Standing Female Figure (Japanese Girl)

Description

From 1950 to 1953, Butler was the first Gregory Fellow in Sculpture. In the 1930s, he had trained and worked as an architect, and taught at the Architectural Association. During World War II he worked as a blacksmith (he was a conscientious objector) and wrote extensively on building practices in wartime, following which he reverted to architecture and began to take classes at Chelsea School of Art. His progress was swift. By 1949, he had his first one-man exhibition; in 1952 he was one of eight sculptors chosen to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale; and in 1953 he was awarded first prize in the international competition for a monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner, defeating Calder, Hepworth and others in the process. Afterwards, he taught at the Slade School and headed its Sculpture Department. Butler was a highly intellectual man, a lecturer, writer and broadcaster, and in 1962 he published a book, 'Creative Development', on his ideas about the process of creation.


It was during his three years as Gregory Fellow at Leeds that Butler's sculptural style matured. In the early 1950s, his work was highly dramatic, an anguished statement about the human condition. His figures are deformed by tension, both physical and psychological, either stretched or compacted. Sometimes, even without heads, they seem to be shouting. One is reminded of the paintings of Francis Bacon, but in three dimensions. For Butler in this period, space is as much a part of the work as the figure. It appears as an antagonistic force and his figures are contending with it. In the mid-1960s, when the 'Japanese Girl' and several similar works were created, Butler had turned in another direction, and in retrospect the period can be seen as a hiatus between the dramatic early works and what followed later. The figures are no longer contorted. They are, for the most part, straight up and down, torsos with heads but no arms, drawn into themselves as if waiting for something to happen.
Space is only the space around them, it does not concern them. They are enigmatic and, for that reason perhaps, still interesting but quietly so. In subsequent years Butler's work featured highly eroticized female nudes, realistically coloured and provocatively presented, which did not please the critics.

Physical characteristics

Category: Sculpture

Technique: bronze

Medium: bronze

Support: stone base

Object: width 125mm height 430mm depth 125mm

Base: width 100mm height 60mm depth 80mm

Measurement details: Object height includes pin/ screw for attachment to base

Accession details

Accession number: LEEUA 1994.001

Accession date: 1994

Source: Gift; Burton, Audrey