Financial Times FT.com

Time for some Moore

By Jackie Wullschlager

Published: September 15 2007 03:00 | Last updated: September 15 2007 03:00

In 1966, the young video artist Bruce Nauman drew a melancholy purple pastel figure sitting stiffly upright, as if boxed in, called "Seated Storage Capsule (For H.M.)". This was Nauman's angry response to the maligning of Henry Moore by the new generation of artists. In the postwar years, Moore's standing as a sculptor of world importance had been rivalled only by Giacometti, but in the mid-1960s his reputation plummeted. He died wealthy and famous but his reputation has never recovered.

In Nauman's sketch, Moore is encased in a tomb-like structure - the image wittily evokes his essential motif, shelter - to be preserved until he is relevant again. Has that time now come?

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