The Archer
Transcript
David Tarnow: In a 1966 CBC Radio interview, Henry Moore tells of how architect, Viljo Revell, approached him with a commission to create a sculpture for his new City Hall Square.
Henry Moore: I got a letter from Viljo Revell asking if he could come and see me to talk about a possible project. And he came and he brought drawings and perspectives of the town hall. And I told him that it seems to me that what matters most is that you put up a good piece of sculpture, not that it should represent justice or peace or whatever your theme is. Because if a thing is too obviously what it is, even the average person will say, "Oh, I see what that means" and then dismisses it.
And so we then agreed that if any idea I was going to do should seem to be right for the position and space that he should come along again and we'd have a look and think about it.
Well he was ill for a year and then he came back. And in the meantime I had done the small version of what we now call “The Archer’. The Archer really is a name for me to identify that I was doing it because it has a kind of bow on one side and a sort of tension between the two forms that looks as though it might be stretching like an archer stretching a bow. But it's not in any literal sense representing an archer.
And he saw it, and he then said this is exactly what he thought would be right, the proportion and the rhythm, contrast to his building or the relationship to it would be right and between us we worked out what size it should be. Because although a thing in scale might be right, if a thing is with architecture you have to make the physical size right or else the architecture can forfeit, or it can be wrong, it can seem to be too small or too big. So, between us we worked this out, which is the size it is now.
Because I believe that one should make, I mean from my point of view now, a large sculpture is more interesting than a small one because one can exploit in a larger thing the surprise, the time element of walking 'round something is a slower one than in seeing a small thing. And so you have this variety in timing of going 'round a large sculpture. And that's why it being in a plaza is something that pleases me.
Runtime 00:02:54