthenon Frieze’.33 That Moore nonetheless appeared to admire the frieze suggests that it could have served as a source for Working Model for Three Way Piece No.2: Archer in the manner Henning described.

In the same text Henning argued that Working Model for Three Way Piece No.2: Archer ‘is more complex and varied formally than most works by the artists to whom Moore seems most closely related: Brancusi and Arp’.34 In 1937 Moore had acknowledged that Brancusi’s work had ‘been of historical importance in the development of contemporary sculpture’ but suggested that the way in which Brancusi reduced forms to singular shapes had become too limiting, writing that ‘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’.35 Working Model for Three Way Piece No.2: Archer might be viewed as an example of Moore’s attempt to ‘open out’ the sculptural form in varying configurations and directions that nonetheless formed an integrated whole.

However, Henning concluded that Moore’s project to advance the practice of sculpture was itself limited in comparison to the innovations of other artists, and that he produced work that was ultimately ‘less experimental than the work of artists such as Calder, Gabo, or Anthony Caro – all of whom involve space as an important element in their sculpture’.36 For Henning, Moore’s commitment to working in bronze and the physical density of his sculptures curtailed the experimental scope of his work in comparison to sculptors who had been able to integrate space into their compositions by using lighter, modern materials; plastics in the case of Naum Gabo, and iron and steel in the case of Alexander Calder and Anthony Caro.

Caro had worked as Moore’s studio assistant between 1951 and 1953 and many art critics in the 1960s pitted the two artists against each other. Caro was often cast as the younger, more progressive artist and Moore as the conservative elder statesman, outpaced by contemporary artistic developments. In 1956 the critic Norbert Lynton claimed, ‘Moore is one of a handful of outstanding sculptors our century has seen so far, but a lot of his recent work has been mediocre. Caro is one of a handful of very interesting younger British sculptors who have questioned the methods and assumptions on which sculpture like Moore’s rests’.37 When the Cleveland Museum of Art acquired Working Model for Three Way Piece No.2: Archer in 1970 it also purchased Caro’s Wending Back 1969–70 (fig.18). Reporting on these two acquisitions in the Burlington Magazine, an unnamed critic explained the differences commonly observed between the sculptors’ work, writing, ‘whereas Moore achieves compactness of form, Caro’s idiom is diffuse; Moore pares down the form, Caro constructs and builds it up; and while Moore often relies on the natural qualities of the material he is working in for his finished effects, Caro exploits the possibilities of painted colour’.38 Although their work could be seen to illustrate divergent approaches to art-making, the curved lines and straight edges of the two examples simultaneously acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art nonetheless testify to a common concern with the tensions and harmonies created by certain formal relationships.

Working Model for Three Way Piece No.2: Archer was presented by Henry Moore to the Tate Gallery in 1978 as part of the Henry Moore Gift. The Gift comprised thirty-six sculptures in bronze, marble and plaster and was exhibited in its entirety alongside Tate’s existing collection of Moore’s work in an exhibition celebrating the artist’s eightieth birthday, which opened in June 1978. A press release was duly prepared announcing that ‘The group [of sculptures] is the most substantial gift of works ever given to the Tate by an artist during his lifetime’.39 Working Model for Three Way Piece No.2: Archer was exhibited in gallery eighteen alongside Working Model for Three Way Piece No.1: Points 1964 (Tate T02298) and Moon Head 1964 (Tate T02297) (fig.19). The exhibition was attended by over 20,500 people and nearly 11,000 copies of the catalogue were sold.40 At its close in late August the Director of Tate, Norman Reid, reflected in a letter to Moore’s daughter Mary Danowski that although he was sad to see the exhibition come to an end ‘we have the consolation of the splendid group of sculptures which Henry has presented to the nation’. ⁴¹