The Post-War Figure
The purpose of this short essay is to revisit and consider aspects of post-war art in Britain, bringing into focus the work achieved by a group of artists who so poignantly captured the mood of the time.
When discussing the art of this period the geo-political climate and psychological context of the era is key. The Second World War was beginning to recede into memory, but the post-war realities of destruction in Europe became a source of inspiration for many artists, as did the intangible, existential dread hanging over post-war life. Art Brut had developed in Europe with artists such as Jean Dubuffet and Antoni Tàpies capturing the aesthetic of bombed-out cities through their use of gritty materials and abstract subjects. In Britain, Kenneth Armitage contributed to our perception of this new world through his sculptural reinterpretation of the human form, a world away from the humanist ideals of the Renaissance man. Instead, Armitage’s semi-abstract figures appear dislocated, incomplete and jagged, indicative of the world in which they were created. As art historian and critic Herbert Read wrote in his review of the British pavilion at the 1952 Venice Biennale: “these new images belong to the iconography of despair, or of defiance” or, as it came to be known, “the geometry of fear.”
Read’s perception of this new iconography embraces work which he sees as carrying nihilistic, fearful qualities and Armitage is at the vanguard of this aesthetic, particularly in his semi-figurative representations of the human form. Echoing Read’s analysis of Armitage’s work, the New York Times described his sculpture as recalling “the mysterious dehumanisations of Alberto Giacometti and Henry Moore”, in which “nothing representational is found, but the movement is absolutely natural and convincing.” Again, viewers and critics feel that post-war art was consumed by dread, with depictions of humanity at its core.
No consideration of the reinterpretation of the human form in post-war British art can neglect Henry Moore's huge influence, which firmly placed British sculpture in the public’s conscious and on the international stage. Whilst Moore didn’t have a huge influence on the mechanical process behind Armitage’s practice, Armitage’s likeness of the human form has an uncanny resonance with Moore’s Blitz Drawings of 1940-1942, which were produced during Moore’s time as an official war artist. The Blitz series simplifies and reimagines the human form in a strikingly distinct approach, moulding his subjects into one another and dehumanising bodies into almost mummified forms. In Kenneth Armitage’s 1960 lithograph Seated Group, from Europäische Graphik I, the modular humanoid figure is further abstracted, culminating in two incomplete people, caught in an empty space. Armitage’s figures have a ghostly quality, stripped down into hollowed versions of themselves, evoking the uncertain world they inhabited in the post-war years.
Taking a step back and considering post-war art in a wider context, it is perhaps instructive to recall art historian Michael Baxandall’s concept of the ‘period eye’, particularly when seeing these works through a contemporary lens. Baxandall’s ‘period eye’ describes his conviction that “the visual skills evolved in the daily life of a society become a determining part in the painter’s style”, creating the idea that an artist’s work acts as a kind of time capsule of the epoch in which it was created. Baxandall also notes that, in his view, painters “are not somehow insulated from the conceptual structures of the cultures in which they live” and that if painters were to “ever reflect on painting at all, then concepts and groups of concepts will have some part in it.” Baxandall’s writing explains how artists are a product of the time and society in which they lived, as active members of a culture, shaped by their era. With this idea in mind, it becomes clear how British artists at this time - including Kenneth Armitage, William Turnbull, Lynn Chadwick, Reg Butler and many others - were profoundly impacted by their lived experience of WW2 and sought to capture this through their revaluation of the human figure in their artistic practice.
The post-war period in Europe was marked by significant changes and British artists captured this uncertainty and flux with penetrating feeling and insight, both in terms of stylistic originality and truth to historical mood. On a conceptual level, the brief dive into Baxandall’s ‘period eye’ feels all too relevant, as he captures the idea that art carries visual cues that embody the time in which it is created. British artists vividly illustrate the point, with their depictions of the post-war figure capturing the time in all its doubt and turmoil.
