Patrick Bade
Henry Moore, Francis Bacon and Graham Sutherland: British Art takes Centre Stage

Patrick Bade - Henry Moore, Francis Bacon and Graham Sutherland: British Art Takes Centre Stage

- Well, as you can see, I’m back in London from the dark and dingy background. And today I’m also back to my daytime job, really, of being an art historian. One of the things I used to love about teaching at the London Jewish Cultural Centre was I got to be able to teach such a variety of things. I didn’t have to be specialised. But sometimes it is quite good to be doing the daytime job. So, the images you see on the screen are paintings by Francis Bacon. The title is “Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion”. And these pictures were shown at the Lavere Gallery in April, 1945. Alongside works by the other two artists I’m talking about today, Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland. And this show marked a milestone, not just in the career of Francis Bacon, these paintings caused an extraordinary sensation and made his reputation. He’d been previously completely unknown. But it also marked a milestone in the history of art in Britain. Henry Moore in the middle, and Graham Sutherland on the right. All quite close to one another in age, Henry Moore just a few years older. And so these three artists, immediately after the Second World War, emerged onto the international scene.

And it marked a kind of emancipation of modern British art from Paris, in as far as there was modern art in Britain from the 1880s through to the Second World War. You could say that British art was really a provincial sideshow to French art. In the 1880s, of course, Victorian art was very much paid no attention whatsoever to French art. Dante Gabriel Rosetti said he thought the British had nothing at all to learn from the French. But in the 1880s, some younger artists realised there was something exciting happening in Paris. And they set up the, kind of oddly named, new English art club in the 1880s because, really, it was a Trojan horse for impressionism and modern French art. And this is the jury of the newish English Art club, major figures initially, Walter Sickert, Philip Wilson Steer, William Rothenstein and someone who actually painted this picture, and Augustus John. And the, againity of Paris was reaffirmed in 1910. I’ve talked to some of you about this before. When Roger Fry set up the, he organised the exhibition entitled “Manet and the Post Impressionist”, and that introduced Van Gogh, Gauguin, and so on to the British, initially somewhat shocked and reluctant. And as I said, for all the, sorts of, leading more or less avant-garde English artists, they were looking to France right up to the Second World War. The Henry Moore very, or the very same year. But he was already 48 years old. But the MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which obviously has huge kudos and reputation, they organised a retrospective for him.

And that was certainly the first time they’d ever done that for a British artist. I’m starting off with Henry Moore, who’s the oldest of the three, he was born in 1898. And you could say he was born in Yorkshire, and initially educated in Leeds, and then came down to London and studied the Royal College of Art. And in common with other sculptors of his generation. I would say that the most important thing, in a way, for him was to get away from Rodin. Rodin was such a sort of huge, giant figure at the turn of the century. Universally acclaimed as the world’s greatest artist. And Brancusi, who’s an artist of the same generation, he was invited to work in Rodin studio and he said, “No, nothing grows in the shadow of big trees.” So all the leading sculptors of that generation, you could say, were they were trying to be as different as possible. Got Henry Moore on the left, Rodin on the right. And we, one of the things that, ways in which they reacted against Rodin was to take up the idea of direct carving. Now, all European sculpture by leading sculptors from the Renaissance right up to the early 20th century involved several stages, several processes. The initial forms, as you can see here, with Rodin on the right hand side, were made by modelling. ‘Cause there are three traditional processes involved in sculpture: modelling, carving, and casting. And modelling, you are using soft material. It can be clay, it can be plaster, it can be wax. And it’s additive, you are building up.

And that’s what Rodin was. He was a modeller. I just was reading today a biography of during the First World War, he went round making film of the greatest living Frenchman. And he went to Rodin studio and Rodin posed for him chipping it away at a piece of marble. Well, actually Rodin almost never did that. The marble statues you see by Rodin were all actually carved by assistance. But they were carved by, and it was a kind of a mechanical process. So the creative part of creating, of making a sculpture for Rodin was in the modelling. And then it’s either cast or it’s remade by carving, by technicians, not really by artists. And so Henry Moore was part of this generation that really wanted to go back to directly carving in stone. Not going through these different stages. And here you see him with a carving that he’s made in honiton stone. And I’ve got a series of comparisons here to show you this, it’s one of those pendulum swings, an extreme reaction from one generation to the next. So it’s Rodin’s on the right hand side, as you can see of a woman’s face, so that, that has been modelled in clay or in plaster. And then a mould has been made and then it’s been cast in bronze. And we’ve got a piece of stone here, not marble, I think, I mean, I don’t think that Henry Moore was very keen on marble. That had too many academic associations. And the interesting thing here is that, well, it’s not very naturalistic. And it also, it doesn’t really follow the classical or Greek Greco-Roman cannons of beauties looking elsewhere for his inspiration to African and South American art. Again, I think striking comparison by Rodin of this old woman.

Title is “She Who was Once the Helmet Maker’s Beautiful Young Wife”. So it’s a sculptor which actually has a narrative and great pathos. And that’s another thing, I think, in which the generation, say of the 1920s in early 20th century, they were also reacting against that pathetic quality, that emotional pathos of Rodin. And Henry Moore on the left hand side. Henry Moore, obviously top left and Rodin, bottom right. And the sensuality and eroticism of Rodin was also something, I think, that they really wanted to leave behind. Rodin on the right, and this chunky, rather primitive Henry Moore on the left. Now, as I said, he was educated initially in Leeds, and then he came down to London and he studied the Royal College of Art under a very academic sculptor called Derwent Wood. He’s chiefly remembered today for this monument, which is at a Hyde Park Corner. Very beautiful in this way, but very conventional, looking back via the Italian renaissance, to the Greek ideal, to classical ideal. It’s actually a monument to the machine gunners in the first World War. It’s actually now, unless you risk your life by crossing the road at Hyde Park corner onto the traffic island, it’s now on a traffic island. So, or very few people ever see it from the front. The only way you normally see it at the buttocks, the backside have really become the focal point of parkland, as you are driving down parkland, or if you’re in a bus going down far parkland, you are driving towards the backside of this monument, which always strikes me as a bit bizarre. Now, Derwent Wood, of course, had very conventional ideas, so he was not at all in favour of direct carving.

This was a very alien idea to him. And so an exercise that he gave to Henry Moore was to make a copy of a beautiful Renaissance Madonna, which is in a Victorian Albert museum by Rossellino. So the original of this is 15th century verintim sculpture. And the process that he was supposed to do was to use a pointing machine. And pointing machines they had actually existed since classical antiquity. And it’s a sort of contraption like a scaffolding. And you very carefully measure distances and you drill little holes and then you carve between them. It’s this kind of 3D equivalent of drawing by numbers. And so he was instructed to do this, but he didn’t want to. This is Henry Moore. He thought, well, he had enough confidence to take a block of stone and directly carved into it just using his eye, but he didn’t want to annoy Derwent Wood. So actually he drilled, you can’t, I can’t really see them in this image, but it’s in the VNA if you go and look at it carefully, you can see that there are little holes at various points in the surface to make it look as though he had actually used a pointing machine. Here he is, he was a rather truculent young man, with one of his pieces. And as I said, he’s looking elsewhere for inspiration, not back mainly to the Italian renaissance, although as we shall see later on, he does reference it. He’s looking outside European traditions and very, very attracted by South American sculpture, Mayan sculpture. He saw this piece.

He went to Paris in 1925 and he saw actually a copy, not the original of this piece in the Trocadero in Paris, in Musee de l'Homme. And he was blown away by it. Had a very big influence, as you can see, on pieces like this that he made in the twenties and the early thirties. Once again, really chunky and earthy and primitive in quality. And not trying to deny that the material is what it is. 'Cause that was another thing that they didn’t like about Rodin, they didn’t like about say, Benini. You know, the great skill of Benini is making you believe that, you know, marble looks like flesh or like hair or, you know, Benini can sculpt a tear going down a cheek. It’s absolutely incredible virtuosity. But the sculptors of this generation believed in truth to materials. You’re using stone and you don’t want to pretend that this is anything else but stone. Of an important early commission for him was for the headquarters of London Transport. And he’s working along other leading sculptors of the early 20th century, Eric Gill and Jacob Epstein. But this piece, it’s meant to represent a wind, it’s the west, I think the west wind, or is it the east wing? I’m not sure. Anyway, it’s on the facade of the London Transport Building. He is, as the thirties unfold, he does become aware of trends in modern art, in continental Europe. This is an example of the biomorphic abstraction, you know, abstract forms that suggest living biological forms. And this is a type of art that was very associated with serialism. So he certainly, serialism became a major international movement and influence in the 1930s.

And he’s rather, like Picasso, Henry Moore is flirting with it. And this is another example of that. And but is so biomorphic abstraction, another example on the left, influenced by natural forms. And this is a collection, well, it’s a mixture isn’t it, of pieces of sculpture and shells and natural forms that have inspired him. And here you can draw parallels between Henry Moore and surrealist sculptures like Hans Arp. So it’s Henry Moore on the left, Hans Arp on the right hand side. Now the Second World War, he produced some of his most memorable work. He was not initially at least an official war artist. There was, they in the First World War had been the scheme set up to, to commemorate, supposed to be the war to end or wars. Alas, as we know it wasn’t. But there was, it was a government inspired scheme where various artists, Stanley Spencer, Paul Nash and so on, were commissioned to commemorate the war. In the second World War, Kenneth Clark, Lord Clark, director of the National Gallery, set up a similar scheme. And initially Henry Moore was working independently of that scheme but he joined it later in the war. But his most extraordinary images were produced of people sheltering in the London Underground, the Blitz, which I was talking about last time. Which lasted for eight months, from September, 1940 to May, 1941, with this terrible bombing of London every night, particularly affecting the east, the working class areas in the east end of London. And many people went down to sleep and shelter in the underground. And this provided him with extraordinary inspiration for these sleeping figures huddled on the platforms.

He drew into sketchbooks, but elaborated them. I said that he, in some ways of course, he was trying to escape from the classical tradition and renaissance, but I think these sleeping figures reawaken an interest in him in the Italian Renaissance, which is the Italian Renaissance, which is so concerned with depictions of the human body. It’s so central to the Italian Renaissance. And, but so, and I think he’s thinking of artists like Mantegna, the detail of Mantegna on the right hand side. And with these slumbering figures in their various poses, I think in particular, he’s thinking of images of “The Agony in the Garden”. “The Garden of Gethsemane”, when Christ is surrounded by his apostles, who will fall asleep around him. This is, again, a detail of Mantegna on the bottom right hand side. And then actually he did join the official war artist scheme, and he was sent up to his Native Yorkshire, and he made drawings of miners. Again, as you can see, the figures in a dark, confined space with the images of the London Underground. And this, here’s a kind of striking, interesting comparison. Henry Moore at the top, and Stanley Spencer, like Paul Nash, he’s one of the few artists who actually produced very memorable images of the First World War and the Second World War. And he was commissioned to paint a ship building on the river Clyde. And so it’s Stanley Spencer beneath and Henry Moore above. In middle age, he married after the war and he had a daughter.

And this seems to have inspired a whole series of sculptures of what seemed to be husbands and wives or families such as this one, that dates from 1950. And then he, after the MoMA show, because he became very, very famous, I suppose he was almost really the Rodin of his time for, you know, for I would say from 1950 up to 1970s he was the most famous sculptor in the world. And that led to a whole series of absolutely huge commissions from all over the world. This is a piece that he made for Paris. It’s for UNESCO in 1963. You can see how huge it is. It’s been put in place. This is a piece outside the Houses of Parliament called “Knife Edge” that was made 1963 to 65. I have to say, I have a, look at the scale of this thing is, the amount of bronze that is involved in casting a huge piece like this. I feel a certain ambivalence about them, these pieces, I find them, well, sort of repetitive, and maybe not that interesting. Here is, there’s a piece in front of the, so they’re all over the world, this one’s in bond, front of the chancery in bond. My former boss at Chris’s education, he used to joke that they all contained MI5 listening devices. And this is a piece I know very well because it’s in front of the Alta pin attack in Munich. So as you can find, you can run across these things all over the world. Then 1972, he is rapidly consecrated with a huge retrospective exhibition in Florence, and this is an image of that time in 1972. So back to Francis Bacon and this, these three pictures that went off like a bomb, I would say. I mean, the people were absolutely stunned by them. Especially when you think, you know, English art had a reputation for being a bit genteel, a bit timid, a timid version of what was going on on the continent. Nothing timid about these.

These are terrifying, truly appalling, terrifying images. And think of the date that these, these were shown in the same month that Bergen Belson was liberated. So, and I’m sure you what you know all about this. 'Cause I think we’ve had lectures on it about the need that was felt at the time, the people who discovered Bergen Belson and the unbelievable horror of it, that photographers and filmmakers went there to record it. And those images were actually in the newspaper when these pictures were shown, said very same month. So lots of people made that association. And it’s right and it’s not right. I mean, it’s right in this is an image of horror, of cruelty, of man’s inhumanity to man. But I think that this obsession that Bacon had, which we’ll see, with horror and cruelty. It was there anyway, it’s in him. And it may have been reinforced by seeing images of, I don’t want to show the worst images, but this, I don’t, I feel those images should be very, in a way, carefully rationed because I don’t, the shock value or concentrating the piles of bodies and so on is something that should not be dissipated by overuse of the images. Interestingly, as that, those, the three Studies, at the base of the figures, the base of crucifixion was on show. Benjamin Britain’s opera, Peter Grimes was in rehearsal, and the world premier was a couple of, a month or so later in June, 1945. And that is an opera, which I think is also very much about cruelty and intolerance and man’s inhumanity to man.

And once again, I mean, people have made the connection with the second World War and that opera. But I think as in the case of Francis Bacon, this is Britain dealing with something inside himself, and it’s not really a direct comment on the war or the horrors or the Holocaust or whatever. So here is Francis Bacon, rather beautiful young man. He was born in this house, elegant Georgian house in Dublin, to a very upper class background. His father was a military man. And so I think the obsession with cruelty, with horror, with pain has a lot to do with his upbringing. I think he’s, as a child and a young man, this is the the time of the Irish Civil War and the troubles and terrible cruelty and terrible, terrible brutality, on both sides in that conflict, in the 1920s, the brutalities that echoed down to our day. It also, I, he had a a very bad relationship. His father was a very brutal man, a very cruel man, and, who despised his son, who was effeminate and not interested in sport and military matters. Apparently ordered him to be horse whipped by the grooms. There’s another story that he was apparently raped by a, a as a child, by a groom in the stadel. The, all these things factor into his mentality, I would say. Things came to a climax when one day his father came home unexpectedly and found a young Francis dressing up in his mother’s underwear and looking at himself in front of a mirror. That, of course, enraged him. And he was thrown out and he came to London with, completely penny-less and became involved in homosexual prostitution and so on.

And then he goes off to Berlin, where appropriately enough you might say, 'cause in 1920s I suppose everybody was, all the men were trying on their mother’s underwear, and there was this sexual, kind of, free for all in Berlin in the 1920s. And he also went to Paris and he started painting, very few paintings from this period survive because he later on destroyed them and tried to suppress them. This one does survive. It’s a crucifixion, on the left hand side. Very interested, of course, in the image. It is extraordinary, I think particularly to non-Christians, that the central image of Christianity is of a horribly tortured body. You know, you walk into a church, you want to pray, you want to communicate with God, you want a moment of calm and what have you got in front of you? You’ve got an image of a bloody corpse nailed to a cross. And often in western art, extremely ghoulish with the cruelty really dwelt upon. So crucifixion is a very, kind of, central image to Western art. But he, like everybody, of course, he’s aware of Picasso. Picasso was the king of modern art. And the painting on the right hand side, the three dancers was, is, was and is, the most important painting by Picasso in Britain. It’s in Tate, Tate Modern. And there may be an echo of, “It’s the three dancers”, which obviously uses a, kind of, crucifixion format as well. But, actually, he started making in the 1930s as an interior designer, a modernist interior designer. Very sleek, very elegant with the new tubular, shiny, hygienic. Tubular metal furniture had only just been invented by Marcel Breyer at the Bauhaus in 1925. But by 1930 it was to be found everywhere.

I mean, there’s a kind of irony here, isn’t it? I’m going to show you a picture of, later, of Francis Bacon’s studio, which is probably more grungy and chaotic, and more terrible than all the mess I can see around me, luckily you can’t see it, in my house. So this sleek, spare, hygienic style is not quite what you might’ve expected from him, but I would say it’s something that even in the most brutal groups of paintings full of gungy bodily fluids, and blood, and gore and so on later on, there is an element of sleek interior design as well. I mean, there are, that’s one of the, I think the big contradictions with Francis Bacon is subject matter is unbelievably horrific, but the paintings are at the same time, very elegant and very beautiful. Now, the, he’s obsessed with the open mouth and this obsession comes from various sources. In Paris in the 1920s, he found a very lavishly illustrated book, very beautiful high quality colour, lithographic illustrations of diseases of the mouth. This might not seem to you to sound like favourite bedtime reading, but it certainly was for him. And it’s a book that that inspired him to the end of his days. But the open mouth, I mean, another artist of course, who is obsessed with the open mouth, well actually these are, these are not Caravaggio, these Rivera, who is an artist strongly influenced by Caravaggio. But in Barack art in the early two 17th century, which is a phase of European art, which is again, very obsessed with pain and cruelty, you have a lot of these images of the open mouth. This is again on the left hand side studies and open mouth. And this is Caravaggio Medusa, screaming Medusa, on the right hand side. A another painting very shortly, this is also from the end of the 1940s. Horrific but actually very beautiful. They, when you get close to a painting by Francis Bacon, there is always a ravishingly beautiful and sensuous amazing paint surface art. Back to the screaming open mouth, yeah.

When he was in Berlin in 1925, he saw Sergei Eisenstein’s famous film, the “Battleship Potemkin”. And the most celebrated scene in that film shows a massacre of civilians on the steps of Odessa, the steps that go down to see in Odessa. And there is number, a horrific closeup scene of a nurse, she’s wheeling, she’s wheeling a baby in a, well I’m trying to think of the word, not tram, trolley, pram. And she is shot in the eye through her glasses and she screams in horror and pain. This is a shock closeup view. And this is one of the sources of Francis Bacon’s most furious famous series of paintings of the screaming Popes. The immediate inspiration was this painting by Velazquez of the rather inappropriately named “Pope Innocent the 10th”. When Velazquez painted this for Pope Innocent, he looks anything but innocent, doesn’t he? And the Pope saw it. He famously said, “It’s too true.” It is one of the most terrifying portraits I think ever, ever painted. The sense of wiley deceit, and evil in that face is really extraordinary. Velazquez himself was using a prototype. The prototype for all these people portraits was the Raphael portrait of Julius II, which is now in the National Gallery in London. But, which is a very fine portrait, but my God does Velazquez ever do things with it. Disturbing, disturbing things. Look at that face. Oh my God. He was, Bacon was very interested in old master paintings, but usually ones with very cruel subject matter. There’s another painting he, on his trip to Paris in the 1920s, I think it was 26 he was in Paris, he went out to the castle of Shanti. And one of the paintings he saw there that made a lifelong impression on him was this of, again with of course the screaming open mouth of “The Massacre of the Innocents”. And I remember he was still alive, he was quite old.

I did meet him once, actually, I met him at the drinks counter in the supermarket. And we had a very jolly chat. He was extremely charming, actually, and friendly. But there was a big exhibition in London of Venetian painting, and it must have had been around 1980, I think. And this painting, which came from a Hungarian convent, Titian, it’s a late Titian of “The Flaying of Marsyas” was shown in that exhibition. It was the first time that most people in western Europe had ever seen the painting. And Francis Bacon was, went absolutely crazy about this picture. He absolutely loved it. And it is, well it is so pre Francis Bacon in a way, this amazing paint surface with these absolutely horrific, you know, somebody being skinned alive and ugh, and pools of blood and all painted in a very kind of visceral, quite sensual way. Another favourite painting of his, surprise, surprise, is the famous Rembrandt flayed ox, which is in the Louvre. So he made his own, rather, actually, that painting had been an icon for modern artists since the 19th century. In the 19th century, The Louvre already owned it. And for a while it was considered so shocking that it was actually hung behind a curtain. But it, it became an icon and inspiration to many later artists. There’s Vis Collin on the left hand side and on right hand side. He was an artist who didn’t paint from life. And very often he, well nearly always, actually, he drew his inspiration from photographs. But he uses photographs in a very creative way. There’s a whole series of wrestling men, but are they, what are they doing? Are they actually wrestling or are they having violent sex? And this series was inspired by Edward Muybridge’s 19th century publication called “Human and Animal Locomotion.”

He used very fast speed camera images to try and capture movement. So 1971, he has his, I mean, he’s so famous, Robert, he is, I suppose by that date, the most famous and admired painter in the world. And he’s given the absolutely extraordinary honour of a huge one man retrospective exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris. And this is the opening of it on the left. And there you can see him talking at a banquet after the opening. It’s extraordinary because, well, as I know from the kind of remarks I get all the time in Paris, French don’t really, I just had a conversation literally two days ago with a French person who was saying, asserting, that the English have no concept of taste, for instance. Well, taste would’ve been irrelevant to Francis Bacon would’ve said, contemptuously, “What’s good taste? What use is good taste?” But there are, in fact, there are two previous occasions when British artists had taken Paris by storm. One was when constables, Hay Wain was shown at the Paris Salon in 1824, won a gold medal. And the other occasion was when Ben Jones’ was shown in the, in universal exhibition of 1889 and also won a gold medal. So there’d just been those three occasions, really, when British artists have had a big impact in Paris. Now, the pleasure that Francis Bacon might have had in this tremendous honour was completely ruined because on the evening of the opening, when he got back to his hotel, he found that his lover, George Dyer, had committed suicide in their bedroom. He, George Dyer, was just a hunky chunky working class type. The type that Francis Bacon really liked. You know, sort of petty criminal.

In the, I, for several years I used to work, I used to give art appreciation classes in London prisons, Wentworth Prison in particular. And there were several occasions where some, I’d be talking to a group of prisoners and somebody would say to me, “Have you heard of an old geezer called Francis Bacon?” I mean, he, Francis Bacon, I think, went through, much of the prison population of London went through his bed at some point or other. And he used to, there are very funny stories. I remember John Golding, my teacher at the , telling me how Francis Bacon would be invited to very posh dinners of art collectors, and he would turn up with one of his criminal underworld, hunky friends and then at the end of the evening, and of course, silver and other items would be missing. This it, from this time onwards, he’s mainly concerned with painting a series of monumental triptychs. The triptych which is form, which of course is particularly associated with the Renaissance and with religious art. And this one is, it’s, the title is “In memory of George Douglas, a Painting”. He was very haunted and by the death of his lover, George Dyer. And another of these, I’ll go through these quickly ‘cause I’m running out of time here. Actually, this is, I would say, a lot neater than my house in London at the moment. This is, I think, probably how it’s, I’m not sure if this photograph was taken, in his studio after his death. I think somebody’s been in there and tidied up a bit. And that studio, of course, has been reconstructed now in Dublin. This I wanted to really show you just to show you this sense of the beauty of the paint surface. And he mixes media very often with a under layer of acrylic and using oil over the acrylic. And it’s very layered and sometimes using crushed pastels. So it’s an extremely beautiful, extremely sensuous paint surface. Now, the third of our three great British artists is Graham Sutherland. He’s the youngest, he’s born in 1903. Comes from, I would say, an upper middle class background.

His father was a barrister. He trained at Goldsmiths as a graphic artist. And that initially, that’s what he was known as in the late 1920s, producing these very beautiful prints, woodcuts of rather poetic English landscapes. Very much influenced by the work of Samuel Palmer, which enjoyed great revival at the Steins Samuel Palmer. It was, it’s a kind of magic realism, isn’t it? Very poetic evocation of the English countryside. This is, once again, Graham Sutherland. In the, so that’s what he, at the beginning of his career, that’s what he’s known all for. Making those kind of prints and there was a market for them. But we, the onset, or with the financial crisis and the onset of the Great Depression, the bottom fell out of that market. And he moved in the thirties into rather more commercial work producing these posters. It’s a kind of golden age of travel posters, I would say, the 1930s, particularly in France, but also here. And often it was London Transport in particular had a very inspired programme of commissioning artists. And you can see that this one is made for London and transport. And Shell also commissioned posters from artists, like Paul Nash for instance, but this is Graham Sutherland. And here I think we can, I mean he, like all three of these artists I can say, I said that they’re in a way independent of Paris. But all three in the thirties are affected, to some degree, by the surrealist movement. And Sutherland, of the three, of course Sutherland is the one who’s most engaged with landscape. But it’s a particularly English type of combination of landscape, a poetic landscape and serialism. So you find it also in the work of Paul Nash and a few other artists. So there’s a very surreal quality to this. This is a Paul Nash. Yeah. And so his work moves towards abstraction, but has very strong elements, I mean, of nature. And you can read this as an abstract picture or you can read it as a landscape.

And same with this. He’s a very fine draftsman’s. Wonderful drawing of sheep here. In the second World War, he is enrolled in the official war artist scheme. And like John Piper, and he’s actually inspired by the terrible beauty of destruction. The, there’s a kind of melancholy beauty, I suppose, in bombed and ruined streets. And so his reputation really takes off with the others after the second World War. It’s a big international representation. His work is represented in all the major modern art collections of the world. And there are pictures like these, which are, I think I would say, rather than abstract. This one, it actually belongs to a friend of mine who wants to sell it. Anybody wants to buy a Graham Sutherland, I can put you in contact with her. And I think the title of this one is “Forms On a Ledge.” He, for a while after the Second World War, he agreed to take on commissioned portraits. Course these are always a bit of a poisoned chalice. People rarely like their own portraits. Although in fact, apparently Somerset Maugham did like the portrait made of him on the left hand side. Lord Beaverbrook on the right hand side. The one that really caused the trouble was this one, which was commissioned by Parliament for Winston Churchill, who of course at this time was a great national hero. And it’s a very fine portrait. I can, but I put, for comparison, I put up Sergeant’s portrait of Lord Balfour which is of course very suave and slick and very elegant.

So I, that’s what people were expecting probably. And they, it was a bit like Valezquez and innocent attempts. The Sutherland Winston Churchill was . It was too true and he absolutely hated it. And of course it was given to him and he wouldn’t look at it. It was hidden. And eventually his wife burnt it. Shocking thing to do, but she did. And somebody who was, I think, probably more willing to take risks was Helena Rubinstein. And he made several portraits of her, several studies. This is the final official one. But I love these studies, particularly one on the left. They’re really terrific. I dunno whether she bought these as well or whether he kept them. He was very Catholic and also interested in the image of the crucifixion. I feel his is less powerful, less visceral, really than Francis Bacon. And you can see it’s very directly inspired by the grunivult crucifixion in the Isenheim altar. And I suppose the climax of his career and his greatest honour was being commissioned to design the huge tapestry of Christ in glory that is the focal point of the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral. And I think that’s it. So do we have some questions going to go into that?

Q&A and Comments:

I disagree with the negative comments on Francis Bacon. I don’t, if you’re talking to me, I didn’t, as far as I’m concerned, I didn’t make any negative comments on Francis Bacon. I, maybe you interpreted it negatively, but Karin, but I think he’s a wonderful artist. I hugely admire him and I love the paintings. And I would gladly hang one of his paintings over my fireplace. Yeah, they’re not pretty. But I don’t say that as a criticism, I say in admiration.

This is Avril. We are fortunate to have Henry Moore sculpture, “The Archer” outside Toronto City Hall. I wonder if there’s any major city in the world that actually doesn’t have a sculpture by Henry. Yeah, I’m back in London. So that’s, it’s the connection here is not quite so good, I’m afraid. Major collection in Ontario.

Thank you, Cheryl. Yes. I’m afraid my, it’s, I am properly plugged into everything, but it’s not always so good here. Yes.

I’m not quite sure why you’re asking me this, but it’s perfectly true that Michael, and also actually Michelangelo was somebody who did direct carving. But it wasn’t normal. And it’s, I think it’s quite likely that the, he would’ve modelled, he would’ve, and we know that if you go to the VNA, you can actually see wax models by Michelangelo. So he certainly did follow the practise of indirect carving. 'Cause he was modelling it first and then carving from the model. Henry Moore donated many of his large plasters to the Art Gallery of Ontario. Late, he didn’t stick to direct carving. He later on, he actually abandoned that practise, later. Those huge monuments later were not done by, well most of 'em were bronze anyway, so they were cast. You can, yes. That is a very interesting thing to do. Much Haddom, go to Henry Moore’s studio.

Well, Barbara Hepworth is, she’s an important sculptor. There are lots of people I didn’t mention, she’s one of them. Henry Moore’s figures for me reflect as aspects of Inuit stone. I’m sure he was aware of that. I think that’s very, very likely.

About Moore, I’m ambivalent about the late work, those huge biomorphic, sort of, abstract bronzes. But I, a lot of this work I admire very much. Who started putting holes in sculpture Moore, or Hepworth? I don’t know who was the first of, but the, I don’t think either of them were the first. I think that you go back to continental sculptures like Gabo and Pevsner, who were the first people to do that.

This is Janet who doesn’t understand the pleasure of looking. Well, I mean to each his own. I think he’s a very fascinating and wonderful artist.

Q: When will I write my memoirs?

A: I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.

Q: The Falling Prime has become an icon used in Eliot Ness movie. Any other examples?

A: You’re probably right. There are probably lots. Yeah, I’m quite sure Francis Bacon had a disturbed mind. So did Van Gogh. So did many of the greatest artists. Thank you, Lorna.

Beauty and Destruction. Please exchange. Is there a terrible beauty? It’s, I mean that’s an idea. Of course it goes back to romanticism. The sublime, the combination of terror, horror and beauty. Thank you.

Yeah, Barbara Hepworth is certainly related to all of this. Probably deserves a lecture to herself. Thank you Claire. I love Vigeland, I share that with you. 'Cause my father was married to a Norwegian lady. She’s still alive. And I used to visit him every year on his birthday and whenever possible I used to go and see the Vigeland Park. He is fascinating. Very underrated sculptor outside of Norway. And it doesn’t surprise me that there’s a Henry Moore in the Lincoln Centre.

Q: Would a joint retrospective of Bacon and Lucian Freud be worthwhile?

A: Yes, it probably, it probably would be. It would be. Of course they were close friends at a certain point in their career and painted each other. You could do, I think you could, a small show. It would have to be quite a choice show rather than a big retrospective. Would be an interesting to thing to do. I’m sure it’s been done, actually.

So that seems to be it. Thank you very much. Apologies about the sound. I will, I think my next lecture to you, I will be back in Paris, I think, so the sound should be better then.