Henry Moore Artwork Catalogue
Bird Basket
Bird Basket
unsigned
The 1930’s represented a hugely
significant time for Moore’s exploration in style. His early visits to Paris, the
centre of Surrealism, encouraged Moore to consider developing his own
surrealist style. However, Moore cannot simply be considered a surrealist
because his love for abstraction and naturalism never strayed. The Bird Basket represents Moore’s
hybridity of styles: the biomorphic curve of the work’s outer shell suggests
naturalism, while the angular lines formed by the strings emphasises a more
constructivist element.
Moore’s biographer, Roger Berthoud, stated that
the series of stringed figures he created between 1937 and 1940 are the result
of his visits to the Science Museum near the Royal College of Art. While examining
mathematical models with juxtaposing forms, such as circles and squares,
connected via string or wire thread, Moore was attracted to the tenseness and
vitality these attachments conveyed.
The work’s name echoes the inner space defined
by the string, in which sits the figure of a bird. Carved from a single piece
of lignum vitae, the hardest naturally forming wood, the bird figure and basket
have a very beautiful surface. At the time, Moore’s favourite material to carve
was stone so the lignum vitae’s similarity in density enabled him to create
very thin edges, demonstrated on the left-hand side.