I’ve found myself constantly reaching for these colours, shapes and forms that seemed organic, soft and round. I have never found the right words to describe it and felt I was grasping at straws and so I decided to read through my trusty dictionary for critical thinking again and came across biomorphism.
I’m diving in and exploring this term but it seems to be the start of something so crucial to my practice.
In the Tate Art Terms, Biomorphic forms or images are ones that while abstract nevertheless refer to, or evoke, living forms such as plants and the human body. Biomorphic comes from combining the Greek words ‘bios’, meaning life, and ‘morphe’, meaning form. Beginning after World War I, many European artists were looking inward as well as the outside world. Many took part in the burgeoning interest in psychology and the physical sciences, finding inspiration in both the invisible signs and symbols that bubbled up from the subconscious and the visible internal cellular structures and life forms that make up the body. With roots deeply connected to Dada and Surrealism, This fluid way of creating art from emotion and its resulting curvilinear aesthetic infiltrated all parts of society from painting and sculpture to decorative arts and interior design.
Barbara Hepworth was one of the first artists that I looked into in relation with Biomorphism, she said;
"Carving to me is more interesting than modelling, because there is an unlimited variety of materials from which to draw inspiration. Each material demands a particular treatment and there are an infinite number of subjects in life each to be re-created in a particular material. In fact, it would be possible to carve the same subject in a different stone each time, throughout life, without a repetition of form.
If a pebble or an egg can be enjoyed for the sake of its shape only, it is one step towards a true appreciation of sculpture. A tree trunk, with its changing axis, swellings and varied sections, fully understood, takes us a step further. Then finally it is realised that abstract form, the relation of masses and planes, is that which gives sculptural life; this, then, admits that a piece of sculpture can be purely abstract or non-representational."
I think its really important in my work that the subjects I investigate are present but I also feel a strong sense of responsibility towards the materiality of the works, I believe Hepworth also felt this way.
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