NARRATOR:
Henry Moore famously called 1932 “the year of the hole;” but his friend and colleague, Barbara Hepworth, who made this sculpture, first explored the void—or empty space—as a significant inspiration for her art. The year before she had created a splash with an alabaster piece pierced in the center, and her use of emptiness, or so-called “negative space,” became the hallmark of her style.
Three large holes penetrate Rock Form (Porthcurno), created over three decades later, and named after a town on the coast of Cornwall, near the artist’s residence. It echoes the region’s rugged, sea worn terrain while deftly exploring open and closed form within a gently curving plane. Hepworth captures the shape and texture of Porthcurno’s dramatic rock formations, hollowed out over centuries by water, wind, and sand. She wrote about her intense identification with objects in the natural landscape:
HEPWORTH [ACTOR]:
“From a sculptor’s point of view one can either be the spectator of an object or the object itself. For a few years I became the object. I was the figure in the landscape, and every sculpture contained to a greater or lesser degree the ever-changing forms and contours embodying my own response to that landscape.”
NARRATOR:
When you leave the museum, make sure to look at Hepworth’s large geometric sculpture in the parking area just outside the main entrance, called Four Square (Walk Through). In it, she carries her exploration of the void even further, inviting us to walk through the sculpture visually. This idea of space and solid was a major contribution to modern sculpture.
Rock Form (Porthcurno)
1964
Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
On View
Barbara Hepworth had a prosperous career within the modernist movement in England. She produced both of the Museum’s examples at a time when an increased demand for her work led her away from stone sculpture to bronze. Her career-long interest in organic, non-human forms remains in both Four Square (Walk Through) and Rock Form (Porthcurno). Whereas Rock Form (Porthcurno) retains the curving planes of much of her work, Four Square (Walk Through) is crafted with a hard geometry characteristic of her late sculpture. In both sculptures, Hepworth embarks on an exploration of the interior of the three-dimensional works. By inviting the viewer to visually walk through her pieces, she breaks open the concept of sculpture in the round, an exploration that exists as one of her major contributions to modernist sculpture.
Details
- Artist Name: Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
- Title: Rock Form (Porthcurno)
- Date: 1964
- Medium: Bronze
- Edition: Edition of 6, Cast No. 3
- Dimensions: overall: 99-3/4 x 42 x 17 in. (253.4 x 106.7 x 43.2 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation
- Accession Number: M.1968.22.1.S
- Copyright: © Bowness, Hepworth Estate
Object Information
Recent Acquisitions by the Norton Simon, Inc. Museum of Art
- Portland, Portland Art Museum, 1968-11-12 to 1969-09
- Tancock, John, The Connoisseur,fig. 11 p. 240
- Sculpture Garden, Norton Simon Museum,no. 25
- Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, Barbara Hepworth,no. 18
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best,2010, cat. 512 p. 307
- Bunnell, Peter C., University: A Princeton Quarterly, p. 7
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