Yorkshire Sculpture Park

I went to YSP just before I started my course so I practiced writing notes. It’s amazing from the James Turrell Deer Shelter to the Anish Kapoor exhibition.  My course manual says “walk around the whole exhibition first mentally making a noting the pieces that really interest you” and that simply can’t be done; YSP demands many visits.

Everything I saw was well displayed the indoor work all seemed carefully placed with lighting that fitted well with the exhibits. The outdoor exhibits looked like they'd been there for ever surveying the parkland. 

Henry Moore

I liked Henry Moore’s Draped Seated Woman (1957/58) because of its serenity and I was almost surprised when I touched the folds of the dress to find them made of bronze, they looked so soft and fabric like.  Henry Moore said of working on drapery

Drapery can emphasise the tension in a figure, for where the form pushes outwards, such as on the shoulders, the thighs, the breasts, etc., it can be pulled tight across the form (almost like a bandage), and by contrast with the crumpled slackness of the drapery which lies between the salient points, the pressure from inside is intensified . . . Drapery can also, by its direction over the form, make more obvious the section, that is, show shape. It need not be just a decorative addition, but can serve to stress the sculptural idea of the figure.

Henry Moore quoted from Sculpture in the Open Air: A Talk by Henry Moore on his Sculpture and its Placing in Open-Air Sites, edited by Robert Melville and recorded by the British Council 1955; typescript, copy in HMF library.

 Available from http://www.henry-moore.org/works-in-public/world/germany/wuppertal/von-der-heydt-museum-wuppertal/draped-seated-woman-1957-58-lh-428  

Moore must have studied how fabric drapes so intently.  I have an idea that I would like to look at a section of the drapery on this sculpture and transfer it back into fabric once again.

My photo of a section of

Henry Moore’s Draped Seated Woman (1957/58)

Miro

Joan Miro is not an artist I know much about.  Looking at the paintings I was able to identify materials and techniques; splashes, wax, collage with fabric, brush, spatter and finger strokes as he painted. Looking so intently at paintings is something I've not done before and whilst I don’t really care for the work I learned a lot just deconstructing in this new way.

There were also a great number of sculptures.  The ones inside the gallery were made of a variety of found objects; bits of dolls, old shoes and so on and this emphasised to me that everything can be put to another purpose and this changes its context

.

The outdoor work seemed to vary in style.  Sometimes the work resembled what I had seen indoors but other pieces were much smoother in texture and less fragmented.

I much preferred the Henry Moore work but at this stage it is hard for me to identify why.  

Kapoor

My most powerful responses were to the Kapoor works Void Spaces particularly Adam, a sandstone and pigment work from 1988/9.

Adam - sandstone and pigment 1988/9.

As I walked towards it I was afraid to approach, the apparent depth was so intense.  I think that might be because the pigment is matt black and seemed bottomless.

When I got back home I made a pencil drawing of Adam then tried water colour for the first time.  I decided neither of these actually evoked the feelings I'd had in the exhibition - they were a bit lifeless.  I tried to make a collage and this worked much better for me.  It is the only one of the three images that captures even a little bit the emotion I felt in the gallery.

My attempts to capture Adam

The other work was fascinating; as I moved it changed and changed and changed again depending on the light playing on the sometimes highly polished surfaces. 

I liked Void, a blue fibreglass form that hangs on the wall. It too changed so much as I moved around it.  It felt as though I could never really see it “properly” – there was no optimum position for viewing.

Kapoor says

the idea that if I empty out all the content and just make something that is an empty form, I don’t empty out the content at all.  The content is there in a way that’s more surprising than if I tried to make content.

From the exhibition pamphlet for Anish Kapoor: Flashback at The Yorkshire Sculpture Park 2012

Overview

I feel as though I've been able to comment on Moore because I'm more comfortable with the work I've seen and it's more familiar to me. 

I think I've sold Miro very short because I only know what I've learned today and feeling no position to make much by way of informed comment.

By contrast, whilst I knew little of Kapoor, my response was intense and immediate.  It simply didn't seem important that any comment would be a naive one.

I found YSP a wonderful place to visit and I've no doubt I'll be a regular visitor.  I've learnt  a lot about the many artists and their work but huge amounts about how to view and letting the emotional impact just happen without asking too may "intelligent" questions.