Modern Bodies

Zanele Muholi, MaID, Brooklyn, New York  2015

This is one of a group of black and white self-portraits in Tate’s collection from the ongoing series Somnyama Ngonyama, in which Zanele Muholi portrays themself in a variety of guises, with a range of props and adornments and against diverse backgrounds (Tate P82041–P82049).

Dame Barbara Hepworth, Figure (Nanjizal)  1958

This sculpture is one of several related carvings made from the mid-1950s onwards. In these Hepworth explored her highly personal response to the natural environment, using abstract forms. Nanjizal is the name of a cove near St Ives, with striking arched cliff formations. However, the artist also described the sculpture as a representation of 'my sensations within myself'. Thus the work appears to suggest the qualities not only of a standing human figure, but also the contours of the cliffs and beach at Nanjizal.

Gallery label, September 2004

Vanessa Bell, Mrs St John Hutchinson  1915

This portrait shows the short-story writer Mary Hutchinson. She was the mistress of Bell’s husband Clive, a fact of which Bell was aware. This may account for the unflattering nature of the portrait. When it was exhibited, to the sitter’s consternation, Vanessa Bell wrote ‘It’s perfectly hideous...and yet quite recognisable’.

The dazzling colours are reminiscent of work by Matisse – an artist Bell revered – and the French ‘Fauve’ painters.

Gallery label, February 2010

Katy Moran, Lady Things  2009

Pablo Picasso, Head of a Woman  1924

This small painting demonstrates Picasso’s ability to capture an image through very direct means: taut lines laid over four colours. The stylisation of the face makes reference to the flattened planes associated with Cubism, but the incised line also reflects the texture and layering that dominated his work of the 1920s. He was much admired by the Surrealists but, even though sharing their interest in the unconscious and the irrational, resisted any official connection.

Gallery label, November 2007

John Milne, Resurgence  1976

Gwen John, Dorelia in a Black Dress  c.1903–4

This painting shows Dorelia McNeill, a friend of Gwen John who later became the partner of her brother Augustus. She portrays her in an informal, intimate way. John painted the work while she and McNeill were walking through France, sleeping rough and earning money from sketching and singing. Opportunities for women to make and study art were expanding around this time. In the 1890s, John trained at the Slade School of Art which admitted female students from 1871, unlike the older Royal Academy. She later had a successful artistic career in Paris.

Gallery label, January 2025

Lubaina Himid CBE RA, Ankledeep  1991

Ankledeep 1991 is a large painting by the British artist Lubaina Himid depicting two women standing behind a curving black banner. The banner covers most of the middle sections of the women’s bodies, so that the only parts of them visible are their heads, shoulders, legs, and, in the case of the woman on the right, her left arm. The women, who are both black and have short hair, look away to their left with expressionless faces. The figure on the right drops from her hand small scraps of blue-green paper covered with markings. Behind the women, at the level of their heads and shoulders, is a large block of yellow with horizontal, vertical and diagonal stripes within it in a slightly lighter yellow tone. Above the yellow area is a horizontal section of dark blue, and at the bottom, by the women’s bare legs and feet, are thin strips reminiscent of grass or straw but rendered in white, blue and grey paint.

Dame Elisabeth Frink, Spinning Man V  1965

Simon Bayliss, Teapot with screw-cap (Mermen of Zennor)  2021

Asger Jorn, The Timid Proud One  1957

Jorn had been a prominent member of CoBrA, a group of northern European artists whose improvisatory approach to painting was intended as a way of liberating their work from repressive bourgeois conventions. Although this painting was made several years after the group disbanded, its child-like style reflects the same principles. The figure embodies some mysterious inner struggle, perhaps reflected in the title. Jorn was a great believer in these kind of opposed dualities. ‘Tension in a work of art is negative-positive: repulsive-attractive, ugly-beautiful. If one of these poles is removed, only boredom is left’, he said.

Gallery label, November 2005

John Minton, Portrait of a Boy (?)  c.1948

Rebecca Horn, Unicorn  1968–9

Roger Hilton, Oi Yoi Yoi  1963

In the early 1960s, Hilton’s art could be figurative or abstract but it always had an erotic charge. This is, perhaps, the most literal description of a situation in his art of that time. He once stated that ‘there are situations, states of mind, moods, etc., which call for some artistic expression’. He gave the source of the painting - ‘my wife dancing on a verandah, we were having a quarrel. She was nude and angry at the time and she was dancing up and down shouting oi yoi yoi – but it is more universal than that.’

Gallery label, September 2016

Keith Vaughan, Ninth Assembly of Figures (Eldorado Banal)  1976

Amedeo Modigliani, Head  c.1911–12

This is one of a series of radically simplified heads with elongated faces and stylised features that Modigliani made between 1911 and 1913. He was inspired by art from countries such as Cambodia, Egypt and Ivory Coast, which he saw in Paris’s ethnography museum. His patron Paul Alexandre recalled how Modigliani worked in this period: ‘When a figure haunted his mind, he would draw feverishly with unbelievable speed… He sculpted the same way. He drew for a long time, then he attacked the block directly.’

Gallery label, January 2019

William Turnbull, Idol 2  1956

The majority of Turnbull's sculptures of the mid - 1950s are very simplified upright forms of human height standing directly on the ground. This is one of a series of 'Idols' made between 1955-7 where the human figure has been refined and streamlined so that it resembles a spear or leaf shape, sometimes incised with surface marks. The integral base suggests feet and the sculpture possesses an elementary nose and breasts indicating a female figure. This generalised human form evokes sculpture of a much earlier period, for example from ancient Greece or Egypt. There are echoes of the sculpture of Giacometti, whom Turnbull met in the 1940s in Paris.

Gallery label, August 2004

Rebecca Horn, Performances II  1973

Horn designed these ‘body extensions’ for herself and her friends. They limit or expand how a person can move and interact with their environment. These performances were made specifically for the camera. They show how the sculptures change the wearers’ relationship to the surrounding space and to other people. Horn has commented: ‘Looking back at these first pieces you always see a kind of cocoon, which I used to protect myself. Like the fans where I can lock myself in, enclose myself, then open and integrate another person into an intimate ritual. This intimacy of feeling and communication was a central part in the performances.’

Gallery label, May 2019