Henry Moore Artwork Catalogue
Treble Clef, Zigzag and Oval Safety Pins
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Treble Clef, Zigzag and Oval Safety Pins
Date1946-47
Artwork TypeTextile Summary
Catalogue NumberTEX 12
Mediaserigraphy
Paperrayon
Collections
Decades before Punk, safety pins appear in Moore’s work. As early as 1939, his drawing Ideas for Sculpture (HMF 1437) was inscribed ‘. . . safety pin magic table in odd setting’. In the drawing the safety pin traverses a table through which a plant grows from underneath. Among the myriad sculptural ideas filling the page is a garden watering can that has metamorphosed into a human figure. These motifs reappear in the first pencil sketch for this textile design, HMF 2117. Here, the watering can at right is coupled with a rake at centre surrounded by abstracted flowers and an insect at left hovering above a stylised pond. In the final design, HMF 2149, the abstract motifs are jumbled together and further removed from any narrative or recognisable reading. Finally, in the textile pattern, the insect has lost any figurative characteristics whatsoever and has been reduced to a double row of small squares with a squiggly line where its head used to be. Moore always believed that Surrealism and Abstraction need not be antithetical, and in this work he has managed to move from one approach to the other through a process of reduction. The result is one of the most modern textile designs of any artist in the post-war era.
Exhibitions
Published References