Moore sculpture that's just Wright

The Family Group - Henry Moore

This mightily underwhelming feature of the York campus, however, has been host and is currently host to some works of sculpture that are worth getting a bit more excited about. Indeed, it would not be an overstatement to say that this concrete plinth is a portal into space and time, and that the works to which it has played host can tell us tales of scandalous university folklore, celebrity British artists, and bigger better things.

For a short spell in the 1960s, before the extraordinary twist of steel that currently resides there did so, the plinth supported a statue called Family Group, by none other than the Yorkshire born, and internationally famous sculptor, Henry Moore.

The Family Group form is one that a lot of Moore’s sculptures from this period take, and there are several casts of this particular sculpture around the world. One in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, one, formerly in the Tate London, is now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Tate London still have a maquette of the sculpture in their collection. Incidentally, a maquette of another of Moore’s bronzes went up for auction at Sotheby’s in 1982 for $7000. Imagine what they’re worth now?

More to the point, imagine if we’d been students here in the 1960’s and we could have gone and sat and drank a coffee on the plinth in front of the Family Group. Hell, we could have probably gone and sat on the knee of one of the members of the Group, and taken in the scenery.

The sculpture that is now there is the cryptic and anonymous work of another Yorkshire sculptor, Austin Wright. There is little to say about the sculpture itself; we could hypothesise for hours what exactly it is of. However, whilst the Moore sculpture has connections with prestigious art institutions around the world, the Wright is connected with some stories closer to home.

Austin Wright sculpture - What do you see?

In the 1990s the University hosted an exhibition of Wright’s sculptures in the area near where the plinth is. However, rather than greet this exhibition with the awe and respect that such an event deserved, the students of York treated it as a sitting target for drunken vandalism. Campus folklore has it that the tall, thin, Giacomettiesque sculptures ended up on their sides, on top of one another and, inevitably, in the lake.

The exhibition was never going to be permanent, but the sculptures were removed sooner than intended. Two remain, however. The aforementioned one that lives in front of Heslington Hall is firmly fixed to the plinth, and is therefore resistant to any attempted vandalism. Although, on sunny summer’s days, students have been seen twisting themselves into the middle of the sculpture and then embarking of the challenge of removing themselves from this snare for the sake of a photo.

The other remaining Wright sculpture is the one that we all walk past everyday; the equally mysterious metal segments in the middle of the library spiral. There are conjectures that this sculpture was made from melted down metal from the roof of York Minster when it was redone. Like the piece in front of Heslington Hall, this one is anonymous, and indeed, Wright was once asked what it was of, or whether it at least had a name, and from this come the ideas that it might be an avocado or an orange.

We are very lucky at York to have these works of art around. Whoever those 1990s vandals were must feel a secret pride now, at the fact that they have gone down in university legend, and indeed, that they implicated the works a man who is now quite a famous artist into their tomfoolery.

Whoever those students were in the 1960’s who had their lessons in Heslington Hall, being watched over the Family Group could not have known that Moore’s work was only going to increase in popularity, and that one day they could look back on that abstracted trio and think to themselves what an honour it was to have had them on our campus.

Add Comment

You must log in to submit a comment.