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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


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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 />

25


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 />

26


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 />

27


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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