“The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.” ― Henry Moore
Reclining Mother and Child, Henry Moore, Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden
Right at the entrance to the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden in New Orleans is this sculpture by Henry Moore.
I like to compare it to another, more abstract, Henry Moore sculptures… one of my favorites here in Dallas, The Dallas Piece, in front of City Hall.
Henry Moore’s Dallas Piece, barricaded for the Turkey Trot.
During the art event Nasher XChange, a pink arrow was added by Rachel Harrison, who called it Moore to the Point. It was pretty cool, and only temporary.
Rachel Harrison, Moore to the Point, City Hall Plaza (click to enlarge)Amanda Popken, in front of Moore to the Point (click to enlarge)
There is also a small version, a model, of the sculpture at the Nasher. A polished coppery gold, I like to take blurred photos of people walking past it.
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TexasNasher Sculpture Center
Dallas, Texas
“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was – I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas
Are there ghosts around us… ghosts that are simply moving too fast for us to see? There are definitely live people moving too fast for anyone to see. Maybe a blur. All you feel is a buzz of wasted excitement and maybe a bit of a hot breeze.
And they are gone.
The sculpture in the photograph above is a Henry Moore bronze – Three-Piece No. 3: Vertebrae (Working Model). It is a prequel for Moore’s larger Three Piece Sculpture: Vertebrae, also known as the Dallas Piece, which sits in a forlorn spot in front of I. M. Pei’s Dallas City Hall.
I’ve always loved that sculpture and have visited it for decades. One especially cool time was when Rachel Harrison added a temporary pink arrow in a sculpture known as Moore to the Pointas part of the Nasher Xchange project.
Moore to the Point (click to enlarge)
Rachel Harrison Moore to the point City Hall Plaza (click to enlarge)
Rachel Harrison Moore to the point
Dallas City Hall, Dallas, Texas
Ever since I first moved to Dallas in 1982, I was fascinated by the Plaza in front of Dallas City Hall. It seemed so modern, so stark, so big city. As a public space, as the years went by, everyone realized it was not all that successful – that it was too sterile and artificial and people didn’t like hanging out there. Still, it always amazed me.
There was that sculpture too, that famous piece, The Dallas Piece, by Henry Moore.
The funny thing is… the first time I saw Dallas City Hall Plaza and the Henry Moore sculpture, it was in an obscure PBS made for TV film of an Ursula K. Le Guin novel – The Lathe of Heaven. It was shown once on the little screen before disappearing for decades (now it has arisen from the dead… it is even available on Youtube). I happened to catch it and it made a huge impression on me. Enough that there was a real thrill in visiting the Dallas locations.
Now, when she was looking at the site for the Nasher XChange, looking at The Dallas Piece, Rachel Harrison noted that the sculpture had a fence, a barricade, around it. That bothered her, a work of art like that should be exposed and available, not locked up.
Henry Moore’s Dallas Piece, barricaded for the Turkey Trot.
I had seen the fence… when I saw it the thing had been erected for the massive crowds that throng the place for the Turkey Trot run. The rest of the time, it isn’t there.
Still, she has a point… and the point is what she built.
This was a very easy sculpture to get to. We rode over to City Hall Plaza right after hearing the lecture at the Nasher. I rode on to the Hyatt Regency then, catching the Red DART line back home.
Rachel Harrison Moore to the point Dallas City Hall, Dallas, Texas
Amanda Popken, in front of Moore to the point (click to enlarge)
Rachel Harrison Moore to the point Dallas City Hall, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)
Rachel Harrison
New York, New York Moore to the point
1500 Marilla St.
City Hall Plaza
A giant arrow pointing to Henry Moore’s sculpture, Three Forms Vertebrae (The Dallas Piece), calls attention not only to the work but to the conditions that frame our encounters with works of art.
For Nasher XChange, Harrison has fabricated a giant pink arrow to be installed in City Hall Plaza in downtown Dallas. The arrow points to an existing sculpture at the site, Henry Moore’s sculpture, The Dallas Piece. Harrison’s project grew out of a recent visit to Dallas City Hall during which she was surprised to see Moore’s outdoor sculpture encircled by metal barricades. For Harrison, the barricades recalled the metal stanchions now commonly found surrounding sculptures in museums, a feature Harrison has sometimes referred to in her own work.
Although the barricades have been removed, most visitors still walk around the sculpture, rather than moving through it as Moore had intended. Harrison’s giant arrow calls attention not only to Moore’s often-overlooked piece but to the conditions that frame our encounters with works of art.
Rachel Harrison Moore to the point City Hall Plaza
Rachel Harrison Moore to the point City Hall Plaza (click to enlarge)
Rachel Harrison Moore to the point City Hall Plaza (click to enlarge)
The Dallas Piece, Dallas City Hall Plaza
Henry Moore
1978
“How important can it be that I suffer and think? My presence in this world will disturb a few tranquil lives and will unsettle the unconscious and pleasant naiveté of others. Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history—greater than the fall of empires—I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence.”
― Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair
Bill Chance 