Scale in Sculpture: The Sixties and Henry Moore

Abstract

How do size and scale matter to the sculpture of Henry Moore? This paper offers a preliminary investigation of this question, pointing not only to the phenomenological and contextual implications of scale in sculpture, but also to some of the transformations in Moore’s studio practice that work at monumental scale demanded. On the one hand, these expansions brought his sculpture closer to the European tradition of sculptural making, in particular to the means of enlargement historically used within the sculptor’s studio; on the other, they saw him adopting new materials – polystyrene in particular – to allow him to operate efficiently, and in a conceptually more venturesome, and more unsettling way.