Working Model for Locking Piece
“Most everything I do, I intend to make on a large scale … Size itself has its own impact and physically we can relate ourselves more strongly to a big sculpture. At least I do.” - Henry Moore
Cast in 1962, the same year Sir Peter and Lady Michael were married, this piece was bought at Christie’s in November 1986. The previous owners, Mr and Mrs James A. Clark Jr from Dallas, Texas, had purchased the work directly from Henry Moore after visiting his studio.
In his extensive oeuvre, Moore introduced a particular form of Modernism to the UK which was monumental in size, powerful and challenging and by which he became a truly international artist, indicating that British artists could have an impact world-wide. Internationally, most important cities, display Moore’s sculptures in their parks or public spaces, indicating the universal appeal of his work. His sculptures sit seamlessly in their environments and have become a familiar aspect of the visual landscape. Although often referred to as an abstract artist, Moore was devoted to the organic form. “Landscape has been for me one of the sources of my energy … the whole of Nature is an endless demonstration of shape and form … Any kind of shape that catches one’s eye at any time, pick up and keep. Sculpture is purely this, an interest in form and shape. Any shape: people, trees, the clouds, any shape whatever is a possible starting …” (Henry Moore).
Associations rooted in the artist’s experience of the natural world are the source of the sophisticated and varied abstract forms in Locking Piece. Inspired by natural forms, not just in landscape but drawing inspiration from pebbles, flints, bones, fists, children’s puzzles, Moore wanted his sculpture to address the subconscious of the viewer. The shapes and facets provoke and jog visceral memories and subconscious associations, which merge and alter as the viewer walks around the sculpture.
Moore created this intricate working model as the preparatory version of Locking Piece, 1963-1964, one of his earliest, most enigmatic, complex, and monumental multi-component bronze sculptures. (Perhaps the most famous, large-scale version of Locking Piece sits near the Tate Britain on Millbank.) The plastic potential in connected forms had long fascinated Moore and led him to experiment with two- and three-piece sculptures composed of shapes that interlocked, touched, or were placed in dialogue with one another. In his 1968 book on Henry Moore, David Sylvester wrote that at this time, Moore’s habitual way or starting a sculpture by drawing was being superseded by the practice of positioning forms in the round such as found stones or bones. Moore stated: ‘The maquette for this two-piece Locking Piece came about from two pebbles which I was playing with and which seemed to fit each other and lock together, and this gave me the idea of making a two-piece sculpture – not that the forms weren’t separate, but they knitted together. I did several little plaster maquettes, and eventually one nearest to what the shape of this big one is now pleased me the most.” Locking Piece has a distinct appearance from every angle and Moore considered it to be “the most successful of my ‘fitting-together’ sculptures. In fact, the two pieces interlock in such a way that they can only be separated if the top piece is lifted and turned at the same time” (quoted in J. Hedgecoe and H. Moore, Henry Spencer Moore, New York, 1968, p. 455).
Nicky Aubury, whose company made the new plinth for the sculpture, recollects that her father, Errol Jackson, photographed Moore on many occasions and he remembered the Locking Piece. He recalled how Isaac Witkin, Moore’s studio assistant, had brought back a dog bone from the pub at Perry Green and had left it in the studio. The following day the bone had disappeared. It later turned up again with clay additions on Witkin’s desk with a note from Moore saying “Make Bigger!”.
Moore wanted people to interact with his work physically and intellectually. Godfrey Worsdale declared that Moore “shows you how to see” and the more you look at Moore’s forms and sculptures the more you understand and re-examine the world around you. His work as a timeless appeal and much as everyone has picked up a pebble, a conker or seen a bone and socket joint or a head bent forward, people appreciate the tactile quality of Moore’s sculpture; of form magnified as if placed under a microscope, and as such the viewer engages in a response to the work governed by a Lilliputian play of ideas about the universality of the cosmos. In 1977, Alan Bowness concluded that works such as Locking Piece “represent … not only the culmination of Moore’s achievement but the most original and challenging sculpture being produced anywhere in the world today.” (Bowness, Henry Moore, Volume 4: Complete Sculpture 1964-73, London, 1977, p. 7.)
