Talk:UNESCO Reclining Figure 1957–58

Public commissions

The lead says that the UNESCO Reclining Figure was Moore's "last major public commission in which he created a new work for a specific site". Where does this claim come from? This might be true for some values of "major", "public commission" and "new work", but Nuclear Energy and Sundial, among others, potentially also fit that description. I think that a note qualifying exactly what is meant and why later works don't count might be useful here, and/or a citation for the claim... Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 08:25, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

That was from Henry Moore - Writings and Conversations, p.27. As Moore tells it, Nuclear Energy was based on a maquette he had already made from some pebbles before he received the commission - see the quotation in the article: "It’s a rather strange thing really but I’d already done the idea for this sculpture before Professor McNeill and his colleagues from the University of Chicago came to see me on Sunday morning to tell me about the whole proposition" - and of course the large public version of the Sundial in Chicago - Man Enters the Cosmos - was an enlargement of the smaller a copy of the one in London made for The Times. Theramin (talk) 22:21, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Well, I don't want to be the one telling Alan Wilkinson that he's wrong about Henry Moore, but I'm still not convinced that Sundial doesn't count. Sure, the Chicago Sundial doesn't, but the Times cast (actually, the same size as the Chicago one) was made specifically to go in Printing House Square, and Moore made a sundial because Astor specifically asked for one: it wasn't based on one of his existing works. The Lincoln Center Reclining Figure seems not to have been based on a pre-existing maquette either, judging by Berthoud's description. Later than both of those, the Altar Piece for St. Stephen Walbrook wasn't based off of any pre-existing work as far as I know, and like the Sundial is sufficiently atypical of Moore's work that it seems likely that Moore didn't start thinking about that design until he was commissioned. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 09:22, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Oh, I must have been thinking about the smaller working model for the Sundial. I suppose you could say the commission for a company like The Times was not really "public" (I wonder where their full-size sundial is now: it was sold to IBM and displayed in Belgium for a time). As for the altar inside St Stephen Walbrook: is the interior of a building "public"? (I've not done the research, but I would not be at all surprised to find it was based on a found object.) As I understand it, the Lincoln Center statue was indeed based on some pre-existing work on two-piece figures and collected pieces of flint; certainly not a site-specific commission. The source is pretty clear, so unless you are saying it is wrong, I'd propose to keep it in. Theramin (talk) 23:59, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

The source is clear, and Wilkinson is unquestionably a reliable source for commentary on Moore's art, so I'm not suggesting changing it. "Verifiability, not truth" is no longer enshrined in our policy, but it certainly applies here: what I believe to be true is irrelevant; what subject-specific experts have written is true is what matters. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 08:06, 13 May 2017 (UTC)