Watching Henry Moore
From time to time for this blog, I muse on art events which are not in the City of Oceanside. Last Thursday was one of those times. The San Diego Museum of Art located in Balboa Park is currently now until August is exhibiting the Sculptures of Henry Moore and the Paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe.
As a sculptor painter I view art works differently than those who do not have this background. When I am in the presence of a sculpture, the three dimensions are compelling and enchanting. The lines, the shadows, the music of repeats are so very different from the viewing of a painting. A painting you see only one dimension no matter where you stand. It is always the same. A sculpture, you walk around and the front, sides, and back show a design of splendid alignment. The lines are in tune with each other no matter where you stand, the repeats are giving music to the arrangement of shapes.
For abstraction of life forms into sculptures, Line, Shadows, and Repeats are essential. These elements are the music of sculpture. A realistic art work in sculpture has these elements as well, but that is for another blog post.
Let me tell of the shadows. Shadows are the element of three dimensional shapes. Without shadows, the work would look flat. Henry Moore, a master of shadows which fall on rounded shapes throw a strait line. To give an example, look at a car's fender and see the highlight and the shape of the highlight. It is perfect and shows that the surface is perfect in it's self so the highlight is perfect as well. This, then is also true with shadows. When a shadow falls on a curve it also has to be perfect from all sides. The challenge for the artist is find and make the shapes perfectly smooth and round for any small bump will throw the shadow into a imperfect wavy line.
Lines are the sharp edges of the sculpture. Some sculptures to not have sharp edges and there are no lines which define where dark and light of where shadows fall. Sometimes I had a hard time conveying to my foundry workers the idea of a curved strait line. It seems like an oxymoron. Again back to the fender on a car. The fender is a curved line, but perfectly strait. Therefor any shadow or highlight will be a perfect line as well.
Repeats are the music in a sculpture. Repeats are a line, shape or shadow which are repeated in the viewing of the work. These repeats can be close together or at a distance when you view the sculpture from different angles. The repeats can be subtle, or of great impact. The dance of the repeats bring a cohesiveness to the work and it is what makes a sculpture a masterwork.
Walking around these masterworks, Watching, I see the dance, hear the music, and see the lights and darks. They sing to me, and give a great sense of a sublime awareness of a gift. A gift from Henry Moore, a master forever.
