Sculpture since 1960
Tate Britain, London
Something fundamental happened to sculpture in the early 1960s. In line with other radical changes of that memorable decade, sculpture was not immune to a fundamental revolution. Among other things, artists abandoned the traditional plinth that isolated and elevated sculpture in favour of placing it directly on the ground, objects that rejected the formal convention in favour of a more relaxed, more accessible approach. This move sparked a more experimental attitude to the making and understanding of what sculpture could be, causing a rupture from earlier modernist traditions. Sweeping changes were the use of everyday objects – be they as diverse as rope, glass bottles or old mattresses – and the abandonment of any straightforward representation of the figure in favour of more abstract work.
The current exhibition in the spacious Duveen Gallery, although modest in scale, includes iconic pieces by leading British sculptors focusing on sculpture of the past
50 years. All sit easily on the floor of the gallery. Radical change in sculpture was not new. In the first half of the 20th century artists adopted an equally revolutionary approach in rejecting the tradition of bronze in favour of other materials. Sculptors such as Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Jacob Epstein, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore sought to develop new sculptural languages in depicting the figure, either in representational or abstracted form. All were concerned with material and process, which came to be typified by the modernist dogma of direct carving, working with materials such as stone, wood and marble.
Sculpture is generally understood to be the manipulation of form and material to
create space and volume, but such formal considerations, while often informing experimental work, were of less concern than an urge to comment on and respond to society in which we live. The resulting “expanded field” within which sculpture
came to be defined has meant that it has ceased to be the fixed category it once was.
Even such conventional sculptors as Anthony Caro, William Tucker and Philip King played around with material such as metal with work that owed as much to the blacksmith and the machine workshop as the studio. By contrast, Bill Woodrow’s English Heritage – Humpty Fucking Dumpty uses a vaulting horse cut into sections between which are wedged a wheeled plough, a book, a clocking-in machine and a box with radiation hazard markings. Feeling uneasy because of the jingoism of the 1980s, Woodrow wanted to debunk and question what actually constitutes his own heritage.
Sexual stereotyping and bawdy humour is the theme of Sarah Lucas’ Beyond the Pleasure Principle, in which a variety of household objects serve as a witty metaphor for sexual activity. The inclusion of a coffin adds a
darker side, reflecting Freud’s suggestion that the drive for life is matched by an equal and opposite drive for death – pleasure bound up with destruction.
Memory is one of the themes in Rachel Whiteread’s cast of the insides of tables in Untitled (Nine Tables), which are solid concrete forms of the empty space created beneath the tables. Each cast bears the “scars” where the legs and the bottom of the table would fit, creating a “positive” out of a “negative” space. Conceptual in its level of abstraction, we are left to imagine the people who made use of these old tables and the way furniture plays a central part in our lives.
With work by 11 sculptors, the selection tip-toes through 50 years of change, making it inevitable that some artists, notably Antony Gormley or Anish Kapoor, are not represented, but the small scale enables us to spend time to ponder the sculptures and the way they do – or do not – relate to the world in which we live.
Emmanuel Cooper
Sculpture since 1960 continues until May 16
