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Green Pebble Magazine
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Articles> Barbara Hepworth
Four Square (Walk Through) 1966
Google Barbara Hepworth’s Four Square (Walk Through) 1966 and you might mistake it for one of the many pieces of public art that litter Cambridge; sterile lumps of semi abstracted metal or stone commissioned in some vacuous nod to corporate support for culture.
Visit the sculpture. It becomes clear that a de-contextualised assessment is reductive. The bronze sculpture was built in 1966 and installed in 1969. Its ridged geometry perfectly reflects the architectural forms of Churchill College in Cambridge.
It is a Modernist masterpiece. It is composed of four identical castings; eight-foot squares of thick bronze with large holes piercing them, one pair stacked on top of the other, with each square facing a copy of itself. This mirroring allows the sculpture to have a balance and order which is composed on self-reflexive grounds.
To go too far down this mode of formal analysis would be to limit the work to the kind of myopic, boring, assessment of Modernist theory. The ideologies which have been projected onto works such as Hepworth’s insist on a reading which sees a closed door on associations. This misreading reduces works such as this to the kind of tragic self-martyrdom that befell Narcissus.
This is a work which is more about what we are than what it is. Its very structure encourages our engagement with it. The arrangement is that of a short tunnel, inviting us to pass through. There is a certain weight to this motion, partly gained by the removal of function or necessity from what is a mundane activity.
The work is a question of scale. The sculpture relates to us; it seems as though it has been measured out in human units, relating to our height, our greatest reach, the length of our steps, the width of our arms stretched out.
Whilst the work serves no direct mimetic function, it is full of human values. Beyond scale the worn, scratched bronze speaks of two different time frames: the biography of its production and the recording of time past post-production.
The circular holes which pierce each square relate to us both in terms of vision and scale, so that accompanying the inward looking walls are four outward looking windows which frame our passing visions.
There is a stillness to this sculpture; a formal balance created through plays of relative values which have been stripped of any extraneous detritus. Whether outside or walking through the work, it seems to imbue a sense of similar harmony within us, due mainly to its direct relation to our physical make up in stature and motion.
We live in an age where we are increasingly removing ourselves from reality. We live in a time of increasing tumult, an exponential acceleration. Both situations are epitomised by the internet. It is a refreshing change to be re-engaged with our physical form and to find a space of stillness and calm. For this reason I encourage you not to go Google this sculpture, but to go ogle it.
Churchill College is on Storey's Way, City Centre, Cambridge. Tom de Freston is a contemporary history painter and art historian. His work can be seen at Tom De Freston's website. From 6 -12 April 2010 Tom has a show, Exiles, at The Brick Lane Gallery in London. For more information contact Tom De Freston.
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