Barbara Hepworth

I have been to the Hepworth in Wakefield; a very pleasant looking building approached across a bridge over the Aire-Calder navigation. It has a permanent collection of items associated with Barbara Hepworth, both finished artworks and examples of the production process, plus various other exhibitions, some visiting and some there all the time.

I've always liked Hepworth's signature sculptures - the smooth ones with the holes - although I couldn't really tell you why and I certainly couldn't give an intellectual justification. And of course anyone growing up in London in the 1960s as I did will have regularly seen her work on Oxford Street. In fact there is a prototype for the Winged Figure on show here and unsurprisingly it looks a lot bigger from close up.

The rest is a mixed bag. One current exhibition is from Haroon Mirza and is frankly rubbish. It is pitched as a successor to Marcel Duchamp's readymades. Now I hold Duchamp in high regard (I bet that makes him rest more easily in his grave) and the more alert amongst you will remember that I included his 'Nude Descending a Staircase, No 2' in a posting a couple of weeks ago. It is indeed the very fact that he could paint that gave him the right to present urinals and the like as pieces of art. Mirza however has given no indication that he can do anything except assemble a load of old tat and surround it with flashing lights.

Of the rest, I liked Michael Andrew's 'A Man Who Suddenly Fell Over' with which I wasn't familiar before. They also have three nice Tissots, a chocolate box guilty pleasure. For those intent on heading to Leeds to look at the Scots Greys and Gordon at Khartoum there is another Tissot on the adjacent wall to the latter. The ones in Wakefield are better, especially 'Portsmouth Dockyard'. For those who need a wargaming fix, the chap in the middle is in the Black Watch.