British Modernism

The age when an empire was colonized by its colony

Henry Moore ´Recumbent Figure´, 1938.

The “Recumbent Figure” 1938 in Green Horton Stone was part, as many other sculptures, of The Reclining figure collection made by Henry Moore between 1929 and 1958. Looking at these sculptures, we sense Moore´s love of nature and at the same time his awareness of his own capacities and insights: material, complete three-dimensionality, idea, and vitality. The associational psychological factors. “Rounded forms convey and idea of fruitfulness”, he writes. The ´Recumbent Figure´ is a symbol of the woman as the concept of fruitfulness, the Mother Earth. Moore, who once pointed to the maternal element in the ´Reclined Figures´ may well see in them an element of eternity, the “Great Female”, who is both birth-giving nature and the wellspring of the unconscious. To Henry Moore, the ´Reclining Figures´ are no mere external objects, he identifies himself with them, as well as the earth and the whole realm of motherhood, according to Will Grohmann (1960).

The piece was made to sit on the terrace of architect Serge Chermayeff´s house, overlooking the rolling Sussex Downs. Chermayeff abandoned the house just before WWII broke out, for a life in the U.S, Moore bought the piece back from he and then sold it to the Contemporary Art Society, which gifted to the Tate.

"Rounded forms convey an idea of fruitfulness" -

Henry Moore

Henry Moore ´Recumbent Figure, 1938. On the terrace of architect Serge Chermayeff´s house.

When you see at the Tate, the ´Recumbent Figure´ becomes a huge modelled sphere, the arms and legs, which pass imperceptibly one into the other, breast and arms so natural one hardly notices the opening, the head its a barely modelled sphere; the arms and legs, which pass imperceptibly one into the other, make up the overall undulating shape. What is more, if you see it in detail and change your point of view, that human shape becomes an architectural one or a landscape.

Detail Henry Moore´s ´Recumbent Figure´, 1938 Detail Henry Moore´s ´Recumbent Figure´, 1938

In that way I can agree with Jon Wood when assure that Moore´s sculpture could be ín two places at the same time´: it demonstrated an ability to turn the habitat of ´this mood of habitation´inside out and extend it beyond the walls of the home, into the landscape and back again. The marriage of indoor and outdoor, of the domestic interior and the landscape, was already by 1939 a central preoccupation of Moore´s work. Preoccupation that shared with British Surrealism, whose two significant and frequently interrelated concerns were the countryside and the objects and features of the domestic interior. Paul Nash in his article ´Surrealism in Interior Decoration´in 1936 contended that Giacometi and Moore were the main artists to have stood up to the challenge of the possibilities of make a new kind of room to live in and produce a new form of decoration… The creation of an atmosphere - a mood of habitation-.

´King and Queen´, 1952-53 a human couple that appears lost lonely on the Scottish Highlands at Shawhead, Dumfies, looking out across a loch to the mountains. Even though has been connected with the British Royal couple due to the year of its production coincide with Elizabeth II´s coronation. This is a high-water mark in Moore´s creative work, a monument for that is what it is -timeless and without specific purpose.

Henry Moore ´King and Queen, 1952-53

During the nineteenth century, British sculpture was the art that could be a suitable for the British Empire to be represented by its constituent parts and London was the stage for this selection of work. The British Empire was still to reach the zenith at the time of the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria, and it did so in the twentieth century than the nineteenth. The years between Victoria´s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 and George V´s Silver Jubilee in 1935 saw the empire widest extend and witnessed it also become throughly embedded into the mind-sets of its peoples. During 1924 and 1938 Empire Exhibitions were staged in London and Glasgow where the colonial dominions offered a range of opportunities to those growing up in Britain. It was in the twentieth century when British sculpture was seen taking shape in the pages of magazines published in Paris and New York and when with the support of the British Council became a brand. We cannot forget that at the same time (during 1920s and 1930s) Modernism was established when the pioneers such as Le Corbusier, Auguste Perret, Rudolph Schindler, Frank Lloyd Wright and others laid the foundation stones of the Modern Movement.

However, the twentieth century was broken in the middle by the WWII and after this event things never became the same. The mid-century period was an age of dreams and optimism. In the post-war years, after all the chaos and crisis of a global conflict, the world began to rebuild and rethink itself. Two important key events will influence the future. Firstly, the vast reconstruction in Europe underwritten by the “American” Marshall Plan. And secondly, the vast spending power of the “American” people (United States people). These explain why even though after 1948 and Henry’s Moore´s success at the Venice Biennale, a new Imperialism -that of the United States of America- came to dictate the construction of sculpture in Britain.

Coventry Cathedral under reconstruction, to a design by Basil Spence, 1962.

It was in “America” that the consumer revolution really gathered pace in the post-war years. They has money in their pockets and those pockets begin to bulge in the boom times of the 1950s and 1960s when “America” was busily exporting and expertise around the globe. According to Dominic Bradbury (2014) the “American” consumer offered the catalyst for a massive expansion in the world of design. This not only took the form of houses, interiors, textiles and home products but also ´big ticket´ items like refrigerators and automobiles. And was graphic design which began producing the logos, branding and advertising posters for a fast-growing corporate culture.

Screenprint from an advertisement of 1955, showing the Pan American Airways pilot greeting a mother and her three children as they board an international flight.

It is important to mention, that it was during this period (the mid-century) when the idea of modernity was transformed and that was the ages of ages- the atomic age, the space age, the computer age. For designers, fast-developing technologies and manufacturing methods meant adapting quickly and making the most of new opportunities to create a whole new generation of products. Designers such as Charles and Ray Eames and Arne Jacobsen made the most of fresh materials such as plywood in their furniture, meanwhile Verner Panton, Oliver Mourgue and Pierre Paulin explored plastics. It is seemed that the future had arrived and that was easier than ever to transmit ideas, designs and products from one place to another.

That was also a time of political, social and sexual revolution. New cultural movements echoed social change, from rock ´n´roll to flower power to Pop Art. This was also the age of festivals and expos that celebrate modernity in their different ways, from the festival of Britain in 1951 to Woodstock in 1969.

A poolside party in January 1970 at the Kauffmann DesertHouse in Palm Springs, California, designed by Richard Neutra.The group includes industrial designer Raymond Loewy

And along this cultural revolution came the design one. America had received the greatest and most inventive minds who emigrated during and before the WWII. They included architects and designers such as Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Ludwing Mies van Der Rohe, Jens Risom and Richard Neutra. All born and educated in Europe but now working and teaching in the United States of America.

Whole United States of America was a centre point in the design world in the 1950s and ´60s. There was plenty going in the other parts of the world. Regional and local modernist architects and designers were establishing international reputations, including Oscar Niemeyer in Brazil, Luis Barragán in Mexico, and Harry Seidler in Australia. The French and Italian design scenes remained strong, and product and industrial design in Germany and Japan were developing fast. Sacandinavia, meanwhile, was also a focal point for what some called ´soft modernism´.

But, where was Britain? We could conclude then that having the United States of America as the protagonist in the global scene of art and design since the mid-century (of the twentieth century), and considering that it was the time in which so much of the way we live now was really shaped; the empire was colonized by its colony?