IF you happen to be traveling to the United Kingdom soon, you might consider a slight detour to one of the most beautiful places on earth. The Yorkshire Sculpture Park presents an ongoing outdoor-museum spectacle of nature interrogated by one man’s vision.
Ongoing until September 6, the park, which is the UK’s leading open-air gallery located a little to the north of the center of England, has just recently opened another iteration of its classic repertoire, one of the most beloved in the land: This is the most recent mounting of the sculptures of Henry Moore (1898-1986).
It is no surprise to learn that the sculptor was one of Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s founding patrons. Unlike almost everyone in the arts, he was committed to showing his work in the open air. But detractors in the stuffy establishment of the city were weary: “You mean exhibit art in the middle of nowhere?”
At the time, during the first decades following World War II, Moore’s idea to install sculpture in the landscape, far from cosmopolitan publics and further away from the stuffiness of the salon and the gallery system, was considered radical, being very far from the center of conventional opinion, as if his nude females had donned the baggy trousers that Amelia Bloomer introduced in the 1850s, an edgy form of dress for women at the time.
But the public is happy that fashion has changed. Though Moore’s women are never seen with bloomers, they can be seen as draped figures or nudes in the form of the Eve of Adam never departed from the garden despite having bit from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Or as Lilith herself in all her splendour.
However, the effect of placing art amid nature had a lasting effect on British art.
The park became one of his favorite places to exhibit. He sought refuge among its boulders; the neverending sky above was a canopy. He praised the ever-changing seasons which allowed his sculptures to be experienced through different lenses. He also credited the resident flock of sheep, which he found to be exactly the right size and scale, the movement of which balanced his gravity.
Moore’s sense of England emerging undefeated from the siege of the greatest war in history led to his vigorous creation of monoliths encompassing endurance and continuity, and what better way to elucidate forever than by showing its manifestations immovable on the land and unperturbed by time itself.
Moore was engaged in a constant investigation of this geology. His abstract works depict humanity, but their shapes and allusions are derived from landscape forms. Like many artists, he largely drew on memories of personal significance—from the black coal deposits of his father’s workplace to his exploration of caves. Although Moore’s signature form is the reclining figure, the form was to lead him to increasing abstraction as he turned his thoughts toward experimentation with the elements of design, all focusing on the endurance and continuity of the land.
While his early reclining figures deal principally with mass and objecthood, in which bent limbs separate from and rejoin the body, his later ones contrast the solid elements of the sculpture with space, not only the space around them but generally through the form as he bore openings that resembled the feminine interrogation of the masculine through alternating concave and convex shapes. Latter-day critical analysis on Moore broaden the scope to include ideas that the trauma of war, the advent of psychoanalysis, new ideas of sexuality, primitive art and surrealism had an influence on Moore’s work.
In the 1948 Venice Biennale, Moore won the International Sculpture Prize. He rejected a knighthood in 1951, because he felt that such an honor would elevate him to a perception of him as an establishment figure and would cut him off from fellow artists whose work had social aims similar to his. But in 1955 and 1963, he accepted the Companion of Honour and the Order of Merit, respectively. Moore became a trustee of the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery.
Back to a Land, the ongoing exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, takes its title from a Jacquetta Hawkes’s book which the artist provided illustrations for. Published in 1951, A Land became a midcentury bestseller as it considered the geology and archaeology of Britain, affirming the author’s belief that readers should form a personal connection with the land, its physical and human layers.
Aside from the sculptural works installed in the park, the exhibit continues into an underground gallery, where rarely-seen works on paper capture landscapes of Moore’s imagination. Additional context is provided by a series of personal artefacts, notes, sketches and photographs, curated by the artist’s only child, Mary Moore.
Back to a Land is supported by Christie’s and Arts Council England.
Admission is free, but parking charges apply.
The Yorkshire Sculpture Park is in West Bretton, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, WF4 4LG, SatNav WF4 4JX, United Kingdom. For more information visit www.ysp.co.uk.