Exhibition of the week: 1913: the Shape of Time, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
Modest in size, immodest in ambitions, this show asks if there was a defining cultural moment for sculpture in 1913, and considers how the objects fabricated in that year speak to other times. Have they become a part of some long-dead past, or are they vitally alive?
A significant idea was the notion of simultaneity, of successive aspects of the same object on the same canvas. Immediately, we think of Cubism and Futurism. Ardengo Soffici's Deconstruction of the Planes of a Lamp disassembles the way in which a lamp sheds light; Picasso's Bottle of Vieux Marc, Glass, Guitar and Newspaper seems to belong in the hectically transient world from which it has scavenged its parts.
Most prescient of all is Marcel Duchamp's 3 Standard Stoppages: solid, three-dimensional representations of the haphazard fall of three pieces of string. The insistence on one year is a touch fanciful, but sculpture was changing dramatically in these years, and we cannot fault this show's verve.
(0113 246 7467; henry-moore.org) to 17 Feb
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