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| Elisabeth Frink |
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I recently chaired a seminar entitled “Dame Elisabeth Frink Remembered through Film and Friends” at Bonhams Lecture Theatre in Bond Street and before that in Sherborne, Dorset. Both events were in aid of Sherborne House where the Frink Archive will eventually be lodged. There will also be a specially designed garden for a permanent display of her larger works and inside the house a space for a selection of her smaller pieces. The exhibitions will be open to the general public and the archive will be available for study by students and scholars. Given Frink’s love of Dorset it is entirely fitting that her archive should find a home in Sherborne House. In preparing and researching for the event I looked at every piece of film made of Lis and her work from the earliest Monitor programme fronted by Laurie Lee to the last made by Mick Csaky for Melvyn Bragg and the South Bank Show. To spend hour after hour watching Lis progress from a vibrant young woman to the last days of her life when she was ill and dying of cancer was a profoundly moving experience. It was equally so for the other friends who spoke on the day, The painter John Hubbard, the sculptor Ann Christopher and Lis’s founder and left-hand man Ken Cook, and Jeremy Barker of Sherborne House. What would it be like to have film of Rodin, who so influenced Frink, at work in his studio and talking about that work? It is an extraordinary privilege, we now have, to be able to see, hear and study a now dead artist at work over their lifetime. To witness themes and ideas being explored and developed, ending in a piece of work which looks finished and beautiful to us and is then rejected and destroyed by the hand that made it because it was not good enough. This was certainly very often so in the case of Frink. One summer staying with her and her husband Ted Poole in France I went in to her studio to share a glass of wine with her just after she had finished work for the morning and on the turn-table was a piece of work that I thought she seemed satisfied with, but I was wrong. As we sipped our wine she started to ignore me staring at the piece with total concentration and then she muttered, “Its not right”. She picked up a two pound lump hammer and went at it like a Mayo navvy on piece work. Plaster flew all over the studio and the wine was forgotten. It was the most unnerving and exhilarating thing to witness. I said, “I hope you know what you’re doing” but of course she did. She mixed up some fresh plaster and I sat there watching her create a more perfect work of art. I consider it one of the most privileged mornings of my life. To witness this was to catch a glimpse of how and why she worked.. She did not work from sketches or drawings but from ideas in her own head, long thought about and gestated. The piece in front of her was something to be worked on, changed, re-done, re-cut, re-shaped and never to be really satisfied with because satisfaction is death for an artist and for Frink a “finished” work was just a jumping off point for the next piece, the next exploration. Her early Bird series full of menace and power of which Laurie Lee memorably said “If they sang they would spit out splinters of iron” ended some years later with the Mirage series, examples of which you can see here. They were inspired by her visits to the Camargue which she loved. She said to Edward Lucie-Smith “In the very hot weather people on horseback, or birds - flamingos in the distance - used to assume these strange, stalking shapes, floating, broken up by the distance”. She looked at everything and everything she saw was stored in that incredible memory to be called up when needed. She had the gift to make every occasion special. Shopping in Anduze with a cafe stop after was as memorable as the days of the grape harvest on her farm in the late summer. Whatever you shared with her became a heightened experience, to be savoured because she was at the centre of it. She made you look and be aware, not by pointing things out but by the act of living it herself. To see her on film over the years starting each working day by plunging her ungloved hands into a sack of plaster and mixing the powder in a bowl of water, and with the same hands slap the mixture on to an armature and begin to make a shape that only existed in her head is to understand why she was drawn to sculpture and not painting. To witness her pure tactile satisfaction in working the plaster with her bare hands before it set; and then with rasps, scrapers and finally with chisels and a mallet creating the textures and details to be reproduced in hard edged bronze and then those hands going over every detail of the bronze and finessing; it was to watch a consummate artist at work. Her work was her life. Her turning down the historic offer to become the first woman President of The Royal Academy was because it would take time from her work. I can think of few people so centred. Her feelings for the downtrodden, the tortured, the cruelly treated, powerless people of our world was acute, deeply felt and totally unromantic. She was outraged by injustice. It is all there in the work, alarmingly, in the Goggle Heads and sadly, bravely and hopefully in the Tribute Heads done for Amnesty. On the metal plate in front of her Dorset Martyrs standing at the cross-roads in Dorchester where many of them were hanged, drawn and quartered is the list of names of those killed and a poem by Robert Southwell, priest. “Not where I breathe, but where I love, I live; Not where I love, but where I am, I die; The life I wish, must future glory give, The deaths I feele in present daungers lye.” Robert Southwell was put to the torture thirteen times and executed at Tyburn 21st February 1595. Lis had a deep, lifelong commitment to Amnesty International so it was no surprise that she jumped at the chance to commemorate these men who, unflinchingly, face their brutal deaths. Also, while she was not “religious” she was brought up a Catholic, and the Dorset Martyrs died because they would not give up their Catholic faith. Watching the film shot during the last months of her life reminded me again of the incredible fortitude, grace and bravery she showed throughout her illness. She was determined to finish the huge figure of the Risen Christ for the Anglican cathedral in Liverpool before she died. To be with her while she worked on it and discussed it was to be with a person who was only interested in life. To me, in that period, she resembled her Madonna striding across the grass in front of Salisbury cathedral, a powerful expression of human strength and purpose. They took the Risen Christ to the foundry but she called the plaster head back to her own studio so she could do some more fine tuning on it, and as she worked she talked about her belief that the spirit of people continued to exist somewhere in the ether and I certainly feel hers does. Then finally, happy with the work, she said in some tired satisfaction, “Now that’s it” and laid down her tool: but of course that was not “it”. She went to the foundry and pointed out details in the bronze she wanted adjusted; then shrunken cheeked, masked and turbaned she set to work herself with a whining metal grinder to put her final stamp on the piece. She stood watching as they winched the huge figure on to its feet until it towered over her and it is an amazing shot of an artist dwarfed by the work but the two are one. She was too ill to travel to the unveiling in Liverpool on the Easter Sunday but she was there , in the work, and she will be there for centuries. She had done what she was determined to do and a little over a week later she died. I have said above that watching the films was a profoundly moving experience but because of her life force it was not depressing or sad; it was uplifting and life-affirming. I finished the address I gave at her memorial at St James Piccadilly with the following - “I do not understand the scientific explanation of the black hole in space but I do, now, understand the black emotional hole that has appeared in my life..... But the hole is not so black. It is filled with colours and shapes, with running men and beautiful animals and above all it echoes with that wonderful bark and hoot of laughter that engulfed you when Lis was at her best and happiest.” I’ll stick with that. Brian Phelan 27/4/06 . |
Biography 1930 Born 14 November in Thurlow, Suffolk. 1941-47 Attended Convent of the Holy Family, Exmouth. Studied at Guildford School of Art. 1949-53 Studied at Chelsea School of Art under Bernard Meadows and Willi Soukop. First major exhibition at Beaux Arts Gallery. Exhibited with London Group. Tate Gallery purchased Bird. 1953-61 Taught at Chelsea School of Art. 1953 Won prize in competition for Monument to the unknown political prisoner. Arts Council purchased Bird. 1954-62 Taught at St Martin’s School of Art. 1955 First solo exhibition at St George’s Gallery. Married Michel Jammet. 1957 First major public commission from Harlow New town, Boar. Commission for Bethnal Green housing scheme, Blind beggar and dog. Contemporary Arts Society purchased Wild Boar. Joined Waddington Galleries. Commission for London County Council, Birdman. Birth of her son Lin Jammet. 1960 Commission for facade of CarltonTower, London. Felton Bequest purchased Birdman (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne). Commission for Coventry Cathedral, Eagle lectern. Commission for Manchester Airport, Alcock and Brown memorial. Commission for Ulster Bank, Belfast, Flying figures. Divorce from Michel Jammet. Eagle installed as J.F. Kennedy memorial, Dallas, Texas. Commission for Our Lady of the Wayside, Solihull, Risen Christ. Married Edward Pool. 1965-67 Visiting Instructor, Royal College of Art. 1966 Commission for Liverpool Cathedral, Alter cross. Moved to France. Illustrated Aesop’s Fables, published by Alistair McAlpine and Leslie Waddington. Awarded CBE. 1971 Elected Associate of the Royal Academy. First showed in Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Illustrated Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, published by Leslie Waddington. Separated from Edward Pool and returned to England. Illustrated Homer’s Odyssey, published by the folio society. Commission for de Beers, trophy for King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes. Commission for Dover Street, London, Horse and Rider. Married Alexander Csáky. 1975 Commission for Paternoster Square, London, Paternoster. Illustrated Homer’s Illiad, published by the Folio Society. Elected to board of trustees, British Museum. 1976 Appointment to the Royal Fine Art commission. Moved to Dorset. Elected Royal Academician. Awarded Honorary Doctorate by University of Surrey. Commission for Milton Keynes, Horse. 1980 Commission for Goodwood Racecourse, Horse. Appointed Trustee, Welsh Sculpture Trust. Awarded DBE. Commission for Brixton Estates, Dunstables, Flying men. Awarded Doctorate by Royal College of Art. Commission for All Saints Church, Basingstoke, Christ. Illustrated Kenneth McLeish’s Children of the Gods, published by Longman. Awarded Honorary Doctorate by Open University. Awarded Doctorate of Literature by University of Warwick. 1984 Solo Exhibitions: St Margaret’s Church, King’s Lynn, Norfolk; University of Surrey, Guildford. Group Exhibitions: British Artists’ Books 1970-1983, Atlantis Gallery, London; Drawings, School of Art, Guildford, Surrey; Man and Horse, Metropolitan Museum, New York. 1985 Solo Exhibitions: Royal Academy of Arts, London; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Waddington Graphics, London. 1986 Solo Exhibitions: Beaux Arts, Bath; Poole Arts Centre, Poole, Dorset; David Jones Art Gallery, Sydney; Read Stremmel, San Antonio, Texas. Group Exhibitions: Menagerie, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Bretton Hall, Wakefield; Barbican Centre, London; Chicago Art Fair. 1987 Solo Exhibitions: Beaux Arts, Bath; Coventry Cathedral, Warwickshire; Chesil Gallery, Portland, Dorset (graphics); Arun Art Centre, Arundal, Sussex; Bohun Gallery, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. Group Exhibitions: Abbot Hall, Cumbria; Royal College of Art, London; Albemarle Gallery, London; Kingfisher Gallery, Edinburgh; Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London; Salisbury Ecclesiastical Festival, Wiltshire; Thomas Agnew, London; Self Portrait, Art Site, Bath, Avon (touring). 1988 Awards: Honorary Doctorate, University of Cambridge; Honorary Doctorate, University of Exeter. Solo Exhibitions: Keele University, Staffordshire; Ayling Porteous Gallery, Chester, Cheshire (graphics). Group Exhibitions: Expo ’88, Brisbane; Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, Lancashire; Angela Flowers Gallery, London. 1989 Awards: Honorary Doctorate, University of Oxford; Honorary Doctorate, University of Keele; Retired from the board of Trustees of the British Museum. Solo Exhibitions; Hong Kong Festival; Fischer Fine Art, London; Lumley Cazalet, London (prints); New Grafton Gallery, London (drawings). Group Exhibitions: President’s Choice, Royal Academy and the Arts Club, London; Sacred in Art, Long and Ryle, London; The National Rose Society, Lincolnshire; Grape Lane Gallery, York; Tribute to Turner, Thomas Agnew, London. 1990 Award: Honorary Doctorate, University of Manchester. Solo Exhibitions: The National Museum for Woman in the Arts, Washington D.C.; Compass Gallery, Glasgow. 1991 Award: Honorary Doctorate, University of Bristol. Solo Exhibitions; Galerie Simonne Stern, New Orleans; Terry Dintenfass Gallery, New York; Chesil Gallery, Portland, Dorset; Bohun Gallery, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. Group Exhibition: Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London. 1992 Award: Companion of Honour. Died 18 April 1993. Exhibitions since 1993Memorial Exhibition, Beaux Arts, London. Also 1995, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2002. Elisabeth Frink, Memorial Exhibition, Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Goodwood Sculpture Park, Chichester. 1997 Salisbury Festival Exhibition (with the Edwin Young Trust, Salisbury and Dorset County Museum, Dorchester). 1997 Elisabeth Frink 1930-1993, Beaux Arts, London 1998 Kilkenny Festival Exhibition, Ireland. 1998 Lumley Cazalet, London. Fifty Years of British Sculpture, Den Haag, Netherlands. Witley Court Sculpture Park Exhibition, Worchester. 2000 Beaux Arts, London 2001 Elisabeth Frink, Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham University. 2002 Beaux Arts, London Head On(Art with the brain in mind), The Science Museum, London, a Wellcome Trust Exhibition. Elisabeth Frink, Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Beaux Arts, London 2006 Beaux Arts, London
Publications1968 Gray.R, Frink, Bratby, Barnes, Jackson, East Kent and Folkestone Arts Centre. 1972 The Art of Elisabeth Frink, by E. Mullins, published by Lund Humphreys, London 1984 Elisabeth Frink, Sculpture, Catalogue Raisone é, Published by Harpvale Press, Wiltshire 1985 Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture and Drawings 1952-1984, Exhibition catalogue, curated by Sarah Kent, Royal Academy of Arts, London 1989 Cameron, Nigel and Frink, Elisabeth, Elisabeth Frink: Recent Sculptures and Drawings, Exhibition catalogue, Fischer Fine Art, London 1990 Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture and Drawings 1950-1990, Exhibition catalogue, The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. 1994 Elisabeth Frink, Exhibition catalogue, introduction by Peter Murray. Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Bretton Hall, Wakefield 1994 Frink, a Portrait, by Edward Lucie-Smith and Elisabeth Frink, published by Bloomsbury. 1994 Sculpture and Drawings 1965-1993, Exhibition catalogue, preface by Edward Lucie-Smith, Lumley Cazalet, London 1994 Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture since 1984 and Drawings, by Edward Lucie-Smith, Published by Art Books International 1997 Elisabeth Frink 1930-1993, Exhibition catalogue, forward by Edward Lucie-Smith, Beaux Arts, London 1997 Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture and Drawings 1966-1993, Exhibition catalogue, Lumley Cazalet, London 1997 Elisabeth Frink – A certain unexpectedness – Sculpture, Graphics and Textiles, Exhibition catalogue, forward by Canon Jeremy Davies, ‘Elisabeth Frink’ by Edward Lucie-Smith, ‘A certain unexpectedness’ by Annette Downing, ‘Man and the Animal World’ by John Hubbard, Salisbury Festival with the Edwin Young Trust, Wiltshire County Council and Dorset County Museum. Frink, The official biography of Elisabeth Frink by Stephen Gardiner Published by Harper Collins. Original Prints, Catalogue Raisonné by Caroline Wiseman. Published by Art Books International. 2002 Elisabeth Frink, Sculptures and Drawings, Exhibition catalogue, forward by Edward Lucie-Smith, Beaux Arts, London 2004 Elisabeth Frink, Exhibition catalogue, forward by Elspeth Moncrieff, Beaux Arts, London 2006 Elisabeth Frink, Exhibition catalogue, forward by Brian Phelan, Beaux Arts, London
Public purchases since 1993 1997 Dying King, 1963. Torso, 1958. Goggle Head 1968. Riace I (Walking Man) 1987, Tate Collection.
Public Collections Great Britain Arts Council, London Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport Birmingham City Museums and Art Gallery Bolton Museum and Art Gallery British Museum, London Dorset County Museum, Dorchester East Haydock Branch Library, St. Helens Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge Ipswich Museums and Galleries Leicestershire Museums Middlesbrough Art Gallery Oldham Art Gallery Portsmouth City Museum and Art Gallery Royal Academy of Arts, London Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon, London Salford Art Gallery Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum, Salisbury Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh Sheffield City Art Galleries Sutton Manor Arts Centre, Winchester Tate Gallery, London Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool Whitworth Gallery, University of Manchester
United States of AmericaCarnegie Institute, Museum of Art, Pittsburgh Chrysler Museum, Provincetown Joseph Hirshhorn Collection, Washington Museum of Modern Art, New York
AustraliaBrisbane Art Gallery National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
South Africa South African National Gallery, Cape Town
Public Places Yorkshire Sculpture Park Royal Opera House, London Warwick University Grosvenor Square, London Outside WHSmith headquarters, Swindon, Wiltshire K & B Plaza, New Orleans, USA Dorchester Hospital, Dorset King’s College, Cambridge Exchange Square, Hong Kong Bristol Museum The Montague Shopping Centre, Worthing Royal College of Physicians, London Chatsworth House, Derbyshire Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge West facade, Anglican Cathedral, Liverpool |
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