Whilst in Cornwall I went to St Ives to visit the Tate and the Barabra Hepworth muesum and sculpture garden. The Tate was showing 'The modern lens' exhibition which showcased photography from the 1920's to the 1960's displaying its place in the history of art and modernism.
I found the exhibition interesting to see early photography work and how innovative some of the artists were through their use of structure and composition which seemed refreshing incomparison to the largey photomanipulated images we see today. This was most prominent in the surrealism and landscape images in the Lower gallery.
The artist who was most inspirational to myself and also demonstrated surrealist photography and connections with the landscape was Claude Cahun. Her works show what appears to be a intimate and deep relationship with the landscape and nature which represent her gender stuggles. I found the context combined with the natural world displayed to me a comfort and freedom in the landscape for Cahun which appear detached from the gender stigma and conformitiy in everyday human society.
The above image is Cahun's 'I extend my arms' which I found was the most ressonant. Researching this image further after my visit I found this image anaylsis by the Tate which explains the connotations in this image: "While the monolith has an inevitably phallic form, the arms with their ornamentation are feminine, defying a single-gendered reading of the image. The beaded bangles with their African and Oceanic resonances represent a form of exoticism that relates to primitivism which the totemic simplicity of the image also evokes. As a reflection of the interest invested by the Surrealists in the ‘primitive’, ritual objects including Eskimo masks and Amerindian mummified heads were included among other ethnic artefacts listed in the exhibition catalogue for the Exposition surréaliste d’objets at Galerie Charles Ratton in Paris in May 1936, in which Cahun participated with objects of her own making. In I Extend My Arms, the ancient rock evokes the chthonic, essential, primal non-gendered self that Cahun’s many self portrait images express, particularly an image from 1928 which shows her back and profile, her head shaven but her eyes and lips made up, combining a non-gendered human form (the head reduced to its bare structure) with the clichéd feminine masquerade. " Resource: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/cahun-i-extend-my-arms-p79319/text-summary
After finishing in the Tate I went to the Barabra Hepworth muesum and sculpture garden, this was extremely excited for me as a big admirer of her work. This was a unique experience as the muesum is set up in what was her home and studio and therefore allows you to not only connect with her finished sculptures but to gain an insight into her life and way of working. Therefore I found looking into her studio space as interesting, if not more so, than seeing her exhibitied sculptures in the Tate gallery.
From looking into her studio to see the large blocks which were yet to be carved it made it more obvious the strenuous amount of work which she would of had to put into carving and forming her sculptures and thus made me appreciate them even more when I then proceeded around the rest of the garden to view her other works.
I admire Hepworth's sculptures for the peaceful and sincere connection with the landscape and her connections with the places she lived, allowing them to impact herself and her work. I find this quotation of her own words describe this perfectly, "In the contemplation of nature we are perpetually renewed, our sense of mystery and our imagination is kept alive, and rightly understood, it gives us the power to project into a plastic medium some universal or abstract vision of beauty." - Hepworth.
It was also clear spending time in the garden which though right in the centre of the busy town was seculded and peaceful with the smells of the sea air and sound of the waves in the distance which demonstrates the sensory power of the landscape and natural world, not purley aesthetic beauty.
