Me and Moore

When I give tours to children and adults at the Parrish Art Museum, I always tell them, “Touch with your eyes, not with your hands.” So when I visited the Henry Moore Foundation at Perry Green in Much Hadham, England, I was in for a surprise. 

The 70-acre estate revealed a landscape dotted with Moore’s sculptures. Children and entire families were stroking them as if it were a petting zoo. There was no security to say, “Don’t touch.” The guards at the Parrish would be scandalized. At the Parrish I give my intro speech on “museum manners” — no touching, no running, don’t get too close to a work of art, raise your hand for a question. This was indeed a different kind of museum.

I read in the brochure that Henry Moore was born in Castleford, England, on July 30, 1898, and died Aug. 31, 1986. One of the themes of his work is suggestive of the female body, and there is a series of sculpted family groupings. The undulating form of his reclining figures reflects the landscape and hills of his birthplace, the county of Yorkshire.

As I walked through the grounds, the sun warmed the sculptures, making the bronze glow as if lit from within. Shining a spotlight on a nude as if she were a Hollywood star, the sun created its own special effects. Then the flat field opened into a panorama of lush green and sky and sculpture. I was humbled by the monumentality of Moore’s art, its heroic, larger-than-life quality. I felt small and insignificant as I reclined my head against a massive bronze for support.

But the sculptures were easy to relate to because of their universal themes of mother and child, family, and positive and negative space. “Harlow Family Group,” of a mother, father, and child, reminded me of when we were a young family and my son sat on my lap for a group portrait. I touched the figures; I caressed the curves of a nude woman, willing her to come alive. I felt the texture of the crosshatch work Moore had applied. 

I could see his dedication in “Large Reclining Figure.” She sits atop a hill like a Greek goddess surveying her subjects from Mount Olympus, slightly removed from the world of mortals yet still able to see their machinations, desires, and foibles. She beckoned me to pay homage to her strength and grace, to her sexuality. I walked closer to receive her blessing. She is regal; she is woman, earth mother, and creator of life. She is silhouetted against the celestial blue — part of the sky and part of the earth. 

I stepped onto her pedestal, mimicking her pose in my black leggings and black quilted jacket, leaning on my elbow the same way she was leaning, with one leg bent for balance, giving my best “come hither” look. She is bronze, not flesh, not going anywhere, impervious to weather, to time, to the elements, but gaining a lovely patina of age. I, however, am acquiring wrinkles of experience, but we looked good together, each relaxed in our own way.

Moore masterfully combines opposites — hard bronze with voluptuous curvy body shapes that I traced with my fingertips. Some sculptures form a puzzle with shapes within shapes like a fetus in a womb. He shows me the texture of an expression, the arched angle of a neck, a hollow look to an eye, a hole for an ear that listens to the wind.

But my favorite is “Sheep Piece,” a sculpture of large sheep shapes, one appearing to be humping another from behind. The forms are roundish, dirty gray like the color of the real sheep munching grass contentedly nearby. The real sheep and the sculpture sheep mirror each other, overlapping and making the perfect foil, creating an echo that reverberates across the field. I maneuvered gingerly around the black, shiny balls of sheep excrement, careful not to step in them.

The real sheep didn’t seem impressed by their bronze cousins. One sheep wandered over to join his friends. With determination, he leaned against Henry Moore’s sheep-inspired sculpture and energetically scratched his backside on it. Perhaps he felt a proprietary relationship to it, an affinity with it, and could do as he liked. 

My docent dictum, “Touch with your eyes, not with your hands,” went out the window. I smiled.

Joanne Pateman is a regular contributor of “Guestwords.” She lives in Southampton.