Helen Chadwick. Constructing identities between art and architecture

239 Pages·2012·7.473 MB·English

by  Chadwick, Helen;Walker

Helen Chadwick

HELEN
CHADWICK
CONSTRUCTING IDENTITIES
BETWEEN ART A ND ARCHITECTURE
Stephen Walker
Titlepage_HelenChadwick_v1.indd 1 9/3/13 2:05 PM
Published in 2013 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
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Copyright ! 2013 Stephen Walker

The right of Stephen Walker to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of
the publisher.

International Library of Modern and Contemporary Art: 14

ISBN 978 1 78076 007 0

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Catolog Card Number: available

Printed and bound in Great Britain by T.J. International, Padstow, Cornwall
from camera-ready copy edited and supplied by the author
to Julia, Felix and Benjamin

Contents
List of illustrations viii
Acknowledgements ix
Preface x
Integration of sources xiii

Introduction: New negotiations 1

Part One: The creative process and the creative persona
1: The creative self 23
2: The creative process and total pattern 37

Part Two: Experience, architecture and identity
3: Body and self 53
4: ‘Multistability’ and viewing position 77

Part Three: Artifice and nature
5: The grotto and architectural conceit 99
6: Architecture, the divinities and the authority of science 121
7: ‘Viral architecture’ and the rapprochement of art and science 141

Part Four: Theory and practice
8: Geometry, ‘stereonomy’ and surface 161
9: The role of making 179

Conclusion 205

Notes 209
Bibliography 219
Index 221
Illustrations
All works by Helen Chadwick.
All images © Leeds Museums & Galleries (Henry Moore Institute Archive)
and The Helen Chadwick Estate

1 Examples of Chadwick’s notebooks and books from her library xvi
2 Menstrual Toilet, 1975–6 3
3 In the Kitchen, 1977 4–5
4 Model Institution, 1981–4 7–9
5 Train of Thought, 1978–9 13–17
6 Le Bateleur from her Notebook 2003.19/E/5.88–9 25
7 The Juggler’s Table, 1983 28
8 Eroticism, 1990 88
9 Enfleshing I, 1989 89
10 The Philosopher’s Fear of Flesh, 1989 91
11 Of Mutability, 1986–7 112–13
12 Viral Landscapes, 1988–9 142–3
13 Ego Geometria Sum, 1983–5 166–7
14 Nostalgie de la Boue, 1989 182
15 Piss Flowers, 1991–2 188–9
16 Cacao, 1994 190
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the support of the Henry Moore Institute in
Leeds, the staff there including Penelope Curtis, Martina Droth, Ellen Tait
and Jon Wood, and in particular to thank the archivists Victoria Worsley,
Ian Kaye and Claire Mayoh. Jeremy Till and Andrew Ballantyne gave their
advice and support during the formative stages of this research, and Louisa
Buck and Ashley Givens provided their help with particular details on the
way through.
I am very grateful to Andrew Benjamin, Mark Haworth-Booth, and in
particular Philip Stanley and Marina Warner, all of whom generously gave
time to discuss their personal recollections of Helen Chadwick.
At I.B.Tauris, I would like to thank Philippa Brewster, Liza Thompson
and Alex Higson for their enduring support throughout the process of
publication. Annie Jackson was once again a patient and sympathetic
proofreader.
I would also like to thank Florance and David Notarius from the Estate
of Helen Chadwick for generously granting image rights, and the editors of
AMBIT magazine for their permission to reproduce Chadwick’s articles.
Finally, I am grateful to the Henry Moore Institute for their financial
support during my initial archival research, and to the Arts and Humanities
Research Council for a Research Leave Grant that was invaluable for the
writing of this book.
Preface
The artist Helen Chadwick (1953–96) produced such a diverse range of
work it is not possible to name a ‘typical’ piece or say for what she is best
know. Perhaps her Piss Flowers or her chocolate fountain Cacao, or her
photographic works Viral Landscapes or Meat Abstracts or Wreaths to Pleasure,
or her operatic installations Ego Geometria Sum or Of Mutability. Her impact
in the art world remains similarly hard to pin down; the first woman
nominee for the Turner Prize, some-time broadcaster, curator, teacher and
mentor, her contemporaries and younger generations of artists frequently
acknowledge her influence.
Yet despite such acknowledgements, or perhaps because of such
diversity, her realised work has never really established a place for itself in
the public eye. It might be said that she was an artist slightly out of her
time. Work that was controversial and experimental when it was produced
now seems too easily accepted; her work was far too prescient for its own
good.
While most art-historical reception of Chadwick’s work has
understandably concentrated on her realised projects (and within these, the
later projects such as those just mentioned), her notebooks reveal the
extent to which these were informed by expansive research work and
theoretical developments that were as creative as the realised pieces.
Considered through this lens, her apparently diverse œuvre becomes far
more coherent: life-long preoccupations were tirelessly explored,
interrogated and developed in concert with her artistic making.
Nevertheless, it is not my intention to demonstrate such consistency in
this book, although it might emerge as something of a by-product. My
primary concern is to enjoy the range, depth and continuing currency of
Chadwick’s research and theoretical positioning. Chasing one of her
enduring preoccupations—the construction and maintenance of personal
identity—Chadwick’s work can offer insights into a number of major,
enduring questions: the relationship between body, space, self and world;