Atom Piece (Working Model for Nuclear Energy)

As its subtitle suggests, Atom Piece (Working Model for Nuclear Energy) 1964–5 represents the intermediary stage in the development of a much larger sculpture, Nuclear Energy 1964–6, which Moore was commissioned to make for the University of Chicago to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first controlled generation of nuclear power, conducted by the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi in 1942.

Atom Piece (Working Model for Nuclear Energy) stands at just over one metre tall on a shallow circular base. It forms a single unit but comprises two distinct sections. The lower part is made up of three roughly textured vertical forms connected near the base by a horizontal shelf of bronze. These three column-like blocks merge and swell into the upper section, which takes the form of a highly polished dome (fig.1).

The lower section resembles a tripod, with three feet arching upwards into a thick, slightly concave platform, which hovers above the base. The irregular arches formed between the three feet are suggestive of caves or coastal arches and expose the underside of the sculpture (fig.2). The outer surfaces of these forms are heavily textured with horizontal striations, forming a visual parallel to cliff stacks that may owe a debt to the legs of Moore’s earlier Two Piece Reclining Figure No.2 1960 (Tate T00395). Each of the three upright forms are shaped and textured differently. The largest is thin and wide with a concave outer face, another is smoother and has a flat lower edge, and the third is faceted and curves sharply inward. Two of them feature trenchant right-angled planes, suggesting that they have been cut into and hollowed out to produce the internal cavity at the centre of the sculpture. Visible between the upright forms are the underside of the dome, which curves slightly to echo its outer surface, and the smooth horizontal plane below it, which has been incised with a single concave groove. The texture of the underside of the dome indicates that a spatula was used to apply the plaster to the model from which the bronze was cast. A horizontal seam encircles each leg where it meets the dome, identifying where the upper and lower sections were welded together after casting (fig.3). A circular plug, visible halfway along the seam on the outer face of the widest leg, and a bronze patch marked by a square welding seam on the surface of the dome, were probably inserted to correct faults in the bronze.