倒下的战士的模型-轻识

Maquette for Fallen Warrior , 1956, is the model for Falling Warrior , a large bronze sculpture of 1956-7, and was cast in an edition of ten (of which this is number two) plus an artist’s proof. Moore intended to show a wounded falling warrior and was dissatisfied with the maquette’s figure, which appeared dead to him. Therefore, when he came to make the final sculpture, he altered the composition, repositioning the warrior’s shield from near his right foot to his left hand, so that it would create the illusion of a mortally wounded man using the shield in order to break his ultimate fall. One of Moore’s few male representations, this is a tragic, writhing contrapposto figure, expressing dramatic energy and dynamism.

At the beginning of his career Moore worked mostly in stone. Subscribing to the modernist ethos of ‘truth to material’, his early pieces were carved directly, and not made from models by assistants. However, in the mid-1930s he began to vary his approach, often making clay maquettes that he would use to create the final work. Moore eventually moved on to casting his work in bronze as well as carving it in stone or wood. Liberated from the constraints of carving, the artist almost entirely eliminated drawing from his working process by the mid-1950s and explored his ideas through small maquettes. These had an intrinsic quality of immediacy or spontaneity and allowed him to imagine the finished product in the round. In 1968 he said, ‘with the kind of sculpture I do now, I need to know it from on top and from underneath as well as from all sides. And so I prefer to work out my ideas in the form of small maquettes which I can hold in my hand and look at from every point of view.’ (Quoted in Wilkinson, 2002, p.239.) In order to translate the scale of the work more effectively from portable to over life-size, he often made larger working models as an intermediate stage between the maquette and the finished sculpture.

Moore’s maquettes were typically cast in bronze in editions of up to ten. The sculptor strove for monumentality in his work and tried to imbue the same quality in the small maquettes. He also took a great deal of care with their finish. Some were more polished than others, some darker, some greener. Moore did all the patination himself, treating the bronze with different acids to achieve different effects then working on it by hand, rubbing and wearing it down.