Frontier Sculpture & Monuments
Frontier Sculpture & Monuments
Public Sculpture in Britain ~ A History
Geoff Archer
The first book to chart the history of Public Sculpture in Britain is to
be published in 2013. It is intended for the ‘man or woman in the street’,
as well as scholars and artists, and uses British examples to show a number
of ideas of just what public sculpture can be.
Public Sculpture in Britain: A History, is educative and at the
same time entertaining. It is full of art and ingenuity, yet for many readers
its most useful quality might be clarity, even when recalling lost sculptures
or untangling the last few decades with hundreds of new arrivals.
True to the subject, the pages echo controversy, iconoclasm and comments by
the press. Differences of opinion are endemic with no single seems that editors
and critics of The Times, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Guardian, et al have
worked in the public interest, provoking debate and urging the public to review
its (our) sculptures. So quotes and headlines, valid or laughable in hindsight,
are included.
The author, Geoff Archer, is a practising artist, art historian and former
art teacher who took on the task of assessing the tidal wave of figurative
sculptures on 1st World War Memorials in The Glorious Dead (Frontier
2009). His writing is well-organised, presenting public sculpture not by era
or location, but by theme and purpose in a logical structure of seven chapters – see
Contents (click blue title). Arranged in and around the text, photographs of
every sort of sculpture create a stream of visual impressions. We see statues
of kings and queens, equestrian generals, inventors and authors. There are
sombre war memorials with allegorical figures and later ‘sculpitecture’,
and modernist works in new towns, with concrete cones and steel-mesh abstracts.
The pictures continue with conceptual and comic sculptures, ‘Fourth plinthers’ and
giant or landmark figures. By now we can see how we arrived at this point in
the continuing story of public sculpture.
May 2013 ISBN: 978-1-872914-40-4. £30 (Click
blue title for full description.
The Art of Memory ~ Sculpture in the Cemeteries of London
Richard Barnes
With an Intoduction – A Short History of the Cemetery Movement by James Stevens Curl
Of many books about the sights to be seen in London cemeteries, The Art of
Memory – Sculpture in the Cemeteries of London, published by Frontier
in 2016, is the first to focus on sculpture.
Among many thousands of memorials in a hundred cemeteries, especially the capital's
'Magnificent Seven', are significant pieces that have been left out of national
surveys. The names of sculptors involved include the best, from Gilbert Bayes,
Edward Burne-Jones and Alfred Gilbert to Barbara Hepworth and Ernst Barlach.
The book opens with the writing of the well-known architectural historian, James
Stevens Curl, who has published extensively about cemeteries. Professor Curl's
Introduction, A Short History of the Cemetery Movement, provides a background
for a series of essays by Richard Barnes. A member of the PMSA (Public Monuments
and Sculpture Association), Barnes aims to acknowledge works in cemeteries, combining
descriptions of design with biographies, associated works and remarks on damage,
repairs and theft. Together and in sequence his essays outline an art history
from 1800 to the present day, reflecting nearly every style of sculpture, from
Gothic to Classical and Revivalist to Modernist. There is an emphasis on styles
from the turn of the last century Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau and Aestheticism,
as well as the Interwar period.
For Londoners, cemetery enthusiasts and above all sculpture devotees, here
are accounts of artists, models, patrons, academicians and monumental masons.
The
book is illustrated throughout with colour plates of photographs, some by the
author, but mostly by the London ecclesiologist and artist, Charles Slade.
We see sculptures in outdoor settings, a few the worse for wear, others carefully
restored by groups of Friends of the Cemeteries. One or two portray the departed,
more often they are mourners, mothers, spirits, angels, allegories or symbols.
Many of them are works of art expressing tender sentiments and mediating the
deepest human feelings. A few are items of national interest, which we are
now
able to appreciate, thanks to the recent and continuing process of 'cemetery
rediscovery'.
240pp, 230 col illus, p/b, ISBN: 978-1-872914-44-2 May 2016. £44
Publication supported by The Henry Moore Foundation
British Sculpture in India ~ New Views and Old Memories
Mary Ann Steggles & Richard Barnes
When Mary Ann Steggles began her studies on the subject of historic statues
exported from Britain to colonies in South Asia, she picked an interest which
has fascinated British and Indian historians. It concerns a parallel collection
to the sculptures in the streets of Britain, with works by Bacon, Baily, Banks,
Bell, Boehm, Brock, Chantrey, Flaxman, Foley, Gilbert, Jagger, MacKennal, Marochetti,
Kathleen Scott, Thornycroft and others.
Presenting new and sometimes first views of this ‘collection’,
the book is Prefaced by the eminent sculpture historian, Benedict
Read, author of ‘Victorian Sculpture’. There follows a 'View from
Calcutta' by Tapati Guha-Thakurta, placing the subject in a modern context
in India. Next come 200
concise descriptions by Richard Barnes, entwining subject and artist biographies,
sculpture
anecdotes
and reports. However, the core of the project is the writing of Mary Ann Steggles,
offering the historical base and account of the commissioning and exportation
of statues from Britain to India. The book’s pages are designed to be
a pleasure to look at, as old plates are balanced with newly commissioned photos
in a treatment which ‘shows off’ sculpture and the skill of the
artists. Authoritative, highly illustrative and bulging with histories, here
is the only exposition of the largest amount of British sculptures outside
the country.
This is a rare book to be commended to devotees of sculpture
in five continents and anyone interested in the endless peculiarities of India’s
connection with Britain.
320pp, 280 illus (col), h/b, Dec 2011, ISBN: 978-1-872914-41-1. £50 (Click
on blue title for CONTENTS and more pictures).
The Glorious Dead ~ Figurative Sculpture
of British First World War Memorials
Geoff Archer
The subject is the the subtitle: it is all about the sculptural images which
connect us by memory, metal and stone to the Great War which began 95 years
ago and still fills us with awe. It is a subject that has waited decades
to be gathered
together in a book; a period of time which has seen the critical dismissal
and decline of figurative sculpture, the death of those sculptors and all
the men
who went to the Great War. What is left to remember? The sculptures themselves!
Geoff Archer has filled a missing gap in 20th century sculpture studies and
redeems the war memorial sculpture of the 1920s to the canon of British art
history.
To open his book is an initiation.
416pp, 270 illus (mono), p/b,
ISBN: 978-1-872914-38-1. £30 (Click on blue title for full description and more pictures).
John Bell - The
Sculptor's Life & Works
Richard Barnes.
The first book about John Bell,1811-1895, who was linked to Henry
Cole and Prince Albert in the Socety of Arts leading up to The Great
Exhibition. The
sculptor made grand monuments in London, and also worked with
manufacturers,
his statues being first in Coalbrookdale's iron, largest in Doulton's terracotta and most popular in Minton's
Parian ceramic. Chronological biography, list of works, illustration
and British Art history.
192pp. H/b. ISBN: 978-1-872914-19-0. £42.00
The Year of Public Sculpture - Norfolk
Richard Barnes.
Sculpture is the commemorative art and Norfolk memories are brought
to focus on statues. In 2000-2001, the year of public Sculpture,
The Eastern
Daily
Press printed 35 features with colour photographs spotlighting
individual works,
sculptors' lives and Norfolk history.
48pp.p/b. Colour throughout. ISBN: 978-1-872914-22-0. £7.95
Artist of an Icon /
The Memoirs of Arnold Machin RA
The artist who created the Queen's Head on British postage stamps,
the most reproduced image of all time. From Minton apprentice
in the Potteries
in
1925 to RA Professor of Sculpture.
224pp, inc 100 col ills, p/b, ISBN: 978-1-872914-25-1. £24.00
The Obelisk - A Monumental Feature in Britain.
Richard
Barnes
Nobody considered Britain's obelisks before, preferring to
regard them as inferiors to the magnificent obelisks of Egypt.
Britain
has roughly
3,000
obelisks and
the sculpture and travel author traces history from when Englishmen
saw the Egyptian obelisks in Rome. The first obelisk arrived
in England c1570
and
by the 1700s obelisks were raised with new uses, as landmarks,
hilltop eyecatchers, milestones etc. Monolithic obelisks in
polished granite
streamed into the
new
cemeteries in the 19th century and soon after a thousand WWI
war memorial obelisks were added. Includes J.Bell's lectures
on obelisks and ends with a gazetteer of Britain's obelisks.
240pp h/b inc 80 colour & mono photos, ISBN: 978-1-872914-28-2 £35.00
Email
contact@frontierpublishing.co.uk