“I found there was such beauty in the co-ordinated human endeavour that the composition – human in appearance – became abstract in shape. I became completely absorbed by the extraordinary beauty of purpose between human beings all dedicated to saving life; and the way this special grace (grace of mind and body) induced a spontaneous space composition, an articulated and animated kind of abstract sculpture very close to what I had been seeking in my own work.”

[1]


HEPWORTH 1903-1975
Fenestration (The Microscope)
1948
Pencil and oil on gesso-prepared board
14 x 18 inches; 35.5 x 45.8 cm.











Barbara Hepworth
Mother and Child
1934
Wakefield Art Gallery
copyright Bowness, Hepworth Estate







I recently visited the Moore | Hepworth | Nicholson - A Nest of Gentle Artists in the 1930s exhibition where I saw this Hepworth Mother and Child and was struck by the tenderness of the composition. It brings to mind those heart stopping moments when babies are learning to stand - and spend more time falling down, that precarious moment of poised success before the wobbling legs collapse into a surprised heap of giggles.





Reducing the forms to this simple expression emphasizes that moment and the universality of the experience. Most of us have seen something like this and though it’s unlikely we remember it, we will have been that tiny form trying to stand. The process of de-personalizing the moment through simplification has paradoxically made it more accessibly, individually personal at the same time as emphasizing the universality of the experience. And, taking the analogy a step further, is a wonderful reminder about the persistence of effort.





The image doesn’t do the piece justice, it can’t because one aspect of it is that it’s actually two pieces with the baby being removeable - it ’sits’ on a peg, though it fits in only one position. There is another piece also titled ‘Mother and Child’ by Hepworth in this exhibition but the one shown here outshines it for me.




Exhibition tours to the Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield from 20 May – 29 August 09



































“I must always have a clear image of the form of a work before I begin. Otherwise there is no impulse to create.”













Two Rocks
1971
Irish black marble
Height: 116.8 cm /46 ins

























“One must be entirely sensitive to the structure of the material that one is handling. One must yield to it in tiny details of execution, perhaps the handling of the surface or grain, and one must master it as a whole.”















Group of Three Magic Stones
1973
Silver
Edition of 6
7.6 × 35 × 31 cm / 3 × 13 3/4 × 12 1/4 ins


















“components fall into place and one is no longer aware of the detail except as the necessary significance of wholeness and unity.”
[2]



















Disc with Strings (Moon)
BH484
1969
Aluminium with strings, edition 4 of 9 + 0
Height: 18 inches


















A few Quotes





And a few more Quotes





More examples of works by Dame Barbara Hepworth at the New Art Centre



















[1] An extract from her autobiography that relates to her watching a team of surgeons operating, quoted by Will Gompertz in his article My life in art: Barbara Hepworth and the art of alchemy, further information about her autobiograhy is not provided.



[2] source as [1]

James Abbott McNeill Whistler,
The Artist's Studio
1865.
Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane. Inv. 6.
© Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

To Whistler, American


On the loan exhibit of his paintings at the Tate Gallery.
by Ezra Pound





You also, our first great,
Had tried all ways;
Tested and pried and worked in many fashions,
And this much gives me heart to play the game.




Here is a part that’s slight, and part gone wrong,
And much of little moment, and some few
Perfect as Dürer!




“In the Studio” and these two portraits,* if I had my choice I
And then these sketches in the mood of Greece?








WHISTLER, James McNeill
Brown and Gold
c.1895-1900
oil on canvas
95.8 x 51.5
© The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery,
University of Glasgow 2009


You had your searches, your uncertainties,
And this is good to know—for us, I mean,
Who bear the brunt of our America
And try to wrench her impulse into art.




You were not always sure, not always set
To hiding night or tuning “symphonies”;
Had not one style from birth, but tried and pried
And stretched and tampered with the media.




You and Abe Lincoln from that mass of dolts
Show us there’s chance at least of winning through.





* “Brown and Gold—de Race.”
“Grenat et Or—Le Pettt Cardinal.”




Source: Poetry (October 1912).

















Selected Correspondence

of James McNeill Whistler






Audio Recordings

of Ezra Pound

Izanami and Izanagi

Izanami and Izanagi Creating the Japanese Islands

Izanami and Izanagi Creating the Japanese Islands
Original Title: Izanagi o motte Izanami o saguru no zu
Japanese, Meiji era, mid-1880s
Kobayashi Eitaku, Japanese, 1843–1890

Image: 126 x 54.6 cm (49 5/8 x 21 1/2 in.)
Overall: 226 x 78.9 cm (89 x 31 1/16 in.)
Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk








The last couple, forming the fifth generation, are Izanagi and Izanami, appellations signifying the male Kami of desire and the female Kami of desire. By all the other Kami these two are commissioned to “make, consolidate, and give birth to the drifting land,” a jewelled spear being given to them as a token of authority, and a floating bridge being provided to carry them to earth. Izanagi and Izanami thrust the spear downwards and stir the “brine” beneath, with the result that it coagulates, and, dropping from the spear’s point, forms the first of the Japanese islands, Onogoro.






This island they take as the basis of their future operations, and here they beget, by ordinary human processes–which are described without any reservations–first, “a great number of islands, and next, a great number of Kami.” It is related that the first effort of procreation was not successful, the outcome being a leechlike abortion and an island of foam, the former of which was sent adrift in a boat of reeds.






The islands afterwards created form a large part of Japan, but between these islands and the Kami, begotten in succession to them, no connexion is traceable. In several cases the names of the Kami seem to be personifications of natural objects. Thus we have the Kami of the “wind’s breath,” of the sea, of the rivers, of the “water-gates” (estuaries and ports), of autumn, of “foam-calm,” of “bubbling waves,” of “water-divisions,” of trees, of mountains, of moors, of valleys, etc. But with very rare exceptions, all these Kami have no subsequent share in the scheme of things and cannot be regarded as evidence that the Japanese were nature worshippers.







A change of method is now noticeable. Hitherto the process of production has been creative; henceforth the method is transformation preceded by destruction. Izanami dies in giving birth to the Kami of fire, and her body is disintegrated into several beings, as the male and female Kami of metal mountains, the male and female Kami of viscid clay, the female Kami of abundant food, and the Kami of youth; while from the tears of Izanagi as he laments her decease is born the female Kami of lamentation. Izanagi then turns upon the child, the Kami of fire, which has cost Izanami her life, and cuts off its head; whereupon are born from the blood that stains his sword and spatters the rocks eight Kami, whose names are all suggestive of the violence that called them into existence. An equal number of Kami, all having sway over mountains, are born from the head and body of the slaughtered child.






At this point an interesting episode is recorded. Izanagi visits the “land of night,” with the hope of recovering his spouse.(1) He urges her to return, as the work in which they were engaged is not yet completed. She replies that, unhappily having already eaten within the portals of the land of night, she may not emerge without the permission of the Kami (2) of the underworld, and she conjures him, while she is seeking that permission, not to attempt to look on her face. He, however, weary of waiting, breaks off one of the large teeth of the comb that holds his hair (3) and, lighting it, uses it as a torch. He finds Izanami’s body in a state of putrefaction, and amid the decaying remains eight Kami of thunder have been born and are dwelling. Izanagi, horrified, turns and flees, but Izanami, enraged that she has been “put to shame,” sends the “hideous hag of hades” to pursue him.






He obtains respite twice; first by throwing down his head-dress, which is converted into grapes, and then casting away his
comb, which is transformed into bamboo sprouts, and while the hag stops to eat these delicacies, he flees. Then Izanami sends in his pursuit the eight Kami of thunder with fifteen hundred warriors of the underworld(4). He holds them off for a time by brandishing his sword behind him, and finally, on reaching the pass from the nether to the upper world, he finds three peaches growing there with which he pelts his pursuers and drives them back. The peaches are rewarded with the title of “divine fruit,” and entrusted with the duty of thereafter helping all living people (5) in the central land of “reed plains” (6) as they have helped Izanagi.





Notes
1 It is unnecessary to comment upon the identity of this incident with the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice.

2 It will be observed that we hear of these Kami now for the first time.

3 This is an obvious example of a charge often preferred against the compilers of the Records that they inferred the manners and customs of remote antiquity from those of their own time.

4 Again we have here evidence that the story of creation, as told in the Records, is not supposed to be complete. It says nothing as to how the denizens of the underworld came into existence.

5 The first mention of human beings.

6 This epithet is given to Japan.







This curious legend does not end here. Finding that the hag of hades, the eight Kami of thunder, and the fifteen hundred warriors have all been repulsed, Izanami herself goes in pursuit. But her way is blocked by a huge rock which Izanagi places in the “even pass of hades,” and from the confines of the two worlds the angry pair exchange messages of final separation, she threatening to kill a thousand folk daily in his land if he repeats his acts of violence, and he declaring that, in such event, he will retaliate by causing fifteen hundred to be born.






In all this, no mention whatever is found of the manner in which human beings come into existence: they make their appearance upon the scene as though they were a primeval part of it. Izanagi, whose return to the upper world takes place in southwestern Japan (1), now cleanses himself from the pollution he has incurred by contact with the dead, and thus inaugurates the rite of purification practised to this day in Japan. The Records describe minutely the process of his unrobing before entering a river, and we learn incidentally that he wore a girdle, a skirt, an upper garment, trousers, a hat, bracelets on each arm, and a necklace, but no mention is made of footgear. Twelve Kami are born from these various articles as he discards them, but without exception these additions to Japanese mythology seem to have nothing to do with the scheme of the universe: their titles appear to be wholly capricious, and apart from figuring once upon the pages of the Records they have no claim to notice. The same may be said of eleven among fourteen Kami thereafter born from the pollution which Izanagi washes off in a river.





Note
1 At Himuka in Kyushu, then called Tsukushi.

Basho Haiku





The leafless cherry,
Old as a toothless woman,
Blooms in flowers,
Mindful of its youth.














Pleasure Outing at Mukôjima to View Cherry Blossoms









































Japanese
Edo period
1781–1801 (late Tenmei to early Kansei era)
Hanging scroll; ink, color, gold, and mica on silk
Image: 66.2 x 122 cm (26 1/16 x 48 1/16 in.)
Overall: 205 x 151 cm (80 11/16 x 59 7/16 in.)
© 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Record of Stone Bell Mountain

by Su Shi








Li Pei, Landscape; Qing to Republic Period.










The Water Classic says: At the mouth of [Lake] Pengli there is a Stone Bell Mountain.





Li [Dao] yuan held that ‘below it, near a deep pool, faint breezes drum up waves, and water and rocks striking one another toll like huge bells.’ Others have often doubted this claim. Today, if one takes a bell or a lithophone and places it into the water, even if there is great wind and waves, he cannot make it ring. How much the less, then, for [common] rocks?





It was not until the time of Li Bo [fl. early 9th century] of the Tang that someone searched for a surviving trace of the phenomenon. Upon finding a pair of rocks by the bank of a pool, he ‘knocked them together and listened. Their southern tone was mellow and muted; their northern timbre was clear and shrill. When the clang ceased, its resonance mounted; the remnant notes then gradually came to rest.’ Li Bo then held that he had found the ’stone bells.





I am, however, especially doubtful of this claim. The clanking sounds made by rocks is the same everywhere. And yet, this place alone is named after a bell. Why, indeed, is that?





On Dingchou day of the sixth lunar month in the seventh year of the Prime Abundance [Yuanfeng] period (14 July 1084), I was traveling by boat from Qi’an to Linru. My oldest son [Su] Mai was just about to leave for Dexing [township] in Rao [county] to take up the post of Pacificator (wei). Since I accompanied him as far as Hukou, I was able to observe the so-called stone bells. A monk from a [nearby] monastery dispatched an apprentice, who carried an ax, to select one or two of the scatttered rocks and knock them [with the ax], upon which they would make a ‘gong-gong’-like sound. I laughed just as I had done before, still not believing the legend.





That evening, the moon was bright. Alone with Mai, I rode a little boat to the base of a steep precipice. The huge rocks on our flank stood a thousand chi high. They looked like fierce beasts and weird goblins, lurking in a ghastly manner and getting ready to attack us. When the roosting falcons on the mountain heard our voices they, too, flew off in fright, cawing and crying in the cloudy empyrean. Further, there was something [that sounded] like an old man coughing and laughing in a mountain ravine. Someone said: ‘That is a white stork,’ I was shaking with fear and about to turn back, when out from the surface of the water rang a loud noise that gonged and bonged like bells and drums unceasing in their clamor. The boatman became greatly alarmed.





I carefully investigated it, only to discover that everywhere below the mountain were rocky caves and fissures, who knows how deep. Gentle waves were pouring into them, and their shaking and seething and chopping and knocking, were making this gonging and bonging. When our boat on its return reached a point between the two mountains, and we were about to enter the mouth of the inlet, [I saw that] in the middle of the channel was a huge rock that could seat a hundred people. It was hollow in the center with numerous apertures, which, as they swallowed and spat with the wind and water, made a bumping and thumping and clashing and bashing that echoed with the earlier gonging and bonging. It seemed as if music were being played. Thereupon, I laughed and said to Mai: ‘Do you recognize it? The gonging and bonging are the Wuyi bells of King Jing of Zhou; the bumping and thumping and clashing and bashing are the song-bells of Wei Zhuangzi. The ancients have not cheated us!’





Is it acceptable for someone who has not personally seen or heard something to have decided views on whether or not it exists? Li [Dao] yuan probably saw and heard the same things I did, yet he did not describe them in detail. Gentlemen-officials have always been unwilling to take a small boat and moor it beneath the steep precipice at night. Thus, none was able to find out [about the bells]. And, although the fishermen and boatmen knew about them, they were unable to describe them [in writing]. This is the reason that [such a record] has not been passed down through the generations. As it turns out, imbeciles sought the answer by using axes to beat and strike the rocks. Then they held they had found out the truth of the matter. Because of this I have made a record of these events, for the most part to sigh over Li [Dao] yuan’s naivete and to laugh at Li Bo’s shallowness.








Trans. James M Hargett,
On the Road in Twelfth Century China, pp. 46–47

About the painting, extracts from the page…



Chinese-painting-pre 1930-item #1006
Painting, ink on paper. Mountains and rivers landscape with pavilions. Entitled, inscribed and signed, with two seals of the artist; 1920 to1930
80.5 x 36 cm (31.7 x 14.1 inches).