Gormley and Moore

So Edinburgh is to have a sculptural work by Anthony Gormley. Well, it’s a keeping- up-with-the-Jones thing much less destructive than the bringing of the trams to the city. And more popular too: the general public are very relaxed about having our green and pleasant land covered with casts of this sculptor’s body. He certainly is a very effective entrepreneur, and one with clout. On his way to Edinburgh Gormley noticed that some trees were partially obscuring a view of his Angel of the North – known locally as the Gateshead Flasher – and he has had an assurance that they will be cut down.

I do wonder if Gormley ever thinks of what happened to Henry Moore. Moore became too successful for his own good. He snapped up commissions at home and abroad and younger sculptors felt blocked out. After his death his popularity waned. Some of his works were even removed from their public sites. Critics suggested that his disciple, Barbara Hepworth, was the better sculptor.

Moore did become a bit too ubiquitous. And perhaps there were just too many variations on his reclining-figure theme. But I, for one, never doubted his genius. When I visited the Picasso/Matisse exhibition at Tate Modern several years ago, there was a sculpture by Moore of a woman sitting on some steps exhibited in the central hall. I knew it previously from a maquette in Aberdeen Art Gallery. Seeing this larger version, I found it more impressive than the neo- classical works by Picasso in the main show. Although there was a nod to the Parthenon sculptures in the treatment of the drapery, it did not invite the prefix ‘neo’, often suggesting superficiality in art jargon. The sculpture by Moore that is at once a reclining figure and a landscape with cliffs and stacks, which for years has been stuck out at the back of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art like rubbish awaiting collection, is a wonderful work. The Falling Warrior is another great piece and I was recently taken by a more abstract work, in the grounds of the museums in Munich. Currently, there is a Moore revival.

Sooner or later, I predict the public and the art world will become bored with Gormley’s works dotted around town and country, here and overseas. Moore has come back now. Is there enough substance in the Gormley oeuvre to trigger a similar re-assessment when the time comes?

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