The recently opened group show Towards a New World is centred around the informal group of postwar, young British sculptors known as the Geometry of Fear – a term coined by art historian Herbert Read1https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/g/geometry-fear. The male-heavy lineup includes Kenneth Armitage, Reg Butler, Lynn Chadwick, Geoffrey Clarke, Bernard Meadows, Eduardo Paolozzi, and William Turnbill. On the ground floor, Prunella Clough and Elisabeth Frank are represented alongside Francis Bacon, Alan Reynolds, and Graham Sutherland. Regarding the aforementioned issue, that being the canonisation of women and minorities, the fact remains that many art movements, postwar sculpture included, have been dominated by men. However, if they really wanted to portray the idea of moving towards a new world, there would have been room to incorporate more female voices in this show, namely Barbara Hepworth and Leslie Thornton – both of whom were involved with the Geometry of Fear.
Marlborough uses its rooms and galleries thoughtfully by establishing smaller arrangements within the greater presentation, which seems to offer multiple exhibitions within the main exhibition. Its first floor back room is often curated as a kind of Kunstkammer style respite from the central exhibition.
We attended the private view on 15 March and asked the audience, what’s your hot take?
HOT TAKE 1: I’m fascinated because it’s heritage, it’s British, and it’s very Marlborough. What I mean by Marlborough is that they have this sense of shape, lines…a lot of shapes. I get to see that a lot, but yeah I love the sculptures here.
HOT TAKE 2: Adequate. I come with an expectation that it’s going to be terrible, and then it’s definitely adequate. It’s better than terrible. I see an awful lot of terrible art which a chimpanzee could have done, and I want to see something that takes a bit of skill and is interesting, and this is.
HOT TAKE 3: Well, these are quite historical figures, some of which I know better than others, and I haven’t really – he’s more interesting than I thought he was, so I’ve learnt something.
HOT TAKE 4: I enjoyed the in-between part on the middle tier level. So basically the show is sandwiched by this other exhibition. It feels like there are fewer rules for that area.
HOT TAKE 5: It’s interesting to see how quite a lot of it relates to Francis Bacon as well. The stuff in this show, these were his contemporaries, so they were probably influencing him and he was influencing them. It’s a two-way street, and that’s interesting to see. I mean actually some work by this guy downstairs very much relates to Bacon. Francis Bacon is always using these frameworks, so that certainly connects. There’s definitely a conversation happening.
HOT TAKE 6: It’s interesting to me that these conversation play out in galleries, who are actually there to sell art to collectors, but the public comes and looks at it and there’s this social event that then contributes to the conversation, even though the business of the gallery is to sell art. But they’re really very much imbricated in the development of the conversation.
HOT TAKE 7: It makes me think about the way that art becomes…it is inherently very problematic. I don’t generally want government telling people what to do, or what to finance. I don’t want it to be public sector. In terms of having artists having public funding, I want it to go to the good artists, but who gets to decide? A lot of burocratrs.
HOT TAKE 8: Public funding is dangerous because it means that buroccrcats are deicing who gets funding. I think you’ve got to have a bit of everything, because each solution is totally problematic. Who could have helped van gogh? Well his brother did, but that was probably the only person who could.
HOT TAKE 9: It makes me think about intentionality. Do you want to publish, or do you want to paint? I just want to paint. Artists are just normal, frail human beings who like their egos to be stroked occasionally, who like people to say, oh this is good, I’m going to put my money where my mouth is.
HOT TAKE 10: I think it’s dangerous when you start telling artists that their work needs to be seen. The timeline of humanity is a lot longer than our scope, isn’t it? Maybe it will be seen later. We only get to be here for what, 100 years, when you think about the trajectory of history, who’s to say that this hundred years is when you want people to see your work? Maybe I want people in the future to celebrate my work and for my fifteen minutes to happen later. When you look back over the decades, it’s often the artists who had very big names who are now forgotten. Bacon had a name, so he is an exception to the rule.
HOT TAKE 11: For me, the show makes me feel like at home because I like this kind of aesthetic. It’s kind of close to Brutalist architecture, and it reminds me of ex Yugoslavia. I don’t know why. Something about that postwar period feels homey to me. I love how they’re displayed, especially in this kind of wood that feels old, and I love actually the long necked one on the first floor right next to Bacon.
HOT TAKE 12: You kind of just get the sense that the artist is being informed by his contemporaries, so we get kind of a look into the conversations which were happening during that time. Some of them also really remind me of Picasso in a way that’s kind of like, beauty behind the horror I guess. This one doesn’t feel like a chicken who is calm. The red makes it feel sharp. Even the left one with the scribbles on the wings feels like maybe she doesn’t have feathers, but just bones. Like a living carcass. I don’t like the word “zombies” but it does make me think of zombies.
HOT TAKE 13: I also don’t like zombies, because there’s too many rules attached to them. We’re no longer allowed to interpret zombie with our own meaning for it, like clowns for instance, but zombies have these rules like, you have to kill them in a very particular place in their head. Because of all these tv shows and movies there are these rules about zombies that are not the same for ghosts. It has become very specific in terms of its meaning, which does not leave a lot of room for creative interpretation.
HOT TAKE 14: In relation to my own art, I like to do a lot of horrid stuff – but that is not linked to the horror that is fed to us through this kind of pop approach. More like there’s a person who is very much living but perhaps feeling dead inside and walking.
HOT TAKE 15: To comment on the zombies thing, I guess the scariest thing about zombies is that they’re really slow, but so persistent. They will never stop. Its almost a life lesson, like that’s how we as humans need to be. We need to be slower and more persistent. Like, I’m not in a rush but I’m never going to stop trying. It’s quite inspirational. I guess I’m pro zombie!
Exhibition view. Courtesy of the gallery.
Towards a New World: Sculpture in Post-War Britain is on view through 22 April at Marlborough Gallery
6 Albemarle St.
London W1S 4BY
more info here
