Mining the Diaries 89: England
Sharendo, Silvershell View, Port Isaac, Cornwall, 12th July 2014
A 60 mile drive down to St Ives via Wadebridge and Camborne. We parked on the edge of town and took the train in from Lelant Saltings. The town was very busy and with its winding streets and changes of elevation it felt very three dimensional after the flat townscapes of Cambridgeshire. It seemed to have a confusing array of beaches to a first time visitor.
There also seemed to be too many galleries offering a tyrannical choice of generic pictures. We stuck to the Tate St Ives and Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden.
The Tate, a stylish building in a great location looking out over Porthmear Beach, opened in 1993. Lacking a permanent collection, it’s a matter of catching what happens to be on show when you are there. We were lucky enough to see International Exchanges: Modern Art and St Ives 1915–1965, which explored the national and international contexts that shaped art in St Ives in the 1940s through to the 1960s. It showed how the art of post-war St Ives drew upon two movements of modern art: one the utopian ideals of Constructivism from Moscow in the 1910s through Berlin and Paris between the wars; and the other a tradition of craft and handmade work that links the carvings of Brancusi and the ceramics of Bernard Leach and others.
Barbara Hepworth first came to live in Cornwall with her husband Ben Nicholson and their young family at the outbreak of war in 1939. She lived and worked in Trewyn studios from 1949 until her death in 1975. The Hepworth Museum and Garden felt more intimate and restful and allowed for a more sensual, less cerebral, experience of the works in the lush garden with the contrasts between wood, stone and foliage. The studio was a calm oasis of whiteness.