Henry Moore Monitor

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MUSIC: "Concerto Grosso No 1: II. Dirge" by Ernest Bloch

HUW WHELDON: 'Henry Moore believes that sculpture

'is an art of the open air and not an indoor art.

'He's got two or three acres of grass and trees attached to his house,

'to give him, in his own words,

'"A piece of ground on which I can try out my sculptures,

'"and see whether, from a distance, they tell

'"whether the forms are big enough, and bold enough,

'"and contrasting enough in their shapes."

'He's also built two large studios in these grounds,

'where the big sculptures are made.

'The house and its grounds are in Hertfordshire.

'And here he lives quietly with his wife and his daughter.

'Moore himself doesn't buy works of art,

'it's Mrs Moore who does the collecting

'and the place is packed with pictures and sculpture -

'paintings in every odd corner

'and sculptures on every available surface.

'A case in the hall holds a collection

'of Aztec and early Mexican work.'

I like very much, this one here. This, um...

- Aztec piece. - Does it come out?

Yes, we can get it out, I think.

- I have to be very careful. - All right.

It was in 50 pieces and it's been put...put together again.

Um...

..this is, um...

..Mexican. What? I suppose around 1000 or a little after...

and, um, Aztec.

And what I find very interesting in it,

apart from the fact that

Mexican sculpture influenced me tremendously in the early stages,

is that this is an example of early stone sculpture,

which is really open and free.

You see, these are the legs crossed.

Er, here's the thigh of the leg. This is the arm.

And this the body.

But the whole thing giving you a space under and through,

supporting, as it were, by space

the huge weight of the head and... yet architecturally strong,

and yet free and open.

And that, for me, is a remarkable sculptural invention.

I think you'd better put it back, before it shatters

into another 50 fragments. It makes me nervous.

And me.

Tell me about, um, this one, over here on the left.

Oh, this is Mexican as well.

But a different culture from the other

and I think a very fine piece.

But, um, I'm staggered whenever I look at it, as now,

at what kind of remarkable authority

and presence that head has got.

The head in particular is what moves me very, very strongly.

I think it has such a...

a presence with it and, um, kind of almost hypnotic power -

a kind of priest-like quality.

And perhaps, in the background,

that may have had some connection with the, um,

head of the king in the King and Queen group

of mine that I made some five or six years ago.

- Yes, that one over there. - Yes.

One of the things that strikes me about this figure, for example,

is that it's one of the very few male figures that you've ever made.

Now, in the first place, is this right?

Um, yes, I think I've done about three or four male figures

out of the hundreds and hundreds that I've done -

the sculptures.

And, now you mention it, they practically are all women.

In fact my subject is...

er, the female figure...

- Why? - ..the woman.

I...I don't know. It's just that, um...

that's...that's what I'm interested in. But why, I wouldn't...

I don't know and I don't think I want to know.

- Um... - Right. Now, why not?

Well, perhaps, um, I can explain. Recently there was a book...

published on my work by some Jungian psychologist -

a very good writer named Neumann.

Um, I think the title was The Archetypal World Of Henry Moore.

- Yes. - And he sent me a copy,

which, um, he asked me to read.

But after the first chapter, I thought I'd better stop because...

it explained too much about...

um, what my motives were and what, um, er...

and I thought it might stop me from ticking over

if I went on and knew it all.

So, I prefer, really, to, er, not talk about one's work too much.

Not to try and explain it too much.

One can say things that don't matter about it, yes.

But to try and go into what its deep motives and reasons are,

I think stops, um...

..might stop one from wanting to go on.

That is perhaps if I was psychoanalysed,

I might stop being a sculptor.

I don't know, but anyhow I don't want to stop being a sculptor.

Are you suggesting that it's impossible to talk about art,

and this programme we are concerned with, for example, is useless?

No, not at all. What I'm... No, I find, um...

I look in at this programme very often

and, for instance,

the one you did on Lawrence Durrell...

I found that, after it, his books meant a bit more to me

than they had done before,

that it gave me a clue about him, that it made him, as a person,

real and therefore his works more real.

In that sense, I think it's very, um, valuable.

And again, too,

one can give a tiny clue perhaps...

er, in talking about what you're trying to do,

um, and therefore people don't look for something

you're not trying to do.

But all I mean is you can't explain, um,

in a few words, what you've been trying to do for a whole lifetime.

That... And again that you shouldn't try to use up words

and get rid of a tension that should be used in your sculpture.

'The place where these tensions are released into sculpture -

'the powerhouse, as it were, for Moore's work -

'is a small studio near the house

'where he does his thinking and makes his experiments.

'There are little trays there, full of bits and pieces.

'And I asked him what they were for.'

Well, they're odds and ends that I picked up on the seashore,

or out in the garden, or in ploughed fields.

And any shapes...

To have collection of things like this around you

means that, if I just walk in here in the morning,

there's something that'll get me thinking or started off...

about shape, about form, which is what, of course, sculpture is.

In fact, any kind of shape which catches one's eye at any time, um,

I pick up and just save or keep.

And, um, you see,

sculpture is purely this interest in form, in shape,

not in literary ideas or that kind of thing.

So that anything is grist for your mill. Any shape whatever.

People.

Trees.

The clouds.

Any shape whatever is, um, a possible starting or excitement for you.

'There are experimental shapes all over the studio shelves.

'Models and maquettes, some of which have remained what they now are,

'some of which have been hammered and cut

'and moulded into the big open-air pieces.

'And there are scores of mother and child pieces.

'Despite his earlier reluctance to talk about his main themes,

'I persisted a little,

'asking him why this mother and child subject

'had always so occupied him.'

Um, I wouldn't really know.

I do know that it has been one of the two main themes.

- That and reclining figure? - That and reclining figure.

And perhaps it isn't as much now as it used to be.

But at one time, almost anything I did turned into a mother and child.

Um, why - I don't know.

It's just a theme that, at one time, obsessed me.

Um...

- There must be some reason? - Yes, but I agree.

- And what is it? - But I don't know it.

I brought with me,

this book with a photograph in it which I marked of your own...

Madonna and Child, Northampton.

Is it a Madonna and child, or a mother and child?

Is there any difference between them?

Well, there is a difference and I tried to make a difference.

I felt very strongly that there should be...

a difference between just an ordinary mother and child

and the Madonna and child.

But in this, I tried to give some sort of...

..hieratic stillness.

Some kind of, um, permanence about the whole pose.

Some sort of, um, looking out onto the world.

Um, but how much happened, I don't know.

But you do this, don't you, with, um...

even when you are making mothers and children

that it has this hieratic, monumental quality in your work,

isn't that right?

Well, not as much, I don't think.

I mean, sometimes I'm not concerned with that, you see, as I can be.

Um, the opposite point of view about a mother and child, from this,

which does connect with it, this is kind of, um...

this warm, human, gentle relationship between the mother and child.

But there is the opposite, in which the...

Such as?

Well, in which the child is really almost trying to devour its mother.

- That kind of. - There?

Yes.

Um, that mother and child there, in which the child is rapacious

and, um, almost, er, so hungry that it could eat its mother.

The mother almost has to hold the child at arm's length

like a grip...on its neck. But there you go.

And that does happen too, in this relationship of the mother and child.

Now, I know you've got these sculptures and oil paintings,

and so on, all over the house.

But I notice that here in the studio, there are no paintings at all,

except for this one.

Yes, well, that really is unique in my life.

It's the only picture, um, I've ever really wanted to own.

And it's the first one.

Um, it's a Cezanne, Bathers composition

and, er...

when I saw it about a year ago,

I didn't sleep for two or three nights trying to decide whether to...

- To fork out... - Yes.

..the enormous amount of cash necessary. Yes

But, um, it has for me all the qualities of Cezanne -

the really monumental qualities of Cezanne -

and altogether gives me tremendous joy to have.

It's not perfect, it is a sketch,

er, but then I don't like absolute perfection.

I believe that one should make

a struggle towards something you can't do,

rather than do the thing you can do easily.

In fact that's what, about Cezanne,

that is, his life was one monumental struggle

and, um,

aim to extend himself, and painting, and art generally.

Again too, you see, it has my kind of figure in it.

Each of those women,

I could quite easily turn into a piece of sculpture, er,

- straightaway. - Mm-hm

They have this...mature...

..middle-aged idea of women and not the young slip of a girl.

- Would you say it's romantic? - Very romantic.

Take the figure on the left, the one with the back like,

almost like a gorilla - so wide.

Um, and yet with, um,

er...four lots of long tresses.

A very romantic idea of women that he had.

I ask that only because it seems to me that

the word romantic is the last word one would apply to your work.

Um, well, no, not at all. I think I have a very romantic idea of women.

Of all the works that you're exhibiting at the moment,

at this present exhibition, which are the most important to you?

Well, I suppose, it's, um, what one hopes are the two last ones.

The two large reclining... two-piece figures made in two pieces.

Yes, we've seen one of them already.

Um, probably because, um...

they have...

Well, I think I can explain it to you with, um, my photographs.

I have some of them somewhere, I think.

I take my own photographs.

- Er... - What do you mean? Sorry.

Well, photographers never take the view you want of them.

You have to do it... Ah.

Do you photograph all your sculptures?

Um, practically all.

Just to, um...be sure that it is the views that one wants. This is it.

This is number one. There are two of them.

And they more or less stand together but the, er, number one

the two-piece one, is this. It's a reclining figure, as you can see,

and connects up with all my reclining figures.

Um, again, if I can show you, um... I can show you the...

..first, one of the first reclining figures I did,

you'll see that it has the same connection, the same idea in it.

It's 1928.

There. HE COUGHS

- This one? - This one.

You see the same looming leg.

The upright body end.

And in this case, I divided it into two,

of which there is the, um...

..head and body and the leg.

- Is this a leg too? - Well, this is the...

Yes, this is, um... the beginning of a leg.

- It's a rudimentary leg? - A rudimentary leg.

Now, these two figures are totally separate.

- Did you make them separately? - Oh, yes.

They're in, um...

They're in two pieces. I think...

..um, this one shows it. You see the, um, head end and the leg end.

And probably what that results in,

through making a sculpture out of two parts,

is that one part gets in front of the other

in a way you can't guess.

And so it has, the sculpture has, I think,

a greater variety in its aspects,

in its views than probably any other sculpture that I've made.

Um, for example...

..there it is from, um...the leg end.

Um, this sculpture was...

..er, a mixture. It's a mixture of the human figure and landscape.

And this one perhaps shows, um, what was in my mind -

the connection with mountains.

You see, you could imagine yourself walking along this...

..here, climbing up, going up.

- A little tiny figure. - A tiny figure with a...

Um...

Well, there it is.

This and the other are sculptures in which, I hope,

in which I've tried to amalgamate the figure

and landscape and mountains.

A kind of metaphor.

Er, like...

in poetry you'd say, "The mountain skipped like rams."

Er, here, the figure

which is connected with the earth, with rocks, mountains.

It's a metaphor.

MUSIC: "Concerto Grosso No 1: II. Dirge" by Ernest Bloch