Programme 8: Sculpture from Nature

The Art Works

Title: Fish
Artist: Constantin Brancusi
Medium: Bronze, metal and wood
Date: 1926

Fish is a simple, elegant form in polished bronze resting on a shiny metal disk. Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) did not want to reproduce the appearance of things, but to try and find an expression of their essential being. Here, in order to catch the idea of the fish’s rapid movement through the water he has stripped it of all excess detail. The dish on which it rests could represent the water in which it swims, and even if it is beneath the fish, its reflective surface is reminiscent of the surface of a pond. The base of the sculpture was carved from wood by the artist himself and is an integral part of the sculpture. Not only do its rough surface and darker colouration contrast with the smoothness and brilliance of the fish itself, but from the side the hole in the base also looks like a fish’s mouth.

Title: Pelagos
Artist: Barbara Hepworth
Medium: Part painted wood and strings
Date: 1946

Pelagos is carved from a single piece of wood. The outer surface is polished, and shows the grain of the wood, while the curving interior is painted a pale blue. Across the ends of the overlapping curves the sculptor, Barbara Hepworth (1903–75), has threaded string, creating a tension across the centre of the work. The title of the piece is the Greek word for ‘sea’.

Hepworth spent many years living in St Ives, on the coast in Cornwall, and likened the sculpture to the energy that is contained within a wave.

Title: The End of the Twentieth Century
Artist: Joseph Beuys
Medium: Basalt, clay and felt
Date: 1983–5

During World War II Joseph Beuys (1921–86) fought for the German air force as a fighter pilot. In 1943 he was shot down over the Crimea (now part of Ukraine), but survived the crash. According to him he was found by nomadic Tartars, who wrapped him in fat and felt to keep him warm and help keep him alive. As a result these substances always had symbolic significance in his work, referring to ideas of life, warmth and regeneration.

Each of the basalt columns in the work has a cone drilled out of it, but a new one is stuck in using felt and clay (another of his favourite materials). Although the stone is dead and lifeless the felt represents the possibility of life. The clay, used by the earliest humans for pots, is a non-polluting form of technology: his concerns are with the environment, and its potential destruction by humans. The large, dead forms of basalt appear nevertheless to have been injured, and the modification of the cones is almost like sticking a plaster on a wound. He suggests that if humans have been responsible for damaging the environment, they should also be responsible for fixing it.