THEN AND NOW
Anthony Caro, Barbara Hepworth, Bridget Riley, Edmund de Waal, Rebecca Warren Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris, 2014 Text by Jurriaan Benschop
Anthony Caro, Barbara Hepworth, Bridget Riley, Edmund de Waal, Rebecca Warren
Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris, 2014
Text by Jurriaan Benschop
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Then and Now<br />
Anthony Caro Barbara Hepworth Bridget Riley<br />
Edmund de Waal Rebecca Warren<br />
Galerie Max Hetzler
Then and Now<br />
Anthony Caro Barbara Hepworth<br />
Bridget Riley<br />
Edmund de Waal Rebecca Warren<br />
Galerie Max Hetzler
Jurriaan Benschop<br />
Then and Now<br />
The curator’s hand in this exhibition appears to be minimal, at first glance.<br />
The works have been put together by someone with a clear appreciation for<br />
reduced and balanced forms, abstract in appearance. There is no painted line<br />
or metal strip or gesture too much – it is all contained. Yet there are five<br />
quite different artists at work, each with their own motivations leading to<br />
their reduced visual languages. As the title of the show indicates, there are at<br />
least two different moments in time involved – a past and a present – so<br />
there might indeed be a traceable development.<br />
A minimal approach in the art-historic sense would imply that the<br />
form of the sculpture or painting would create the actual meaning, and that<br />
there would be no need to look for references outside the artworks themselves.<br />
There would also be no storytelling involved, and no symbolism attached<br />
to what is offered. Is this the case with these five artists? Are their<br />
abstract visual languages indeed self-sufficient, or should we connect them<br />
to things or thoughts outside the works?<br />
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The exhibition spans the work of three generations of British artists,<br />
the oldest being Barbara Hepworth, who was born in 1903 and passed away<br />
in 1975, the youngest Rebecca Warren, born in 1965 and currently working<br />
in London. Within this course of time, quite a few notions in the arts have<br />
changed, including what the meaning of abstraction is and what attitude an<br />
artist has towards minimalism or constructivism or any other kind of ‘ism’.<br />
This exhibition is presented in our current time of multiple-ism, one could<br />
say, with no claims on truth given to a single style. In this sense, the exhibition<br />
offers more than the works of five artists: it challenges viewers to see<br />
how a certain modern art vocabulary and way of thinking has developed<br />
throughout the years. Is that vocabulary still relevant?<br />
In the show, there are three artists who can be called, without hesitation,<br />
‘modern’: Bridget Riley, Barbara Hepworth and Anthony Caro. Then<br />
there are two artists, Rebecca Warren and Edmund de Waal, both born after<br />
1960, whose work developed through the 1990s and the early years of the<br />
new millennium. What do these two artists stand for? To start with, one<br />
observes that their visual language has a close connection to the art of the<br />
20th century; it fits well in the context of this show. One could even think<br />
that all the artists presented are from more or less the same era. The connections<br />
between the works seem organic and not imposed by some external<br />
idea, which is a significant curatorial accomplishment. With another choice<br />
of artworks by the same artists, the picture could have been quite different.<br />
Yet, as will become clear later, there is also a little time spoiler in the show,<br />
which breaks the illusion that the works are from the same era, and introduces<br />
a ‘then’ and a ‘now’.<br />
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Edmund de Waal’s three vitrines with small ceramic vessels appear like<br />
visual poems, each consisting of five lines (here: shelves) with words (here:<br />
vessels). They are called Fadensonnen (2014, pp. 16, 18, 19), which is a reference<br />
to Paul Celan’s poem of the same name published in 1968. The white<br />
(or white-ish) cups in the white vitrine make a modest and minimal contribution<br />
to the show. With the same size of vitrine presented three times, the<br />
eye starts to look for differences between them, which can be found in the<br />
vessels (the height, the actual colour) and the way they are grouped (the<br />
sentences, so to say). The handmade vessels are all different look-alikes. So<br />
well-preserved in boxes that cannot be opened, these vessels seem to be<br />
valuable museum pieces, their imperfections and individuality suggesting a<br />
former life outside the box. They might have belonged to different people<br />
and only now have been brought together, but this is just speculation. It is<br />
not the individual vessels that are highlighted, but rather their rhythm and<br />
their appearance in formations of one, two, three or four together – or almost<br />
together. That they contain some personal memory is a fictional quality,<br />
but it is an attractive thought fueled by the knowledge that de Waal<br />
conducted extensive lineage research on small objects (not on these vessels<br />
in particular, but instead on Japanese netsuke) and found generations of history<br />
attached to them, as described in his book The Hare with Amber Eyes. So<br />
then, objects are about storytelling and the secret knowledge of things, not<br />
just about the contemplation of minimal forms.<br />
Bridget Riley’s Rose Rise (2012, p. 15), in the first room facing one of<br />
de Waal’s Fadensonnen, does not allow any references outside the painting<br />
itself – no family history here, no location, no objects. The painting shows<br />
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a consistent layering of horizontal stripes, all the same length and height.<br />
For this work, Riley used around ten colours and combined them in different<br />
ways. A soft or hard contrast, a smooth or abrupt transition – these<br />
qualities define the dynamics. Colour as such, Riley’s work tells us, does<br />
not exist, rather it is about constellations and how they work together. Still,<br />
there is a parallel to de Waal’s works, because Riley employs serial thinking<br />
as well. Just like de Waal makes a series of three poems on the basis of similar<br />
vessels, Riley makes paintings with a similar set of colours, but in a different<br />
order, which changes the whole dynamic. For instance in Rose Light<br />
(2013, p. 13), there are five interruptions in blue, whereas in Rose Rise there<br />
are twice as many.<br />
Riley does not use any kind of figuration because that would distract<br />
from what really matters: looking at the colours and their dynamics. Eliciting<br />
that attention through looking is her motivation for using a reduced<br />
form vocabulary. That is also why there is no handwriting or gesture, no<br />
personal touch to the work. It is about the act of looking and the rewards<br />
that a detached contemplation may have in store.<br />
What is actually going on in Riley’s works? The two paintings in the<br />
show both have multiple neighbouring colours, like red, pink and orange,<br />
and these colours are at times interrupted by a single hard green or blue<br />
horizontal stroke. As in a lot of Riley’s work, it looks very organized and<br />
systematic, but when trying to find the system, one discovers that it is not<br />
actually there. Or the system is subjective – as a viewer, you co-define the<br />
work by taking a trail through the colours, dividing and following them. This<br />
process is endless, and there is no final or correct way of seeing the work.<br />
The paintings create space, as one stripe appears closer and the ones above<br />
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and below it recede. There is also the experience of ‘time’ in painting, since<br />
only after staying attuned to the painting for some length of time does such<br />
spatial adjustment occur. Without time the colours remain decorative, instead<br />
of active and vibrant. The paradox of this work is that it is not just one<br />
image, even though it may seem so in a reproduction.<br />
Riley spent her early years in Cornwall during the Second World<br />
War, and later came to London, where she has been based since. In terms of<br />
art-historic lineage, however, she seems not in the first place a British but<br />
rather a French painter. Artists like Seurat, Matisse, Cézanne and Renoir<br />
have been of high importance in her research and development, particularly<br />
in terms of dealing with colours, organizing the surface and creating<br />
movement and space. Her recent works make one think about the palette of<br />
Renoir.<br />
Riley is the only painter in the show, but for Anthony Caro painting<br />
has been very important in the formation of his sculptures. His Table Piece<br />
LXXVIII (1969, pp. 10, 12, 19) was inspired by forms seen in Matisse’s paintings,<br />
and other pieces from the same series have roots in a drawing by<br />
Leonardo da Vinci and Manet’s painting Déjeuner sur l’herbe. The smaller table<br />
sculptures mark only one episode in Caro’s diverse oeuvre, but it is a remarkable<br />
one. The plinth here is not just a support, but an active part of the<br />
work. The steel is heavy, but the piece in the show is elegant and expands<br />
in space, a birdlike domestic sculpture.<br />
‘The great joy of looking at Caro comes from liberation,’ wrote Charles<br />
Ray in a homage published in 2014, a year after the artist’s death. 1 Caro<br />
did not originally set out to make abstract sculptures. In the 1950s he<br />
made figurative sculptures in bronze and plaster. In the 1960s he started<br />
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working with abstract forms. This did not mean that his interest in the<br />
human body disappeared. In fact, the body is still in Caro’s works, in the<br />
way that you can (and have to) walk around them to get the full picture, and<br />
also in the size of the works. Caro regarded the pieces as a reflection of<br />
bodily behaviour, such as dancing. He once remarked that abstraction was<br />
so difficult because it didn’t give you the handle on what it was made of.<br />
‘I swore I would never make an abstract sculpture, but what I meant was<br />
that I didn’t want to make an empty sculpture. It shouldn’t be an exercise,<br />
it should be about life.’ 2 In a way, looking at Caro’s sculptures there is a<br />
feeling that you have already seen the work, even if you are seeing it for<br />
the first time. This is because the parts making up the sculptures are familiar<br />
metal pieces, such as those used in machines, ships, buildings, bicycles,<br />
ploughshares and so on. As the artist remarked, the world is full of objects<br />
that look like sculptures, but that are not. Significant for his work is the<br />
friction between the territories of life and art. Whereas objects in daily life<br />
are meant to be used, artworks are ‘feeling objects’, as Caro put it. His Flax<br />
(1965, p. 10) is a sculpture on the ground. It leans over slightly, teasing<br />
gravity, and yet it is well-balanced. The bright blue painted construction is<br />
reminiscent of jungle gyms on playgrounds, and it contains a lot of open<br />
space. It is one of Caro’s early examples of a sculpture without a plinth,<br />
which was a big step in his development: it put the artwork at the feet of<br />
the viewer, neither elevating nor separating it.<br />
Caro is one of the great 20th-century British sculptors. It is interesting<br />
to see that, around 1960, his work was electrified through contact with<br />
American artists such as David Smith and Kenneth Noland, and art critics<br />
Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried. This contact moved Caro towards<br />
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Rebecca Warren, ’Tony ’67, 2011 9
10<br />
Anthony Caro, Flax, 1965 (front), and Table Piece LXXVIII, 1969
Barbara Hepworth, Menhirs, 1964 (back); Rebecca Warren, ’Tony ’67, 2011<br />
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12 Anthony Caro, Table Piece LXXVIII, 1969; Barbara Hepworth, Menhirs, 1964
Bridget Riley, Rose Light, 2013 13
14
Bridget Riley, Rose Rise, 2012 15
16 Edmund de Waal, Fadensonnen, II, 2014
Rebecca Warren, The Mystic, 2011 17
18<br />
Edmund de Waal, Fadensonnen, I, 2014
Edmund de Waal, Fadensonnen, I, 2014 (back); Anthony Caro, Table Piece LXXVIII, 1969 19
20<br />
Barbara Hepworth, Menhirs, 1964
new approaches to sculpture. Both he and Barbara Hepworth engaged in<br />
abstract and minimal forms, and they did so driven by humanist motives.<br />
They did not want art that was self-absorbed or self-referential, but instead<br />
saw human life at the centre of their efforts, even if that did not happen in<br />
the form of depiction or storytelling.<br />
For Hepworth, being an artist brought high expectations, especially after<br />
the Second World War had ended and chances for a new future were felt.<br />
Hepworth had the hope that art would contribute to a new world. Probably<br />
her most famous piece is the more than six metre high Single Form (1961–1964),<br />
placed outside the United Nations building in New York. Hepworth thought<br />
highly of the UN and dedicated the piece to its secretary general, her friend<br />
Dag Hammarskjöld, who died in a plane crash in 1961. It is one big piece<br />
with a large hole in the upper part, through which the surroundings are included<br />
in the work. Actually, for both Caro and Hepworth, emptiness is an<br />
essential part of their sculptures.<br />
Hepworth’s Menhirs (1964, pp. 11, 12, 20), on show in this exhibition,<br />
are two erect forms in teak wood, polished very finely. The left one has<br />
three round openings in it, the right one only one. The wood grain and the<br />
rounded surfaces, and the ability offered to look through the work, belong<br />
to the aesthetic pleasures of this sculpture. The piece is based on the ancient<br />
menhirs (standing stones) that can be found in Brittany, Cornwall and other<br />
parts of Europe. But it is clear that they also can be read, in an abstract way,<br />
as two human beings, different in cut, but belonging together.<br />
Hepworth came to St. Ives in Cornwall in 1939, right at the outbreak<br />
of war, and in 1942 she moved to a studio just outside the town, where she<br />
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spent the rest of her life. The mild climate enabled her to carve outside in<br />
the garden throughout the year. Her direct and personal relationship with<br />
the material and with nature resulted in an immaterial quality in her works.<br />
She observed: ‘I have gained very great inspiration from Cornish land- and<br />
seascape, the horizontal line of the sea and the quality of light and colour,<br />
which reminds me of the Mediterranean light and colour which so excites<br />
one’s sense of form; and first and last there is the human figure, which<br />
in the country becomes a free and moving part of a greater whole. This<br />
relationship between figure and landscape is vitally important to me. I cannot<br />
feel it in a city.’ 3 Hepworth has just one piece in the show, but it makes<br />
a strong presence.<br />
Cornwall was also important for Bridget Riley, who, just like Hepworth,<br />
spent the war years there, but at a younger age. There was not much to buy<br />
and there was not much happening, the artist has recalled. The spectacle<br />
was to be found in walks close to the seaside, and in the observation of<br />
nature during those walks. Riley’s focus on the act of seeing was formed<br />
during these years, before she ever went to art school. The landscape did<br />
not give her a motif, but it gave her knowledge about how things change all<br />
the time, if you look carefully.<br />
From the works of Riley, Hepworth and Caro to those of Rebecca<br />
Warren is quite a step, although, at first glance, the transition seems rather<br />
smooth in the context of this exhibition. Warren’s ’Tony ’67 (2011, pp. 9, 11)<br />
obviously refers to Anthony Caro (‘Tony’ to friends) whose Flax is in the<br />
same room. Warren’s piece is made of steel and uses constructivist vocabulary,<br />
and the important factor seems to be balance. The work actually makes<br />
me think first about Richard Serra – the possibility or ‘danger’ that the small<br />
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steel shelf will tumble adds something exciting to the work. Two long rods<br />
lean against a metal pedestal, each making a slightly different angle with the<br />
floor. In playfulness, it is reminiscent of Caro’s works.<br />
In a second work by Warren, The Mystic (2012, p. 17), there is again a<br />
main body in steel and, in this case, just one shelf resting against it. On top<br />
there is a little pom-pom. Such a funny prop would not have been possible<br />
in high minimalism; here a distinction between ‘then’ and ‘now’ is introduced.<br />
The artist seems to say, ‘I am using this form, but don’t take it too<br />
seriously’, and so it becomes a retake of an existing modern style. Does<br />
this mean that Warren is mocking the visual language that she is using? The<br />
answer is not entirely clear, but the question is interesting enough, since<br />
Warren is not the only one of her generation making such gestures. Worth<br />
noting is that in other works she employs a very different, expressive kind<br />
of sculpture; minimalism is for sure not her one and only motto.<br />
Within the framework of the show, it seems that Warren has a genuine<br />
interest in geometric vocabulary and its weight. The work seems investigative,<br />
rather than singular, in its choice of material and geometry. With<br />
The Mystic, irony is entering the room, a sculpture mocking itself. The<br />
artist said during a gallery talk: ‘Art is the place where you can be the most<br />
comfortable with not knowing something.’ 4 In comparison, the aspirations<br />
that came with abstract sculpture for an artist like Hepworth were far more<br />
idealistic than they are for Warren.<br />
So has the mystic become a joker? Is that the difference between modern<br />
art and after? Bruce Nauman already touched upon this question in a<br />
neon work from 1967, which shows in a spiral form the words, The true<br />
artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths. It is up to the viewer to decide<br />
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how seriously or ironically that statement should be taken. To believe in it<br />
or not is the question.<br />
It is interesting in this context that Edmund de Waal’s work escapes<br />
any clear feeling that it belongs to a specific time period. Apart from being<br />
visual poems, his pieces also seem to be a reflection on how modern art<br />
works – how collecting is part of it, how we look at protected objects and<br />
consider them charged with meaning and values, and how we long for the<br />
single, ultimate object. De Waal exhibits this practice, offers it for reflection,<br />
and maybe even questions it with his multiple vessels, but without becoming<br />
ironic about it, since at the same time he seems to enjoy exhibiting and<br />
to believe in the power of objects.<br />
For those who thought that modern art was over, this show is a challenge.<br />
It offers a lineage that connects works by five artists in multiple ways.<br />
Their origins are British, and some of them share the landscape and the<br />
era that surrounded and formed them as artists. They also share an interest<br />
in abstraction and modern ‘essentials’. What we can see in this show is<br />
modern art still being effective. There is belief in the objects presented and<br />
in their potential to be meaningful. The show presents continuity, in methods<br />
and appearances, between 20th-century and 21st-century art pieces.<br />
Even with Warren’s anachronistic little pom-pom and de Waal’s reflections<br />
on the unique art object, this continuity can be felt. In fact, through questioning<br />
habits and styles, these artists only confirm the importance that<br />
‘then’ has for ‘now’.<br />
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1<br />
Charles Ray, ‘Anthony Caro’, Artforum, February 2014, p. 51<br />
2<br />
Anthony Caro in a television interview for the BBC programme Nationwide, 1984<br />
3<br />
Barbara Hepworth, ‘Approach to Sculpture’, The Studio 643, October 1946<br />
4<br />
Rebecca Warren in a gallery talk at The Renaissance Society at the University<br />
of Chicago, 1 October 2010 (archived on the Society’s youtube channel)<br />
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List of Exhibited Works<br />
Anthony Caro<br />
Flax, 1965<br />
steel painted blue, 61.5 x 206.5 x 151 cm<br />
Table Piece LXXVIII, 1969<br />
steel painted matt brown, plinth,<br />
44.5 x 154.9 x 57.2 cm, plinth 77 x 153 x 36 cm<br />
Barbara Hepworth<br />
Menhirs, 1964<br />
teak, height 121 cm, plinth 87.6 x 48.3 x 58.4 cm<br />
Bridget Riley<br />
Rose Rise, 2012<br />
oil on linen, 147.5 x 254 cm<br />
Rose Light, 2013<br />
oil on linen, 175 x 332.7 cm<br />
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Edmund de Waal<br />
Fadensonnen, I, 2014<br />
20 porcelain vessels, wood and plexiglass cabinet,<br />
90 x 50 x 15 cm<br />
Fadensonnen, II, 2014<br />
19 porcelain vessels, wood and plexiglass cabinet,<br />
90 x 50 x 15 cm<br />
Fadensonnen, III, 2014<br />
19 porcelain vessels, wood and plexiglass cabinet,<br />
90 x 50 x 15 cm<br />
Rebecca Warren<br />
’Tony ’67, 2011, steel, 282 x 58 x 32 cm, edition of 2<br />
The Mystic, 2011, steel and pom-pom, 106 x 76 x 63 cm,<br />
edition of 4<br />
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Published on the occasion of the exhibition Then and Now<br />
at Galerie Max Hetzler, Bleibtreustraße 45, 10623 Berlin,<br />
6 March to 19 April 2014<br />
The gallery would like to thank<br />
Ivor Braka, Stephanie Forrest, James Holland-Hibbert<br />
and Karsten Schubert<br />
Then and Now<br />
Edition of 400<br />
Published by Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris<br />
Bleibtreustraße 45, D -10623 Berlin | 57, rue du Temple, F-75004 Paris<br />
www.maxhetzler.com<br />
Text: Jurriaan Benschop<br />
Copy editing: Lutz Eitel<br />
Design: Hans Werner Holzwarth<br />
Photographs: def image<br />
Lithographs: Bildpunkt, Berlin<br />
Printing: Medialis, Berlin<br />
Copyright 2014: the artists, the photographer and the author<br />
Copyright 2014 for this edition: Galerie Max Hetzler<br />
Distribution: Holzwarth Publications, Berlin<br />
www.holzwarth-publications.com<br />
All rights reserved<br />
First edition 2014<br />
ISBN 978-3-935567-73-2<br />
Printed in Germany
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