Reynolds, L. 2020. Creative Process, Material Inscription and Dudley Shaw Ashton's Figures in a Landscape (1953). in: Jacobs, S., Cleppe, B. and Latsis, D. (ed.) Art in the Cinema: The Mid-Century Art Documentary London Bloomsbury Academic.
| Chapter title | Creative Process, Material Inscription and Dudley Shaw Ashton's Figures in a Landscape (1953) |
|---|---|
| Authors | Reynolds, L. |
| Editors | Jacobs, S., Cleppe, B. and Latsis, D. |
| Abstract | Dudley Shaw Ashton’s flamboyant 1953 portrait of the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, Figures in a Landscape, quite literally lifts Hepworth and her sculptures from the spaces of critical reception and creative process associated to the museum, gallery or studio, to audaciously place the artist and her work in the Cornish landscape amongst its beaches, megalithic standing stones and tin mines. This chapter explores how Shaw Ashton’s use of film technology to explore scale, distance and proximity between artist, sculpture and the contours of the landscape, proposed ways of depicting the artist and the creative process on film which were at odds with contemporary art documentaries of the immediate post war period. Reinforced further through the accompanying narration scripted by the archeologist Jacquetta Hawkes, Shaw Ashton seeks instead to inscribe Hepworth’s creative process within a pre-modern landscape and to present the artist and her sculptures as the embodiment of a materially located mythic and historic continuity. Made shortly after the 1951 Festival of Britain, and funded by the British Film Institute’s Experimental Film Fund, was Shaw Ashton’s disavowal of Hepworth’s modernist credentials reflective of a transitional and short lived moment in Britain’s post war culture? When an historical turn might be seen to presage new ways forward in cultural representation? |
| Keywords | Barbara Hepworth |
| Jacquetta Hawkes | |
| Dudley Shaw Ashton | |
| sculpture | |
| Cornwall | |
| landscape | |
| modernism | |
| Book title | Art in the Cinema: The Mid-Century Art Documentary |
| Year | 2020 |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Publication dates | |
| Published | 15 Oct 2020 |
| Place of publication | London |
| ISBN | 9781788313674 |