Modern Bodies: Barbara Hepworth

Ronald Moody, Midonz  1937

We do not know for sure the identity of this monumental head. One writer suggested she is Moody’s ‘vision of woman, primordial and awakening’. Moody himself described her as ‘the goddess of transmutation’. Moody was interested in Gnosticism, a belief in the redemption of the spirit from physical matter through spiritual knowledge. It may be this sort of transmutation that he had in mind.

Midonz was shown in Paris and Baltimore in the 1930s, after which it was lost for almost fifty years.

Gallery label, August 2003

Francis Bacon, Sketch [Reclining Figure, No. 2]  c.1959–61

This sketch may have served as colour studies and even responded to Mark Rothko's contemporary work (seen in London in 1959). The male nude and horizontal bands (derived from a sofa against a wall) are common to a series of Bacon's oil paintings from 1959 and 1961. The sketches appear to be later, as an impression of writing from another sheet but visible on 'Sketch [Reclining Figure, no.1]' gives his address as '7 Reece Mews', the studio which he occupied in the autumn of 1961.

Gallery label, March 2023

Dame Barbara Hepworth, Figure (Nanjizal)  1958

This sculpture is one of several related carvings made from the mid-1950s onwards. In these Hepworth explored her highly personal response to the natural environment, using abstract forms. Nanjizal is the name of a cove near St Ives, with striking arched cliff formations. However, the artist also described the sculpture as a representation of 'my sensations within myself'. Thus the work appears to suggest the qualities not only of a standing human figure, but also the contours of the cliffs and beach at Nanjizal.

Gallery label, September 2004

Roger Hilton, March 1960  1960

Hilton’s work oscillated between complete non-representation and degrees of figuration. In the end he came to believe that was ‘only a step towards a new sort of figuration

, that is, one which is more true’. Often apparently abstract shapes suggest parts of the body – usually female. But, as well as his forms, Hilton used the material of the work of art itself to evoke ideas of the body and its functions. He reversed the conventions of picture making by drawing into and over paint while the paint itself looks as if it has been smeared or laid on in blocks.

Gallery label, February 2010

Roger Hilton, Oi Yoi Yoi  1963

In the early 1960s, Hilton’s art could be figurative or abstract but it always had an erotic charge. This is, perhaps, the most literal description of a situation in his art of that time. He once stated that ‘there are situations, states of mind, moods, etc., which call for some artistic expression’. He gave the source of the painting - ‘my wife dancing on a verandah, we were having a quarrel. She was nude and angry at the time and she was dancing up and down shouting oi yoi yoi – but it is more universal than that.’

Gallery label, September 2016

Veronica Ryan OBE, Loss of Selves, Place and Transformation  2000

This work is one of three drawings in Tate’s collection (see also Gravitas Profundis II 2000, Tate T07772 and Gravitas Profundis III 2000, Tate T07773) that Ryan made while she was artist in residence at Tate St Ives (1998-2000). During this period, Ryan worked in the former studio of Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975). Hepworth had moved to St Ives shortly before the outbreak of World War II, and lived and worked in the area for the remainder of her life. She was interested particularly in the qualities of form and space, and her carved sculptures were often pierced expressing a concern with internal and external forms. While in residence in the studio, Ryan made a series of works that responded to Hepworth’s practice while simultaneously addressing her own concerns. Ryan found the Cornish peninsula reminded her strongly of the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean where she was born and lived until emigrating with her family to the United Kingdom as a young child. These similarities prompted Ryan to revisit childhood memories in the work she made at St Ives.

Keith Vaughan, Untitled (Male Figure)  c.1970

Phoebe Unwin, Man with Heavy Limbs  2009

This work depicts a seated male figure in profile with his forearms and hands resting on his thighs. Rendered in a variety of materials, from charcoal and pastel to acrylic and ink, the work is made of four sheets of paper mounted together in the frame. The printed pattern acts both as clothing and interior, thus confusing the relationship between figure and background. The depiction of a single fragmented figure follows Unwin’s interest in removing any sense of narrative or reality. This way, the figure stands alone in the work’s own imaginary world with no sense of place or time.

Gallery label, September 2016

Francis Bacon, Sketch [Reclining Figure, No. 1]  c.1959–61

These two works on paper by Bacon are the only ones in the display in which the page has been filled. As the pose remains the same, they may have served as colour studies and may even be a response to Mark Rothko's contemporary work (seen in London in 1959). The male nude, and the horizontal bands (derived from a sofa against a wall) are common to a series of Bacon's oil paintings from 1959 and 1961. The sketches appear to be later, as an impression of writing from another sheet but visible on 'Reclining Figure, no.1' gives his address as '7 Reece Mews', the studio which he occupied in the autumn of 1961.

Gallery label, September 2004

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, 10pm Saturday  2012

Louise Bourgeois, Tree with Woman  1998

Topiary: The Art of Improving Nature is a suite of nine copperplate etchings with dry point and aquatint presented in a salmon pink silk-covered box. The portfolio was produced in an edition of twenty-eight of which this is the twelfth. It was printed by Harlan and Weaver, New York and published by Julie Sylvester Cabot, Whitney Museum of American Art Editions, New York. The prints follow a progression and are individually numbered and titled with a simple description. III Tree with Woman depicts a woolly-textured tree, like that represented in I Tree (P78621) and II Tree with Split Trunk (P78622). The horizontal format of the first two images has here been rotated into vertical alignment, emphasising the height of the tree, now represented whole, perhaps an older incarnation of the younger tree developing in I and II. At the tree’s base a little naked woman spans its massive trunk with her arms. Her legs are astride, one over each of two large divergent roots. Prominent labia mirror the bifurcated trunk above. She appears empowered, happy, in the prime of her sexual life. The tree is further developed in IV Tree with Shoes (P78624) and returns in the final image of the portfolio, IX Tree with Crutch (P78629).

Rebecca Horn, Performances II  1973

Horn designed these ‘body extensions’ for herself and her friends. They limit or expand how a person can move and interact with their environment. These performances were made specifically for the camera. They show how the sculptures change the wearers’ relationship to the surrounding space and to other people. Horn has commented: ‘Looking back at these first pieces you always see a kind of cocoon, which I used to protect myself. Like the fans where I can lock myself in, enclose myself, then open and integrate another person into an intimate ritual. This intimacy of feeling and communication was a central part in the performances.’

Gallery label, May 2019

Pablo Picasso, Head of a Woman  1924

This small painting demonstrates Picasso’s ability to capture an image through very direct means: taut lines laid over four colours. The stylisation of the face makes reference to the flattened planes associated with Cubism, but the incised line also reflects the texture and layering that dominated his work of the 1920s. He was much admired by the Surrealists but, even though sharing their interest in the unconscious and the irrational, resisted any official connection.

Gallery label, November 2007

Sandra Blow, Composition II  1960

John Milne, Resurgence  1976

Asger Jorn, The Timid Proud One  1957

Jorn had been a prominent member of CoBrA, a group of northern European artists whose improvisatory approach to painting was intended as a way of liberating their work from repressive bourgeois conventions. Although this painting was made several years after the group disbanded, its child-like style reflects the same principles. The figure embodies some mysterious inner struggle, perhaps reflected in the title. Jorn was a great believer in these kind of opposed dualities. ‘Tension in a work of art is negative-positive: repulsive-attractive, ugly-beautiful. If one of these poles is removed, only boredom is left’, he said.

Gallery label, November 2005

William Scott, The Harbour  1952

The Harbour 1952 is made of black and white oil paint on canvas. The composition is dominated by a slightly curving black band that reaches about four fifths of the way across the middle of the painting from left to right. A small square of black occupies the top left-hand corner. A thinly painted, narrow black line stretches out from that square across the full width of the canvas and there is another, with four vertical lines beneath it, in the lower part of the composition. Within these black elements white paint has been applied in a generous manner to give a luscious, richly textured surface. For the most part, the white and black paint do not touch and bare ground can be seen between the two elements.

Zanele Muholi, MaID, Brooklyn, New York  2015

This is one of a group of black and white self-portraits in Tate’s collection from the ongoing series Somnyama Ngonyama, in which Zanele Muholi portrays themself in a variety of guises, with a range of props and adornments and against diverse backgrounds (Tate P82041–P82049).

Henry Moore OM, CH, Figure  1931

Figure is an early example of Moore’s development towards abstraction in the first half of the 1930s. In this sculpture a figure of a woman is interpreted fluidly, a rendering that is in part determined by the sensitivities of the wood’s grain. It was most likely created in Moore’s Hampstead studio. Its rounded contours, in common with others from this period, relate to the sculptor’s interest in the lines of the landscape, where natural forms are softened and simplified as a consequence of weathering.

Gallery label, September 2016