Henry Moore’s ‘Knife edge mirror two piece’, at the
National Gallery of Art, Washington
by JOHN-PAUL STO NARD
STANDING AT THE ENTRANCE to the East Building of the
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Henry Moore’s Knife
edge mirror two piece (1976–78; Fig.43)1 is one of the artist’s bestknown works in North America. It keeps company in this
respect with the Lincoln Center Reclining figure (1962–65) in
New York and Three forms vertebrae (1978–79) outside the Civic
Hall in Dallas, as well as Atom piece (1964–66), commemorating
the site of the first nuclear chain reaction in Chicago, now
renamed Nuclear energy. The latter is one of the few sculptures
to have escaped the fate of Moore’s ‘late-period’ works, defined
by Peter Fuller over two decades ago, as having received ‘very
little critical evaluation or interpretation’, a state of affairs that
holds true today.2 From a European perspective, the concentration of important late works, particularly commissions,
in North America has led to a narrow view of this period
as dominated by monumental, impersonal public sculptures
lacking the vivid historical context of the pre-War carvings
and wartime Shelter drawings.3 Yet it was only after 1960 that
Moore was to create some of the most intriguing works of his
career, developing ideas that had first been broached in the
1930s. Powerful, complex abstract forms, experimentation
with materials and scale, as well as a new dynamic relationship
with architecture, define the work of this period. Moreover,
it was primarily in North America that Moore found the
atmosphere in which this new phase could unfold.4 Recent
research on Moore has vigorously challenged the hagiography
that for so long encumbered writing on his work, but has not
so far countered the bias towards the first four decades of his
working life.5 This article aims to illuminate the commissioning and fabrication of Knife edge mirror and to suggest some ways
in which it epitomises Moore’s late period, and what might
even be described as his transatlantic rebirth.
Moore’s aversion to architects and architectural commissions
is well known, and it is thus surprising to learn the degree to
which the forms of Knife edge mirror were developed in concert
with I.M. Pei, the architect of the East Building. The then
Director of the National Gallery of Art, J. Carter Brown, who
was the ‘third man’ in the commissioning process, wrote to
Moore in May 1973 requesting ‘a great Henry Moore for the
This article is based on a paper first given as Colloquium CCXLII at the Center
for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington,
and was completed while the author was Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellow at
CASVA. Many thanks are due to friends and colleagues at CASVA for their
comments. Thanks also for their assistance to James Cooper, Penelope Curtis,
Maygene Daniels, Amanda Douberley, Anita Feldman, Valerie Fletcher, Jean
Henry, Derek Howarth, Dorothy Kosinski, Paul Matisse, James Meyer, Michael
Parke-Taylor, Michael Phipps, Shelley Sturman, Katy May, Gregory Vershbow
and Anne Wagner. Throughout these notes the National Gallery of Art, Washington, is cited as NGA. This article is for Malcolm Clendenin (1964–2011) and his
friends at CASVA.
1 Catalogued as Mirror knife edge in A. Bowness, ed.: Henry Moore. Complete Sculpture,
Volume 5, 1974–1980, London 1983, no.714. The title Knife edge mirror used throughout this article is an abbreviation of that given by the NGA: Knife edge mirror two piece.
2 For Nuclear energy, see I.A. Boal: ‘Ground zero: Henry Moore’s “Atom Piece” at
the University of Chicago’, in J. Beckett and F. Russell, eds.: Henry Moore. Critical
Essays, London 2003, pp.221–41; C. Stephens: ‘Henry Moore’s “Atom Piece”: The
1930s generation comes of age’, in Beckett and Russell, op. cit., pp.243–56; and
P. Fuller: Henry Moore, London 1993, p.45. For a recent publication that virtually
omits any account of Moore’s work in North America, see C. Lichtenstern: Henry
Moore. Work – Theory – Impact, London 2008.
3 One writer has recently described the ‘Beaux-Arts monumentality’ of these
works, revealing the ‘establishment – rather than the avant-garde nature of his late
production’; see C. Pearson: Designing UNESCO. Art, Architecture and International
Politics at Mid-Century, Farnham 2010, p.264; and C. Stephens, ed.: exh. cat. Henry
Moore, London (Tate) and Toronto (Art Gallery of Ontario) 2010, esp. p.17.
4 H. Seldis: Henry Moore in America, New York 1973, remains the best account of
Moore’s presence in North America, and includes important primary material. Such
an account should be set alongside the commissions Moore received from German
museums and municipalities, for which, see Lichtenstern, op. cit. (note 2).
5 See, for example, Beckett and Russell, op. cit. (note 2); A. Wagner: Mother Stone,
New Haven and London 2005; and Stephens, op. cit. (note 3).
43. Knife edge mirror two piece, by Henry Moore. 1976–78. Bronze, 535 by 721 by
363 cm. (National Gallery of Art, Washington, gift of the Morris and Gwendolyn
Caffritz Foundation, 1978. Photograph: Gregory Vershbow, January 2011).
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HENRY MOORE’S ‘KNIFE EDGE MIRROR TWO PIECE’
44. Large spindle piece, by Henry Moore. 1974 (first cast in 1968). Bronze, 335 cm.
high. (North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh).
45. The
‘Henry
Moore
Sculpture
Platform’,
East Building, National Gallery
of Art,
Washington.
(Photograph:
Gregory
Vershbow,
January
2011).
Pennsylvania façade’ of the East Building.6 He emphasised the
importance of Pennsylvania Avenue as the ‘great symbolic way
joining the White House with the Capitol and the Supreme
Court’, and added that Pei had custom-designed a pedestal at
the end of a long sculpture pool on the north side of the building. A mock-up of a small bronze by Moore had already been
tried on the architectural model, as photographs in the Gallery
archive demonstrate.7
Moore accepted the commission immediately.8 He was
visited by Brown at his home and studio in Perry Green, Much
Hadham, that summer but it was not until May the next year
(1974) that he travelled to Washington to view the site, still
under construction, and also to view the large architectural
model of the East Building.9 It was then that Moore suggested a
crucial change to the siting of the sculpture, moving it north
of the building line, essentially sliding Pei’s pedestal out from the
terrace.10 Moore’s rationale was clear: he did not want the sculpture to be subservient to the building, to be mere decoration. He
was perhaps more mindful of this condition than the other artists
commissioned to make works for the new building, including
Alexander Calder, Isamu Noguchi, Anthony Caro, David Smith
and James Rosati, all of whom contributed sculptures, Joan Miró
and Hans Arp, who were represented by tapestries, and Robert
Motherwell, who contributed a large painting.11 Moore’s aversion to producing ‘architectural sculpture’ can be traced back to
his involvement with the constructivist milieu of the 1930s,
when collaborations were encouraged, which, as his biographer
Roger Berthoud has noted, brought out a ‘competitive feeling
which marked his attitude to architects and their products for
much of his life’.12 The origins of this were certainly in Moore’s
self-conception as an artist who had inherited the task of forging
sculpture as an independent art from those such as GaudierBrzeska, Brancusi and Epstein at a time when, as Ezra Pound
once put it, most sculptors were ‘engaged wholly in making
gas-fittings and ornaments for electric light globes . . .’.13 As
Moore later made clear when working on the Reclining figure for
the Lincoln Center, this was not only a matter of retaining a free
choice of subject-matter, but also of avoiding sculpture being
‘stuck up against the building in such a way that you can’t see
it from all sides’.14 Such sculpture entered a type of ornamental
vassalage that Moore particularly loathed.
Brown was obliged to accept Moore’s wish.15 Pei redesigned
the pedestal as a triangular promontory jutting out from the
terrace. Shortly after, Pei sent Moore drawings of the redesigned
plinth, now named the ‘Henry Moore Sculpture Platform’
(Fig.45), reassuring Moore that ‘while the base is still part of the
building, the sculpture on the other hand is definitely liberated
from it’.16 Moore’s doubts were assuaged by the triangular
pedestal, and in April 1975 he wrote proposing the sculpture
Spindle piece (Fig.46). ‘From my memory of the site and its
6
(1969); Two forms (1966–69); and Sheep piece (1972). Harry A. Brooks to Charles
Parkhurst, 1st March 1973, NGA Curatorial Files: Moore, Henry. 1978.43.1. Knife
Edge Mirror Two Piece.
7 The work can be identified as a model based on a Reclining figure by Moore from
1969–70; thanks to Michael Phipps for this information.
8 Henry Moore to J. Carter Brown, 23rd May 1973, NGA1.
9 I.M. Pei & Partners created the working model of the East Building at
three-eighths-inch-to-one-foot; since destroyed.
10 Unsigned, undated sheet, ‘Status of Henry Moore Sculpture Project’, NGA:
Records of the Office of the Director J. Carter Brown. Building East – Art – Moore
(hereafter cited as NGA2).
J. Carter Brown to Henry Moore, 7th May 1973, NGA: E.B. Art – MOORE
Spindle Piece (1972–12/1975) (cited hereafter as NGA1). Informal discussions had
begun in 1972, and two of Moore’s dealers attempted to intercede. Kurt Delbanco
had written in June 1972 that Moore would consider contributing a ‘new monumental vertical sculpture’; Kurt Delbanco to John Bullard, 28th June 1972, NGA1;
David Scott replied that discussions were ‘premature’ and that there were ‘several
alternatives we must explore first’; David Scott to Kurt Delbanco, 18th July 1972,
NGA1. On 1st March 1973 Harry Brooks of Wildenstein & Co., New York, wrote
to Charles Parkhurst, the Assistant Director of NGA, sending photographs of six
monumental works ‘which Henry Moore proposes’. These were Totem head (1968);
Reclining figure: leg arch (1969); Reclining figure (1969–70); Reclining connected forms
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HENRY MOORE’S ‘KNIFE EDGE MIRROR TWO PIECE’
46. Plasticine model of Spindle piece positioned on the model of the East Building, 2nd/3rd
June 1975. (National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gallery Archives).
47. Photographs of J. Carter Brown, National Gallery of Art Director
1969–92, and Henry Moore at Moore’s studio at Perry Green, 23rd
September 1976. (National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gallery Archives;
photographs courtesy of Paul Matisse).
surrounding architecture, I think it needs a strong and powerful
sculpture, and something with bulk (rather than spatial or
“elegant”)’.17 He enclosed photographs of the three-foot-high
working model (dated 1968–69) of which he was in the process
of casting a larger version, ‘nearly eleven feet high to know how
it works on a bigger scale’ (Fig.44). A larger version still would
be needed for the ‘impressive architectural surroundings’ of the
East Building, ‘fifteen or sixteen feet high without its pedestal,
which in itself could be three or four feet high, and circular in
shape – the extra three feet of height would increase its impact’.
He explained to Brown the significance of the ‘points’ motif,
which had been explored in a number of previous works, from
Three points (1939), to Two piece reclining figure: points (1969–70).
But where the points in these earlier works were directed
inwards, Moore explained, ‘here in the spindle piece the points
move outwards, and in my mind suggest the hub of a wheel’.
He extended his pitch with a more literal explanation, making a
connection between the forms of the sculpture and the idea of
Washington as ‘the hub of the world’. ‘Sometimes people need
a literary reason as a start to look more favourably on sculpture’,
he added.18
Brown and Pei responded positively to Moore’s proposal,
although both echoed Moore’s concern about the scale of the
existing version – at eleven feet high, it would probably be too
small for the setting. When Brown visited Much Hadham
during the summer to view the working model for Spindle piece
(Fig.47), Moore agreed that a larger model would be necessary,
but was concerned that it might become too caught up with the
architecture: ‘He felt the one problem to be avoided was that of
having architectural elements cut the piece visually in some way.
Therefore, he felt the limiting factor was having it so high that as
one got near it, the soffit would impinge’.19 Pei, for his part,
thought that the sculpture ‘could not be too big’, and was clearly more interested in a monumental, essentially architectural
form, rather than a sculpture that might bear a physical relationship to viewers.20 Photographs show a plasticine model of
Spindle piece placed on the ‘Sculpture Platform’ (Fig.46).
In spite of the possibility of altering the scale, there was growing unease about the choice of sculpture.21 In a memorandum of
his visit Brown noted that Moore had been ‘willing to concede
that [the sculpture] must be correct in scale, material, texture,
placement, and general mass and form’. Brown’s concern with
Spindle piece seems to have touched on all these variables – but he
was particularly uncomfortable with the pointed forms. He
recorded that in his conversation with Moore he had ‘let drop
that the last thing we wanted is to have some newspaper man talk
about Pinocchio’.22
The eleven-foot-high bronze Spindle piece was nevertheless
shipped, leaving Southampton on 28th March 1976. Moore himself arrived in Washington a couple of weeks later. He had sent
plans for the construction of a circular pedestal, to be placed on
the existing ‘Henry Moore Sculpture Platform’, ready to receive
Spindle piece. The sculpture, however, never arrived. On seeing
the building semi-complete, it seems that Moore simply decided
11
16
See R.B.K. McLanathan: East Building, National Gallery of Art. A profile, Washington 1978, pp.25–47.
12 R. Berthoud: The Life of Henry Moore, London and Boston 1987, p.152.
13 E. Pound: Gaudier-Brzeska. A Memoir, London 1916 (1st ed.), repr. 1970, p.96.
14 ‘Henry Moore Looks Ahead to Lincoln Center’, The Performing Arts (13th
December 1962), unpaginated.
15 ‘Your vision of a truly monumental work of sculpture in front of our Pennsylvania
Avenue façade is an exciting concept. Of course, it is on a grander scale than we had
anticipated in making our budgetary provisions for your work, but the all-important
thing is the sculpture itself. We’ll have to try to work out the means to fit the goal’;
J. Carter Brown to Henry Moore, 12th June 1974, NGA1.
I.M. Pei to Henry Moore, 18th June 1974, NGA1.
Henry Moore to J. Carter Brown, 10th April 1975, NGA1.
18 Ibid.
19 J. Carter Brown, ‘Memorandum of Conversation’, 25th June 1975, NGA2.
20 Similar perhaps to Moore’s walk-through sculpture The arch (1963), which Pei had
commissioned for the plaza outside his Cleo Rogers Memorial Library, Columbus IN.
21 On Brown’s suggestion that he produce a unique work, Moore restated his views
on being independent from the site-specific demands of a commission. Sculpture,
he told Brown, ‘should look well in a variety of installations, just as a person reveals
different aspects of himself in different situations’; letter cited at note 17 above.
22 Brown, op. cit. (note 19).
17
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HENRY MOORE’S ‘KNIFE EDGE MIRROR TWO PIECE’
48. Knife edge two piece, by Henry Moore. 1962–65. Bronze, 275 cm. high. (Edition
of 3, this version: presented by the Contemporary Art Society to the City of Westminster, London; reproduced by permission of the Henry Moore Foundation,
Much Hadham).
against the Pennsylvania Avenue façade, owing to the lack of sunlight it received, and stated instead his wish to place a different
work at the main Fourth Street entrance to the East Building.23
The commissioning process for a work by Dubuffet for this spot
had commenced, but the work Dubuffet had suggested, Welcome
parade, was, in Brown’s eyes at least, not entirely suitable.24
Moore’s suggestion therefore presented them with a double
solution – to the problem of the Dubuffet commission, and the
location of the Moore sculpture. In any case, it was impossible for
Brown and Pei not to agree: ‘In front of the maestro you don’t
say, “No, you’re not going to have that’”, the curator David Scott
later noted.25 Spindle piece bypassed Washington and ended its
long journey in Raleigh, where Gordon Hanes had purchased it
by pre-arrangement for the North Carolina Museum of Art.26
Following his dramatic intervention in Washington, Moore
travelled to Dallas to inspect the plaza outside Pei’s Civic Hall,
for which the architect wanted to commission another work
from the artist. On his return to England, Moore wrote immediately to Pei and Brown sending two colour transparencies of
alternative works for the East Building,27 Three piece vertebrae,
which became Pei’s ‘Dallas Piece’, and Knife edge two piece
(1962–65), a version of which had by that time been placed outside the Houses of Parliament in London (Fig.48).28 Brown saw
immediately that Knife edge solved the problem not only of the
placement but also of shape – given a few adjustments here and
there. He wrote immediately to Moore that Knife edge was the
right choice, but could be ‘perhaps modified sufficiently to make
23
Alexander Liberman’s Adam (1970), a large and geometric steel work, was lent by
the Storm King Art Center to occupy the platform for the opening of the building.
It has since remained largely empty.
24 On 2nd July 1974 Brown had viewed a mock-up of Welcome parade in an
abandoned munitions factory in the Bois de Vincennes used by Dubuffet for
various projects. Brown had reservations about the expressions of the figures: ‘I
commented on the fact that the expressions on some of his people seemed rather
anguished than joyful, and he leaned heavily on the fact that his art had a high seriousness, bordering on the tragic. I did try to indicate that part of the fun was the
sense of welcome, and that one did not want figures that were forbidding to the
visitor’. Brown was also concerned about the longevity of the ‘plastic technologies’
Dubuffet was proposing as the construction material; J. Carter Brown, ‘Memorandum to D.W. Scott’ (dictated while abroad, tapes received and transcribed 5th July
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it a unique piece’, and outlined his vision of a ‘golden form
bathed in the level rays of the sun [. . .] what with the scale and
prominence of that location, tied to an institution of esthetic
purpose, we may be on to something very major’.29
Moore’s choice of the sculptures may in fact have been based
on a conversation with Pei in Dallas; the architect was later to
claim that he had in fact chosen Knife edge two piece on the basis
of a strong identity between the sculpture and his building, a
coincidence of the ‘knife edge’ motif. ‘I secretly wished we could
have the Knife Edge because I thought it was appropriate. But I
don’t think even Mr Moore knew that. You see, the buildings
were already designed before we choose Moore [sic], so when I
went through Moore’s entire catalogue and I saw Knife Edge, I
liked the name of it. It somehow seemed to be correct. Maybe
Carter knows, but I don’t think [so]. I never confided to anyone
about the reason why I chose Knife Edge over the other piece’.30
The ‘knife edge’ of Moore’s piece clearly mirrors the ‘knife edge’
of the west façade of Pei’s building, the nineteen-degree angle on
the corner of the study building triangle.
Yet the motif may also be taken as the basis for the sculptural
independence of Knife edge mirror from architecture, a formal
idea that Moore had developed throughout his career. David
Sylvester traced the ‘knife edge’ motif back to certain carvings in
alabaster, ironstone and slate of around 1930 that incorporate
very thin sections, and in general to works that were inspired
by the thin structures of shells and bones.31 Developed in his
monumental post-War works, however, the motif is cut loose
from nature and takes on an independent formal dynamic.
Although it is the principal subject of the 1961 Standing figure:
knife-edge, the sense of a thin, resilient structure is given with
more power in the Lincoln Center Reclining figure (1962–65),
where the ‘torso’ part is taken to an extreme thinness at the
pivotal part of the ‘waist’. Knife edge two piece shows the motif in
an even more dramatic fashion, indicating movement and the
action of cutting.32 Indeed, the subject of the East Building Knife
edge mirror is the combination of the ‘knife edge’, and the sliced,
or ‘mirror’ face of the larger part. The ‘slice’ may be traced as a
cognate motif in Moore’s work, and ultimately derives from
Brancusi’s use of a similar format in works such as Torso of a young
man (1924; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington), where the slice emphasises the imagined bodily solidity
of an otherwise hollow sculpture. In Moore’s case the ‘slice’
combined with the ‘knife edge’ suggests an organic form sprung
spontaneously from inorganic matter – an apt metaphor for the
sculptural autonomy Moore had always desired.
The ‘mirror’ of the title seems not to have originally referred
to the sliced surface, however, but to the fact that the forms of
the East Building sculpture were obtained by reversing, or mirroring those of the London Knife edge two piece. The suggestion
1974); NGA, Records of the Office of the Director J. Carter Brown. Building East
– Art – Dubuffet.
25 NGA, Oral History Program, interview with David Scott, conducted by A.G.
Ritchie, 26th August 1993, p.42.
26 J. Carter Brown, ‘Memorandum for the File’, 19th April 1976, NGA1. Hanes, a
member of the Collectors Committee formed by Brown to fund the purchase of
contemporary art, had offered to pay for transportation of the sculpture, if it was
then made available for purchase by the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh;
Gordon Hanes to Henry Moore, 10th November 1975, NGA1.
27 Henry Moore to I.M. Pei, 22nd April 1976; NGA: E.B. – MOORE Two Edge
Knife Piece [sic] (April 1976–November 1977) (cited hereafter as NGA3). Moore had
written to Brown the previous day to inform him of the proposal; Henry Moore to
J. Carter Brown, 21st April 1976, NGA3.
HENRY MOORE’S ‘KNIFE EDGE MIRROR TWO PIECE’
49. East Building model with mock-up of Knife edge two piece, June 1976. (National
Gallery of Art, Washington, Gallery Archives).
to invert the original came, so it seems, also from Pei.33 Scale
models of both options, using miniature photographs and a
maquette on the architectural model, show the differing aspects
of the sculpture in reversed and ‘normal’ positions (Figs.49 and
50). Brown was initially in agreement with David Scott that the
‘unreversed’ position was better, but was soon convinced by
Pei’s notion that the ‘placement on the terrace (towards the afternoon light and sun)’ and also the open aspect that the sculpture
would present on approach from the north, as if channelling visitors in, made the ‘reversed’ position preferable.34
Moore reported to Brown in December 1976 that he had
begun the ‘mirror-image’ of Knife edge two piece ‘in the working
model size, that is about 2 feet 4 inches long, and one foot eight
inches high, – this is the size of the two pieces arranged together (and this is a practical size for me to work from when I come
to do the full-size sculpture)’.35 He used Polystyrene (known in
America as Styrofoam) as a modelling material to create the new
maquette, a plaster cast of which was made and sent to the
Gallery at the beginning of the following year (Fig.51). Polystyrene, to which Moore had been introduced by a former
assistant, Derek Howarth, in the late 1960s, is much quicker and
easier to shape than plaster, is significantly lighter and, on a large
scale, self-supporting. It is also easy to cut, using either a hot
wire or worked into with a wire brush. Moore used it not only
for the working model but also for the full-scale ‘original’ from
which the final work was cast, thus expediting significantly the
process of enlargement, a task he left to his assistants, Michael
Muller and Malcolm Woodward, while he travelled to Italy for
28
It was bought by the Contemporary Art Society and donated to the City of
Westminster.
29 J. Carter Brown to Henry Moore, 26th April 1976, NGA3.
30 NGA, Oral History Program, interview with I.M. Pei, conducted by A.G.
Ritchie, 22nd February 1993, pp.38–39.
31 D. Sylvester: Henry Moore, London 1968, p.119.
32 In a 1967 article the work is captioned as Knife-edge sliding piece; A. Elsen: ‘The
New Freedom of Henry Moore’, Art International 7 (September 1967), pp.42–45.
33 Brown wrote a memo to David Scott to say that Moore ‘had agreed to consider
reversing KNIFE EDGE, to follow I.M.’s desire’; J. Carter Brown to David Scott,
3rd August 1976, NGA3.
34 David Scott to J. Carter Brown, 9th September 1976; Brown to Scott, memo, 11th
50. East Building model with mock-up of Knife edge two piece, reversed, c.September 1976. (National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gallery Archives).
51. Henry Moore with maquette for Knife edge two piece at his studio in Much Hadham. (National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gallery Archives).
his annual period of stone carving at Forte dei Marmi. The
various changes to the commission meant that Moore was far
behind schedule, meaning there would be no time for the
traditional method of enlargement, involving a laborious buildup of wood, plaster and scrim.36 The working model for Knife
edge mirror was divided into lateral sections, providing a contour
that was used to cut enlarged sections from the Polystyrene,
October 1976; and Brown to Scott, 13th September 1976, NGA3. Similarly, Moore
had left to I.M. Pei the orientation of The arch outside the Cleo Rogers Memorial
Library, Colombus.
35 Henry Moore to J. Carter Brown, 17th December 1976, NGA3.
36 It was for this reason that Moore chose not to use his preferred foundry: Noack
of Berlin, but rather the Morris Singer Foundry in Basingstoke, England, who were
also casting Three piece vertebrae for Dallas. The choice saved both money and shipping
time, and allowed close supervision of the work: ‘The English foundry has much
less experience in doing large bronzes and I, and my boys, will need to spend much
more time working at the English foundry to help them in producing as highly
finished surface as I desire!’. Henry Moore to I.M. Pei, 26th October 1976, Henry
Moore Foundation Archive, Much Hadham.
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HENRY MOORE’S ‘KNIFE EDGE MIRROR TWO PIECE’
52. Henry Moore at the installation of Knife edge two piece at the East Building, 10th
to 13th May 1978. (National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gallery Archives; photograph by Jose Naranjo, Bill Sumits).
which were then assembled to form an approximate full-scale
model for finishing (Fig.53). Where the old method of plaster
build-up using a stick and rag armature, used for example on
the Lincoln Center Reclining figure, encouraged a textured
surface, it was impossible with Polystyrene to achieve the same
depth of surface texture, even when plaster was added to the
Polystyrene model. Although the Polystyrene full-scale models
were in many cases only roughly approximate, and were cast
by an outside firm before being returned to Moore’s studio for
finishing, in many cases the smooth surface of the cast was
left untouched.37
37
The firm was Norman & Raymond of Clapham. My thanks to James Cooper and
Michael Phipps for this information.
38 J. Carter Brown to Henry Moore, 3rd February 1977, NGA3.
39 J. Carter Brown to Henry Moore, 26th July 1976, NGA3.
40 Photographs in the Moore Archive show that the transparent hanger-like studio
built to house the plaster model for the Lincoln Center Reclining figure was subsequently used for Knife edge two piece, Atom piece and The archer.
41 Henry Moore to I.M. Pei, 22nd April 1976, NGA3.
42 See B. Rose: ‘Blowup: The Problem of Scale in Sculpture’, Art in America 56
(July 1968), pp.80–91. By today’s standards, Knife edge mirror may not seem particularly large; James Meyer has described the increasingly monumental appearance of
post-War sculpture dominated by sheer size, rather than related to the body of the
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When Brown saw the reversed maquette in the following
February (after it had been accepted by the Acquisitions
Committee), this was exactly the point he raised, writing to
Moore: ‘Our one hope is that in working out the final sculpture,
it will bear the articulation of surface that your work so often
has, giving the sense of your hand having been involved in the
finishing of the final piece, and adding visual interest to the
surface, particularly on the back . . .’.38 Brown had made a
similar point after seeing the version of Knife edge two piece outside the Houses of Parliament, writing to Moore that he had
admired the ‘surface work showing your hand’, although it
was ‘less volumetric’ than he had expected.39 The surface of the
London Knife edge two piece is indeed highly articulated, showing
the scrapings and scorings that also characterised the Lincoln
Centre reclining figure, made shortly before.40 By contrast, the
surface of Knife edge mirror is entirely smooth and unarticulated,
and may be compared in this respect with a number of works
from the 1960s, such as Pointed torso and Architectural project,
both of 1969. Such works moved away from the markings and
articulations that, during the 1950s, may be compared to the ‘suffering surfaces’ of Brutalist sculpture, and that in the 1960s more
readily provoked comparisons with natural formations, rocks and
landscape features. Moore clearly saw that the ‘visual interest’ of
such surface markings would be in conflict with the monumental scale of Knife edge mirror, and would not in any case be visible
from the distance necessary to view the work as a whole.
Enlargement, the third transformation of the work (alongside
mirroring and smoothing) – has proved perhaps the most controversial. On sending images to Pei of Knife edge and Vertebrae,
Moore had suggested that he could ‘choose which transparency
to blow up to any size, to experiment with and to try out, as
suggested, on the building’.41 At over twenty-three feet, the
final version is on an architectural scale comparable with
Vertebrae, designed to be walked through and around. It is one of
Moore’s largest sculptures. It was precisely this ‘indiscriminate’
enlargement of models that Barbara Rose had criticised a few
years earlier. The ‘pernicious’ notion of scale-as-content was
exemplified for Rose by Moore’s Lincoln Center Reclining
figure, ‘lounging like a great melancholy behemoth in the plaza
of Lincoln Center [. . .] a perfect example of a work executed on
an inappropriate scale’.42
Rose’s comments on the Lincoln Center Reclining figure are, to
an extent, justifiable; yet by the time Moore came to make Knife
edge mirror, ten years later, the problem of scale was greatly
resolved. Rather than attempt to mediate between architecture
and the human body, the monumental scale of the figure
signifies a ‘return’ to architecture, such that the sculpture is only
viewable as a whole from a significant distance, and close to can
viewer; J. Meyer: ‘No More Scale’, Artforum (Summer 2004), pp.221–28.
43 Cf. R. Morris: ‘Notes on Sculpture Part 2’, ibid. 2 (October 1966), pp.20–23.
44 H. Read: The Art of Sculpture. The A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 1954,
National Gallery of Art, Washington, New York 1956, p.5.
45 Competing demands from the point of view of sculpture and architecture extend
even to the naming of the work; just before the sculpture arrived in Washington,
Carter Brown circulated a memo distinguishing between the final work and
two maquettes, one plaster, one bronze, that the Gallery had also acquired. ‘The
Director has ruled that of the two new Henry Moore sculptures, the large plaza piece
will be called “Knife Edge Mirror Two Piece” and (to differentiate it) the small one
will be called “Two Piece Mirror Knife Edge’”. ‘Memorandum to the Executive
Officers, DEX, Registrar and DCT, DID’, 20th March 1978, NGA: E.B. –
HENRY MOORE’S ‘KNIFE EDGE MIRROR TWO PIECE’
53. Plaster maquette of Knife edge two piece showing lateral sections for enlargement
in Polystyrene. (Reproduced by permission of the Henry Moore Foundation,
Much Hadham).
54. View of Knife edge two piece against the façade of East Building, by Henry
Moore. 1976–78. Bronze, 5.345 by 7.211 by 3.631 m. (National Gallery of Art,
Washington; photograph: Gregory Vershbow, January 2011).
only be experienced (or at least was originally intended to be), as
a ‘walk-through’ structure (Fig.52).
Questions of scale and bodily experience were central to
minimalist definitions of sculpture current in North America as
Moore’s works were appearing in museums and public spaces
around the continent. Works such as Mirror knife edge may be
read in apposition to these new definitions of sculpture, based
on phenomenological experience and bodily identification.
Robert Morris’s definition of sculpture as existing somewhere
between the intimacy of an ornament and the anonymity of a
monument, is one of the most frequently cited definitions of
the somatic basis of minimalist sculpture, and clearly relates
to the problems of scale and placement that had defined
the commissioning of Knife edge mirror.43 Intriguingly, it seems
that Morris derived this definition from Herbert Read, one
of Moore’s firmest supporters, in Read’s Mellon lectures on
sculpture given in 1954 in Washington, particularly the first
lecture, ‘The Monument and the Amulet’. But where Morris
saw sculpture as a negation of the ornament and the monument, Read saw sculpture as having its origins in the two
extremes, and thus ‘as a method of creating an object with the
independence of the amulet and the effect of the monument’.44
Read’s definition is an apt summary of the ‘knife edge’ on
which Moore’s East Building sculpture itself stands: caught at a
mid-point between architectural adornment and sculptural
independence (Fig.54).45
The installation46 and subsequent life of Knife edge mirror are
subjects for further investigation, and would include an account
both of the changing views of the sculpture and the controversies surrounding its maintenance and restoration.47 In fact, as we
have seen, these controversies and conflicting interpretations
were already formative during its commissioning and fabrication.
Over thirty years later this history can be assessed, and a ‘critical
evaluation and interpretation’ of Moore’s late works, including
their reception in North America, becomes possible.
No more telling account could be cited in this respect than
that given by the meçene of the East Building, Paul Mellon, in an
interview conducted just over a decade after the opening. ‘I
think my father, if he walked into the East Building today, would
be horrified! And he would have thought he was in a madhouse!
And I think that’s true of my sister. To a certain extent it’s true
of me too. There are certain things, especially the hugeness of
things. Because I think of art, and I think probably my father did,
and my sister did, and a lot of people do, as things that you want
to have about you in a house. So that once things become things
that are done purely for the public, great canvases, great huge
statues, and so forth [. . .] I suppose what I’m saying is I have
nothing against it, and I suppose I have the feeling that these are
things that two generations from now are going to decide, and
it’s not for me to decide’.48 ‘Two generations’ later the ‘hugeness
of things’ has become less an aesthetic shock than a focus for
historic description. For Mirror knife edge, as we have seen, this
involves not only the means of enlargement and fabrication, and
the critical context of minimalism, but also the new relationship
between abstract sculpture and monumental architecture that
evolved during the 1960s.
MOORE Two Edge Knife Piece [sic] (November 1977–December 1981) (hereafter
cited as NGA4). As noted above, the work is listed in Moore’s catalogue raisonné not
as ‘Knife Edge Mirror’, but ‘Mirror Knife Edge’.
46 The two pieces travelled separately, the smaller arriving on 28th March, the
larger, delayed by a dock strike at Southampton, on 9th May. Moore arrived two days
later to supervise the installation. He was quoted in the local newspaper: ‘I’m
concerned that at some stages of the day, the whole sculpture will get the sun [. . .]
There will always be some time when some will be in shadow at the top. That’s all
right, though I wouldn’t want to take a photograph of it then. If a sculpture is fixed,
unturnable, and this piece is so big that it is unturnable there will always be some
time that is preferable to others. All I want is that the whole sun will get the
sculpture at some point’; B. Weintraub: ‘Architect, artist, pianist, and oh, yes, 15 tons
of sculpture’, Washington Star (12th May 1978), p.8.
47 The fate of the Polystyrene full-scale model is also of interest. Whereas Moore’s
plaster models are displayed as works of art, the Polystyrene enlargements were generally considered expendable, existing as means to an end. A letter from the Director
of the shipping company to Brown shows that the Polystyrene models were available
to the packers ‘so that the major part of the packing work can be completed before
the sculpture is available to us’; Michael K. Scott, Director, Pitte Scott Ltd., Fine Art
Packers and Shippers, to J. Carter Brown, 16th January 1978, NGA4. Photographs
and film footage of the packing cases being opened in Washington suggest that the
Polystyrene model had in fact been cut up and used as packing material.
48 NGA, Oral History Program, interviews with Paul Mellon, conducted by Robert
Bowen, 26th and 27th July and 10th November 1988, pp.74–75.
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