CONTEMPORARY ARTS
SCULPTURE
The Unknown Political Prisoner THE international sculpture competition on the theme of "The Unknown Political Prisoner "is clearly going to set the cat amongst the pigeons. It will be remembered that an anonymous donor has presented, through the Institute of Contemporary Arts, £11,500 prize-money (payable in any currency) to which have been added, in a number of countries, various national awards. It is a matter of regret that the Eastern European nations haie.not seen fit to compete. Nevertheless 3,500 entry applications were received from fifty-seven countries, and judging is already complete in many of them. Among the names which will come forward for final consideration are Bill, Calder, Gabo, Pevsner, Fabbri, Minguzzi, Conzijn and Wotruba. At the beginning of March an international jury of ten will consider the national entries and select eighty prize-winners for exhibition at the Tate Gallery later in the month. Among the sites already offered for the main prize-winning work—to which will go a total of at least £4,525—is one suggested by Dr. Reuter in Western Berlin.
From the second largest number of national entries the British jury, consisting of Sir Philip Hendy, Sir Leigh Ashton, Mr. Philip James and Mr. H. D. Molesworth, have selected twelve for submission in the" finals "and to their authors the Arts Council has presented a prize of £25 each. The maquettes and sketches, together with those of thirty-three runners-up, are now to be seen at the New Burlington Galleries. Of the chosen twelve only two were born before 1913, and their average age is only thirty-five, so the exhibition reflects with some accuracy the climate of taste in which the phenomenon of British post-war sculpture is taking place.
Here, in acute form, is displayed the dilemma and fate of the con- temporary artist. It is a truism of contemporary art, which con- servative critics do not tire of making, that it reflects the sickness, the brutality, the fractures of society today. Faced then with a theme sufficiently flexible to embrace all the qualities that colour the created work of the most sensitive minds today, these young sculptors, it might be argued, had only to be themselves. On the other hand, memorial sculpture poses certain inescapable obligations. Henry Moore, when commissioned to produce a Madonna and Child for Northampton, did not hesitate to modify his style to accord with the limitations inherent in the subject. Were the jury to choose the best and most exciting work, or that which most explicitly illustrated the set theme ? Many of the sculptors, preoccupied with problems of "open " sculpture and the definition of space itself, made no effort to come to terms with the subject in humanist terms (and indeed, in all fairness to them, it was specifically stated in the regulations governing the competition that abstract and symbolic work would receive the same consideratiob as more realistic).
So, in the event, they have gone their own way. Eduardo Paolozzi (who last week was awarded the first Critics' Prize) has provided what is really a children's playground ; Miss Hepworth has placed three cromlech-figures (one of which, it has been pointed out, has rather more nose than usual) against a Torcello background ; William Turnbull has turned in a sprightly Giacometti figure that strolls untouched through its martyrdom. Reg Butler, whose solution gives every evidence of thought, has abolished the prisoner altogether ; only three" watchers "remain to observe the iron cage—a" trans- muted gallows, scaffold or guillotine "on its outcrop of rock. More literary conceptions include a forum for political discussion, a boy struggling with an octopus, a foetus, a sprawled figure in a sunken prison. Space does not permit any detailed discussion of all the entries, but it seemed to me that at least ten of the runners-up were in no way inferior to the twelve chosen prize-winners. For the rest we must wait for the exhibition at the Tate, remembering that these are only small-scale models and not finished sculptures, and also that more subtle implications are more likely in the long run to make their point than violent action and barn-storming emotion. • • Georg Ehrlich is a professional sculptor who is moved to pity by the sickness of humanity, the pathos of its waifs, the sweetness of its youth. In his drawings the sentimentality of his conceptions is manifest, but in his sculpture, attenuated like that of a sadder Letunbruck, his craftsmanship sufficiently overcomes a certain triteness of thought. His new exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery includes a good head of Benjamin Britten._ M. H. Minotzrox.
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