Modern Bodies: Barbara Hepworth

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).

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).

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

Francis Bacon, Seated Figure  1961

Bacon’s portraits are explorations of the human condition as much as they are character studies, particularly in works such as Seated Figure, in which the identity of the sitter is not disclosed. They also represent a complex exploration of pictorial space: the figure is simultaneously posed among some elegant items of furniture and confined within a box-like frame. This device, which was one of Bacon’s trademarks, underlines the sense of isolation as well as generating a claustrophobic psychological intensity.

Gallery label, July 2012

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

Vanessa Bell, Mrs St John Hutchinson  1915

This portrait shows the short-story writer Mary Hutchinson. She was the mistress of Bell’s husband Clive, a fact of which Bell was aware. This may account for the unflattering nature of the portrait. When it was exhibited, to the sitter’s consternation, Vanessa Bell wrote ‘It’s perfectly hideous...and yet quite recognisable’.

The dazzling colours are reminiscent of work by Matisse – an artist Bell revered – and the French ‘Fauve’ painters.

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

Jacques Lipchitz, Seated Man with Clarinet I  1920

The figure of a clarinet player emerges from a series of block-like forms in this sculpture. Musical subject matter was typical of early works by the cubists Picasso and Braque, and the angular facets of this work suggest a relationship to the geometric shapes of cubist painting. The work also reflects the aesthetic ideals of purism, a movement which began after the First World War and sought to develop aspects of cubism, emphasising simplicity and harmony.

Gallery label, April 2012

Keith Vaughan, Ninth Assembly of Figures (Eldorado Banal)  1976

William Turnbull, Idol 2  1956

The majority of Turnbull's sculptures of the mid - 1950s are very simplified upright forms of human height standing directly on the ground. This is one of a series of 'Idols' made between 1955-7 where the human figure has been refined and streamlined so that it resembles a spear or leaf shape, sometimes incised with surface marks. The integral base suggests feet and the sculpture possesses an elementary nose and breasts indicating a female figure. This generalised human form evokes sculpture of a much earlier period, for example from ancient Greece or Egypt. There are echoes of the sculpture of Giacometti, whom Turnbull met in the 1940s in Paris.

Gallery label, August 2004

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

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

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

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

Rebecca Horn, Pencil Mask  1972

Strapped around the face, this mask transforms the wearer’s head into an instrument for drawing. Horn has described wearing it: ‘All pencils are about two inches long and produce the profile of my face in three dimensions...I move my body rhythmically from left to right in front of a white wall. The pencils make marks on the wall the image of which corresponds to the rhythm of my movements.’ The spike-like pencils make this one of Horn’s more threatening works. However, it is linked to the feather masks, as feather quills were also once used for writing.

Gallery label, September 2004

Wangechi Mutu, You were always on my mind  2007

Mutu’s elaborate figurative paintings incorporate collaged materials from a variety of sources including medical journals, ethnographic photo-essays, fashion, wildlife and pornographic magazines. In this double profile, the larger, lower, head is mainly in earth tones, and includes collaged images of a begging figure and a jewelled hand. The smaller head is lushly coloured and partly built-up in layers of a moss-like plant substance. The entire construction suggests a conflation between natural and artificial constructions of beauty and plenty.

Gallery label, September 2008

Katy Moran, Lady Things  2009

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

Simon Bayliss, Teapot with screw-cap (Mermen of Zennor)  2021

John Milne, Resurgence  1976