Henry Moore OM, CH

Working Model for Three Way Piece No.1: Points

1964, cast c.1964–9

© The Henry Moore Foundation. All Rights Reserved

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Not on display

Artist: Henry Moore OM, CH 1898–1986
Medium: Bronze
Dimensions: Object: 700 x 740 x 740mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by the artist 1978
Reference: T02298

Catalogue entry

Entry

Working Model for Three Way Piece No.1: Points is a bronze sculpture composed of irregular-shaped forms that display different features from different angles, encouraging consideration of the sculpture in the round. Curved bulbous forms merge into sharp-edged projections creating recessed areas and arches that convey a sense of dynamism and energy (fig.1). Standing on its base at three tapered points, the sculpture appears to be almost weightless, despite its bulky mass. Two of these points are rounded in shape, and are positioned side by side, separated by a shallow arch. The third point is much sharper and narrower in form and is located on the other side of the base, creating a large arched space underneath the central core of the sculpture.

One of the two rounded legs curves up smoothly towards an elliptical form defined by sharp edges that juts out prominently at an angle (fig.2). In contrast, the second of these legs rises up vertically towards a rounded ridge that extends down and outwards to create a thin, overhanging fin-like form. Behind this, a similar wedge-shaped protrusion emerges from the apex of the ridge, separated from the overhanging fin by a concave curve (fig.3). The third, sharper point on which the sculpture rests extends from a more distinct, highly polished curved form that loosely resembles the shape of a canine tooth. It is connected to the other side of the sculpture by a bridge of bronze that stretches over the central arch (fig.4).

Early exhibitions and reviews

The Henry Moore Gift

Alice Correia
October 2013

Notes

John Read in Henry Moore: One Yorkshireman Looks at His World, dir. by John Read, television programme, broadcast BBC2, 11 November 1967, http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/henrymoore/8807.shtml, accessed 3 November 2013.

David Sylvester, Henry Moore, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1968, p.53.

Henry Moore in ‘Henry Moore talking to David Sylvester’, 7 June 1963, transcript of Third Programme, BBC Radio, broadcast 14 July 1963, p.18, Tate Archive TGA 200816. (An edited version of this interview was published in the Listener, 29 August 1963, pp.305–7.)

Henry Moore cited in Gemma Levine, With Henry Moore: The Artist at Work, London 1978, p.124.

See Richard Wentworth, ‘The Going Concern: Working for Moore’, Burlington Magazine, vol.130, no.1029, December 1988, p.928. For a discussion of Moore’s enlargement methods see Anne Wagner, ‘Scale in Sculpture: The Sixties and Henry Moore’, Tate Papers, no.15, Spring 2011, http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/scale-sculpture-sixties-and-henry-moore, accessed 13 August 2013.

Julie Summers, ‘Fragment of Maquette for King and Queen’, in Claude Allemand-Cosneau, Manfred Fath and David Mitchinson (eds.), Henry Moore From the Inside Out: Plasters, Carvings and Drawings, Munich 1996, p.126.

Alan Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore. Volume 4: Complete Sculpture 1964–73, London 1977, p.11.

Henry Moore, letter to Heinz Ohff, 8 March 1967, Henry Moore Foundation Archive.

See technique and condition report.

See ‘Henry Moore talking to David Sylvester’, 1963, pp.3–4.

See ‘Three Way Piece Number 1: Points’, Museum Without Walls: AUDIO, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Rv7VVHP2kE, accessed 3 October 2013.

Bowness 1977, p.9.

Henry Moore cited in John Hedgecoe (ed.), Henry Moore, London 1968, p.501.

Bowness 1977, p.9.

Henry Moore, ‘Statement for Unit One’, in Herbert Read (ed.), Unit One: The Modern Movement in English Architecture, Painting and Sculpture, London 1934, pp.29–30, reprinted in Alan Wilkinson (ed.), Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Aldershot 2002, p.191.

Ibid., p.191.

Sylvester 1968, p.53.

Jennifer Mundy, ‘Comment on England’, in Chris Stephens (ed.), Henry Moore, exhibition catalogue, Tate Britain, London 2010, p.28.

Ibid., p.28.

Jean Arp cited in James Thrall Soby (ed.), Arp, New York 1958, pp.14–15.

See John Russell, Henry Moore, 1968, revised edn, London 1973, p.74; and Michel Remy, Surrealism in Britain, Aldershot 1999, p.70.

Sylvester 1968, p.128.

Ibid., p.128.

Russell 1973, p.224.

Ibid., pp.231, 233.

For example, with the exception of two essays on Atom Piece, none of the chapters in the book Henry Moore: Critical Essays address the late work. See Jane Beckett and Fiona Russell (eds.), Henry Moore: Critical Essays, Aldershot 2003.

Peter Fuller, Henry Moore: An Interpretation, London 1993, p.46.

Christa Lichtenstern, Henry Moore: Work-Theory-Impact, London 2008, pp.175–87.

Herbert Read, Henry Moore: A Study of his Life and Work, London 1965, p.235.

Anon., ‘Bacon and Moore Again in Powerful Relation’, Times, 14 July 1965, p.15.

Terence Mullaly, ‘Magicians of Art Can Still Cause Surprise’, Daily Telegraph, 16 July 1965, Henry Moore Foundation Archive.

Norbert Lynton, ‘Reality Abandoned’, Guardian, 29 July 1965, p.6.

Ibid., p.6.

Norbert Lynton, ‘Anthony Caro at Kasmin Limited’, Guardian, 16 November 1965, p.8.

Albert Elsen, ‘The New Freedom of Henry Moore’, Art International, vol.11, no.7, September 1967, p.42.

Ibid., p.42.

Ibid., p.43.

See ‘Note on the Henry Moore Gift’, 1978, Tate Public Records TG 4/6/10/4.