Long before Damien Hirst and the YBAs erupted on to the scene, Henry Moore was rebelling against the art establishment of 1920s Britain. Now Tate Britain is staging a major exhibition of his work including many of his abstract forms, wood-carvings, bronzes and drawings.
I have to confess to a vested interest. A few years ago, on a wintry walk in Hertfordshire, we came across what looked like a Henry Moore sculpture howling at the sky from a small hill. The kids ran ahead while my husband and I bickered about what it could be. Why would a Moore be stuck out in the countryside? And what were the other contorted figures in the sheep fields below? Whatever, it made a good windbreak for us to sit down with our sandwiches and tea, the kids creating their own fantasy of what the statue was: a mermaid, a fish or a funny-looking lady.
Our funny lady did turn out to be a Moore and the figures below further sculptures in the grounds of the Henry Moore foundation. And the fact that we guessed the artist is no surprise for, more than 20 years after his death, Moore remains one of the most recognised of all Britain’s modern artists (probably even more so than Damien Hirst). Yet the aim of the Tate Britain exhibition is to present a very different Moore from the avuncular figure of our popular imagination, whose gloriously tactile figures are as appealing to young children as adults.
Moore’s work, the exhibition reveals, was as much a product of the shattering events of the early 20th century as his frequently discussed interest in primitivism. It displays his pieces firmly in the context of history — the First World War, new attitudes to sex and sexuality and an emerging interest in psychoanalysis — and uncovers a dark and erotically charged dimension that challenges our familiar image.
We shall certainly look at the prone, apparently fragmented, figure of our funny lady in a new light since discovering the violence that Moore witnessed as a young First World War combatant, the gassing he endured during the Battle of Cambrai in 1917, and the fact that he was one of only 52 survivors from the 400 men of his battalion.
Henry Moore, the exhibition, is at Tate Britain from February 24 to August 8, 2010 (tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/henrymoore)
