Having devoted yesterday’s post to a discussion of the work of Antony Gormley (responding to criticism of him by Lanny May Freedman) by coincidence I opened this month’s edition of Apollo magazine this morning to find an article about him.* It is interesting to find both a measure of agreement (if only implied) between the two authors, and a good deal of distance between their approaches. I am glad to say that my attempt to blunt the severity of Freedman’s critique of the sculptor gains some support from Schwartz.
One remarkable feature of the Apollo interview is the character of Gormley’s language, which is far less overblown than the quotations produced by Freedman. The thought has crossed my mind that in any interview the subject often takes an important cue from the interviewer in relation to how the discussion is pitched. There is none of the overblown over-theorisation of art, on this occasion, for which Freedman castigates him. A part of the difference might be explained by the passage of time. Another Place dates from 1997, and The Angel of the North dates from 1998, and her appraisal of Gormley refers heavily to these two relatively early pieces and his observations on them. It would not surprise me at all to discover that Gormley himself might want to backpedal away from the hyperbole of his responses to interviews so early in his career. His remarks in the Apollo interview are far more grounded.
A common feature of the art world more generally is that artists find a seam that yields gold, and they go on working it for all it’s worth. Gormley’s overproduction of the casts of his own body is only a more prominent example of something we see over and over again. I have a good friend who (at least for the time being) seems to have hit the jackpot with a particular style and subject, and indeed a particular palette, and who is now working almost on an industrial scale to turn these out.** He is far from being the only one. I remember remarking to my wife a couple of years ago, touring the Great North Art Show in Ripon, that more than one of the exhibitors seemed to be working the same trick. A lot of the material on show looked terribly familiar. That is too often what “successful” artists do.
The interesting thing about the Schwartz interview is that it does point up Gormley’s willingness to diversify. His subject-matter is still the human body, but if you want a cypher for that which is generically human, that seems fair enough to me. I am intrigued by his recent gestures in the direction of neolithic cave art.
I admit that I am not a great fan of the work of Antony Gormley, and I am happy to go along with the general claim made by Freedman to the effect that it is probably heavily over-valued. Nevertheless, fair is fair, and I don’t believe that it is appropriate to dismiss him entirely on the basis of a few bad attacks of “art bollocks”, or worse still, on a bout of resentment fuelled by the inappropriately generous sponsorship of his patrons.
*Gabrielle Schwartz, “Body of work”, Apollo, April 2021, pp. 38-43.
**I’ll space his blushes, and protect our friendship, by keeping my comments anonymous!