Robert Adams (1917 − 1984)
Robert Adams
Circles occur in nature, and squares don't, so, in his introduction to the 1962 exhibition, J. P. Hodin saw their combination in Adams's work as 'one of nature and of the human mind.' The way Adams sited his tubular Column (1961) in the British Pavilion proved the point.
In front of a window facing the nearby lagoon, it contrasted with the boxy, architectural angles of the frames and filled with the light from the big, round summer Venice sun, picking out what Alastair Grieve called the
tide-like patterns of triangles of various sizes cut into streams of grouped rectangles and crossed by swirls of slim rods [that] recall, though do not directly copy, patterns of leaves, shoals of fish, strata of friable rock.
Since it was converted from a café in 1909, the building has spent the last century being reinvented by the art shown in it. It worked well in 1962, but Adams was actually more comfortable placing his work in a building before it was 'already up'. To reflect this, the show included a photograph of the1959 façade for Gelsenkirchen municipal theatre, Germany, which he considered his 'greatest success'.
He and the other five artists – including Yves Klein – had been involved by the architects, Ruhnau, Rave & von Hausen, from the outset, and 'were collaborating', they felt, 'in creating something new and important'. Like Maquette for architectural screen (1956) – one of the 41 Adams sculptures at Venice – it uses obviously man-made shapes, but lets them soften, intertwine and grow along its 22 metres, like something not concrete and angular, but organic. This point in the construction process suited his instinctive way of working; Tim Hilton called him 'a natural, one of those artists whose innate sense of form bestowed calm and lucidity on everything he produced'.
Under the influence of 'quite definitely Moore in the beginning and maybe Hepworth', Adams had committed to sculpture in 1946, producing abstracted figures and unfolding buds, and attracting the career-long support of the Gimpel Fils Gallery within a year.
But, by 1962, Grieve was careful to stress that Column does 'not directly copy'; Adams had abandoned figuration by this point. He'd told the ICA's 1957 Statements exhibition that, though he admitted being 'excited by certain relationships observed in nature and this may be the germ of a new work', for him, these experiences had to be 'assimilated before being used'. Though Grieve points out that we know 'patterns of leaves, of pebbles or of limpets clustered on rocks' caught his eye – he left behind photographs – he needed to work these visual stimuli into something 'completely objective, with its own life and laws'.
He certainly wasn't alone in this aim; it was notably shared by his friend Victor Pasmore, and Grieve points out that the Biennale works involving 'large rectangular or curved metal planes, held in orthogonal supports [probably meaning Climbing forms No.1 (1961) or Circular form and bar (1962)] resemble the forms in Pasmore's paintings done at that time'. Nevertheless, Robert Melville thought his success stood out:
to those of us who have grown so used to the sign language of Paul Klee that we can deduce the thing signified from the most far-fetched diagram, this detachment of Adams seems a very real achievement.
Adams was also aware that, 'if you are going to leave out the human form from your work then you must put something back in its place.' His 'something' was, again, fairly typical of the time:
I am concerned with energy, a physical property inherent in metal, [and] in contrasts between linear forces and masses, between solid and open areas […] the aim is stability and movement in one form.
In 1952, this sort of thought was rounded up in the Biennale 'New Aspects of British Sculpture', a show designed to point out how a generation influenced by Henry Moore had turned, from direct carving of stone, to what Herbert Read called a metallic 'Geometry of Fear': the square winning out over the circle.
To Read, selection committee member at both his Biennales, Adams stood out for building 'forms with small but compact masses, generally of wood', but was even more so 'isolated' in his concern with architecture. By this point, he'd already begun to make a name for himself with one-man shows in Paris and New York in 1949 and 1950, and an Arts Council commission for the Festival of Britain in 1951.
Even with all this press, abstract art was hard to sell in the early '50s; Adams and his contemporaries in the London Group collective were often forced to run their own shows from private houses. Thankfully, as well as the support of Gimpel Fils, from 1949, Adams could count on a steady income as a teacher at the London's Central School of Arts and Crafts, where he started working in metal. By 1961, he could afford to give up teaching, and arrange one-man shows in Hull and Newcastle in preparation for his Biennale.
Adams's show was slightly overshadowed by both of his Pavilion-mates winning prizes, and Giacometti dominating the press, but he managed to sell Two circular forms No.2 (1962) to the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Rome. More excitingly, the show brought him two site-specific commissions; one for Peggy Guggenheim in Venice, and one for a building in Kuwait. Complaining 'it is difficult to show non-figurative works very well in exhibitions', he relished the opportunities. Neither commission came through in the end, but the critic Lawrence Alloway thought the Kuwaiti plans in particular struck a perfect balance between architecture and animal:
here sculpture shall act as intermediary between the public building and the human beings, as an integral part of the site.
Later that year, there was another show with his stalwarts at Gimpels, but as he told Charles S. Spencer in 1966, in terms of selling work, 'I can't say it does in England. Almost everything still goes to America, except for public collections here.'
In 1962 he'd gone with some work to America, and noticed 'I was already established, people took notice of me and were interested in my work, so I had a proper entrée into the art world of New York, which was an exciting one.' As for public collections, when the Tate bought Screen Form No.2 (1962) the year it was made, he asked them to replicate how similar patterned works – like Column – had been shown at the Biennale:
The sculpture should be free standing with a well-lit plain white background so that light reflected in it can shine through the perforations.
The Venice show also featured 28 drawings, paintings and collages, all important forms to Adams, but as early as 1966, he was telling Spencer
the older I get the more I realise that everyone has only got a few ideas. One thing derives from another and an artist's work must be continuous. Sometimes one makes a leap forward, especially after a break.
This calm sense of personal progression meant ignoring fashion, which, combined with modesty, was lethal for an artist's career in the 1960s' din of brashness and self-promotion. Over a 40-year career, he produced over 700 sculptures; but Grieve finds the removal of many of the site-specific pieces 'symptomatic of the lack of concern for his art today'. The Gelsenkirchen mural will stay up as long as the building does, as a reminder of a genuine artist-architect collaboration.
Tom Overton, 2009.
Sources
Herbert Read, 'New Aspects of British Sculpture', in The British Pavilion: Exhibition of works by Sutherland, Wadsworth et. al. [exh. cat.] (London: British Council, 1952).
Alastair Grieve, The Sculpture of Robert Adams (London: Henry Moore Foundation in Association with Lund Humphries, 1992).
J. P. Hodin, 'Robert Adams', in Ceri Richards, Robert Adams, Hubert Dalwood [Venice exh. cat.] (London: The British Council, 1962).
Robert Melville, Harper's Bazaar, January 1952.
Tim Hilton, 'An Objective Lesson in Simplicity', The Independent on Sunday, 31st January 1993.
Alastair Grieve, Robert Adams 1917-1984: A Sculptor's Record (London: Tate Gallery, 1992).
Charles S. Spencer, 'Profile: Robert Adams', Arts Review, 20th August, 1966.
Robert Adams, Exhibition of Statements, ICA, 16th January – 23rd February 1957.
Lawrence Alloway, Nine Abstract Artists: Their Work and Theory (London: Alec Tiranti Ltd., 1954).
