Kenneth Armitage: Life and Work (British Sculptors & ... (ISBN 085331702X)

A privileged retrospective view by the artist:
Kenneth Armitage is still best known for the innovative bronze figure groups he produced in the 1950s. Beginning with Linked figures (1949), Armitage found a pure sculptural solution to the representation of the relationship between human bodies, through literal fusion and the articulation of space as solid form, achieving startling results in works like 'Friends walking' (1952) and 'Triarchy' (1958-60). Yet, at the peak of the international success brought by this work, the artist turned to more abstract explorations of the figure in the 'Pandarus' series. This is characteristic of the primary importance placed by him on personal artistic freedom and an unceasing desire to experiment; a trait in his practice that has resulted in a varied, at times difficult, and - if the handlist published here is to be believed - spare sculptural oeuvre. The retrospective sweep of 'Kenneth Armitage. Life and Work' allows the reader a privileged view of the artist's journey, through reproductions of sculpture and drawings spanning half a century, as well as through the text compiled from interviews recorded by John McEwen and Tamsyn Woollcombe in 1991. There is much of interest here, not least in Armitage's description of formative early memories of Yorkshire and Ireland and his experience of service during the Second World War. This is a chronicle of a life, though, containing only occasionally the kind of critical insights into individual works that reveal something of the deeper creative foundations of the sculptor's practice. This is the case with the strange, large 'Arm' (1967-8), for example, of which Armitage says only that it relates to an Egyptian fragment in the British Museum and that it is based on the idea of doing 'figurative work combined with geometric shapes.' Armitage is obsessed with the human figure, yet he is at his most lyrical when talking about landscape. Indeed, in the broad, rough surfaces of earlier works like 'The sentinels' (1955-6) the connection with a powerful, wild Nature is almost tangible, reappearing in more distant, intellectualised form in recent works like 'The Dagda' (1995), inspired by Celtic mythology and the landscape of Ireland, and whose very name, he says, 'inspires awe'. Here, as in other parts of the book, the artist leaves the reader to imagine the feeling to which he alludes. Colin Rhodes