For whatever reason, Henry Moore inspired imagery has been bubbling to the surface in all my work for the last week. It happened with chalk pastels, charcoal and a zinc drypoint etching. So I wanted to explore the significance of this artist further.
I was introduced to Henry Moore because of a homework assignment for my Drawing 3 class. We were asked to research an artist we didn’t know, and then we would emulate his/her work in class. Our professor for this class was artist Ken Ragsdale. His work is fantastic and his teaching follows the same standard. He made a statement in the beginning of the year about how artists possess a certain sense of insecurity, and they devote their entire lives to finding how to express their voice through their artwork. I thought about that idea on my walk from the studio to my dorm room and ended up walking right past it and onto the main campus.
“Great art… invites us to think not about its author and his experiences, but about our own experiences and ourselves.”
I ended up browsing through forgotten oversized art books in the back of the Neil Hellman Library. I found one entitled Henry Moore: Drawings by Kenneth Clark published by Harper and Row in 1974. I still remember how the book smelled. How I hated the typography on the spine. How that spine cracked like a literary firecracker while the oil of my fingertips mixed with the film of dust on the jacket. How my knees stiffened and my quads tightened after a few minutes of remaining in a squatting position as I soaked up image after image. Once I finished flipping through all 326 pages of that book once, I never looked at drawing the same. It was love at first sight. I took him back to my place. I treated him really well. I choose “119”, one of the “Standing Figures” sketches from 1940, to complete in class.
A few weeks later, we had to break up because he had to go back home. Apparently, if you don’t return college library books, you have to pay for it or they withhold your diploma and you cannot walk at graduation. We parted ways. Six years later, I found that book while browsing a bookstore in Portland, Maine. It was one of those serendipitous moments that makes your entire day. I purchased it immediately.
What hit me right away was that even though Henry Moore was known for his sculpture work, this book contained 264 images of only sketches and drawings, which Clark separated into ten different sections based on subject matter. Moore’s sculptures are smooth and grounded, with harmonious, beautiful curves. In contrast, his drawings are dark, aggressive, hatched and full of a haunting energy. You can tell he has a sculptural aesthetic by how much depth and dimension his figures have even in sketch form. His drawings explore form in a way I had not seen before then. I admired how many different ways Moore depicts a figure with just line and shading. Rather than aim for precision, he embraces mark making and the media used for these surreal, hollowed, anomalous bodies.
Clark directly states in the Preface, “I have avoided deep psychological explanations, partly because I am not qualified to make them, partly because Moore himself dislikes them” (Clark, 1974). I am not going to analyze Moore’s sketches. I too am not (yet) qualified, nor am I with him to ask him to interpret his own artwork, which is very important when engaging in art therapy. Art created is owned by the client only. However, Moore’s dislike for psychological interpretations could be viewed as resistance toward what is undeniably difficult subject matter. I learned that the work I was specifically drawn to is of figures hiding in London Underground shelters during World War II, where Moore was recruited as an official war artist and experienced multiple bombings.
The speed at which Moore’s artwork resonated with me echoes an idea by Edith Kramer and Elinor Ulman (two important contributors to the field of art therapy), “Great art… invites us to think not about its author and his experiences, but about our own experiences and ourselves.” (Kramer and Ulman, 1977). I connected to his work, regardless of the fact that I do not share many experiences with him. I actually find Moore’s work, despite his statements, to be very psychological. His figure drawing makes you want to explore inside the person while also allowing you to see right through certain carved out areas of the form. He often positions multiple figures together, creating small groups or crowds. Even though facial features are not expressed, you feel as if they are conversing nonverbally with each other. There is so much connection and movement within each piece, even though the figures themselves appear stationary. I see the forms as physical representations of the ego’s defense mechanisms. It’s almost as if what is happening in their minds is manifesting itself physically. There are very little appearances of legs and feet. Rather, these limbs have smoothed over like an irritant covered in the nacre of an oyster.
“The violent quarrel between the abstractionists and the surrealists seems to me quite unnecessary. All good art has contained both abstract and surrealist elements, just as it has contained both classical and romantic elements - order and surprise, intellect and imagination, conscious and unconscious.”