Modern Landscapes
5 rooms in Modern Conversations
Works in this room explore environments from Cornwall and across the world
How do you define a landscape? Beyond depicting scenes of nature, these works consider environments seen from above, below or within.
In the 20th century, manufacturing, technology and transport dramatically transformed how people lived and worked. Growing cities and industrialisation altered surroundings forever. Some artists responded with radical approaches that broke away from traditional painting and sculpture. The artists shown here were influenced by developments in fields such as science, politics and philosophy. They borrowed from these to investigate our environments and how we understand them. Their works question and reflect on our modern relationships with landscapes, sometimes going beyond what we can recognise or see. In this display, landscapes range from the vast to the invisible and also bring cultural and political perspectives.
Spotlight on Marlow Moss (1889-1958)
Art is as – Life – forever in the state of Becoming
Marlow Moss moved from Paris to Cornwall in 1941, fleeing the war in mainland Europe. They were a co-founder of the group Abstraction-Création whose international members wanted to create art that would speak across cultures and capture the spirit of the time. Moss pioneered the graphic ‘double line’ motif, using systems if measurement and proportion to create a dynamic ‘rhythm in space’. Moss explained this in letters to Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, who later used it in his work.
Moss’s abstract work and deliberately masculine appearance challenged both artistic and social conventions of the time. Moss’s approach to modern art and identity continues to provoke vital debate about art history, making, and gender.
Tate St Ives
Level 3
Ongoing
Entry to both the display and the gallery is free for Tate Members, Locals' Pass holders and under 18s.
Become a memberJesus Rafael Soto, Horizontal Movement 1963
As the spectator passes this work, an optical effect causes the background of black and white lines to vibrate and flicker. Soto described Horizontal Movement as ‘one of the first truly mobile works that I had made’, referring to the addition of an iron rod that hangs in front of the lines. As in all his works the background lines are drawn by hand.
Gallery label, September 2004
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Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, White, Black and Yellow (Composition February) 1957
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Marlow Moss, Untitled c.1950
This is one of three sculptures by Marlow Moss in which sheets of metal have been folded to create a pattern based on the structure and planes of a tetrahedron. The location of the other two is not known, but one of them is identified in a black and white archival photograph held in Tate Archives, which has an inscription by Moss on the reverse giving the title as Construction Based on a Tetrahedron and the date 1950. This photograph shows a construction composed of the same pattern of repeated tetrahedron planes as seen in Untitled c.1950, but extended so that it is formed of approximately five times as many elements. Each of the sculptures is fixed to a narrow cuboid base.The structure of this sculpture is characteristic of Moss’s three-dimensional work, which involved the exploration of concepts of geometrical mathematics. Moss is known to have read the philosophy of mathematician Matila Ghyka, whose ideas were founded upon the Pythagorean concept that the universe is formed entirely from principles of geometry. Since the late 1920s Moss had been familiar with the work and theories of the pioneering abstract artist Piet Mondrian (1872–1944), and is known to have met him in Paris in 1929.Moss attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London between 1917 and 1919. Moss’s life during the 1920s was characterised by movements between London and Cornwall. After a four-year period in Cornwall, in 1923 Moss returned to London. Moss’s name then changed from Marjorie to Marlow. A few years later, Moss was again in Cornwall, studying at Penzance Art School. In London from 1926, Moss had an exhibition with the London Group in 1927. That year Moss also moved to Paris, and attended the Académie Moderne and met Netty Nijhoff-Wind, who previously owned this sculpture. Part of a relatively varied community of artists associated with the Paris-based group Abstraction-Création in the mid-1930s, Moss here encountered the ideas and works of Swiss and French constructivists Max Bill (1908–1994) and Jean Gorin (1899–1981).During the Second World War Moss stayed with Nijhoff in the Netherlands, before fleeing for London in 1940, leaving a lot of work behind. Upon returning to England, Moss again travelled to Cornwall, and settled in Lamorna, south-west of Penzance. It is here that Moss began to make metal constructions such as a polished copper column of c.1944, partly inspired by having attended a course in architecture at Penzance during the war. Although Moss continued to make regular trips to Paris after the end of the war and exhibited in international groupings such as the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Lamorna remained Moss’s permanent residence until her death in 1958.The sculpture Untitled c.1950 is characteristic of Moss’s sculptural works of the 1950s, many of which were conceived as explorations in geometrical relationships. In material and form is it reminiscent of the totemic but restrained resonance of works by the modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876–1957) and the abstract sculpting of geometrical planes in the early work of Naum Gabo (1890–1977). In its basis upon non-representational geometry it is also closely connected to the tenets of post-war constructivism in Britain and further afield. Within the artist’s output of this period, these tetrahedron constructions are comparable to other metal constructions formed of geometric elements, such as the steel Spatial Construction 1949 (Nijhoff/Oosthoek Collection, Zurich), and later forms of polished brass sheets, including Concentric Circles Projected in Space 1953 (whereabouts unknown). Over the following years Moss’s sculptures took on added complexity regarding the range of materials and forms assembled together, as demonstrated by Balanced Forms in Gunmetal on Cornish Granite 1956–7 (Tate T01114). Further reading Florette Dijkstra, Marlow Moss: Constructivist the Reconstruction Project, translated Annie Wright, Den Bosch, Netherlands 1995.Lucy Howarth, Marlow Moss (1889–1958), Ph.D. thesis, University of Plymouth 2008, series illustrated p.129.Sabine Schaschl (ed.), A Forgotten Maverick: Marlow Moss, exhibition catalogue, Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich 2017, illustrated p.83.Rachel Rose SmithAugust 2018Revised 2023
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Donna Conlon, Coexistence 2003
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Nalini Malani, Untitled I 1970/2017
Untitled I is one of three works in Tate’s collection from a series of black and white photograms by the Indian artist Nalini Malani (see also Untitled II [Tate P82089] and Untitled III [Tate P82090]). The three images all date from 1970 and are visually similar in nature: monochromatic geometric studies in light and form. Originally produced as photograms, exposing light-sensitive paper to light without the use of a camera, these works now exist as photographic prints in an edition of ten. Tate’s copies were printed in 2017 and are number four in the edition. The photograms were first exhibited at the Pundole Art Gallery, Bombay in 1970, printed to a similar scale as the later edition.
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John A. Park, Snow Falls on Exmoor 1939
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Victor Pasmore, Spiral Motif in Green, Violet, Blue and Gold: The Coast of the Inland Sea 1950
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Rasheed Araeen, Lovers 1968
Araeen trained as a civil engineer, and his sculptures are constructed using geometric forms. Lovers combines two structures, each of which consists of a series of triangles that have been rotated and orientated in different ways. The work can be shown in two different configurations: either with the two parts next to each other, or on top of each other. This introduction of alternative possibilities challenges the idea of the artwork as a fixed object conceived by a single individual.
Gallery label, October 2016
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Paul Feiler, Janicon LXII 2002
Janicon LXII 2002 is a square abstract painting on canvas. This canvas has been stretched over a built-up stretcher that, with the addition of silver leaf around the edges of the canvas, provides an illusion of a separate frame for the painting. This is however not the case, and the silver leaf border sets up the sharply recessive space that is described by succeeding horizontal and vertical bands of pale blues, greys, greens and browns. The back board of this illusionistic space is a field of similarly coloured vertical bands, in the centre of which is an upright oblong, bounded off-centre in gold leaf. The title brings together references of the double Janus head that looks both back in time and towards the future, with the gold and silver leaf of Byzantine religious icons. Despite the use of geometry and pale colour, the paintings in Feiler’s extensive Janicon series, of which this is a part, are built up of many layers of colour over a long period of time.
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Karl Weschke, The Nile near Kom Ombo 1994
Weschke went to Egypt, on an organised tour, in 1990 and again in 1992. His work already showed his fascination with the notion of immensity, and the powerful effect on him of the ancient sites was inevitable. He travelled south from Cairo to Aswan, by way of Giza and the Valley of Kings at Luxor. Kom Ombo is on the eastern bank of the Nile north of Aswan. While awed by the antiquity of such things as the unfinished obelisk near Aswan, the artist was also powerfully affected by the landscape. Here, the spare painting style emphasises the vastness of the desert that towers over the figures and camels on the riverbank.
Gallery label, August 2004
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Sir Terry Frost, Winter 1956, Yorkshire 1956
Frost's move from St Ives to Leeds in Yorkshire introduced him to a new landscape. In the Yorkshire Dales he felt like a tiny presence in a huge expanse of space.
He related this unusually long, thin work to a particular experience: tobogganing with friends down a steep hill in Leeds, quite out of control. He said the black form at the top left derived from a Russian hat worn by his friend; the long sweep of the lines evokes his experience of careering down the hill.
Gallery label, September 2004
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Piet Mondrian, The Tree A c.1913
Mondrian’s fascination with trees developed out of his earlier landscape painting. This is one of his last paintings of trees and is based on realistic sketches made in the Netherlands. After settling in Paris and absorbing the influence of Cubism, Mondrian reworked the image almost to abstraction. The trunk and branches are condensed to a network of verticals and horizontals. He acknowledged the inspiration of nature but added, ‘I want to come as close as possible to the truth, and abstract everything from that until I reach the foundation of things’.
Gallery label, April 2013
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Cornelia Parker CBE RA, Measuring Niagara with a Teaspoon 1997
Created by the British artist Cornelia Parker in 1997, Measuring Niagara with a Teaspoon is a coiled length of silver wire mounted on a square of dark grey card that is set inside a glazed, pale wooden frame. The silver that makes up the piece of wire previously took the form of a Georgian teaspoon which, as the artist explained in a 2003 interview, has been melted and ‘“drawn” to the height of Niagara Falls’ – a set of three waterfalls situated on the border between the United States and Canada (Parker in Lisa Tickner, ‘A Strange Alchemy: Cornelia Parker’, Art History, vol.26, no.3, June 2003, p.385). While the precise length of the piece of wire is unknown, in 2013 the artist stated that it measures ‘approximately 187 feet’ (Cornelia Parker, ‘Works’, in Blazwick 2013, p.123). It is coiled into a thick ring that occupies a small portion of the grey card near to the centre of the frame and has numerous strands curving outwards around its edges. The frame is made from untreated ash wood and has mitred corners, and its reverse side comprises a sheet of fibreboard secured with masking tape.
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Bryan Wynter, Riverbed 1959
Wynter made his paintings with hundreds of brushmarks intersecting and laid over one another. This approach related him to the art informel movement or tachisme then prevalent in France. These laid emphasis on the matter of paint itself and the gestural marks made in response to one another. Wynter, who lived isolated on the moors of Cornwall, was fascinated by nature. His painting technique deliberately echoed natural processes of flow and erosion. Here the lighter brushstrokes seem to flow around larger areas like water around rocks – hence the work’s title.
Gallery label, November 2016
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Dame Barbara Hepworth, Sun Setting 1971
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Harry Callahan, Weeds in Snow 1942
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Harry Callahan, Grasses, Wisconsin 1958, printed no later than 1968
This is one of eight black and white photographs in Tate’s collection, all of which were taken by the American photographer Harry Callahan, that depict grassy settings in American landscapes. Five of them were shot in the mountains in the American state of Georgia, while one was taken in Wisconsin and the other two show unidentified locations. In all of the pictures the camera is angled down towards the ground, and since they are very tightly cropped and show only grass, the scale of the depicted areas is unclear. Seven of the images have very dense compositions that feature many blades of grass that tend to point in varying directions, lending the scene a highly textured and chaotic effect. These also combine thick patches of grass with individual blades, which are often clearly distinguished through sharp focus and where they pick up the light, giving them a bright, silvery tone. There are also dark shadows lying around and between the clumps of grass. One of the eight photographs – Grasses, Wisconsin 1958 (Tate P80161) – is somewhat different from the rest: rather than showing dense masses of grass, it is highly abstracted, featuring numerous small blades that appear as curving white lines against a largely black background.
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Marlow Moss, Untitled (White, Black, Blue and Yellow) c.1954
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Peter Lanyon, Thermal 1960
This painting is one of a series of works that were partly inspired by Lanyon's experience of gliding. Lanyon began gliding in 1959 and the sensation of flight added new dimensions to his landscape painting. He gained a much stronger feeling for the elements. He later explained: 'The air is a very definite world of activity as complex and demanding as the sea.. The thermal itself is a current of hot air rising and eventually condensing into cloud. It is invisible and can only be apprehended by an instrument such as a glider.. The basic source of all soaring flight is the thermal'.
Gallery label, September 2004
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Marlow Moss, Balanced Forms in Gunmetal on Cornish Granite 1956–7
Marlow Moss, born Marjorie Moss, studied briefly at the Slade School and then at Penzance Art School in Cornwall. In 1927 after a short but crucial visit to Paris, in which Moss was overwhelmed by the work of the painter Piet Mondrian, Moss broke off connections with England and went to live and work in Paris. Moss made contact with Mondrian then and subsequently became a pupil of Léger and Ozenfant. With the advent of the Second World War, Moss fled from France and returned to Cornwall. There, Moss made abstract paintings in pure colours and some geometric sculptural compositions, of which this is a rare example.
Gallery label, August 2023
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Vanessa Winship, Ripple on pond, Valparaiso, Indiana 2011–12
This black and white photograph is one of several works in Tate’s collection by the British photographer Vanessa Winship. It comes from a series entitled she dances on Jackson 2011–12 (Tate P82445–P82458). The series exists in an edition of twelve Fine Art pigment prints and Tate’s prints are various numbers from the main edition. The photographs were taken in the United States after Winship had won the Prix Henri Cartier-Bresson in 2011; she spent over a year travelling across America, from California to Virginia, New Mexico to Montana. She went with the intention of exploring a country in the throes of economic decline and to assess the impact of that decline on the fabled American dream. The sudden death of Winship’s father immediately prior to the making of the work further inflected its changeable mood of sorrow and hope. She wrote in the book that accompanied her exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery, London in 2018, And Time Folds, that ‘Like the small, barely audible ripple on the pond, this work [she dances on Jackson] is my note of that time.’ (Winship 2018, p.69.)
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