A letter to an unknown friend....

The colour of art....

Dear Friend,

I am at the Albert Hall, as you suggested, listening to the 85 year old/young Martha Argerich play Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 2 with the Munich Philharmonic and conductor Lahav Shani. It is fresh, it is light, it is beautiful, and, as Joanna MacGregor says, she brings colour to the performance.....

Turning Form (Atlantic) - Barbara Hepworth, 1961

30 years ago Martha Argerich decided she would not play solo again, preferring to play with orchestras, chamber groups, or in duets. But she is remarkable – agile, intelligent, strong – and, despite always being afflicted with nerves before any performance, she is still a revered star of the classical concert circuit (and it is hard to believe but she first played at the Last Night of the Proms in 1966 - 60 years ago!)

Eidos - Barbara Hepworth, 1947

I realise that it is something of a leap to connect Martha Argerich with Barbara Hepworth, but I was at the Courtauld Gallery the other day to see Hepworth in Colour, The first exhibition to consider colour in the sculptures and drawings of Barbara Hepworth.....

Intersection - Barbara Hepworth, 1946

But how can you liken a pianist to a sculptor? Or, rather, how can you compare modern visual art to the musical compositions of someone born in 1770?

You and I perhaps might have different answers to this, but as I listen to the strong but delicate finger-dancing of the Argentine pianist I can imagine the powerful but controlled sculpting of Barbara Hepworth’s hands, and something about the nature of art belongs to both.

Sculpture with Colour (Eos) - Barbara Hepworth, 1946

 

Dismiss my rambling as you like.  But who has ever conclusively defined ‘art?’  Is art the difference between Ariel and Caliban?  Is it what makes life tasteful, or beautiful? Is it what distracts us from the mundane, the awful, the wastewater that flows through Trump and Farage? (Apologies – but what is the worst of humanity?)

 

Sea Form (Porthmeor) - Barbara Hepworth, 1958

So, perhaps Beethoven’s trills and flowing notescapes are really not so very different from the harmonious shapes that Barbara Hepworth hewed or made from the seascapes around St Ives, like this bronze (above) with a mottled green patina and flecks of white, as if salted from long immersion in seawater.....

Wave - Barbara Hepworth, 1943-44

And then there are those that she coloured (though the cobalt blue has since faded) and embellished with taught lines like hawsers on fishing boats.

Pelagos - Barbara Hepworth, 1946
 

Hepworth was admired for her employment of natural materials, and for the way she smoothed and crafted forms, and most of her works that are in the public domain are monochrome, or use the polychromatic nature of their material, be it wood or bronze or stone.  But when she left London for Cornwall in 1939, taking her family to a safer haven, she became inspired by the colours and shapes of the Cornish landscape and coast.  And, I would say, with tenuous connection to Beethoven and Argerich, she would have been moved by the sounds of the sea, the sometimes rhythmic, sometimes dangerous, rush and surge, beat and ebb of the sea on her doorstep.  Chipping and sanding, smoothing and carving, the work of a sculptor needs to echo natural rhythms and what is more defining to us that the swell and fall of the waters on the face of the earth?

Pelagos - Barbara Hepworth, 1946
Elm, paint and strings

I am in the Albert Hall.  Martha Argerich, her grey hair drifting over her collar, is absorbed by her music, bent over the piano that almost hides her, matching the compound harmonies of the orchestra, as if it is her own composition, but knowing that she is reconstructing Beethoven’s imagination, spelling out to us, the dull streetwalking mass of society, just how sounds can overcome the flat swamp of life.  

Curved Form with Green - Barbara Hepworth, 1943
Pencil and gouache on paper

 

And, perhaps, to a degree, that is also what Barbara Hepworth achieved, shaping forms from shapeless masses, threading strings across gaps, so that things connect and have symmetry and strength?

Circle (Forms in Movement) - Barbara Hepworth, 1942

 

I write this as people in black tee shirts, trousers and masks disrupt the traffic outside Dover, threaten innocent by-passers in my home town of Portsmouth, and scare shoppers outside the Daily Mail office in London, and do so with impunity, while at the same time gentle people who sat holding placards carrying the words, I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action, are dragged off to trial and potential prison sentences in overcrowded prisons.

 

Two Opposing Forms (Grey and Green) - Barbara Hepworth, 1969
Irish marble and paint

How does that fit with Beethoven and Martha Argerich and Barbara Hepworth?  Could it be that art is the defining difference between brute ignorance and imaginative intelligence?   The gulf between hate and love?  

 

Spring (Project for Sculpture) - Barbara Hepworth, 1957
Oil paint on board

My life is nothing in the grand scheme of things, in the rich wealth of the world, but, though my abilities are nothing compared to the great artists of humanity, I think I can tell the difference between a hawk and a handsaw.....

 

I thank you again for directing me to this promenade concert, to a wonderful evening. I only wish you could have been with me to share it, but, perhaps, by writing this, I may draw closer to linking thoughts and experience with you, and with others.....  

The diversity of music, and of all forms of art, means that while we may share experiences, our responses may be different. Just as colour is something we perceive individually (the blues and greens of the sea and the weeds on the rocks in my photographs of St Ives are not exactly as they were in daylight, nor will they ever be exactly the same to you and me) we can still share the appreciation. Just as the soughing of air amongst the leaves of trees is a kind of music, so is the erosion of material a kind of sculpture.....  Let us be grateful that there is a world around us and that there are artists to guide us to its wonders.

 

We live in hope.....  We have to.....

 

With love,
 
Richard  

Winged Figure - Barbara Hepworth, 1961-62
Aluminium with steel rods

*****

And, if you would like to see more about Barbara Hepworth and St Ives, please visit:

https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2023/03/a-brief-trip-to-st-ives-cornwall.html

and

https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2026/07/south-by-south-west-part-2.html

Spring - Barbara Hepworth, 1966

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South by South-West (Part 2)

Light and Shade in St Ives (again)

I don't think I could tire of this view.  It is from one of the rooms of Podn Olva, where I stayed in 2023, and where I stayed again this year.....

Pednolva, St Ives by John Anthony Park ROI (1878-1962)

Christopher (Kit) Wood stayed in the little wooden bungalow (which then had no hot water or toilet) here in the grounds of the Pedn Olva House Hotel, in the autumn of 1926. He was inspired by the light and colour.  

Here is a view of the rocky point from the harbour:

Pednolver, St Ives by Arthur Hayward (1889-1962)

And here is a view of the harbour itself:

St Ives by Alfred Cochrane (c1871-1947)

All of which go to show that St Ives has been popular with artists for quite some time, and that the stardom that arrived with Barbara Hepworth in 1939 was really part of a continuum, which eventually led to the creation of Tate St Ives in June 1993, designed, with echoes of the former gasworks on the site, by architects Eldred Evans and David Shalev.  The gallery was then enlarged by cutting into the cliffs by Jamie Fobert Architects in 2017.

Tate St Ives is a wonderful gallery, catching the light from the sea across Porthmeor Beach, and hosting works by local artists that include Alfred Wallis, Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth.

And it was Barbara Hepworth who drew me here in March 2023 as the gallery was holding a major exhibition of her work then.  (For more about that please see:

 https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2023/03/a-brief-trip-to-st-ives-cornwall.html)

Stringed Figure (Curlew) Version II 1956, edition 1959, By Barbara Hepworth

I really like her work, and though the above example may be called Curlew, I see in it the curls and colours of waves, and also the head of a great fish.....

Trewyn Studio, now known as the Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden, is almost as if Hepworth is still there.  Her studio has overalls hanging on the door,

And some of her tools are laid out as if she was about to start work....

Whatever her pieces are named, and whatever they are made of, I cannot help but feel the effect of the sea on them, the patient, timeless wear that creates smooth rocks and pebbles, but also the way that caves are formed, the way the incessant washing of the ocean sculpts forms where it meets the land.....

Hepworth's is a garden of earthly delights. A place to while away a sunny day in the shade of some glorious tree, musing on the turning of the world, the pull of the moon and sun, and the swish of the nearby sea.

Then, halfway between Trewyn and the Tate we find a tiny cottage, marked with a humble plaque.

This was the home of Alfred Wallis, who moved here with his wife in 1912, when he was 67.  Three years later Susan died, and Alfred took up painting, with household paints and bits of cardboard.  He painted from memory, scenes from his maritime experience as a young man. 

P.Z. 11 by Alfred Wallis c 1928

He never had tuition but his talent was recognised by Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood when they chanced by on a day trip to St Ives in 1928.

The Blue Ship, c1934, by Alfred Wallis (1855-1952)

There is a similarity in Alfred's story to that of John Craske (see, if you will,

 https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2026/04/life-and-death-and-love-and-loss-on.html)

but, with respect to St Ives, it was his influence on Christopher Wood that was most significant.  As Sebastian Faulks describes in The Fatal Englishman, Wallis's work persuaded Wood to narrow his range of colour..... [and] what he really offered him was a renewed childlike directness.....

Cornish Fishermen, The Quay, St Ives, 1928 by Christopher Wood (1901-1930)

Christopher Wood died in Salisbury in 1930; Alfred Wallis lasted until 1952, and is buried in Barnoon Cemetery, overlooking Porthmeor Bay.  His grave is covered in ceramics by another artist who took up residence in St Ives, the potter Bernard Leach (1887-1979)....

St Ives is an enchanting place. Despite the changes brought about over the years by motor transport and the influx of tourists (like me) it still lives and breathes as a real place rather than as some kind of artificial Disneyworld.  The ever-changing Atlantic that ebbs and flows in and out of the harbour and over the sand and the rocks, the abundance of wildflowers on the island and along the coast, and the way the light rises and falls, shimmers and blurs, sparkles and fades - these all contribute to the magical appeal....  If I were an artist I would never cease to paint it from sunrise to dusk, through rain and mist and blazing cloudless heat.

Yes, if I could I would probably try and paint something like this, from a room in Pedn Olva:

Setting Sun Across The Bay, Albert Julius Olsson (1844-1942)

The town of St Ives has long been an artistic hub, attracting artists since the time of J M W Turner. They were attracted to Cornwall because of the beauty of the landscape and the quality of natural light. From the 1940s a circle of artists working in modern styles grew around St Ives. They contributed to international debates and developments in painting, sculpture and architecture, becoming pioneers of modern art. From this small Cornish fishing town, artists changed the international landscape of art, and of homes, towns and cities through their influence on subsequent generations of artists, designers, architects and makers. (From the Tate St Ives website).

I will go again.....

*****

South by Southwest [Shome mishtake?  Ed]
but it's all about the sculpture.....

*****

Dedicated to Eva Marie Sainte (who will be 102 on July 4th) and to my travelling companion

*****