Barbara Hepworth: Material Practice in Post-War British Sculpture

20世纪英国主要雕塑家芭芭拉·赫普沃斯是如何将她的艺术理念转化为现实的？她如何操纵工具和过程来塑造抵抗物质，以及它们又是如何塑造艺术家的？她是如何与技术人员和工匠合作，将她的模型变成成品雕塑的？这些都是关于赫普沃思，甚至是任何雕塑家的实践都需要问的基本问题；然而，这些问题仍然非常少被探索。这个项目将寻求通过汇集不同的专业知识来源来开始回答这些问题，以处理赫普沃思·韦克菲尔德(THW)的独特收藏，该博物馆是英格兰北部最重要的现当代艺术博物馆之一。虽然赫普沃思作品的大部分其他主要藏品主要是成品，但THW收藏的核心是赫普沃斯家庭礼物，这是一个独特的准备、技术和个人材料档案。这包括石膏原型、青铜铸件和雕刻、版画和图纸、工具和材料、食谱和笔记/日记。赫普沃思个人图书馆的一大部分借阅进一步丰富了这本书。目前，由于缺乏对赫普沃思的材料、技术和工艺的协调研究，这些非凡的收藏品仍然鲜为人知。许多知识是存在的，但目前这些知识在策展人、文物保护人员、执业艺术家、技术艺术历史学家和学术艺术历史学家中是孤立的。其结果是，THW发现理解和展示其丰富的持有量具有挑战性。这个研究网络将通过汇集不同的专业知识、技能和专业知识领域来开始解决这种情况，这些专业知识、技能和专业知识领域需要了解赫普沃思的物质过程及其与她更广泛的文化目标和兴趣的关系。它将使学术艺术历史学家、THW和其他地方的策展人、执业艺术家、文物保护人员、技术艺术历史学家、技术人员和工程师能够汇集和协调他们的方法和专业领域。在这样做的过程中，他们将对赫普沃思的工作产生实质性的新知识和理解。同时，他们为进一步对赫普沃思的物质实践进行更有针对性的跨学科研究奠定了基础，并设定了议程。该网络将对博物馆和画廊部门、保护实践和赫普沃思作品的广大受众产生重大影响。它将直接进入即将举行的特别回顾展--有史以来最大的赫普沃思展览--并使人们能够介入赫普沃思在THW的作品的永久展示。通过这样做，它将为韦克菲尔德的文化生活和更广泛的复兴做出贡献。同样重要的是，它还将为合作研究艺术中的物质实践提供一个模式和基础，如果我们要真正掌握艺术生产的物质方面，这是必不可少的。具有讽刺意味的是，虽然艺术史学家往往热衷于他们所在学科的“材料转向”，但他们往往以高度理论性的方式来处理材料。因此，他们倾向于优先考虑现象学和社会经济学方法，而忽略了艺术生产的直接物理现实。从事艺术实践的艺术家、技术艺术史学家、工程师和艺术技术人员直接接触材料和工艺。然而，他们往往远离那些让他们的艺术史同事充满活力的问题。以这个项目设想的方式将学者和实践者聚集在一起，将这些观点带入对话，并展示对物证的详细探索如何改变我们对艺术生产的理解。

How did the major 20th century British sculptor, Barbara Hepworth, transform her artistic ideas into physical reality? How did she manipulate tools and processes to shape resistant matter, and how do they shape the artist in turn? And how did she work with technicians and artisans to turn her models into finished sculptures?These are fundamental questions to ask about the practice of Hepworth, or indeed any sculptor; yet they remain remarkably little explored. This project will seek to begin answering them by bringing together diverse sources of expertise to bear on the unique collection of the Hepworth Wakefield (THW), one of the north of England's most important museums of modern and contemporary art. While most other major holdings of Hepworth's work consist primarily of finished works, the core of THW's collection is the Hepworth Family Gift, is a unique archive of preparatory, technical and personal material. This includes plaster prototypes, bronze casts and carvings, prints and drawings, tools and materials, recipe books and notes/journals. There is further enriched by the loan of a significant portion of Hepworth's personal library. At the moment, this remarkable collection remains poorly understood because of the lack of coordinated research into Hepworth's materials, techniques and processes. Much knowledge exists, but it is currently siloed among curators, conservators, practising artists, technical art historians, and academic art historians. The result is that THW finds it challenging to understand and present its rich holdings. This research network will begin to address this situation by bringing together the diverse specialisms, skills and fields of expertise needed to understand Hepworth's material processes and their relation to her broader cultural aims and interests. It will enable academic art historians, curators at THW and elsewhere, practicing artists, conservators, technical art historians, technicians and engineers to pool and coordinate their methods and areas of expertise. In doing so they will generate substantial new knowledge and understanding of Hepworth's work. At the same time, they establish the basis for, and set the agenda for, further more targeted transdisciplinary research into Hepworth's material practice. The network will have substantial impacts on the museum and gallery sector, on conservation practice and on the wide audience for Hepworth's work. It will feed directly into a forthcoming special retrospective - the largest Hepworth exhibition ever staged - and enable intervention into the permanent displays of Hepworth's work at THW. In doing so it will contribute to the cultural life and the wider regeneration of Wakefield. No less significantly, it will also provide a model and foundation for collaborative research into material practice in the arts, essential if we are to gain a genuine grasp of the material aspects of artistic production. Art historians, while often enthusiastic participants in the 'material turn' in their discipline, have ironically tended to approach the material in highly theoretical ways. As a result, they have tended to prioritise phenomenological and socioeconomic approaches to materiality, while neglecting the immediate physical realities of artistic production. Practicing artists, technical art historians, engineers and art technicians are in direct contact with materials and processes. However, they are often remote from the questions that animate their art historical colleagues. Bringing together scholars and practitioners in the way envisaged by this project will bring these perspectives into dialogue, and show how detailed exploration of material evidence can transform our understanding of artistic production.