Henry Moore: Sculptural Process and Public Identity

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

This large plaster sculpture comprises a thin, vertically-orientated figure surrounded by an outer cocoon-like form. The cuboid wooden plinth on which it sits is fitted with four steel bolts that secure the sculpture in place. The plinth is now painted grey but the underside is painted silver, which suggests that this may have been its original colour.

The figure at the centre of the sculpture is held in place at its base by plaster but it is also secured to the outer form by two supporting screw threads. One joins the back of the figure’s ‘head’ to the interior of the cocoon at the back (fig.1), and another fixes the upper rounded form of the internal form to an adjacent point on the interior wall (fig.2), although this is obscured from the viewer by the strip of plaster projecting across the front of the sculpture. A great deal of damage has occurred to the outer form where it joins the base, presumably as a result of stresses applied to this point during transit and handling.

Moore initially made this plaster so that a mould could be made from it that could be used to cast the sculpture in bronze. To make a plaster of this size he would first have constructed a supportive armature, probably using a combination of metal and wood. He would have then applied successive layers of wet plaster to it, gradually building up the form before finishing it with a striated surface texture. Close examination reveals the presence of small metal or wooden points lying just under the surface of the plaster (fig.3). It seems that a number of outward-facing, pointed rods were attached to the main body of the armature, marking at various points the desired depth of the sculpture’s outer form as Moore built up the plaster. This would have been part of the process of scaling up the sculpture from one of Moore’s smaller models, allowing the proportions of the original form to be accurately replicated in the plaster.

When a mould is taken from a plaster in order to cast it in bronze a release agent is applied that enables the mould to be removed from the sculpture while retaining as much surface detail as possible. Traces of release agent remain visible on certain areas of the sculpture’s surface in the form of yellow-brown patches, marking the position where two edges of the mould met (fig.4).

Large or complex plasters such as this will often be cut into parts during the casting process, with the resulting pieces of bronze being welded together after casting. There appears to be evidence of this in the form of vertical cuts made on either side of the arch that projects across the open face of the sculpture (fig.5). There also seem to have been two sets of horizontal cuts made at around one and fourth fifths of the sculpture’s height respectively. Numerous repairs have been made to the surface following damage caused by the moulding process. Moore asked for the plaster to be reassembled after the casting was complete and it is likely that most of the repairs were carried out at this point.

A fine wash of brown pigment has been applied to the surface of the sculpture, adding tone to the whiteness of the plaster and highlighting its surface texture. It seems likely that the pigment was applied after casting, perhaps so that the plaster could be seen and exhibited as a finished sculpture in its own right rather than as a preliminary stage of the casting process. There is no signature visible.

Upright Internal/External Form 1952–3 is a plaster sculpture comprising a vertically-orientated, rounded shell inside which an upright form is nestled. It is one of Henry Moore’s most well known sculptures and was cast in a bronze edition in c.1958.

The exterior element takes the form of an upright hollow shaft that extends from a hemispherical base to a rounded apex at the top (fig.1). While the rear is almost flat, the surface of the sides undulate and swell in places giving it an organic quality. The front, however, is marked by two large, curvaceous holes through which the interior of the form can be seen. These openings are separated by a single horizontal arch or bridge that spans the front of the sculpture approximately two thirds of the way up. Seen from the side it is evident that this bridge projects forward and overhangs the base.

Inside this tubular casing and visible through the two openings is a thin, vertically-oriented form that is wholly contained by the walls of the exterior piece (fig.2). This internal element is made up of two rounded, roughly elliptical forms joined by a thin, cylindrical shaft which appears to twist slightly so that the rounded forms face at different angles. A wedge shape with a single hole driven through it protrudes from the top of the upper elliptical form. Its lower half curves to follow the contours of the right-hand inner wall of the sculpture, whereas its upper half bends to the curve of the left-hand edge. The way it curves to the shape of the interior wall is suggestive of a life form occupying a cocoon, with the dimensions of the inner and outer forms complementing each other in what might appear a symbiotic or organic relationship. In 1953–4 Moore created a bronze version of the internal form as a unique standing sculpture (fig.3).

In addition to casting three bronze versions of Upright Internal/External Form Moore also carved a larger version of the sculpture in elm shortly after completing the plaster version. In October 1955 Moore wrote to Gordon Smith at the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo outlining the development of this wooden version:

According to the art historian Kenneth Clark, the small maquette that Moore created in 1951 was made out of clay, a medium that Moore had regularly used during the 1930s and 1940s to create initial models for sculptures.2 It is probable that he worked from preparatory drawings and drew upon his existing sculptural vocabulary to create this maquette, which was later cast in bronze in an edition of seven (fig.4). Once Moore was happy with the design of the maquette it was then scaled-up to a ‘working model’ of intermediary size (fig.5). At this stage in his career the creation of a working model constituted a new development in Moore’s sculptural practice, for up until the early 1950s he had always enlarged his maquettes into full-size sculptures.3 The deployment of a working model coincided with Moore’s decision to use plaster rather than terracotta as the principal medium for his preliminary models.4 Indeed, the working model for Upright Internal/External Form and Tate’s full-scale version can be identified as among his first sculptures made in the material. Moore later reflected on the benefits of working in plaster, stating that ‘plaster is an important material for sculptors. Good quality plaster mixed with water sets to the hardness of a soft stone. 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’.5 During the 1920s and early 1930s Moore had been known for his advocacy of direct carving and his rejection of traditional modelling techniques, but by the 1950s he found that working in plaster afforded him greater artistic freedom to test ideas on smaller scales before committing to them. As the critic David Sylvester noted in 1955:

The working model was built over an internal wire armature and scaled up from the maquette using a mathematical system of measuring precise points on its surface. Producing a working model allowed Moore to test the design at a slightly larger size, although Sylvester observed that it was also ‘on a scale to fit the drawing room’ of any potential collector.7 In addition, the relative size of the internal and external forms could be considered in more detail. Like the maquette, the plaster working model was also cast in a bronze edition of seven.

Working in plaster was also considerably quicker than carving in wood, and with the help of assistants Moore was able to create full-size sculptures in a relatively short period of time. The full-size plaster version of Upright Internal/External Form was created in the Top Studio in the grounds of Moore’s home, Hoglands, in Perry Green, Hertfordshire (fig.6). Using the working model as a guide, armatures, probably made of wire, were constructed for the two separate pieces. Over these structures Moore and his assistants would have applied layers of plaster with trowels and spatulas so that the two components started to gain mass. It is likely that much of the initial construction work on Upright Internal/External Form would have been undertaken by Moore’s studio assistants, who between 1951 and 1953 included Pete Atkins, Anthony Caro, Robert Clatworthy, Alan Ingham, Peter King, and Philip McCraken. Moore was able to allocate the bulk of this work to others because, as the curator Julie Summers has noted, the enlargement process was ‘a scientific rather than artistic process’.8 Moore usually worked with two or three assistants at any one time, and in 1960 he explained to the critic Donald Hall how they helped him:

As Moore recounted to Gordon Smith in 1955, shortly after completing the full-size plaster he purchased a large piece of elm from which he carved a version of the sculpture, which he titled Internal and External Forms (fig.7). Moore recalled that ‘the large wood version was started in early 1953’ and was carved ‘slowly over a period of two years’.10 In a discussion of the elm version the critic Herbert Read noted that ‘this is one of the sculptor’s major works and unique in that the carved form was preceded by a careful exploration of the formal possibilities in modelled clay or plaster’.11 Unlike Moore’s earlier dictum of ‘truth to materials’, whereby the forms of a sculpture were carved in response to the particular physical properties of the material, Read noted that ‘the forms appropriate to wood were visualised from the beginning, but it cannot be said that the material determined the forms’.12 Moore explained his preference of wood for this sculpture, stating that ‘it was necessary for the Upright carving to be in wood, which is alive and warm and gives a sense of growth. (Wood is a natural and living material, unlike plaster or metal which are built up by man.)’.13

When Moore first started working in plaster he regarded the sculptures as stages of the creative process and not as artworks in their own right. This explains why, when discussing the elm Internal and External Forms in 1968, Moore stated that ‘there were two versions of this sculpture, one in bronze and one in wood’.14 Moore often destroyed his original plasters after all the bronzes in an edition had been cast to ensure that no additional, unauthorised casts were made. However, in the 1950s, when demand for exhibitions of his work increased, Moore began exhibiting plaster versions when bronzes – or in this case, the carved elm – were unavailable. Indeed, an additional plaster cast of Upright Internal/External Form was made by Moore’s assistants for the British Council so that the sculpture could be included in its touring exhibition of Moore’s work between 1953 and 1959.15 It is therefore likely that it was the plaster cast of Upright Internal/External Form (rather than Tate’s original plaster) that was included in the British Council’s exhibition of Moore’s work at the 1953 International Biennial of São Paulo, which later toured to Canada (1955–6), New Zealand (1956–7), South Africa (1957), Southern Rhodesia (1957), Portugal (1959) and Spain (1959). A close-up detail of the sculpture was reproduced on the front cover of the exhibition pamphlet produced to accompany the Canadian and New Zealand exhibitions. However, in his review of the New Zealand edition of Moore’s exhibition the art historian Mark Stocker cited the artist’s former assistant Anthony Caro, who stated that Upright Internal/External Form was represented by the original plaster (Tate’s sculpture) in that leg of the tour.16

Moore’s attitude towards his plasters shifted over time, and he began to see them not simply as intermediary stages in the sculptural process but as unique works of art. In the early 1970s Moore declared that ‘These are not plaster casts; they are plaster originals ... they are actual works that one has done with one’s hands’.17 In 1973 Moore recounted the moment when he began to reconsider the value of his plasters:

Having decided to stop destroying his plasters, Moore was then faced with the problem of what to do with them. Selling them on the open market would increase the risk of casts being made without his permission, but he did not have the required space to keep the plasters indefinitely. A solution was found by way of philanthropic gifts, first to the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto in 1974, and then to the Tate in 1978.

Having decided to give the AGO and Tate examples of the original plasters, in the early 1970s Moore’s studio assistants John Farnham, Michael Muller and Malcolm Woodward set about restoring and repairing the damaged plasters and removing traces of resin sealant from their surfaces. According to the curator at the AGO Alan Wilkinson, this process demonstrated ‘more clearly the extraordinary variety of surface details and textures, each of the original plasters having its own unique surface colouring and tonality’.19 In the case of Upright Internal/External Form the plaster is revealed not to be a stark white but a softer colour bordering on beige and highlighted with touches of brown and aquamarine (fig.8). According to Anita Feldman, author of the publication Henry Moore: Plasters (2011), Moore often coloured his plaster ‘with walnut crystals to give the sculptures an organic warmth’, while a pale green wash was used ‘to emulate the bronze dust which often accumulated on them over time in the foundries’.20 It is unclear whether the colours on the surface of Upright Internal/External Form were applied by Moore when the plaster was first made or by his assistants in the 1970s, or whether they are in fact residues of the casting process.

In 1955 Moore explained the idea behind the sculpture as ‘a sort of embryo being protected by an outer form, a mother and child idea, or the stamen in a flower, that is, something young and growing being protected by an outer shell’.21 Discussing Upright Internal/External Form in 1968 he drew further parallels, stating that,

As Moore’s statement acknowledges, he had been thinking about the relationship between internal and external forms for some years prior to the development of his initial maquette for Upright Internal/External Form. His first sculpture exploring this theme had been The Helmet 1939–40 (fig.9). This lead sculpture was one of the last works made by Moore before the Second World War put a halt to his sculptural production in 1940.23 In it a vertical form made up of arches and ellipses, evocative of a standing figure, is enclosed within a domed shelter. When discussing his ‘Helmet Head’ series in 1980, Moore recalled that ‘the idea of one form inside another form may owe some of its incipient beginnings to my interest at one stage when I discovered armour. I spent many hours in the Wallace Collection, in London, looking at armour’.24 Given the time at which it was made, coupled with Moore’s declared interest in armoury, The Helmet and the subsequent series of helmet head sculptures may well have been prompted by the Second World War, although as Moore himself suggested, the sculptures also relate to other interests. The German psychologist Erich Neumann, for example, emphasised in 1959 that The Helmet is ‘dominated by the mother-child symbolism: it forms a uterine shell within which there dwells a child inhabitant’.25

Prior to the war Moore also explored these themes in drawings such as Standing Figures 1940 (fig.10). Kenneth Clark noted that these works are dominated by ‘hollow men (or women) who reveal through huge apertures in their bodies the struts and stays that constitute their biologically simple, but formally complex, inner mechanism’.26 Clark asserted that ‘Moore seems to have created a credible alternative to the human race, as if millions of years ago, evolution had taken a different course’.27 Moore’s appointment as an Official War Artist in 1941 put a halt to his more extreme reinventions of the figure, and Clark acknowledged that ‘the strange fact is that, although these figures were invented in 1940 ... they did not appear in sculpture till 1951’.28

Nonetheless, Moore’s experiences as a War Artist may have shaped his understanding of internal-external relationships. They appear to have been particularly relevant to his Shelter Drawings, which record crowds sheltering in the London Underground during air-raids. Two Mothers Holding Children 1941 (fig.11), for example, depicts figures swathed in blankets that follow the curvature of the heads and bodies beneath in a way that resembles how the outer element of Upright Internal/External Form encases and protects the inner form.

Moore resumed thinking about the relationship between interior and exterior forms in sculptural terms after the war. Drawings such as Ideas for Sculpture: Internal and External Forms 1948 demonstrate that Moore was developing ideas for the helmet-like objects and larger standing forms that first appeared in his pre-war drawings (fig.12). A sketch of Upright Internal/External Form can be seen in the centre-left of the page. Prominent features of this particular sketch include the depth inferred by the black interior against the green inner form, the upper sides of which have been picked out in white as if lit from above. The outer form has been rendered in fine black outlines while its volume has been enhanced through the use of repeated red contours.

Moore’s drawings can be seen to closely track his work in three dimensions between 1948 and 1950. The year Moore created Studies for Helmets and Full-Length Enclosed Figures (fig.13) he also returned to the ‘helmet’ in sculptural form, creating Helmet Head No.1 1950 (Tate T00388). Three of the forms included in this drawing are repeated from Ideas for Sculpture: Internal and External Forms 1948, including the study for Upright Internal/External Form, visible in the bottom-left corner, the form sketched above it, and the two upright forms immediately to its right. It is likely that by the time he made this sketch Moore had clear conceptions of these forms as three-dimensional sculptures, enabling him to repeat them freely.

It is also possible that Studies for Helmets and Full-Length Enclosed Figures was created as a developmental work for a series of lithographic prints made in 1950. In December 1949 Moore was invited to create a series of illustrations for the French writer André Gide’s translation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Prometheus, itself based on Aeschylus’s ancient tragedy Prometheus Bound. Moore worked on a set of lithographs throughout 1950 that were first exhibited in Paris in May 1951. In one of these lithographs Upright Internal/External Form is presented as an ‘imprisoned statue’ (fig.14).

Most interpretations of Upright Internal/External Form have taken as their starting point Moore’s assertion that while making this work the ‘Mother and Child idea and of birth and the child in embryo’ was at the forefront of his mind. When discussing the sculpture in 1965 and 1968 respectively, the critics Herbert Read and John Russell both cited the same extended passage from Neumann’s 1959 book The Archetypal World of Henry Moore:

It is worth noting that neither Russell nor Read substantially unpacked or expanded upon Neumann’s ideas. Read simply asserted that the forms of the sculpture were determined by ‘the archetypal forms of womb and foetus’.30 According to Neumann, Moore’s use of ‘archetypes’ – subjects or forms that may be recognised and understood universally – and specifically those of the ‘mother goddess’ or ‘earth mother’, was a direct response to the Second World War:

For Neumann, Moore’s sculptures were manifestations of a universal turn to ‘Mother Earth’ as a source of restoration and sustenance in the post-war period. As such, his works could be regarded as representative of a variant of humanist philosophy that flourished during the post-war years. Industrial technology, monolithic institutions and an absolutist view of human progress had brought about unprecedented destruction during the Second World War, and among other things humanists sought to align the goals of human progress with an appreciation for nature, of which humanity itself was a part. Accordingly, a common justification for the attribution of humanist tendencies to Moore’s sculptures was his use of organic, natural forms.32 Given Moore’s reference to a ‘stamen in a flower’, the rounded surfaces of Upright Internal/External Form might be said to resonate with organic forms such as seed pods or chrysalises. Philip Hendy, director of the National Gallery, seemed to anticipate this aspect of Upright Internal/External Form when he wrote in 1949: ‘who knows what elemental emotions have stirred this rhythmic ebb and flow of form which links the tunnelled hollow with the swelling boss? Man came to life through woman, and in her loses and finds himself again’.33

Following Neumann’s thesis, the art historian Christa Lichtenstern has suggested that in a cultural context characterised by social and political upheaval, natural forms offered Moore a vocabulary suited to narratives of endurance and longevity. In this sense, the union of human bodies and natural forms conveyed by Upright Internal/External Form represented an ‘organic whole’ through which humanity would be able to rejuvenate itself.34 This idea is perhaps most convincingly embodied by Moore’s related sculpture Upright Internal/External Form (Flower) 1951, in which naturally-existing forms and rhythms are even more pronounced (fig.15). More prosaically, when discussing the elm version of Tate’s sculpture, Kenneth Clark asserted:

Moore identified another possible source for the internal-external framework of his sculpture in his 1981 photographic book Henry Moore at the British Museum. This publication contained reproductions of artworks from the British Museum’s collection that had influenced Moore during his career, alongside statements written by the artist.36 Photographs of the fifty items selected by Moore were organised according to geographical region or type. The section dedicated to Oceanic sculpture included a reproduction of Upright Internal/External Form alongside an image of a carving, now identified as a malangan figure from the north coast of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea (fig.16). In the book Moore stated that:

Moore’s knowledge of ‘so-called primitive’ cultures first came from reading the art critic Roger Fry’s influential book Vision and Design (1920) while studying at Leeds School of Art in 1920. Fry’s book contained chapters on African, Islamic and ancient American art and exemplified the increasingly widespread belief that non-Western or ancient art was more expressive or authentic than the academic classicism of European fine art traditions. As the art historian Christopher Green has suggested, for Fry and many others the turn to primitive art ‘offered a stimulus for rebuilding the broader terms of the European tradition’.38 Moore later recalled that ‘Fry opened the way to other books and to the realisation of the British Museum. That was the beginning really’.39

In 1941 Moore’s thoughts on ‘primitive sculpture’ were published in an article in the Listener magazine. Discussing Oceanic carving, Moore noted that ‘the carvings of New Ireland have, besides their vicious kind of vitality, a unique special sense, a bird-in-a-cage form’.40 The notion of a being held within a cage was evidently a potent motif for Moore and, according to curator Alan Wilkinson, a drawing now titled Internal/External Forms c.1935 (fig.17) ‘leaves us in no doubt of Moore’s fascination with New Ireland sculpture’.41 Annotated in Moore’s handwriting with the phrase ‘forms inside forms’, this drawing comprises three studies of an upright figure held within a cylindrical cage-like structure. Wilkinson argues that the sketch on the lower left of the page ‘was almost certainly based on a carving in the British Museum’, such as the malangan figure.42

Originating from a sketchbook dated 1935 on its front cover (known as Sketchbook B), the drawing Internal/External Forms, according to Wilkinson, ‘was almost certainly the first of the internal/external drawings executed between 1935 and 1940’.43 However, Ann Garrould, the cataloguer of Moore’s drawings, has suggested that it is unlikely that all of the drawings contained within Sketchbook B date from 1935. She has proposed that, given the range of styles, media and subjects featured in the sketchbook, some of the drawings may date to the early 1930s, while others may have been executed at ‘the end of the 1940s when he was jotting down ideas for Prométhée’.44 Whether or not it was executed in the 1930s or 1940s, the drawing is a useful indicator of Moore’s early development of the figurative element of Upright Internal/External Form.

In 1954 the magazine Britain Today published an article by David Sylvester reviewing Moore’s major sculptures made since 1951. Discussing Upright Internal/External Form and the comparable Reclining Figure (Internal and External Forms) 1951 (fig.18), Sylvester wrote:

The elm version of Upright Internal/External Form (titled Internal and External Forms) was included in Moore’s solo exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, London, in 1955. In his review of this exhibition Sylvester elaborated upon the issues of size and scale, asserting that the sculptural form of Upright Internal/External Form was ‘incomparably more successful’ in its enlarged state.46 However, Sylvester reflected that ‘if there is a criticism to be made’ of Upright Internal/External Form and its reclining counterpart (also included in the exhibition), ‘it is that they are really only an elaboration of formal ideas which Moore first explored in the late nineteen-thirties and that, while they are bigger than the things of their kind he attempted then, they are better only in terms of technical accomplishment’.47 He suggested that the large-scale elm sculpture lacked the ‘kick’ or immediacy of some of his earlier works, concluding that ‘it is not easy for any artist, least of all an artist of Moore’s wide-ranging mind to sustain over a period of twenty years the imaginative impetus and intensity that an idea is charged with when it is first conceived’.48

The art historian Alan Bowness was more effusive in his review of the Leicester Galleries exhibition, writing that:

‘Elemental’ was a term used more than once to describe the elm version. An unnamed critic writing in the Times stated:

The American museum that had acquired the elm version was the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo. In 1955 Moore wrote to the curator Gordon Smith regarding the display of the sculpture, explaining that he preferred for it to be shown in top-lit gallery spaces so that light ‘does not shine too directly into the interior’. Moore found that lighting the sculpture from above ‘lets the interior look like a cave, with some mystery in it’.51 He went on to state:

In 1960 one of the bronze casts of Upright Internal/External Form was exhibited in Moore’s solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, London. Curated by Bryan Robertson, the show comprised sculptures made since 1950 and was Moore’s first major exhibition in London since his 1955 show at the Leicester Galleries. In 1968 Moore reflected that:

The exhibition was generally well received in the press. The critic Keith Sutton wrote in the Listener that ‘the power and quality of it all is undeniable and satisfying’,54 while the critic David Thompson declaring in the Times that:

However, in 1994 Bryan Robertson revealed that some visitors to the 1960 exhibition had felt uneasy about Moore’s work. Considering the exhibition in relation to the Whitechapel’s 1954 display of sculptures by Barbara Hepworth, Robertson recalled that he ‘discovered that the public was more at ease at that time with total abstraction, provided it was free of any morbidity, than awkward semi-abstract work with worrying figurative undertones. Moore’s sculpture, shown later at Whitechapel, was more of a problem for the uninitiated’.56

Upright Internal/External Form 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’.57 Upright Internal/External Form was included in the exhibition and displayed in gallery twenty-six alongside Reclining Figure 1951 (Tate T02270; fig.19). The exhibition was attended by over 20,500 people and nearly 11,000 copies of the catalogue were sold.58 At the close of the exhibition in late August 1978 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’.59 In September 1979 Tate temporarily returned Upright Internal/External Form to Moore so that additional casts of the sculpture could be made. Records held in the Tate Conservation Department do not make it clear whether these casts were in bronze or plaster. A plaster cast of Upright Internal/External Form is held in the collection of the Henry Moore Foundation, although whether this was the cast made by the British Council in the 1950s or a version made in 1979 is not known. Of the three bronze casts made in c.1958 one is currently held in the Kunsthalle Hamburg and another at Västertorp Sculpture Park in Stockholm. The third, formerly in the collection of Andrew Gagarin, was sold at Christie’s, New York, in 1996 for $1,322,500 and is believed to be held in a private collection.60