Gaudier's genius
Andrew Lambirth WE the moderns Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, until 18 March When Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was killed in 1915 while fighting for the French, he was only 24. It's hard to believe that so young a sculptor could have done as much or left as large an imprint on art history. When Gaudier's partner, the mercurial Zofia Brzeska, died intestate in 1925, it was indeed fortunate for his posthumous reputation that his entire estate arrived for assessment at the office of Jim Ede, then working at the Tate Gallery. Ede bought most of it himself, and eventually bequeathed it, the rest of his extended collection of Modern British art, and the building which housed it, to the University of Cambridge. This is the museum we know today as Kettle's Yard, which maintains not only a fascinating permanent collection, but also mounts an ambitious programme of temporary exhibitions. The first in this, the museum's 50th anniversary year, is dedicated to Gaudier-Brzeska, and to re-establishing him in a European context.
For although he was French, Gaudier lived in London from 1911, and it was there that his youthful genius developed. He associated with the avant-garde writers and artists of the day (the similarly exiled Ezra Pound became an early champion), and was drawn into the Vorticism of Wyndham Lewis. In fact, the title of this excellent exhibition is taken from Gaudier's own contribution to the first edition of Blast, subtitled the 'Review of the Great English Vortex', and the manifesto of the movement. In his statement, which ricochets with upper-case vehemence, Gaudier praises the vortex as energy and lists Epstein, Brancusi, Archipenko, Dunikowski (not exactly well-known today, a Polish sculptor of restrained but expressive modernist tendencies) and Modigliani as the fellow-moderns who will revolutionise three-dimensional art. The exhibition takes that list, excludes Dunikowski — which is a pity, as he's so unknown here — and adds a few more, interspersing examples of their work with Gaudier's own. The result is richly stimulating and exuberant.
The display begins inevitably with Rodin, a key early influence on Gaudier, and juxtaposes the master's chunky 'Walking Man' with Gaudier's bronze 'Dancer' of 1913. An amusing aside on their relationship is offered by a drawing in a Gaudier sketchbook of Rodin prostrating himself before an imaginary prize-winning painting by Gaudier himself. Before settling on sculpture as his métier, Gaudier did do some paintings, and two of his brightly coloured and striking pastels (a self-portrait and a study of Zofia) are included here. He was also a wonderfully agile and lyrical draughtsman, and a number of his drawings feature among the sculptures. An early portrait bronze, of Major Smythies, is curiously clumsy and inert in comparison with the flame-like flickering of 'Dancer', but the bust of Alfred Wolmark shows how powerful Gautier's feeling for modelled form and movement was becoming. (An illustration of this work reminds us just how much is lost in not being able to experience sculpture in the round: limited to one profile, the bust cannot convey even a quarter of its strength and inventiveness.) Nearby are positioned a sharp-nosed bronze head by Brancusi, Modigliani's long limestone head (both borrowed from the Tate) and Archipenko's alabaster 'Women with Cat' from Dusseldorf. Kettle's Yard has been very fortunate in its loans which add immeasurably to this exhibition's stature, and provide the context that makes proper assessment possible. Here too is Matisse, not an artist mentioned by Gaudier, but a useful comparative figure in his distortion of the figure. Among other enlightening juxtapositions is the hanging of a Gauguin woodcut over Gaudier's carving of a mermaid, placing a Toulouse-Lautrec poster next to two posters by Gaudier, and the grouping together of a number of German expressionists, including Franz Marc, whose `animalisation of art' would have struck a resounding chord with Gaudier.
Among the most memorable of Gaudier's sculptures are 'Red Stone Dancer', 'Wrestlers' and 'Bird Swallowing a Fish', which move towards abstraction without becoming as difficult to read as 'Birds Erect'. Among the drawings are 'Seated Woman' and 'Two Cow Heads', intensely piquant in its arcing linearity. They hold their own remarkably well against sculptures by Picasso and Henri Laurens, Zadkine and the little-known Hungarian Cubist Jozsef Csaky. There are also a couple of things by Raymond Duchamp-Villon, older brother of Marcel Duchamp, including a vilely mechanistic bronze horse's head. Even in such company Gaudier-Brzeska stands out as a great original, and this exhibition is an innovative and fitting tribute to him It travels to the Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, from 31 March to 16 June.
In London's Docklands is a small informal retrospective of a senior British sculptor who deserves just this kind of serious museum show. Ivor Abrahams (born 1935) has been a highly individual presence in the art world for more than 30 years, but rarely do we get a chance to see his work from different periods brought together. In the vast lobby of One Canada Square in Canary Wharf is currently an impressive display, curated by Ann Elliott, called Four Seasons of Ivor Abrahams, RA (until 23 March). Although a corporate building, this section of it is open to the public, and accommodates a substantial show of more than 30 pieces with plenty of room to spare.
The selection ranges from a bronze of 1959 through the dramatic gardens sculptures of the 1970s — a particularly memorable shrubbery group in styrene and flock shows Abrahams using pigmented form well in advance of Anish Kapoor — to the figures of bathers and gymnasts in the 1980s, and thence to the Cubisty collage structures and bird sculptures of his most recent period. In fact, for a moment it looks as if Canary Wharf has suffered an invasion of owls, or is being used as the setting for an updated version of Alan Garner's cult novel The Owl Service. One of the largest pieces here is 'Urban Owl', which stands some 10 feet tall, imperious and slightly menacing like Red Ken himself, while a trio of enamel-on-steel inebriate owls cluster in feisty sodality beneath the disapproving stare of a 'Family Group' nearby. All of London society is here in miniature. Ivor Abrahams is a sculptor to be reckoned with.
Previous page
