Post-war Bodies: Fear, Trauma, And Vulnerability

Question 1

Key Points

• How the human body is represented
• Set in context after the Second World War and nuclear welfare
• Post-war thinking and post-war extentialism

Answer 1

• Human body as distorted, deformed, made fragile in sculpture.
• Vehicle for psychological trauma, unease and anxiety after the second world war and in context of nuclear welfare.
• Transformation of specific political fears into broader psychological anguish.
• Fragility and vulnerability associated with post-war thinking and post-war extentialism (emphasis the existence of the individual person as free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will).

Question 2

Key Phrase - ‘Geometry of Fear’ by Herbert Read

• British sculptors representing the British pavilion
• Emotionally charged figurative imagery
• Example of how humans were displayed/ conveyed
• Horrors of the atomic bomb

Answer 2

• Coined by art critic Herbert Read in 1952
• This phrase is associated with artists working in Britain in the 1950s.
• Read wrote an introduction to 8 British sculptors who represented the British pavilion at the Venice Biennale (Arts organisation based in Venice) of that year. He wrote about their work…

‘These new images belong to the iconography of despair, or in defiance […] Here are images of flight, or ragged claws ‘scutting across the floors of silent seas’, of excoriated flesh, frustrated sex, the geometry of fear’.

• This phrase refers to the work that represents figurative imagery, but emotionally charged figurative imagery.
• For example, showing humans that have been blasted by hard winds, figures that have been impaired and mutilated. Exemplified in ‘People of the Wind’ (1950) by Kenneth Armitage.
• This phrase invoked the horror of the atomic bomb: conjures view of post-war humans as desperate, culpable (deserving blame), vulnerable, injured and impotent (unable to take effective action; helpless or powerless)

Question 3

‘Storm Man’ (1947-8, cast 1995) by Germain Richier (1902-59)

• Who was Germain Richier?
• Description of the artwork

Answer 3

Who? Richier is a French female post-war sculptor. She influenced British artists working around the same time and slightly later like Kenneth Armitage.
What? A nude human figure, details of the fave have been erased. Mutilated blind figure, staggering with pitted and scarred flesh. Broad figure, one leg is slightly bent showing movement and the hands are tensed and separated. The surface of the body is pitted and has uneven skin, hollowed surface. The title suggests the appearance of the figure as if its been battered about by the storm. The work is set in context of violence and destruction after the second world war.

Question 4

‘People in the Wind’ (1950) by Kenneth Armitage (1916-2002)

• Who was Kenneth Armitage?
• Description of the artwork

Answer 4

Who? William Kenneth Armitage CBE was a British sculptor known for his semi-abstract bronzes.
What? Distortion of the human figure. Serires of figures angled as if they have been buffeted (strike repeatedly and violently; batter). Distortion of the body, elongated necks.

Question 5

Both Works

• Nature
• Themes of fragility and vulnerability

Answer 5

Both of these works have a sense of nature the conditions that humans can’t control. See themes of fragility and vulnerability that was associated with post-war thinking.