SPOTLIGHT ON THE ARTS: Evolved from a Pebble: Reflections on "Warrior With a Shield"
- Naomi Haugen
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Are there works of art in Mia’s collection that stop you in your tracks? An object that elicits a physical response -- a smile, a quiver, a rush of fear or awe?
Warrior With Shield, 1953-1954 • Henry Moore
Bronze
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John Cowles • 54.22
For me, one of those objects is Henry Moore’s “Warrior with a Shield.” Rather than evoking thoughts of war and dismemberment, the “Warrior” lifts me out of my personal clouds to a higher plane of appreciation and consciousness. But why? What is it exactly that elicits this response? A bit of research and lots of reflection led me to a deeper understanding of the artist, the sculpture, and my own engagement.
“I started with a 1965 hardcover book (thank you Hennepin County Library) by poet and writer Donald Hall, entitled Henry Moore: The Life and Work of a Great Sculptor. From the first sentence, I was captivated: “Henry Moore gets up at 7:30. He makes a pot of tea downstairs in the kitchen…” This intimate scene is followed by a prose tour of Moore’s work spaces, including a room containing “shelves and shelves of bones, flints, pebbles -- the natural objects which are sources of many of his forms…” These shelves, the author says, are “a mint of forms, a magic closet… It’s here that the new shapes -- …even a bronze thirty feet wide and sixteen feet high… -- are born from a piece of flint and a pair of modeling hands.” Other sources confirmed this fact. “Close study of the natural world led Moore to create his abstracted figures, at once both alien and familiar, using organic shapes taken from a line of hills, a massive rock formation, or a sea-smoothed pebble on a beach” wrote one author for Tennants Auctioneers.
Moore himself describes the origin of “Warrior with a Shield” this way:
“The idea for the Warrior came to me at the end of 1952 or very early in 1953. It was evolved from a pebble I found on the seashore in the summer of 1952, and which reminded me of the stump of a leg, amputated at the hip.”
Learning that the “Warrior” had its origin near the sea, my mind tumbled with sounds and images of oceans and the endless tides reducing boulders to stones and stones to pebbles. Perhaps, I thought, it is the pulsing of the sea that embraces me when I’m in the Warrior’s presence, the emergence of the unknown from a watery beginning. A birth, of sorts.
But, as much as I wanted to end my exploration there -- aha! I figured it out! -- I knew I was not finished with my personal reflection. Leaving the ocean and seaside behind, I turned my focus to one word in Moore’s description -- evolved. The verb evolve has its origin in the Latin word “evolvere,” meaning to “roll out.” Moore further describes the “rolling out” of the Warrior from that stump-shaped pebble like this: “First I added the body, leg and one arm and it became a wounded warrior, but at first the figure was reclining. A day or two later I added a shield and altered its position and arrangement into a seated figure and so it changed from an inactive pose into a figure which, though wounded, is still defiant.”
Reflecting on this comment and Moore’s process led me to new understanding. The artist did not set out to create a warrior, nor a shield. He began by picking up a pebble and turning it over in his hands. His warrior did not blossom fully formed in his imagination but evolved or rolled out over a period of time. Moore did not set out to comment on war or dismemberment or even resilience. He simply followed his imagination.
On my most recent visit to Mia, I stopped, as always, to spend time with “Warrior with a Shield,” and, as always, my bumpy emotional edges softened into humble reverence. But this time, I took special care to examine the figure’s left leg, or its suggestion of a leg. And then I saw it -- the pebble shape that evolved into this powerful and moving piece of art. Hope mingled with my reverence as I left the Warrior, knowing I can return again and again to experience the spirit of evolution.
Resources:
Hall, Donald. Henry Moore: The Life and Work of a Great Sculptor. Harper and Row, 1965
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