THE REVELATION OF THE HEAD Messums Wiltshire 01747 445042 Place Farm, messumswiltshire Court Street, Tisbury, @messumsthebarn Salisbury, [email protected] Wiltshire SP3 6LW www.messumswiltshire.com THE REVELATION OF THE HEAD 62 63 THE REVELATION OF THE HEAD THE REVELATION OF THE HEAD SATURDAY 26 MAY - SUNDAY 8 JULY 2018 ‘THE BODY IS BUT A TRIPOD FOR THE HEAD’ 64 65 THE REVELATION OF THE HEAD Roman THE REVELATION OF THE HEAD Portrait of Emperor Antonius Pius, 2nd century CE, Marble, Height 35.5cm If depictions of the human face enjoy long standing and enduring appeal, Messums The sculpture was formed during a period in which artistic interchanges between Wiltshire is perhaps in as good a position as any to provide additional context. Greece and Egypt accelerated and the man’s smile is evocative of the so-called ‘Archaic smile’ which was introduced into the repertoire of Greek sculpture during the sixth As well as providing a unique setting for this remarkable exhibition, the century BCE. Scholars have suggested that the Greek Archaic smile was appropriated by location is also the source for a piece of coral, struck from a fossilised reef Greek sculptors who may have come into contact with Egyptian portraits such as this one. and carried from Tisbury to Swanscombe in Kent more than 400,000 By Roman times a new wave of realistic head portraiture emerged which lasted for more years ago. It is amongst the earliest known manuports, or objects of than 500 years and had an often overt agenda to dominate and mesmerise. significance connected to distant dwellers on these islands and the earliest recognisable - to our eye - depiction of a face. Any hint of a smile is dispensed with in the portrait of Emperor Antonius Pius created in the 2nd century CE, whose aim was to project the realness and humanity of the great and The journey itself is around 130 miles along chalk ridges which remain popular walking as it turned out, equable, leader but project him as a virile leader of men, nonetheless. routes today. The person who carried it was not even a Homo sapiens; he or she was pre Neanderthal, and it is only relatively recently that revisionist thinking has begun to give In contrast to the Greeks and Egyptians who liked to idealise the human form, the weight to even the presence of aesthetic sensibility in the pre Homo sapiens period at all. Romans were interested in the individual; as one can see in this attempt to describe in stone the emperor’s rugged beard, subtly nuanced brow and fleshy chops. Egyptian This exhibition therefore starts with the thought of how deeply entrenched our enduring Head of a Male fascination is with that body part that matters most; the one we cannot live without and Equally, the sculpture of Juno, dating from the 1st or 2nd century CE pays homage to middle 26th to early 27th dynasty, where all our consciousness, emotions and personality lies. aged women rather than idealising young ones. Exquisitely modelled, her wavy hair circa 550-500 BCE, restrained by a ribbon, head turned and tilted to the right, she bears a wistful and Height 17.5 cm The head is the central focus of our lives, the hub of all our senses; we feel as though we live reflective expression and her face is fuller than Greek models. life entirely within its fleshy confines, although recent mindfulness studies show that we The cult of Juno who was wife of Jupiter or Zeus and queen of the Olympian gods can be as present throughout the entirety of our body. In the words of the painter was well established in Rome, where she was worshipped as protector of the city’s Tai-Shan Schierenberg, ‘the body is but a tripod for the head’ and as such the matrons and, more generally of childbirth, making her representative of sovereignty head acts as an instantly recognisable index for each and every one of our and fertility. individual personalities. We human beings often prioritise our heads ‘above’ our bodies, so much so that it has become a common for artists to detach it completely as a subject: a kind of creative decapitation. The earliest work in this exhibition is the enigmatically smiling portrait of an elite government official from ancient Egypt carved out of diorite marble more than 2,500 years ago. He has a captivating presence; with his finely executed facial features and naturalistic brow he faces us head on with an Roman air of calm confidence. Head of Juno 1st - 2nd century CE White marble, Height 38cm 22 3 THE REVELATIONREVELATION OF OFTHE THE HEAD HEAD Antonio Canova Gavin Turk Character Head Ragut Kirn circa 1780, 2010, Terracotta, Varnished clay, Height 8cm 27 x 23 x 22cm Of all the sculptors of the 18th century probably the most celebrated is The destruction of a sculpted head, although by chance in this case, is explored by Antonio Canova. Famed for his ability to master facial expressions to some of the more contemporary artists in this show as a way of expressing fragmented create a narrative in sculpted form, the head by him in this exhibition identity. Gavin Turk, Glynn Williams and Laurence Edwards, have all created heads that dates from when Canova was in his early twenties and depicts an are spliced, smashed and rebuilt as metaphors for the human struggle. Turk made a androgynous figure, with a quizzical, almost comical look. His hair is series of 72 self portrait heads in clay and then invited members of the public to come the unkempt thatch of an adolescent; his expression woebegone. Made and distort them with the result that the sculpture exhibited here was one of many that of terracotta, this unusual but lively work from an artist now principally had a hole gouged out where facial features should be. remembered for his delicate evocation of female desire in his marble sculpture of The Three ‘Somehow we ended up with something that felt close to a self-portrait’ says Turk. Graces, it endorses Canova’s assertion that: ‘clay is the life, plaster the death and marble the ‘I always get a shock when I look in the mirror because what I feel like on the inside resurrection of sculpture.’ The subject here looks like a horny handed son of toil and there doesn’t correlate to what I look like on the outside. My mental image of myself changes daily. is something faintly comic about his pained expression; inspired it is believed by that of the For instance, if I’ve got toothache, I feel like my face is totally swollen and that I am one figure wrestling with a snake in the celebrated Roman sculpture of Laocoön and his sons. great big tooth, but I look in the mirror and you wouldn’t know. Or, if I’ve a nervous eye tic, By the 18th century the vogue for Greek art had returned with renewed vigour, inspired I feel that I am a huge twitching eyeball, but I don’t look like that in the mirror.’ by a rediscovered love for all classical art awoken by the Grand Tour. The psychic energy of the head is instinctively understood by children, who always make the One of the most arrestingly beautiful sculptures in this show is a bronze sculpture heads in their drawings and paintings much bigger than the bodies. Equally, the inhabitants of Hercules dating from the 18th century based on a Roman - and before that of Easter Island hundreds of years ago sculpted enormous heads modelled on one a Greek - prototype. Thought to have been a portrait of Julius Caesar’s son, of their tribe to give protection to those living nearby as if the size of the cranium Lucius, it captures a man at that liminal point in his life when women are in the translated into power. past and men, the future; the downcast eyes accentuating his haunted beauty. The giant Chthonic Head by one of Britain’s most improvisational bronze sculptors, Laurence Edwards, suggests a similarly ancient, almost atavistic being, emerging from is the depths of a primeval swamp. Chthonic means from the underworld and, as in much of Laurence’s sculpture the feeling of antiquity and heaviness borne of the bronze contrasts with the vigorous, light and playful handling of the clay from which it was cast giving it a sense of kinetic life. Italian Laurence Edwards Bust of Hercules, (After the antique) Chthonic Head No 1 Second half of 18th century, 2014-18, Bronze, Bronze, (edition of 9) Height 41.5 cm 110 x 55 x 65cm 4 5 THE REVELATIONREVELATION OF OFTHE THE HEAD HEAD Brian Taylor Keith Coventry Gabriel aged 17 Supermodel (Kate Moss) 2013, 2000, Bronze, (edition of 10) Steel with gold plate, 40 x 37 x 30cm 68.5 x 43 x 11.5cm It is the ancients from Egypt and Greece who over time seem to have the most Perhaps the neatest and most reductionist of all the artists inspired by persistent influence not only on Edwards but on many sculptors in this show classical art is Keith Coventry, whose sculpture of Kate Moss is formed including Kevin Francis Gray, Ellen Christiansen, Christie Symington and Nuria simply from two golden rings based on the ‘golden ratio’ the ancient Greeks’ Torres who are all also in their different ways, neo-classicists. used to calculate perfect facial beauty; according to the ancients’ algorithm, the distance from the nose to the edge of the eye, divided by the distance from One artist who was wonderfully deft yet daring in his moulding the edge of the eye to the corner of the lips should equal 1.618.