0:00:01 > 0:00:03BBC Four Collections -
0:00:03 > 0:00:06specially chosen programmes from the BBC Archive.
0:00:39 > 0:00:44In the courtyard of a new building in London stands a sculpture.
0:00:44 > 0:00:47Some people admire it, some are puzzled.
0:00:47 > 0:00:49Many wonder whose work it is.
0:00:50 > 0:00:53In fact, it's the work of Barbara Hepworth,
0:00:53 > 0:00:55for many years a leading personality
0:00:55 > 0:00:59amongst artists who have pioneered modern art in Britain.
0:00:59 > 0:01:03She was trained at the same art school as Henry Moore.
0:01:03 > 0:01:05Her work has been shown all over Europe
0:01:05 > 0:01:08and in North and South America.
0:01:08 > 0:01:10She has received many of the honours
0:01:10 > 0:01:14which come to artists whose fame and distinction are international.
0:01:15 > 0:01:21Here, her powerful sculpture enlivens the towering walls of the city.
0:01:21 > 0:01:23But she herself still works
0:01:23 > 0:01:27in the surroundings she chose more than 20 years ago,
0:01:27 > 0:01:31at St Ives, near Land's End in Cornwall.
0:01:31 > 0:01:34CHURCH BELL TOLLS
0:02:17 > 0:02:19SHIP'S HORN BLARES
0:02:57 > 0:02:59HAMMERING
0:03:22 > 0:03:26Barbara Hepworth works with wood, stone and metal.
0:03:26 > 0:03:30Her work fills three or four studios round her house.
0:03:30 > 0:03:34The weight of the great blocks and the storing of her sculptures
0:03:34 > 0:03:36are amongst the greatest problems she has to face.
0:03:37 > 0:03:40Some of her work is small and intimate in size,
0:03:40 > 0:03:44but much of it is massive and monumental.
0:03:44 > 0:03:48Arranging an exhibition involves the packing and the transport
0:03:48 > 0:03:51by rail, by air and by sea
0:03:51 > 0:03:55of a mass of sculpture weighing more than the contents of an average home.
0:04:03 > 0:04:04The shapes of her sculptures
0:04:04 > 0:04:08may remind one of the shapes of hills and trees.
0:04:08 > 0:04:15Their contours flow in the rhythms of the sea, of the beach, of sand dunes,
0:04:15 > 0:04:19of birds in flight or of the human figure.
0:04:19 > 0:04:25Her sculpture may call these things to mind, but it never describes them.
0:04:25 > 0:04:27Their meaning is ambiguous.
0:05:00 > 0:05:03The rugged landscape of Penwith in Cornwall
0:05:03 > 0:05:07is where Barbara Hepworth has worked for many years.
0:05:07 > 0:05:10But she was born in a Yorkshire town,
0:05:10 > 0:05:13where the mill chimneys and the stone-cobbled streets
0:05:13 > 0:05:17were a harsh contrast to the open moorland round about.
0:05:17 > 0:05:21Her feelings for the contrasts of the Yorkshire scene
0:05:21 > 0:05:24are part of her earliest childhood recollections.
0:05:25 > 0:05:28BARBARA HEPWORTH: All my early memories
0:05:28 > 0:05:31are of forms and shapes and textures.
0:05:32 > 0:05:38I remember moving through the landscape with my father in his car,
0:05:38 > 0:05:40and the hills were sculptures.
0:05:40 > 0:05:42The roads defined the forms.
0:05:44 > 0:05:46There was the sensation
0:05:46 > 0:05:49of moving physically over the fullness of a moor
0:05:49 > 0:05:54and through the hollows and slopes of peaks and dales,
0:05:54 > 0:06:00feeling, seeing, touching through the mind, the eye and the hand...
0:06:01 > 0:06:05..the touch and texture of things...
0:06:05 > 0:06:09sculpture, rock, myself and the landscape.
0:06:12 > 0:06:16This sensation has never left me.
0:06:16 > 0:06:19I, the sculptor, am the landscape.
0:06:24 > 0:06:27BERNARD MILES: Barbara Hepworth's love for this Cornish landscape
0:06:27 > 0:06:29is complete.
0:06:29 > 0:06:32She feels for its history, its geology
0:06:32 > 0:06:36and every part of its varied geography.
0:06:36 > 0:06:38Though her work is abstract,
0:06:38 > 0:06:41her sculptures often bear the old Cornish names
0:06:41 > 0:06:44given to the features of an ancient kingdom,
0:06:44 > 0:06:50names like Trevalgan or Trenona or Pendour.
0:07:19 > 0:07:21WAVES CRASH
0:08:05 > 0:08:09The Penwith landscape is dominated by the sea.
0:08:09 > 0:08:12But behind the sea, the hard features of the land
0:08:12 > 0:08:16are concealed beneath a profusion of growth.
0:08:16 > 0:08:20This almost-tropical luxury is in extreme contrast
0:08:20 > 0:08:24to the wild and elemental nature of the hills and the coast.
0:08:24 > 0:08:28A brilliant light clarifies every colour and every image.
0:08:30 > 0:08:32Standing in the garden by her studio,
0:08:32 > 0:08:37one can believe that one is living in a Mediterranean country.
0:08:37 > 0:08:42The precise forms of her sculpture have the clean-cut beauty
0:08:42 > 0:08:44of Greek or Italian art.
0:09:07 > 0:09:09BARBARA HEPWORTH: It took a long time
0:09:09 > 0:09:13for me to find my own personal way of making sculpture,
0:09:13 > 0:09:16a long time to discover the purest forms
0:09:16 > 0:09:20which would exactly evoke my own sensations
0:09:20 > 0:09:22and to visualise images
0:09:22 > 0:09:28which would express the timelessness of primitive forces which I felt...
0:09:28 > 0:09:33and the constant urges towards survival and growth
0:09:33 > 0:09:37which I knew to be fundamental both to the human being
0:09:37 > 0:09:40and to the landscape in which we stand.
0:09:44 > 0:09:47I have always loved the joy of carving
0:09:47 > 0:09:51and the rhythm of movement that grows in the sculpture itself,
0:09:51 > 0:09:54just as I like dancing or skating.
0:09:56 > 0:10:00I like the relaxation of sound and movement.
0:10:00 > 0:10:05When I am carving or when I am listening to someone else carving,
0:10:05 > 0:10:10I know what is happening not by what I see but what I hear.
0:10:11 > 0:10:15The tools a sculptor uses become his friends,
0:10:15 > 0:10:19and they become intensely personal to one,
0:10:19 > 0:10:23the most precious extensions of one's sight and touch.
0:10:25 > 0:10:29The right hand is the motor in carving,
0:10:29 > 0:10:32and the left hand is the thinking, feeling hand...
0:10:34 > 0:10:38..feeling the use of the gouge, the chisel,
0:10:38 > 0:10:41the adze, the point.
0:10:43 > 0:10:46All these tools have their special uses,
0:10:46 > 0:10:53and the left hand senses the organic structure of the material
0:10:53 > 0:10:56as it feels its way about the form.
0:11:32 > 0:11:35BERNARD MILES: Although her earliest sculpture was realistic,
0:11:35 > 0:11:40it already had a strong feeling for monumental shapes
0:11:40 > 0:11:42and for surfaces which were characteristic
0:11:42 > 0:11:45of the materials from which they were carved.
0:11:45 > 0:11:50But increasingly, she worked with more freedom as her ideas developed.
0:11:50 > 0:11:53Her sculptures became more abstract,
0:11:53 > 0:11:57but their reference to the human figure still remained.
0:11:57 > 0:12:02Then, the human figure was used to express the artist's deepest feelings
0:12:02 > 0:12:06in the sculptural language of shapes and forms.
0:12:10 > 0:12:13BARBARA HEPWORTH: It is difficult to describe in words
0:12:13 > 0:12:15the meaning of forms,
0:12:15 > 0:12:21because it is precisely this emotion which is conveyed by sculpture alone.
0:12:22 > 0:12:26Our sense of touch is a fundamental sensibility
0:12:26 > 0:12:29which comes into action at birth...
0:12:30 > 0:12:36..the ability to feel weight and form and assess its significance.
0:12:38 > 0:12:43The forms which have had a special meaning for me since childhood
0:12:43 > 0:12:46have been the standing form...
0:12:46 > 0:12:48which is the translation
0:12:48 > 0:12:52of my feeling towards the human being standing in landscape...
0:12:54 > 0:12:57..the two forms, which is the tender relationship
0:12:57 > 0:12:59of one living thing beside another...
0:13:01 > 0:13:07..and the closed form, such as the oval, spherical or pierced form,
0:13:07 > 0:13:11sometimes incorporating colour...
0:13:11 > 0:13:12which translate for me
0:13:12 > 0:13:18the association and closeness of the human figure to landscape.
0:13:20 > 0:13:26These forms also translate for me the closeness of mother and child
0:13:26 > 0:13:29or the feeling of the embrace of living things
0:13:29 > 0:13:32either in nature or in the human spirit.
0:13:34 > 0:13:40In all these shapes, the evocation of what one feels about man and nature
0:13:40 > 0:13:43must be conveyed by the sculptor
0:13:43 > 0:13:48in terms of mass, inner tension and rhythm,
0:13:48 > 0:13:51scale in relation to our human size
0:13:51 > 0:13:54and the quality of surface,
0:13:54 > 0:13:58which speaks through our hands as well as eyes.
0:14:02 > 0:14:05BERNARD MILES: Not all of Barbara Hepworth's work is abstract.
0:14:05 > 0:14:10Often, an artist feels the need to work in a realistic way,
0:14:10 > 0:14:13and realistic paintings and drawings are complementary
0:14:13 > 0:14:15to the carving and modelling of abstract work.
0:14:17 > 0:14:22One series of such pictures were studies of the hands and figures
0:14:22 > 0:14:27of nurses and surgeons at work in a hospital operating theatre.
0:14:28 > 0:14:30The artist was making a record
0:14:30 > 0:14:33of a subject which she had seen in reality.
0:14:34 > 0:14:38But the artist can do more than record in a pictorial manner,
0:14:38 > 0:14:42for this artist is a person who can project her feelings
0:14:42 > 0:14:45into the materials she is using
0:14:45 > 0:14:50until they correspond to the reality of her imagination
0:14:50 > 0:14:53and so make us feel what she felt.
0:15:12 > 0:15:14SEAGULLS CRY
0:15:44 > 0:15:48BARBARA HEPWORTH: Many people select a stone or a pebble
0:15:48 > 0:15:50to carry for the day.
0:15:50 > 0:15:55The weight and form and texture felt in our hands
0:15:55 > 0:16:01relates us to the past and gives us a sense of a universal force.
0:16:01 > 0:16:06The beautifully shaped stone washed up by the sea
0:16:06 > 0:16:08is a symbol of continuity,
0:16:08 > 0:16:15a silent image of our desire for survival, peace and security.
0:16:40 > 0:16:42BERNARD MILES: A group of the stones
0:16:42 > 0:16:45which Barbara Hepworth found on the beaches around St Ives
0:16:45 > 0:16:47looks like an imaginary landscape.
0:16:47 > 0:16:51We don't often look at things as closely as the artist does.
0:16:51 > 0:16:54The artist trains us to use our eyes.
0:16:56 > 0:17:02A crystal of quartz is one of Barbara Hepworth's most valued possessions,
0:17:02 > 0:17:04just a lump of mineral found in the ground,
0:17:04 > 0:17:08but its delicate beauty stirs her imagination,
0:17:08 > 0:17:10and it stirs ours, too.
0:17:26 > 0:17:30The sculptor sees the beauty of nature
0:17:30 > 0:17:35and has the intuition and the skill to pin it down in concrete terms.
0:17:35 > 0:17:39This is sculpture which is composed much as music is composed,
0:17:39 > 0:17:42and abstract sculpture is a kind of visual music.
0:19:20 > 0:19:23FOOTSTEPS
0:19:38 > 0:19:42Barbara Hepworth is convinced of the value of our response
0:19:42 > 0:19:46to the shapes, textures and rhythms of the world about us.
0:19:46 > 0:19:49She believes that in our materialistic age,
0:19:49 > 0:19:52this response to the qualities and values of things
0:19:52 > 0:19:55is particularly important,
0:19:55 > 0:19:59for painting and sculpture appeal to the roots of our being.
0:20:01 > 0:20:05To many people, the importance of abstract art is not at all clear,
0:20:05 > 0:20:07for we have been accustomed
0:20:07 > 0:20:11to a kind of art which sought perfection in pictorial realism.
0:20:11 > 0:20:16Barbara Hepworth's art cannot be read or understood in those terms.
0:20:16 > 0:20:20Her work may follow nature, but it never imitates it.
0:20:21 > 0:20:27From her materials, she has made sculptures of the finest workmanship
0:20:27 > 0:20:31whose shapes and surfaces have a great beauty.
0:20:31 > 0:20:34The natural qualities of stone, of wood or metal
0:20:34 > 0:20:37have been completely revealed.
0:20:37 > 0:20:43She has manipulated volumes and spaces into complex constructions
0:20:43 > 0:20:48whose lines and surfaces flow with an unbroken subtlety and grace.
0:20:49 > 0:20:52Instinctively, she seems to have discovered
0:20:52 > 0:20:57compositions and proportions as satisfying as any we have known.
0:20:57 > 0:21:01The spaces and volumes of her sculptures seem inevitable.
0:21:02 > 0:21:05She has created beauty...
0:21:05 > 0:21:07and who can do more than that?
0:21:13 > 0:21:16BARBARA HEPWORTH: It may be that the sensation of being a woman
0:21:16 > 0:21:23presents another emphasis in art and particularly in terms of sculpture,
0:21:23 > 0:21:25for there is a whole range of perception
0:21:25 > 0:21:28belonging to feminine experience.
0:21:30 > 0:21:35So many ideas spring from an inside response to form...
0:21:37 > 0:21:41..a nut in its shell or a child in the womb
0:21:41 > 0:21:46or the structures of growth in shells and crystals,
0:21:46 > 0:21:51the hidden energy and rhythms of wood and stone
0:21:51 > 0:21:54and the pure and gentle quality
0:21:54 > 0:21:58of reflected light on the surfaces of natural material
0:21:58 > 0:22:05which produces sensations of vitality, security and calm.
0:22:18 > 0:22:22When I'm making a drawing, I like to begin with a board
0:22:22 > 0:22:28which I have prepared with a definite texture and tone.
0:22:29 > 0:22:33I like to rub and scrape the surfaces,
0:22:33 > 0:22:36as I might handle the surface of a sculpture.
0:22:38 > 0:22:42The surface takes my mood in colour and texture.
0:22:44 > 0:22:48Then a line or a curve made on it has a bite,
0:22:48 > 0:22:51rather like cutting into a slate.
0:22:52 > 0:22:57Then one gets lost in a world of space and creation,
0:22:57 > 0:22:59with a thousand possibilities,
0:22:59 > 0:23:05because the next line one draws in association with the one before
0:23:05 > 0:23:07will have a compulsion about it
0:23:07 > 0:23:11which will carry one forward into unknown territory.
0:23:13 > 0:23:16The conclusion will be reached by a sense of balance.
0:23:17 > 0:23:21Suddenly, before one's eyes, is a new form
0:23:21 > 0:23:24which, from a sculptor's point of view,
0:23:24 > 0:23:27can be deepened or extended,
0:23:27 > 0:23:31twisted, tightened, hardened, flattened
0:23:31 > 0:23:33according to one's will,
0:23:33 > 0:23:37as one brings to it one's own special life.
0:23:39 > 0:23:42And in this kind of nonrealistic art,
0:23:42 > 0:23:46the artist is free to follow his imagination
0:23:46 > 0:23:49and to create precisely to his will.
0:23:51 > 0:23:58What one does springs from a profound response to life itself.