A Sculptor's Thoughts

*I have been asked to address you as a sculptor and it might therefore be appropriate if I began by trying to give you some ideas of my own attitude to the art I practice. Why have I chosen to be a sculptor, or why has the art of sculpture chosen me as an exponent of its special aims? If I can answer that question satisfactorily I may be in a better position to answer some of the specific questions which are before this conference.

Some become sculptors because they like using their hands or because they love certain materials - that is, they like the craft of sculpture - I do. But beyond this, one is a sculptor because one has a special kind of sensibility for shapes and forms, in their solid physical actuality. I feel that I can best express myself, that I can best give outward form to certain inward feelings or ambitions by the manipulation of solid materials - wood, stone, or metal. The problems that arise in the manipulation of such materials, problems of mass and volume, of light in relation to form and of volume in relation to space, the problem of continually learning to grasp and understand form more completely in its full spatial reality, all these are problems that interest me as an artist and which i believe I can solve by putting down, building up or welding together solid three-dimensional materials.

But what is my purpose in such activity? It might, of course, be merely a desire to amuse myself, to kill time or create a diversion. But then I should not find it necessary, as I do, to exhibit my sculpture publicly, to hope for its sale and for its permanent disposition either in a private house, a public building o an open site in a city. My desire for such a destination for my work shows that I am trying, not merely to express my own feelings or emotions for my own satisfaction, but also to communicate those feelings or emotions ti my fellow men. Sculpture, even more than painting (which generally speaking, is restricted to interiors) is a public art, and for that reason I am at once involved in those problems which we have met here to discuss - the relation of the artist to society - more particularity, the relation of the artist to the particular form of society which we have at this moment of history.

Henry Moore

*This is the beginning of an address given at an international conference of artists under the auspices of UNESCO in Venice in 1952