Barbara Hepworth: Material Practice in Post-War British Sculpture
Lead Research Organisation:
University of York
Department Name: History of Art
Abstract
How did the major 20th century British sculptor, Barbara Hepworth, transform her artistic ideas into physical reality? How did she manipulate tools and processes to shape resistant matter, and how do they shape the artist in turn? And how did she work with technicians and artisans to turn her models into finished sculptures?
These are fundamental questions to ask about the practice of Hepworth, or indeed any sculptor; yet they remain remarkably little explored. This project will seek to begin answering them by bringing together diverse sources of expertise to bear on the unique collection of the Hepworth Wakefield (THW), one of the north of England's most important museums of modern and contemporary art. While most other major holdings of Hepworth's work consist primarily of finished works, the core of THW's collection is the Hepworth Family Gift, is a unique archive of preparatory, technical and personal material. This includes plaster prototypes, bronze casts and carvings, prints and drawings, tools and materials, recipe books and notes/journals. There is further enriched by the loan of a significant portion of Hepworth's personal library.
At the moment, this remarkable collection remains poorly understood because of the lack of coordinated research into Hepworth's materials, techniques and processes. Much knowledge exists, but it is currently siloed among curators, conservators, practising artists, technical art historians, and academic art historians. The result is that THW finds it challenging to understand and present its rich holdings.
This research network will begin to address this situation by bringing together the diverse specialisms, skills and fields of expertise needed to understand Hepworth's material processes and their relation to her broader cultural aims and interests. It will enable academic art historians, curators at THW and elsewhere, practicing artists, conservators, technical art historians, technicians and engineers to pool and coordinate their methods and areas of expertise. In doing so they will generate substantial new knowledge and understanding of Hepworth's work. At the same time, they establish the basis for, and set the agenda for, further more targeted transdisciplinary research into Hepworth's material practice.
The network will have substantial impacts on the museum and gallery sector, on conservation practice and on the wide audience for Hepworth's work. It will feed directly into a forthcoming special retrospective - the largest Hepworth exhibition ever staged - and enable intervention into the permanent displays of Hepworth's work at THW. In doing so it will contribute to the cultural life and the wider regeneration of Wakefield.
No less significantly, it will also provide a model and foundation for collaborative research into material practice in the arts, essential if we are to gain a genuine grasp of the material aspects of artistic production. Art historians, while often enthusiastic participants in the 'material turn' in their discipline, have ironically tended to approach the material in highly theoretical ways. As a result, they have tended to prioritise phenomenological and socioeconomic approaches to materiality, while neglecting the immediate physical realities of artistic production. Practicing artists, technical art historians, engineers and art technicians are in direct contact with materials and processes. However, they are often remote from the questions that animate their art historical colleagues. Bringing together scholars and practitioners in the way envisaged by this project will bring these perspectives into dialogue, and show how detailed exploration of material evidence can transform our understanding of artistic production.
These are fundamental questions to ask about the practice of Hepworth, or indeed any sculptor; yet they remain remarkably little explored. This project will seek to begin answering them by bringing together diverse sources of expertise to bear on the unique collection of the Hepworth Wakefield (THW), one of the north of England's most important museums of modern and contemporary art. While most other major holdings of Hepworth's work consist primarily of finished works, the core of THW's collection is the Hepworth Family Gift, is a unique archive of preparatory, technical and personal material. This includes plaster prototypes, bronze casts and carvings, prints and drawings, tools and materials, recipe books and notes/journals. There is further enriched by the loan of a significant portion of Hepworth's personal library.
At the moment, this remarkable collection remains poorly understood because of the lack of coordinated research into Hepworth's materials, techniques and processes. Much knowledge exists, but it is currently siloed among curators, conservators, practising artists, technical art historians, and academic art historians. The result is that THW finds it challenging to understand and present its rich holdings.
This research network will begin to address this situation by bringing together the diverse specialisms, skills and fields of expertise needed to understand Hepworth's material processes and their relation to her broader cultural aims and interests. It will enable academic art historians, curators at THW and elsewhere, practicing artists, conservators, technical art historians, technicians and engineers to pool and coordinate their methods and areas of expertise. In doing so they will generate substantial new knowledge and understanding of Hepworth's work. At the same time, they establish the basis for, and set the agenda for, further more targeted transdisciplinary research into Hepworth's material practice.
The network will have substantial impacts on the museum and gallery sector, on conservation practice and on the wide audience for Hepworth's work. It will feed directly into a forthcoming special retrospective - the largest Hepworth exhibition ever staged - and enable intervention into the permanent displays of Hepworth's work at THW. In doing so it will contribute to the cultural life and the wider regeneration of Wakefield.
No less significantly, it will also provide a model and foundation for collaborative research into material practice in the arts, essential if we are to gain a genuine grasp of the material aspects of artistic production. Art historians, while often enthusiastic participants in the 'material turn' in their discipline, have ironically tended to approach the material in highly theoretical ways. As a result, they have tended to prioritise phenomenological and socioeconomic approaches to materiality, while neglecting the immediate physical realities of artistic production. Practicing artists, technical art historians, engineers and art technicians are in direct contact with materials and processes. However, they are often remote from the questions that animate their art historical colleagues. Bringing together scholars and practitioners in the way envisaged by this project will bring these perspectives into dialogue, and show how detailed exploration of material evidence can transform our understanding of artistic production.
Planned Impact
Both the subject matter of the Hepworth Research Network, the combination of academic, museum-based collaborators and practitioners, and the plans for dissemination of the Network's activities and findings will ensure that it has exceptionally wide impacts beyond the academy.
The non-academic groups directly impacted by the research will include:
- the Hepworth Wakefield (THW)
- school groups and young visitors to THW and, in the longer term, other museums and galleries showing post-war British sculpture
- adult visitors to THW, including artists and Barbara Hepworth enthusiasts
- conservators in museums and private practice
- institutions with works by Hepworth in their collections
- owners of modern sculpture, especially public sculpture
- curators
- public and private sector museums and galleries concerned with authentication of works and assessing their condition
- residents of Wakefield and the surrounding area, including not only those directly visiting THW but benefiting from the wider economic impacts of THW, which the project will help support
The Hepworth Research Network will play a direct role in shaping the priorities of THW regarding the care and display of its permanent collection, as well as informing temporary exhibitions, such as the forthcoming Hepworth retrospective in 2021 and its accompanying publication.
By facilitating new interpretative frameworks and the development of temporary interventions into the permanent display of Hepworth's work, especially the important but challenging group of maquettes and models in the Hepworth Family Gift, the Hepworth Research Network will enhance the engagement of audiences with it, particularly in connection to themes of materials and making. Using the experience of contemporary artists to understand the interaction with material and technological processes in creative practice will bring the engagement of audiences with historical artistic practices to life.
By connecting curators, technicians and conservators, the project will have direct impacts far beyond the academy. It will assist in the identification and dissemination of best practice in the preventive and remedial conservation of Hepworth sculptures, not only to ensure that her sculptures are better cared for and presented in both public and private collections, but that works by her contemporaries are also better treated and appreciated.
By enhancing the public programmes of THW, the project will also contribute to the wider regeneration of the Wakefield area, one of England's 20% most deprived council areas.
The non-academic groups directly impacted by the research will include:
- the Hepworth Wakefield (THW)
- school groups and young visitors to THW and, in the longer term, other museums and galleries showing post-war British sculpture
- adult visitors to THW, including artists and Barbara Hepworth enthusiasts
- conservators in museums and private practice
- institutions with works by Hepworth in their collections
- owners of modern sculpture, especially public sculpture
- curators
- public and private sector museums and galleries concerned with authentication of works and assessing their condition
- residents of Wakefield and the surrounding area, including not only those directly visiting THW but benefiting from the wider economic impacts of THW, which the project will help support
The Hepworth Research Network will play a direct role in shaping the priorities of THW regarding the care and display of its permanent collection, as well as informing temporary exhibitions, such as the forthcoming Hepworth retrospective in 2021 and its accompanying publication.
By facilitating new interpretative frameworks and the development of temporary interventions into the permanent display of Hepworth's work, especially the important but challenging group of maquettes and models in the Hepworth Family Gift, the Hepworth Research Network will enhance the engagement of audiences with it, particularly in connection to themes of materials and making. Using the experience of contemporary artists to understand the interaction with material and technological processes in creative practice will bring the engagement of audiences with historical artistic practices to life.
By connecting curators, technicians and conservators, the project will have direct impacts far beyond the academy. It will assist in the identification and dissemination of best practice in the preventive and remedial conservation of Hepworth sculptures, not only to ensure that her sculptures are better cared for and presented in both public and private collections, but that works by her contemporaries are also better treated and appreciated.
By enhancing the public programmes of THW, the project will also contribute to the wider regeneration of the Wakefield area, one of England's 20% most deprived council areas.
Organisations
Publications
Michael White
(2023)
How Yorkshire influenced the sculptures of Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore
Ro Robertson
(2021)
Terrain of the Queer Body
Stephen Feeke
(2021)
Hepworth and the Tache: Drawings and Paintings 1957-8
Description | First report March 2022 We are not yet at the end of the award and activities are still ongoing. Nevertheless, a number of new avenues for research are opening up, as follows. It has become very clear how little of the specific knowledge concerning materials and their properties gained through the active conservation of Barbara Hepworth's sculptures has yet to be disseminated to art historical and curatorial communities, let alone wider audiences. Exchange of this knowledge at our events has already led to the identification new questions, such as why Hepworth might have treated the surfaces of sculptures even from the same edition differently, what knowledge and awareness she might have had concerning where they would be placed (i.e. inside or outside), and how open she was to the possibility of their material change and even degradation. These are questions that extend beyond her practice alone and are allowing us to address the tension between the museological impetus to present sculptures as if frozen in time at the moment of their creation and their status as objects with ongoing lives. The very active and enthusiastic engagement of contemporary artists with the network has also been a key feature of its early success. One recurring theme in the creative responses of practitioners to Hepworth's sculptures has been the relationship between materiality and immateriality. In identifying the connections between their works and those of Hepworth, artists have presented moving-image and sound works, and drawn on archival documents in surprising ways that have drawn attention to the place of Hepworth's sculptures in the wider physical environment and also broader visual culture. Attention to the presentation of Hepworth's sculptures in other media, such as photography has been another developing theme of events so far. This has extended also to the discussion of the application of 3D scanning technology, which has enabled a previously mobile sculpture titled 'Turning Forms' to be re-visualised in motion once again. As above, here we have an instance of the 'dematerialisation' of a work of sculpture permitting re-engagement with its previous material condition and for its sense of novelty (and even futurity) to be recovered. Update March 2023 The original objectives of the award were as follows: 1. To arrange a series of collaborative events over a period of eighteen months to share knowledge that has remained siloed within specialist communities, advancing the study of sculpture by taking fully into account material factors and exploring their interactions with conceptual aims and intentions. 2. To make constructive use and widen awareness of the exceptional archive and collection at THW, in order to model an approach to Hepworth's material practices that has potential to be more widely applicable to sculpture/sculptural thinking. 3. To develop curatorial strategies for engaging gallery audiences with material processes - finding novel ways to make the network's findings accessible and engaging, developing new interventions in the permanent displays at THW and informing the development of a Hepworth retrospective in 2021. 4. To contribute meaningfully to Wakefield's cultural and economic revival by supporting the work of THW and its public programme. In respect to those objectives, we have achieved the following: 1. Over the course of the award we organised five events, all of which included equal levels of participation by our key communities. Together with an initial event held just before the start of the award, we have had contribution from thirty-eight individuals, who are now part of our network, including eleven artists, ten art historians, eleven curators and six conservators. The immediate and very obvious learning gained from these events was the relevance of specialist knowledge in each of those communities to the work of the others. For example, a workshop at The Hepworth Wakefield on three different versions of the sculpture 'Spring' by Barbara Hepworth, in plaster and bronze, revealed not only different forms of treatment by conservators that has led to marked differences in appearance but even slight variations that the artist tolerated or even encouraged at the point of manufacture. Furthermore it revealed that one of the versions had been exhibited back to front. The importance of integrating conservation histories into the art historical research process as part of exhibition making has become completely apparent. 2. Over the course of our events, we have incorporated numerous archival materials into our research programme, dedicating one event to photographic images of sculpture, for example, and attending to the remnants of Hepworth's studio in St Ives, in another, including surviving tools and materials, subject to their own processes of degradation. We have also encouraged and debated the generation of new archival objects, such as 3D scans and the creative use of sound recordings of Hepworth and images of her sculptures, a number of examples of which featured in our event focused on the responses of contemporary artists to her practice. 3. Despite the timing of the award and the challenges of the pandemic, we were able to run a number of our events alongside the major retrospective, 'Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life,' engaging with it in its exhibition venues in Wakefield and St Ives. We brought members of our network to engage with the curatorial teams in both of those locations and dedicated time to gaining insights from all sectors of our communities into display strategies relevant to Hepworth and beyond. In St Ives, our discussions were also intended to support planning for the creation of further Hepworth-related display space in her second studio, the Palais de Danse. 4. The Hepworth Research Network has received numerous mentions on websites and blogs, with many repostings by its members, who include artists with significant followings. By means of its pages on the website of The Hepworth Wakefield, featuring details of its events, recordings, videos, transcripts, and resource links, it has added a major new dimension to the activities of the project partner, placing it at the heart of a large research community. Some papers given at events have been written up and feature discussion of such topics as the information to be gleaned from Hepworth's correspondence, the material evidence of her working processes still remaining to be uncovered in surviving objects in her former studio, the impact of her turn to bronze casting on other areas of her creative practice, and the value of her example for contemporary artists working at the intersection of material form and subjectivity. The research network has in general provided a lively forum for interactions between practitioners (both artists and conservators) and curators, all of whom are active researchers but outside of academia, with colleagues based in universities. |
Exploitation Route | First report March 2022 The findings listed above will provide useful knowledge and understanding for many organisations that own and care for sculptures by Barbara Hepworth and similar artists. The creative responses made by artists and the deeper understanding being generated by our research activities of the communication of her sculptures' materiality in other, less materialised media should stimulate new approaches to its curatorial presentation. Update March 2023 Alongside the outcomes noted last year, further thoughts and discussions have been developing in connection to how the insights and interests of our different communities might be used to enrich the description of sculptural objects for different audiences, from the perspective of accessibility. We also initiated a discussion of how Hepworth can provide a test bed for considering the different environmental conditions in which works of art are exhibited, informing debates concerning variations in environmental standards in museums. An unusually significant number of her sculptures in public spaces have been listed, leading to additional questions concerning their maintenance and responsibilities of future generations to their care. |
Sectors | Creative Economy Culture Heritage Museums and Collections |
URL | https://hepworthwakefield.org/our-story/hepworth-research-network/ |
Description | A very provisional but potentially fruitful discussion has begun between the research network and a colleague in the field of human-computer interaction at the University of York concerning the description of works of art, specifically sculpture, on The Hepworth Wakefield website and issues of accessibility, in which the diverse range of expertise in the network concerning materials, processes and meaning might be mobilised. It is at the moment very early to tell if it will lead to a project but the conversation itself would not have occurred without the existence of the research network. Our activities have also come to the attention of the School of Arts and Creative Technologies at York, along similar lines. (Update March 2024) A small trial on the creation of some image description guidelines was conducted in summer 2023 by Prof Helen Petrie of the Dept of Computer Science at the University of York, working with a graduate student, Meg Upadhyaya with Michael White acting in an advisory capacity. There has not yet been an opportunity to take this project further though, due to time constraints on all concerned. |
First Year Of Impact | 2022 |
Impact Types | Cultural Societal |
Description | Feature on research pages of the University of York website. |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | This was a short feature article on the University of York website research pages intended to communicate research activities to wider audiences. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
URL | https://www.york.ac.uk/research/themes/hepworth-research-network/ |
Description | Reference to the research network in a national news magazine. |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | The research network was referred to in an article in The Spectator reviewing a book by the project partner lead, Eleanor Clayton. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
URL | https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-st-ives-became-barbara-hepworth-s-spiritual-home/ |
Description | Reference to the research network's activities by the 20th Century Society |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | An article on the website of the 20th Century Society by Catherine Croft, 'Unusual Barbara Hepworth Concrete Sculpture Restored and to be on View in Wakefield,' referred to the interaction of conservators, historians and curators in the research network in reference to the treatment of this example of a sculpture by Hepworth. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
URL | https://c20society.org.uk/2021/05/13/unusual-barbara-hepworth-concrete-sculpture-restored-and-to-be-... |
Description | University of Huddersfield news item |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | The news pages of the University of Huddersfield carried a story about the research network, linking its activities to the opening of a major Barbara Hepworth retrospective exhibition at the Hepworth Wakefield. The main purpose of the item was to disseminate awareness of the network and its role in supporting the exhibition, which was a cultural event of national significance. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
URL | https://www.hud.ac.uk/news/2021/august/barbara-hepworth-research-network-legacy/ |