Yorkshire Sculpture Park

  1

2

The first few mornings after my arrival at Yorkshire Sculpture Park were shrouded in heavy mist, which lent the place an eerie feeling, hearing sounds but not being able to identify where they came from.  The lambs are all out, running from one hill to the next, racing eachother on the unnatural tarmac driveway with spray-painted numbers on their sides.  

Seeing sculpture in the fog is a pleasure, the edges dissolving, the forms slowly emerging as you approach, a perfect diffused grey backdrop from every perspective. It’s perhaps a better condition for viewing sculpture than sunshine, rarer in any case. It made the park feel infinitely large.

Over in Leeds, The Henry Moore Institute’s current exhibition ‘Photographing Sculpture: How the Image Moves the Object’ was a pertinent follow-on. Archive prints showing sculpture in various stages of undress; artist’s snaps in the studio, images taken of tarpaulin and rope-bound work in transit, un-worked back-sides and underneaths that were never supposed to see the light of day.  I remembered that somebody’s argument against this kind of corner-cutting was that though nobody could see it, “the Gods would know”.  Indeed.

1  Henry Moore, 'Reclining Figure: Arch Leg', 1969-70 at Yorkshire Scuplture Park. Courtesy Henry Moore Foundation.
2  Arthur Fleischmann, 'Miranda', 1951, Image of the artist in the studio with the work and model.
    Vintage print, Courtesy Leeds Museums and Galleries. Courtesy Henry Moore Institute Archive.