British Art Studies, Issue 3:
Summer 2016: British Sculpture Abroad

British Art Studies is an open access, peer-reviewed digital journal published jointly by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven. The journal provides an innovative space for new research and scholarship of the highest quality on all aspects of British art, architecture, and visual culture in their most diverse and international contexts.

British Art Studies is one of the few completely open access journals in the field of art history, providing a platform for digital publishing as well as a forum for debate about the digital humanities and fair use. 

This special issue, edited by Penelope Curtis and Martina Droth, focuses on British Sculpture Abroad between 1945 and 2000. British sculpture of the twentieth century has been so thoroughly established as a collective grouping—through exhibitions, catalogues, and related writing—that it has become a category. It appears readily identifiable, even if its terms may differ more or less subtly over time and place. The conjunction of these two words has an immediate resonance, which calls to mind in particular Henry Moore, who has become the organizing principle for British sculpture of the twentieth century—both when he is at the centre, and when he is intentionally set aside.

We asked our contributors to look critically at all three terms, but to pay special attention to them in combination. What happens to “British Sculpture” when it is shown abroad? Does it acquire new meaning? Does it reverberate locally, or back at home? How do we understand the distinctions between the meaning of Moore in 1950s Yugoslavia and in 1970s America? How does the Englishness intrinsic to the language of conceptualism affect its reception relative to place? We sought to find commentators who themselves reflect a variety of national contexts and positions relative to the subject. We readily acknowledge that we move from those who have studied the period as art historians, to those who were physically on the ground, involved as witnesses and sometimes as protagonists. It seems like a pertinent moment to examine a phenomenon which may now be seen to have run its course over the second half of the twentieth century, precisely because of the changing global dynamics around it.

Contents

Articles

Introduction – Penelope Curtis, Martina Droth

The Promotion and Reception of British Sculpture Abroad, 1948–1960: Herbert Read, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and the “Young British Sculptors”, by Henry Meyric Hughes

Henry Moore's Exhibition in Yugoslavia, 1955, by Želimir Koščević

Barbara Hepworth in Brazil, by Ana Gonçalves Magalhães

British Sculpture Exhibited at the Venice Biennale after the Second World War, and its Impact on the Work of Italian Sculptors, by Emanuela Pezzetta

1984 and Beyond (2005–07), by Gerard Byrne

Introduction to British Sculpture Abroad in the 1960s, by Jon Wood

British Constructivist Art, by Sam Gathercole

“Induced Tension”: A Forgotten Chapter in the History of British Sculpture in the USA, by Arie Hartog

Hybrid Sculpture of the 1960s, by John J. Curley

Sight Unseen: Anthony Caro’s Prairie, 1967, by Sarah Stanners

The Geography of Making or On Finding Moore Everywhere, by Simon Starling

1970s: Out of Sculpture, by Elena Crippa

Mark Boyle and Joan Hills at the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, by Chris Townsend

The British Avant Garde: A Joint Venture Between the New York Cultural Center and Studio International Magazine, by Jo Melvin

Arte Inglese Oggi, Milan, 1976: Between Formalism and Conceptual Art, by Elena Crippa

Un Certain Art Anglais, 1979, by Lucy Reynolds

Henry Moore’s Public Sculpture in the US: The Collaborations with I. M. Pei, by Alex Potts

Renewing the New: British Sculpture in the 1980s, by Greg Hilty

The British Show in Australia, 1985, by Anthony Bond

A Quiet Revolution: British Sculpture Since 1965, by Mary Jane Jacob

full’n’empty – subjectobject – uhmm, Richard Deacon, Haus Lange and Haus Esters, Krefeld 1991, by Julian Heynen

Expanding the Field: How the “New Sculpture” put British Art on the Map in the 1980s, by Nick Baker

Britishness, Identity, and the Three-Dimensional: British Sculpture Abroad in the 1990s, by Courtney J. Martin

Sensational Cities, by John J. Curley

Brilliant! New Art from London, Walker Art Center, 1995–96, by Richard Flood

Real/Life: New British Art and the Reception of Contemporary British Art in Japan, by Kajiya Kenji

With the Void, Full Powers: Anish Kapoor and the Venice Biennale of 1990, by Rakhee Balaram

Disorienting the Art World: Mona Hatoum in Istanbul, by Jo Applin