A Quarterly Review of Contemporary "Abstract" Painting& Sculpture Editor: Myfanwy Evans
A Quarterly Review of Contemporary "Abstract" Painting& Sculpture Editor: Myfanwy Evans
A Quarterly Review of Contemporary "Abstract" Painting& Sculpture Editor: Myfanwy Evans
1935
AXIS
A
Q U A R T E R L Y
" A B S T R A C T "
R E V I E W
O F
P A I N T I N G
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C O N T E M P O R A R Y
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AXIS
No. 3
1935
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Page
3
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No. 4
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LIVING A R T "
28
ORDER
FORM
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for one half year,
(for one year.
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P.O.
Signed
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Address
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Cheques should be made payable to AXIS, and all orders and
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Near Henley-on-Thames, Oxon.
Address for London distribution : 20, Jermyn Street, London, W . I . (Telephone :
Regent 3416.)
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^FONDS KANDINSKYJ
MNf^
3.
reproduced were
CONTENTS
Page
Brancusi
Henry Moore and, Ourselves
New Works by Barbara Hepworth
Alexander Calder
New Planets
A Review and Comment
London Shows
Paris Shows
ANATOLE
JAKOVSKI
GEOFFREY
GRIGSON..
H.
FRANKFORT
fAMES
fOHNSON
SWEENEY
HUGH GORDON PORTEUS
..
MYFANWY
EVANS
..
EILEEN
HOLDING
..
H. WESCHER
3
9
14
!9
22
2
27
28
ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
Brancusi. COLONNE
SANS FIN.
{Wood)
Brancusi. SOCRATE.
{Wood)
Brancusi. LED A et LE NOUVEAU-NE.
{Bronze)
Brancusi. POISSON.
{Marble)
Brancusi. LA MUSE ENDORMIE.
{Plaster)
The " Normandie " arriving at New York
..
..
..
..
..
Henry Moore. SCULPTURE,
1934. {Ironstone)
Henry Moore. CARVING,
1935. {Corsehill Stone)
Henry Moore. COMPOSITION,
1934. {Reinforced Concrete)
Henry Moore. TWO FORMS, 1934. {Pynkado Wood)
Henry Moore. TWO FORMS, 1934. {Four views)
Barbara Hepworth. CARVING,
1935. {White Marble)
Barbara Hepworth. CARVING,
1935. {Second view)
..
..
..
Barbara Hepworth. CARVING,
1935. {Grey Alabaster)
Barbara Hepworth. CARVING,
1935. {Snakewood)
..
..
..
Barbara Hepworth. CARVING,
1935. {Blue Ancaster Stone)
Barbara Hepworth. CARVING,
1935. {Second view)
..
..
..
Alexander Calder. MOBILE FOR THE OPEN AIR.
{Three views)..
Alexander Calder. MOBILE FOR THE OPEN AIR
Alexander Calder. MOBILE
Alexander Calder. MOBILE
Eileen Holding. CONSTRUCTION,
1935. (Wood)
Csanne. LE BUVEUR.
Block by the courtesy of the Lefevre galleries ..
Csanne. FRUITS SUR UNE ASSIETTE
'
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..
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The photographs of works by Brancusi, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth reproduced were
all taken by the artists themselves.
XJgomew^X
Ifonds KANQINSKY)
NS'MNMJ/
Ip> ""2.
- - -
lii'aiicusi
There are not many men like Brancusi, whose
long life and long vision is unwaveringly devoted
to the constant elevation of his art, to the uninterrupted and symbolic construction of the
" Colonne sans fin," of which fortunately we
shall n o t see the completion, either to-day or
to-morrow. T h e task is doubly difficult for a
sculptor ; for Brancusi, I must point out, has his
roots in the century already forgotten, the century
which was essentially anti-sculptural, extrapictorial and illusionist, and of which the greatest
sculptor, Rodin, did after all nothing but introduce the impressionist principle into sculpture,
and thus fatally destroy it. Rodin's touch, his
little cells of shadow and light, disintegrate the
volume, in the same way as spectral divisionism
the decomposition of the old " white " by painters
of this school killed the modelling, exhausted the
perspective and consequently destroyed the whole
weight of the picture.
Architecture even lost its solidity, and the
stone dripped away drop by drop through the
cut veins of these unusual " modern-style "
buildings, scattered throughout Europe. A t that
time the eyes of the world announced themselves
as Monet, Renoir, Manet.
Their power lasted until Cubism. Until the
new century's first attack of conscience, which
showed itself little by little in Montmartre.
There, in a heavy atmosphere of expectancy,
when paradox was the only possible form of
truth, and the only reasonable means of escaping
f r o m a thoroughly shaken reality, fantastic
voyages and Gauguin's flight to Tathiti presided
over the discovery of negro art made by a new
Bohemianism living in the immemorial tradition
of artists maudits, persecuted in their turn by the
persistent recurrence of the mal du sicle, which
left nothing behind it but a ditch full of evasions,
stupidities, neuroses, suicides.
Lautramont,
Van G o g h , Gerard de Nerval, Baudelaire. H o w
long it is, this furrow of despair ! So the new
spirit revealed itself under the sign of artificial
paradises and negro fetishes.
Having succeeded in exhuming the beauties
of former timesthe arts and dead visions of all
people and all ages, f r o m the Pre-Raphaelites to
the arts called prehistoric and savagethere is
nothing to do but to draw u p a balance sheet and
make a clean sweep of all preceding cultures, and
open the way to abstract art, which will not be
slow in appearing. Cubism clearly traced the
frontier between the t w o civilizations, between
the millenary and the electro-metallurgic period
which begins our days.
e RANCUSI.
(Two following
right
: Poisson)
Socrate.
6 RANCUSI.
La muse
endormie.
rods.
Yesterday !
When :
JAKOVSKI.
(Translated f r o m t h e French.)
GRIGSON.
Illustrations
Two following
: BARBARA HEPWORTH.
pages : left:
Opposite,
Carving
in White
1935 ;
Marble,
1935.
BARBARA HEPWORTH.
Carving in Blue
Ancaster stone
(Two views) .
lB
'"
Alexander Cal(ler
~ ___ ~.
--'~,
1.
r\
ALEXANDER CALDER.
Left : "A mobile for the open air; four white discs and a
Iitt/e red blob. The supporting rod is twelve feet long and is
guyed from the centre of its length. "
Be/ow : Mobile .
:t< i~t fr y.
ALEXANDER CALDER.
TT-
Mobile.
^ i e w
P l a n e t
outstanding power, vision, sensibility and technical competence. I emphasise " a n d , " because
several Englishmen show one or other gift
without the remainder ; I emphasise " English "
because the Semitic genius is older, quite different,
and fairly constant in character for all times
and places ; and this is n o time or place to attack
or defend Epstein anyway. Moore's latest w o r k
illustrates the way in which a man of genius and
ability can adapt a new invention and make it at
once his o w n and superior to what " influenced "
him.
Moore's earlier w o r k , bunions raised in rock,
lunar landscapes with female features, b u d d i n g
eyes or breasts, boiling mud-beds transfixed on
the point of eruption, have gently disbanded into
simpler elements, disparate but juxtaposed. It
seems likely that w o r k by Barbara H e p w o r t h
suggested to M o o r e the possibilities of this new
game.
Take away f r o m Barbara H e p w o r t h all that
she owes M o o r e , and nothing would remain
but a solitary clutch of Brancusi eggs, with a few
A r p scraps. A H e p w o r t h torso is always barely
and perilously existing, as sculpture. O n e touch
and it might collapse like dough. But in this
new f o r m she has discovered new gifts. T o get
under the skin of something, to intuit its degree of
sympathy or resistance to a foreign b o d y t h a t is a
feminine gift. Considered singly, her objects
often lack powerpartly, perhaps, because of the
proximity of a Moore ! But consider the superb
poise of her new twin monoliths ; and, as between
the units of her rotunder pieces, note the precise
apprehension of surface tensions. Her objects
are related together in a manner diametrically
opposed to that of Moore. W h e r e Moore's
forms are linked by an intangible b o n d of sympathy, attraction of opposite magnetic poles,
Barbara H e p w o r t h ' s are as deliberately based on
similarity of forms, magnetic repulsion. Each
unit is a highly individualised, haughty, feminine,
enclosed lump, spurning its neighbour with a
tacit noli me tangere. This principle of repulsion
is to be found at the core of Eileen Holding's
Giacomettesque also : the forms are knit together by a mutual assertiveness and hostility.
O r it is the struggle of gourd-vines within the
formal goal of a trellis, the self a prisoner exulting
masochistically (femininely) in all the paraphernalia
of the public stocks, the tongue-bit, Chinese
Kang, etc.
All these sculptures are potent personal
symbols of pride and struggle and suffering,
g r o w n for a dimly apprehended purposeas a
GORDON
PORTEUS.
EILEEN
HOLDING.
Construction,
1935.
R e v i e w
2111!
C o m m e n t
London Shows
EXHIBITION OF PRIMITIVE
OBJECTS
KLEE
LEFEVRE
GALLERY
HOLDING.
Paris Izotes
Under the name of " A t e l i e r 1 7 " artists
introduce themselves at the Galerie Pierre,
grouped round G . W . Hayter, with w h o m they
study etching and engraving by a special method.
A n apparent uniformity is produced, not only
because these artists all employ the same
technique, b u t because Hayter as a teacher
follows a quite decided line of thoughtthat
the quality of a work of art depends on the
degree in which the artist has realised his primary
vision.
H e opposes all mere illustration or
reproduction of reality, but besides this he
considers certain restrictions necessary in respect
of pure mathematical forms. H e fears that the
logically conscious working might restrain the
vaster possibilities of the creative subconscious.
From the point of view of a teacher he may be
right. Once all means of artistic expression have
been imparted to the pupil, the individual may
be left to take the final decision of choosing pure
geometrical shapes which as a first step might
have contained the danger of t o o great a
simplicity.
Giacometti has taken this course, finding a
special graphic form ; he projects mathematical
structures into a plane, but in such a way that
the lines, leading into the space, return to the
foreground.
Hayter himself adheres to abstraction in
another sense. H e prefers a more open form, as
Kandinsky did in his earlier period. H e confides
a most subjective meaning to line and curve, not
only as regards tendency and direction, but also
in respect of their qualities, which may be light
or heavy, flowing or stagnant, static or dynamic.
Rather more technical experiments are the
etchings of Prinner in their interplay of light and
shade ; the negative, blotted out shapescongenial to the expression of modern photogramms
are used as a competitive element to the positive
contours.
Husband has found a satisfactory graphic
solution for the problem of relationship between
plane and space; she detaches some single
shapes from the mass, and links up the distance
with the whole, by t w o lines building a narrow
path from the vague beyond.
Perhaps Max Ernst, artistically the most
experienced, is the least teachable as regards
Hayter's ideas.
Obsessed by the object, by
constantly new objects, I might even say, by a
new meaning of new objects of painting, he surely
attains a certain degree of realisation in his works,
but hardly ever a real simultaneity of statement
and expression.
Mr. Tschichold asks that an error which appeared in the printing of his article in Axis
should be corrected in this number.
Page 18, Hz O or N should read H, S, O, or N.
z,
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