Sculptural Values: Carving, Modelling, Making

How do we address questions of matter, process, facture, climate, fluidity and scale in premodern sculpture today? What languages of art history and criticism might enable us to hold such qualities within description and to do so with verve? What deeper fantasies lie within materials? What inner ferments does the artwork externalise?

This event for early career researchers is part of a Research Season at Henry Moore Institute that centres on the idiosyncratic sculptural imagination of the English critic Adrian Stokes (1902–72).

A key voice in mid twentieth-century sculptural and architectural criticism, Stokes uniquely combined a disparate set of compelling concerns: modernist values of direct carving, speculative psychoanalytic thought, a sensitivity to the vitality of natural materials, and a deep understanding of pre-modern sculpture in its continual reanimation. The workshop will engage, both directly and indirectly, with some of Stokes’ key terms, but no prior familiarity with his writings is necessary.

Bringing together scholars working on premodern sculpture, we aim to re-assess Stokes’ primary distinction between ‘carving’ and ‘modelling’ as part of a larger discussion of sculptural values.

The workshop will include a group discussion of pre-circulated excerpts from Stones of Rimini (1934) as well as an exhibition tour of Sagarika Sundaram at the Institute. Together, we will apply Stokes’ values (especially questions of tactility, external/internal, soft/hard, permeability etc) to critical assessments of Sundaram’s sculpture.