Exhibition Review (Personal response)

Throughout my visit to the Royal Academy of arts, I completed a gallery sheet to reflect my comprehension of the exhibition. The artist that I chose to study further in the gallery sheet is Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. In my opinion, Gaudier’s most illustrated work is the red stone dancer; therefore, I then applied my pencil skills into a vividly and delicately drawn sketch of this master piece. As I first glanced at this marvelous sculpture, various words came across my mind – ‘surreal’, ‘naturalistic’, ‘spontaneous’ and ‘primitivism’. The red stone dancer first attracted me by its exotic feeling and based on the combination of Aztec geometry and Indian gracefulness. Moreover, this mast piece is also a typical vorticism work, which is loosely curved and reflects the artist’s versatility and innovation in its range from Cubist abstraction to primitivism. In fact, its geometric simplification stresses the need of reduction of complex sculptural techniques, so what both expressed and contained emotions hidden in the work can be released. As Gaudier’s most representational piece of art, the ‘Red Stone Dancer’ can also be linked with the other masterpieces such as ‘Bird Devouring a Fish’. To develop my understanding of Gaudier’s work, I also completed another biro sketch of this piece of art, again, this masterpiece was loosely curved to enhance its visual and aesthetic effectiveness. Overall, I think the ‘wild thing’ assisted me to comprehend the connotation of the extraordinary and delicate sculpture and also reinforced my knowledge of the fateful modern-art threesome who totally changed the course of British sculpture. Furthermore, it is the spirit and passion of these three tremendous and phenomenal stone carvers which inspired sculptors in the future, and also, paving the way for the rise of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.