Henry Moore: Sculptural Process and Public Identity

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

This bronze sculpture consists of three amorphous forms positioned within a stage-like setting. A single L-shaped component forms a rectangular base with vertical a backdrop. The figures to the centre and right are each attached to the base with one bolt. The figure on the left should have been attached with two bolts but one has been lost causing it to swivel. Conservation reports suggest that some fixings have become loose, so it is possible that the three forms are not orientated as the artist originally intended. However, the dearth of early photographic documentation of this sculpture makes this difficult to confirm.

Some yellowed adhesive is visible underneath the base of the form on the left that is not thought to be original. It is more likely to be the remains of a substance used to prevent the figure from swivelling. The sculpture is coloured a vivid bright green with dark brown highlights and it rests on a wooden plywood mount clad with copper sheet to which it is fixed using two bolts at either end.

Moore would have made each of the original elements in plaster (fig.1) and would perhaps have spent time positioning them in different configurations before settling on the final arrangement. He textured the plaster using a combination of tools and it is possible to see horizontal incisions and marks made using saw blades. The texture of the backdrop suggests that Moore made this section using either clay or plaster, which he freely applied, before impressing rectangles into the surface to create a decorative pattern. The high points of the forms have been smoothed, probably by using abrasives when the plaster was dry. Once complete, a mould was taken from the plaster original that was then used to cast it in bronze.

The level of detail on the bronze figures suggests that they were fabricated using the lost wax technique, whereas the base and backdrop are more likely to have been sand cast, as is revealed by the slightly granular texture of the surface at the back (fig.2).1 Small flaws in the casting are often repaired with a plug of bronze that is then carefully smoothed and textured to match the surrounding surface. An example of such a repair is visible as a circular mark on the middle form (fig.3).

After casting the bronze was coloured using a technique known as artificial patination. This process involved applying chemical solutions that reacted with the bronze to create coloured compounds. A dark brown background was applied first using a chemical such as potassium or ammonium polysulphide. This was then followed by the application of a green patina over the top. There are many different patina recipes used to produce green colours on bronzes but they often contain mixtures of copper and ammonium salts dissolved in water. The solution is usually applied in successive layers until the desired colour is achieved. The patinator has lightly abraded the green patina on the high points of the form to reveal the underlying brown colour before a clear wax was applied to consolidate and protect the finished patina.

The bronze is mounted onto a copper-clad wooden base. This sculpture was cast at the Art Bronze Foundry, London, in an edition of ten plus one artist’s cast. It is inscribed ‘Moore 10/10’ on the back right corner at the side (fig.4).

The bronze sculpture Three Motives Against Wall No.2 comprises three individual amorphous forms positioned in a row on a stage-like platform set against an upright rectangular wall. This wall is imprinted with an arrangement of square and rectangular depressions and is joined to the horizontal platform to create a right-angled unit. The assembled bronze is mounted onto a copper-clad wooden base. The three forms, or motives, sit directly on the bronze base, to which they are attached with a bolt screwed from the underside. This particular subject and composition was first devised by Moore in 1958 when he created Three Motives Against a Wall No.1 (Tate T03763), although there are significant differences between this earlier sculpture and the present work.

The motive on the left-hand side is a single entity but comprises two globular, curvaceous forms that appear to be balanced one on top of the other (fig.1). Overall the motive is roughly oval-shaped, although from the front it appears as though two u-shaped forms have been slotted together leaving a small recess in the centre. The top edge of the motive dips slightly in the middle creating a concave curve, while the front is rounded and projects forward. By contrast, the middle motive consists of a thin, tubular shaft that rises vertically upwards from the base and is punctuated by two short protrusions, or stumps, on alternate sides (fig.2). The top of the shaft curves forwards at a right angle and culminates in a long, bulbous protrusion that makes the motive seem top heavy.

The right hand motive takes the form of a roughly-shaped sphere from which several bulbous protrusions emerge, encircling the object (fig.3). The top of this motive, however, is flat, as though the apex of the sphere has been sliced off. A notable feature of this motive is the sequence of parallel lines or rings that have been incised into the surface and run horizontally around the circumference. Although tool marks are visible on the other two motives, neither of them have been marked or patterned in a similar way to this right hand form.

A series of square and rectangular depressions decorate the rear wall, the surface of which is generally rough, suggesting that this element of the sculpture was cast from a plaster original (fig.4). Overall the sculpture is coloured with a vivid green patina. It has been signed ‘Moore’ and is numbered ‘10/10’ towards the rear of the right edge (fig.5).

In order to make the sculpture in bronze Moore would have first made each element in plaster, modelling and shaping the forms with specialist spatulas and metal modelling tools (fig.6). It is likely that Moore made the base and the backdrop either in clay, which was then cast in plaster, or directly in plaster. The texture of the back wall suggests that Moore impressed rectangular objects into the surface to create the geometric pattern. It is probable that Moore made the plaster maquettes in his small maquette studio in the grounds of his home, Hoglands, at Perry Green in Hertfordshire. The studio was lined with shelves on which his ever growing collection of bones, shells, and pebbles – what he called his ‘library of natural forms’ – was stored.1 It is known that Moore often borrowed shapes from these organic objects when making his sculptures and it is probable that the curvilinear forms of the motives originated from his study of bones and stones.

Moore started collecting pebbles, shells and bones in the late 1920s and his sketch books from the 1930s contain studies of these natural forms, many of which are transformed into figures. The curator David Sylvester noted that Moore was attracted to organic forms ‘because of their potential for evoking things other than themselves, so that shapes derived from them could have a mysterious ambiguity’.2 By the late 1950s, when Three Motives Against Wall No.2 was created, Moore had all but eliminated the practice of making preparatory drawings for his sculptures, preferring instead to make small three-dimensional plaster models. According to Sylvester, ‘a high proportion of the [plaster] sketch-models have had as their point of departure a found pebble or bone or fragment of bone, while others have been made up while looking at pebbles and bones – as well, of course, as while remembering them’.3 When asked in 1960 how he arrived at an idea for a sculpture, Moore replied:

Importantly, Sylvester noted that the stones and pebbles examined by Moore in the 1950s were different from those looked at in the 1930s. Unlike the smooth pebbles that informed the rounded elements of sculptures such as Four Piece Composition: Reclining Figure 1934 (Tate T02054) by the 1950s Moore was looking at ‘the sort of pebbles found inland – flints with sharply undulating contours and corners broken off leaving a jagged facet ... The objects are altogether rougher, more irregular, than before’.5

In 1987 the curator Alan Wilkinson asserted that the three forms in Three Motives Against Wall No.2 ‘were undoubtedly based on flint stones in the artist’s studio’.6 In particular, he identified a photograph of stones from Moore’s studio which includes a flint that closely resembles the middle motive of the sculpture (fig.7). This flint stone, positioned second from the right in the photograph, has truncated arm-like protrusions and a large bulbous head that curves forward at a right angle just like the central tall motive.7 Although Moore would often modify his flints and bones with additions and alternations in plaster, Wilkinson argued that in this instance he used the flint with ‘little alteration’.8 In 1963 he explained to Sylvester how he worked with found natural objects:

It is likely that in order to make the middle motive, Moore made a reproduction of the flint stone, and then, once the plaster had hardened, he accentuated and added forms, such as the two small protrusions on the top of the sculpture.

An additional plaster maquette also exists of the left-hand motive of Three Motives Against Wall No.2 (fig.8). According to Wilkinson ‘the surface of the plaster has been marked in pencil with points of reference for enlarging the maquette’, suggesting that at one stage Moore was thinking about producing this particular sculpture on a larger scale.10 Although this idea never materialised and the maquette was not cast in bronze, the basic form of this sculpture, which comprises two balanced or interconnected elements, may have provided a starting point for Moore’s larger sculpture Locking Piece 1963–4 (Tate T02293).

When they were completed Moore sent the plaster components to a professional foundry to be cast in bronze. The three motives were cast separately while the base and back wall appear to have been cast as a single piece. Records held at the Henry Moore Foundation reveal that Three Motives Against Wall No.2 was cast at the Art Bronze Foundry in London, in an edition of ten plus one artist’s proof. Not all of the examples in the edition were cast at the same time. The date of Tate’s cast is known from a bill issued by the foundry dated 7 June 1962 that lists ‘Wall & Motives, 10/10, £200’ among the items cast for Moore that month.11 It is likely that Moore first came into contact with the foundry when he was Head of the Sculpture Department at Chelsea College of Art in the 1930s because it was located close to the college and was used regularly by staff and students.

At the foundry the technicians would have used the original plasters to create hollow moulds into which molten bronze could be poured, and from which the multiple bronze versions could be made. While the three motives were most likely cast using the lost wax method, the base and the backdrop were probably cast using the sand casting method because the grainy texture on the back of the rear wall is typical of this casting procedure.

After casting Moore would have inspected the quality of the bronze and made a decision about the patination. A patina is the surface colour of a sculpture and is usually achieved by applying chemical solutions to the pre-heated bronze sculpture. Three Motives Against Wall No.2 has been treated with a vivid sea-green patina. In certain areas the patina on the sculpture has been rubbed back or worn down, revealing the darker brown colour beneath (fig.9). As Moore explained in 1960, after patination ‘you can then work on the bronze, work on the surface and let the bronze come through again, after you’ve made certain patinas. You rub it and wear it down as you hand might by a lot of handling. From this point of view bronze is the most responsive and unbelievably varied material’.12

According to Wilkinson, ‘in the original plaster and in the bronze casts each of the forms may be turned and positioned in various combinations’.13 This suggests that Moore allowed for an element of variation in the work: the sequence of the motives could be swapped and their orientation could be changed. Although minimal, this variation is evident between the Tate cast and the version held in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, in which the middle motive has been swivelled slightly clockwise. Moore first explored the possibility of using moving parts within a sculpture while he was carving Screen for the Time-Life Building in Bond Street in 1952–3, which comprised four geometric stone arrangements that Moore wanted to be able to turn on a central pivot, but safety concerns prevented his scheme from being carried out.

In his 1981 catalogue entry for Three Motives Against Wall No.2, which was based on conversations he had had with Moore in December 1980, the Tate researcher Richard Calvocoressi accounted for the origins of the sculpture:

While Moore’s wall relief commission at the Bouwcentrum in Rotterdam may have influenced his thinking with regard to sculpture and architecture, critics have agreed that the prevalence of sculptures made in the 1950s consisting of figures positioned against architectural features were a direct result of Moore’s commission to create a large-scale sculpture for the new Unesco headquarters in Paris in May 1955 (fig.10).15 According to Anita Feldman Bennet, between 1955–60 ‘Moore created thirty-four sculptures experimenting with positioning figures on steps, seated on platforms, benches, ledges or against walls’.16 Although Moore had made works for urban environments in the past, a statement made in 1951 reveals how he felt about the relationship between art and architecture: ‘I would rather have a piece of sculpture put in a landscape, almost any landscape, than in, or on the most beautiful building I know’.17 With the Unesco commission, then, Moore faced the challenge of creating a sculpture that could be integrated into an architectural setting in a way that did not diminish the artwork’s formal qualities. As the critic Herbert Read explained in his introduction to a volume of Moore’s catalogue raisonné written in 1965:

An example of this theme is Maquette for Girl Seated Against Square Wall 1957 (fig.11), which consists of a bony and wiry nude female seated on a tall cuboid bench in front of a flat wall that serves as a backdrop to the scene. Although the figure is seated sideways, her head and body twist towards the front. The rear wall is marked with small rectangular depressions of different lengths, which when seen from the front frame the figure’s head. These indentations might be regarded as windows and as such demonstrate Moore’s concern with the ways in which sculpture and architecture might respond to each other. Although the idea of constructing a wall around the Unesco sculpture was abandoned, as Read noted it was something that Moore exploited later, and informed Three Motives Against Wall No.2 and its earlier counterpart Three Motives Against a Wall No.1 1958.

Alan Wilkinson noted in 1987 that although Moore did not incorporate imprinted walls in his sculptures until the late 1950s, the ‘rectangular slotted walls first appear in the drawings as early as 1936 as a background for sculptural ideas. In some of the drawings diagonal walls lead into the picture space and with the background wall create a claustrophobic, cell-like setting, as in Ideas for Sculpture in a Setting of 1938’ (fig.12).19 The enclosed character of the spaces depicted in Moore’s drawings of the 1930s had previously been commented upon by the psychologist Erich Neumann in his book The Archetypal World of Henry Moore, published in 1959. Neumann suggested that:

Neumann went on to discuss Moore’s uncanny architectural spaces in relation to the work of the Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978), whose work was admired by surrealist artists including René Magritte and Paul Nash. De Chirico’s paintings frequently depict enigmatic town squares, shadowy architectural facades and claustrophobic urban environments that create a tense and menacing atmosphere. In 1965 Read concurred stating that Three Motives Against Wall No.2, alongside the ‘Upright Motives’ series (Tate T02274–T02276) and Three Part Object 1960 (Tate T02285), was ‘as powerful and sinister as anything yet created by the sculptor’.21

In 1973 the critic John Russell sought to account for the indeterminate, amorphous forms of the three motives, arguing that they represented qualities that could not be expressed with reference to human experience. For Russell, in Three Motives Against Wall No.2

Moving away from these more cerebral interpretations, writing about the middle motive in 2006 Wilkinson reflected that ‘for many years it reminded me somewhat of a head of a hippopotamus, until a more perceptive young schoolboy gleefully exclaimed: “Look Mummy, Snoopy from Peanuts”’.23

Henry Moore presented Three Motives Against Wall No.2 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’.24 Three Motives Against Wall No.2 was displayed in the exhibition next to Relief No.1 1959 (Tate T02284). The exhibition was attended by over 20,500 people and nearly 11,000 copies of the catalogue were sold.25 At the close of the exhibition in late August 1978 the Director of Tate Norman Reid reflected in a letter to Moore’s daughter 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’.26

Other casts of Three Motives Against Wall No.2 are held in the collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, The Henry Moore Foundation, Perry Green, and in private collections. The original plaster version of the sculpture is in the Moore Collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.