Art: Maker of Images

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A work can have in it a pent-up energy, an intense life of its own, independent of the object it may represent. When a work has this powerful "vitality, we do not connect the word beauty with it. Beauty, in the later Greek or Renaissance sense, is not the aim in my sculpture. —Henry Moore

The studio is a small, skylit shed set amid four tranquil acres of Hertfordshire farm land, an hour north of London. Inside, workbenches are covered with old bones, sticks, water-smoothed pebbles, shells from the English coast and the Riviera sands. On the walls are curious drawings in pencil or in sallow greens, yellows and reds—disturbing, faceless human forms composed of lines, curves, shadows and holes.

Sculptor Henry Moore sits in an aged wicker chair on a crumpled cushion. He is small and compact (5 ft. 7 in., 154 Ibs.), with a high-domed face that is benign yet cragged. Thinning strands of greying hair stretch errantly across his head. From beneath brows that jut at least an inch beyond pale blue eyes, he stares intensely at a small plaster shape held in his left hand. The right hand, thick-wristed and broad, with straight fingers that are surgically muscular, holds a small scalpel. In a few minutes, the chunk of thumb-shaped plaster takes on form.

Form of what? Vague outlines of the female figure flow from beneath the blade. One breast pushes forward from a gently twisted torso. Where the other breast should be, Moore's scalpel scoops out a smooth crater. The head does not satisfy him.

Reaching for a smaller tool, the sculptor pares the head into an elongated, rectangular appendage, no larger than his thumbnail, perhaps one-twentieth the size of the body instead of nature's less than one-seventh. He pushes his own head backward and thrusts the piece forward, studying it with a frown. Then he pokes two tiny indentations to make the eyes. One or more such small maquettes, produced between breakfast and a 1 o'clock lunch, may prove the seed for another of the large reclining women or mother figures to which the mind of Henry Moore returns and returns.

Holes & Torsos. Even in its final form, the result would horrify a Michelangelo or, only 50 years ago, a Rodin. But today, Henry Moore's massive, pinheaded women with gaping holes in their torsos adorn public buildings or parks in a dozen cities and occupy places of honor in 53 museums over most of the world, including 14 in the U.S. At a recent showing in the small city of Galle, Ceylon, a crowd of 10,000 flocked to see his works in three days. A traveling show of 22 Moore pieces and 25 drawings will open next month behind the Iron Curtain in Warsaw.