Philosophy

"Most artists express the ideas that dominate their age. But there are some we only understand if we accept that their work embodies a spirit, or simply an existence, that their age has forgotten or repressed. In such cases, we need to broaden the field of critical categories, although this does not necessarily mean going back to outmoded aspects of creativity or study. No, this forgotten spirit is often one society would like to address, even if most of the time it does not know how. Artists whose aspirations seem irrelevant to the present may actually answer the deepest wishes of the time....."

 Yves Bonnefoy, Alberto Giacometti Assouline New York 2001

It always happens this way: I go to the hardware store, grab the one thing I need and then start wandering around. Soon Heather comes up and asks the usual question ("What are you looking for?") and gets the same old answer: "You know me; I never know what I'm looking for until I find it".

 It's much the same when I make sculpture.

I would go completely mad if I had to design everything carefully and then spend weeks almost mechanically making it. For me that would be the most miserable and mundane of fates. A far better option is to allow myself to make the decisions about the work as I go. This keeps my brain active - and continually expectant about which chords the eventual outcome will strike. I count myself lucky to have found a subject that, whilst obvious, is so comprehensive that I would be surprised if it ever stopped fulfilling all my artistic needs.  

I have come to see the intelligent human head and face as the ultimate symbol of all times and as being capable of expressing more than anything else.   I read my current sculpture as implying that the body has eroded away, with only the intelligent head remaining. This, in turn, should be seen as a metaphor for the state of the planet - tempered by an optimistic belief that human nature, as always, will endure and survive even the most challenging circumstances.

Just when any work of art is finished is an eternal problem for all artists and this in my case is particularly so. To me a sculptural fragment is always more interesting and more evocative than the perfect whole as it gives the spectators the fabulous chance to finish the sculpture in their own minds. Tracking through my past to find the trigger for this, one memory keeps recurring: when I was in my late teens something sent me on an obsessive reading spree. All of Ibsen was followed by all of Strindberg and about half of Bertold Brecht. Playwrights only supply us with words - the dialogue and a few guides to set the scene - and I soon realised that what excited me during this youthful quest was that I was forced   to imagine everything else. And this is how the sculpture works. I give you the script but you direct the play. All I offer is a partially developed fragment of a character and invite you to cast it in the finished play or place it in a context of your own choosing.

Of course it is not quite that simple because the whole idea relies on the character being embedded in a convincing sculptural entity. To allow this character to emerge convincingly, the stone must contain the tangible evidence of the full range of my work - both my values and my methods. These are all given roughly equal status and thereby create a kind of democracy of parts within the whole. The stone must remain as stone and the marks left by the carving must have their say. I also need to feel that the role I chose for the model is in there somewhere and the overall form of the head must be able to evoke the being that comes from within; most importantly, they will all jostle and struggle with each other if a memorable sculpture is to emerge.

The methods used to achieve this presence are almost impossible to describe.   I certainly can't categorise them all but there are several that seem to make a major contribution.

My previous interest in Marcel Duchamp and his ready-mades led me directly to the venerable Chinese, Japanese and Korean traditions which had used found objects (in their case, natural rocks) for 2,000 years.1 These carefully selected stones invariably contain an intrinsic and significant sculptural presence and, most interesting to me, they are chosen for their ability to somehow encourage the viewer to contemplate both the presence of nature and the nature of existence.

Western artists who use stone tend to start with a bland rectangular block. They then remove all what they see as excess (what is not art) and thus aim to fashion their version of sculptural presence. My process is different. I select my stone, a marble boulder, very much as I imagine the Asians do. Acknowledging this presence from the outset, it is set up in my studio as if it already were a work of art. I say, "as if it were art" because regardless of the vast range of statements, narratives and emotional effects a ready-made can carry they can never do much more than act as or pretend to be, works of art.

The next stage is to find how this chunk of nature can allow, and even encourage a human being to live inside it. I use the word "inside" as I lean towards the idea of the head sharing the stone rather than simply coexisting with it. Then add in the feeling that the head can think for itself, communicate like a human being and we start to get closer to what I'm aiming at in terms of an undeniable sculptural presence. It all happens inside the stone - and with its permission.  

Although the resulting objects are almost as simple and obvious as one can imagine, they seem capable of creating some distinctly intangible effects. I see these as being like the extra voice that is sometimes created when particular singers sing in harmony; a resonance that is over and above the actual individual parts.

Sculpture is never about words. It is about the things that sculpture alone can do. It comes with its own silent but comprehensible language that can be read from any starting point. Best of all, a sculpture is a single, concise, permanently re-visitable object; unlike the performing arts which require time to elapse (a poem, play, film or piece of music), a sculpture can potentially convey the entirety of its art in a single glance. But just as with flesh-and-blood people the first glance may tell us much of what we seek, it is never the end because it's never enough. We need to keep looking and listening because there's a (slightly) different person in front of us every day. I like to think my sculptures work just like that.  

1 (For further reading, Google "Scholar Rocks").

Clive Murray-White exhibition catalogue notes 2007