Moore and the atomic mushroom cloud at the Tate Gallery
LAST YEAR, THE exhibits at Tate Britain were re arranged – or ‘rehung’ as the gallery likes to put it. In addition to rearranging the paintings and sculptures – very excellently I might add – previously unseen exhibits were added to the galleries. One of these is in a small gallery containing sculptures and some drawings by the British artist Henry Moore (1898-1986).
The additional exhibit in this gallery devoted to Moore is a glass cabinet containing a Ban the Bomb poster – a photomontage – designed by Henri Kay Henrion (1914-1990). I went to school in Belsize Park with one of his sons for a few years. The rest of the contents of the cabinet are documents – mainly press cuttings – about one of the sculptures near to the cabinet. They relate to a sculpture Moore created for the University of Chicago. The bronze sculpture, which at first sight resembles a combination of an atomic ‘mushroom cloud. with a distorted face beneath it, is called “Atom Piece (Working Model for Nuclear Energy)”. The Tate’s website (www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/henry-moore/henry-moore-om-ch-atom-piece-working-model-for-nuclear-energy-r1171996) explained:
“As its subtitle suggests, Atom Piece (Working Model for Nuclear Energy) 1964–5 represents the intermediary stage in the development of a much larger sculpture, Nuclear Energy 1964–6, which Moore was commissioned to make for the University of Chicago to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first controlled generation of nuclear power, conducted by the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi in 1942.”
The sculpture next to the cabinet is one of 13 bronze castings that Moore had made from one of his plaster maquettes that were created whilst planning the larger sculpture commissioned by the University of Chicago. Moore donated it to the Tate.
The photomontage by Henrion shows a human skull superimposed by a mushroom cloud. He created it in about 1959. The Tate’s website mentioned that Moore was most probably aware of Henrion’s terrifying image long before he created the sculpture for Chicago:
“Moore is likely to have been familiar with Henrion’s photomontage: in 1950 he had signed a letter published in the Times protesting against the potential use of atomic weapons, and in 1958 had become one of the founding sponsors of the CND.”
Although I have seen the ‘atomic’ sculpture by Moore at Tate Britain many times, I had not taken any special interest in it. However, thanks to the superb ‘rehang’ at the gallery and the addition of the glass case containing Henrion’s image, I began to appreciate the atomic sculpture, and strangely also began to enjoy Moore’s sculptures even more than I had before.
