Among the diverse and recognized sources of inspiration in the art of Henry Moore, that of pre-Hispanic Mexico is one of the most constant and, perhaps, the most decisive. The connection between his reclining figures and Chac-Mool is the most evident and about which more has been written, but it isn't by any means the only one.
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Henry Moore and his Debt to Mexico
by Elisa Ramírez Castañeda
IN HIS MEMORANDUMS OF NOTES, that cover the years 1921-1928, there are hundreds of sketches of sculptures, copies drawn of pieces and annotations. They are an unusual index of his interests and range from his mixed interests from a formative period, willing to be open to all forms, to reject classic Greek and Renaissance models -- the traditional stereotypes.
In the notebooks there are reproductions, notes and a diary describing his contemporaries' sculptures, "primitive" art, non-European traditions and sculpture in general. At that time, his sources were bibliographic, but his center of studies was the British Museum.
Henry Moore was born in 1896 in Castelford, an area ringed with coal mines, the chemical industry and ceramic factories. The influence of his father, a socialist miner, and the experience suffered during the First World War drove him to question Western Civilization, its aesthetic values and its concept of art: he decided to begin, like so many others, at zero. His immediate predecessors were Gaudier-Brzeska, Brancusi, Derain, Gaugain and the Russian post-Revolutionary avant-garde. The genre, proposed by all of them involved with primitive art, as well as the theories of Roger Fry and Clive Bell, influenced him definitively.
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Moore was the only student in the recently-inaugurated sculpture department in the arts school of Leeds; from there he went on to the Royal College of Art, in London. His tutor, Sadler, was of the vanguard. He rapidly began his withdrawal from the traditional study plans and, along with that, his exit. His true school was the cultural wealth of the British Museum, which he visited twice a week, and the libraries, where he assiduously studied ancient Greek sculpture, specimens from the Pacific Islands, from Africa and, above all, from ancient Mexico.
The collection of Mexican artifacts in the museum was even then very extensive. In 1923, Maudsley's Maya collection occupied a special salon -- after nearly a quarter of a century of being consigned to the store rooms of the Victoria and Albert Museum. That same year a guide to the exhibition appeared. At that time there was a renewed interest in Maya culture; archaeologists and publications proliferated. In 1926 the Blom and La Farge book, Tribes and Temples, appeared, which assumed great importance for the sculptor.
This interest in Mexico has a parallel in literature: D. H. Lawrence, a contemporary with a similar family history, published The Plumed Serpent in 1926. Moore read this author attentively. Contrary to Lawrence, Moore cared little about the history, mythology or meaning of pre-Hispanic Mexican art: their formal solutions attracted him, that which assumed unmediated emotion, the crude carving, revitalizing barbarous art, purifying, lacking in conceptualizations, faithfulness to the material, neither mannered nor modeled. He admired, beyond the technique, the harshness of what was expressed. He was amazed by the harmony, cubism and massiveness of Mexican art.
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Moore defined his artistic plan at that time: to abandon sculptural models, except for natural ones; from the two dimensional to small format models; from the minimal to the monumental. This step is nourished by sculpture itself. The private language of the technique or material should let itself be heard. Later on he would modify this hypothesis, but at that time he was a furious defender of direct carving.
The simple, monumental grandiosity of Aztec sculpture has attracted me enormously since I was a young student. They possess a massive solidity that one feels as being indestructible, and that is so faithful to the nature of the stone. For this reason I felt, during the twenties, that the Mexican pieces constituted the examples of sculpted stone that are of the hardest rock that has ever been made. For me it was almost a fetish that the creation of a sculpture should be conditioned by the material used, that one never should try to obligate the stone to represent an idea that could be carried out in a more natural way in wood or clay. This was the reason the reclining figure attracted me … Today I feel that the vision of the artist counts more than the material used. (H. Moore)
His sculpture "Mother and Child," 1922, shows a direct influence from Xochipilli of the British Museum and of a seated Aztec figure: the base unpolished, the stone rough, the mass cubic, the gestures of the hands, the alert posture and the absence of anecdotes -- one lone note about the reference: the figure's sandals. The mother's face, on the other hand, seems closer to the figures from Mezcala, Guerrero because of her flat and stylized features. These appear later in Moore's other sculptures and masks.
The sculptor's interest in pre-Hispanic Mexican art, his sculptural results and his working technique demonstrate a style that later on will become unitary and distinctive. He is moved by the density, harshness and solemnity of the stone, without making it look like skin or cloth, the materials manifesting their own language.
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Moore relates that he saw the first Chac-Mool in 1925, in a German book. Nevertheless, according to his notebooks, it seems that he saw this representation even earlier, which wouldn't be strange, since it has to do with one of the most reproduced pieces of Mexican art. In the Trocadero Museum, in Paris, there is a reproduction. From this piece he would take the axial symmetry, the torso turned ninety degrees in respect to the head and the distorted proportions: long extremities, large head. The ornaments from the head will also be repeated. He was particularly intrigued by the "vigilant tension" of this sculpture. The contrasted asymmetry, the weight bearing on the buttocks, the twisting, appear here and there; as much on the figure as on the sculptures of Moore, the masses work in an independent manner and not as a simple solid shape.
Quietness, watchfulness, its sense of liveliness, its whole presence … is exuberant and is sustained by its own strength, in its full totality; that is to say, the shapes that compose it are fully produced and function as masses in opposition, not merely indicated by the carved relief of the surface; it is not perfectly symmetrical, it is static, strong and vital, discharging something of the energy and the power of the great mountains. It possesses its own life, independent of the object which it represents. (H. Moore)
In his reclining figures we will find other Mexican elements as well: the position of the standard-bearer's fists, the headdresses, the masks, the figures of indigenous god statues and Olmec carvings. The original model's influence steadily becomes more distant, but two thirds of Moore's creations are reclining figures and, as he himself acknowledges, "Chac-Mool is the single sculpture that most influenced me in my early work."
During the following decade, Moore absorbed inspiration from other sources: organic shapes, abstract compositions and surrealism. Nevertheless, in all his series of interior-exterior sculpture, we see the influence of the markers used in games of "pelota," or ball games, hatchets and pre-Hispanic yokes. The inclusion of emptiness as an essential element for the play of columns owes something to the pieces from Xochicalco or from El Tajin.
In the forties, when his series of family groups proliferated, the new formal solutions recall once more ancient Mexican art. In this case, it concerns Western sculpture, and in particular, those in the catalogues of pieces from Diego Rivera's collection, published in 1941, now in the Anahuacalli. The proportion, the poses, the shortened heads, the tubular extremites and the burnished surfaces of the family groups of Jalisco and Colima newly appear in these sculptures.
Moore's art is universally known and is considered as one of the most innovative and important creations of this century. Through his sculptures, the re-evaluation of our pre-Hispanic art acquires new dimensions, on aesthetic and generic planes, and a circle closes.
Translated from the Spanish by Marlene van Albrecht.
Elisa Ramirez Castañeda is a sociologist, poet, translator and she writes for children.
This article was published in Spanish by ARQUEOLOGÍA MEXICANA, Vol. III, Number 13 and may be acquired by writing Monica del Villar, to whom we are grateful for her kind cooperation, at Editorial Raíces, Avenida Taxqueña #1798, Colonia Paseos de Taxqueña, Mexico City, Mexico.
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