NARRATOR:
Henry Moore famously called 1932 “the year of the hole;” but his friend and colleague, Barbara Hepworth, who made this sculpture, first explored the void—or empty space—as a significant inspiration for her art. The year before she had created a splash with an alabaster piece pierced in the center, and her use of emptiness, or so-called “negative space,” became the hallmark of her style.
Three large holes penetrate Rock Form (Porthcurno), created over three decades later, and named after a town on the coast of Cornwall, near the artist’s residence. It echoes the region’s rugged, sea worn terrain while deftly exploring open and closed form within a gently curving plane. Hepworth captures the shape and texture of Porthcurno’s dramatic rock formations, hollowed out over centuries by water, wind, and sand. She wrote about her intense identification with objects in the natural landscape:
HEPWORTH [ACTOR]:
“From a sculptor’s point of view one can either be the spectator of an object or the object itself. For a few years I became the object. I was the figure in the landscape, and every sculpture contained to a greater or lesser degree the ever-changing forms and contours embodying my own response to that landscape.”
NARRATOR:
When you leave the museum, make sure to look at Hepworth’s large geometric sculpture in the parking area just outside the main entrance, called Four Square (Walk Through). In it, she carries her exploration of the void even further, inviting us to walk through the sculpture visually. This idea of space and solid was a major contribution to modern sculpture.
Rock Form (Porthcurno)
1964
Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
On View
Barbara Hepworth produced Rock Form (Porthcurno) as a response to the coastal landscape of Porthcurno, a town in southwest England near her home and studio. The sculpture’s form abstracts and monumentalizes the region’s seaside caves, with their distinctive perforations created by the ebbs and flows of the tides. “They were experiences of people,” she said of the sculpture and related works from this period, and “the movement of people in and out is always a part of them.” Recently installed in the Entrance Gallery, Rock Form (Porthcurno) welcomes visitors to the Museum and marks a new threshold between the galleries and the pond beyond them.
In the summer of 2023, the sculpture underwent a conservation treatment to restore its original patina. By removing years of protective wax and lacquer, followed by chemical repatination, the bronze surface has returned to its intended pale green color and the internal apertures shine once again.
Details
- Artist Name: Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
- Title: Rock Form (Porthcurno)
- Date: 1964
- Medium: Bronze
- Edition: Edition of 6, Cast No. 3
- Dimensions: overall: 99-3/4 x 42 x 17 in. (253.4 x 106.7 x 43.2 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation
- Accession Number: M.1968.22.1.S
- Copyright: © Bowness, Hepworth Estate
Object Information
Barbara Hepworth
- New York, Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, 1966-04 to 1966-05
Recent Acquisitions by the Norton Simon, Inc. Museum of Art
- Portland, Portland Art Museum, 1968-11-12 to 1969-09
[on loan]
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1969-09-21 to 1972-06-16
Modern Sculpture from the Norton Simon, Inc. Museum of Art and the Norton Simon Foundation
- Pasadena Art Museum, 1972-08-01 to 1973-07-31
- Bunnell, Peter C., University: A Princeton Quarterly, p. 7
- Tancock, John, The Connoisseur, fig. 11 p. 240
- Sculpture Garden, Norton Simon Museum, no. 25
- Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, Barbara Hepworth, no. 18
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 512 p. 307
Additional Artwork by Artist
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