5. Reference in Taylor's Work

BEYOND DUALISMS: THE QUESTION OF REFERENCE

The divisive hierarchies and the arbitrary assumptions about the concepts of Figuration and Abstraction, need to be re-examined through the 'problématique' of reference, as theorised by semiotics. 
This can significantly expands the theoretical and epistemological basis upon which the works can be seen and discussed, and their value appraised.
This shift from ideological affirmation to semiological analysis has the advantage of bringing us closer to the works and to the processes associated with their making, and to their respective ways of working as representations.

Although in St Ives and in London artistic circles, the distinction between 'FIGURATIVE' and 'ABSTRACT' was used to distinguish between traditional and progressive artistic practices, many exponents of 'ABSTRACTION' did not claim for their work total autonomy from nature and from the real world. To make life easier for themselves, critics played down this aspect.

Barbara Hepworth, for instance, wrote in 1934: 'In the contemplation of Nature we are perpetually rewarded, our sense of mystery and our imagination is kept alive, and rightly understood, it gives us the power to project into a plastic medium some universal or abstract vision of beauty' (quoted from Barbara Hepworth, A Pictorial Autobiography, p. 30).

In his essay Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art, Mondrian pointed out that the distinction between 'figurative' and 'non figurative' art was 'approximate' and 'relative'; pointing out that 'every form, even every line, represents a figure, no form is absolutely neutral' (' Circle, p. 42).
Art Historians and critics have played down this aspect to emphasize and promote the problematic notion of non-referentiality as the basis (or the nec plus ultra) of Abstract Art, instead of examining how Figurative and Abstract Art implemented diverse forms of reference to the world.

In 1955, (date of the first Documenta), in response to claims made by a group of American artists and critics that the most advanced art was 'non-referential', Elaine deKooning remarked:''The exclusion or inclusion of nature is, however, not a matter of the individual artist's choice. For art, nature is unavoidable'.

For Mondrian 'abstract art' was not an art severed from nature, but an art that did not represent 'relations with the natural aspect of things' (p. 49).

The key term, here, is 'aspect'; i.e. 'appearance'. Mondrian did not imply that abstract art was cut off from reality but only from its external aspects. 

In a platonic spirit Mondrian aspired to deal with essences and universals; by making visible those invisible, constitutive elements of the real at a higher level.

Thus, drawing from the neo-Platonic philosophical tradition and from Theosophy, Mondrian claimed for neo-Plasticism the status of a superior form of Realism.

After positing that a higher reality exists, hidden beneath a veil of appearances, the first exponents of 'abstraction' (Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian, Kupka, etc.) developped ways of giving form to and manifesting this 'higher reality'.

A remark by Jackson Pollocks confirms that his 'abstract' works was not exempt from concerns about the real world: 

'It seems to me, writes Pollock, that the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture. Each age finds its own techniques'.
Only simplistic assumptions, based on a facile dualism, could justify the epistemologically naive notion that art could ever be self-referential and, thus, make every other art forms obsolete.

*   *   *

'The contemplation of nature…gives us the power to project into a plastic medium some universal or abstract vision of beauty'

Barbara Hepworth (Unit One, 1934)

'As soon as I sit down to draw the land or the sea in front of me, I begin to draw ideas and forms for sculptures'.

B. Hepworth, A Pictorial Autobiography, 1978 (p.23)

'… the forms that one sees in nature, in people, in trees, are reproduced or get mixed up with one's sculpture because they are part of living.'

'I see no reason why realistic art and purely abstract art can't exist in the world side by side at the same time, even in one artist at the same time. One isn't right and other wrong'.

Henry Moore (1960)

'The exclusion or inclusion of nature is, however, not a matter of the individual artist's choice. For art, nature is unavoidable'.
Elaine de Kooning (1955)

' … I had been born in an Earthly Paradise from which we have all been expelled. Not so long ago, a sculptor could still be content with a search for full, sensual and vigorous forms. But in the past fifteen years, nearly all our new sculpture has tended to create forms that are disintegrating'

Marino Marini (1958).

6. In Search of a Forgotten Modernist

IN SEARCH OF A FORGOTTEN MODERNIST 

Let's consider this photograph…

(reproduced from Peter Davies' St Ives Revisited: innovators and followers, 1994).

taken on 30th June 1958, at the opening of the exhibition '4 Sculptors 2 Painters', at the Drian Gallery, London. 

The gallery was set up in 1957 by Lithuanian artist Halima Nalecz, to show the work of  up-and-coming artists, before more prestigious London art galleries signed them on…

This exhibition (1-9 July) included 8 works by each artist. From left to right: Roger Leigh, Bruce Taylor,  Gwen Leitch, Misomé Peile, Denis Mitchell (spectacles), Halima Nalecz (gallerist) and Brian Wall.

Echoing the aesthetic preoccupations of the day,  Alan Bowness remarked in the catalogue: 'The St Ives painter and sculptor is compelled to turn first to the fundamentals of his art — the question of colour, texture, form, space and mouvement'.

Projecting his formalist concerns onto the work of artists who pursued different artistic aims, in order to valorize their works in the context of the new 'avant garde', in the light of the rise of abstraction, Bowness played down the humanistic concerns of Taylor's works and devalued their figurative expression.

THE PROBLEM OF FORM

This emphasis on 'pure' form over 'realist' representation reflected the tension that existed between 'figuration' and 'abstraction' among St Ives artists, from the late 1940s, and that led to the schism in the St Ives Society of Artists that resulted in the creation of the Penwith Society, in 1949. 
Similar tensions did occur within the Newlyn Society of artists.

The polarisation of the debate between 'FIGURATION' / 'REPRESENTATION' and 'ABSTRACTION' / 'CONSTRUCTION' by Herbert Read, Bowness and other major critics of the day [and among American artists and critics who emphasised this dualism in an attempt to claim the aesthetic high ground], confined the debate to a simplistic aesthetic dualism that defined the new 'Avant-Garde' on the basis of arbitrary assumptions, and, in the process, impoverished the debate around representation in all fields of art.

Taylor did not conform to this dualism, neither did he follow the Nicholson-Hepworth orthodoxy, but followed his own idiosyncratic path, in preference to fashionable trends. He did so at the risk of being overlooked.
Nicholson, however, told Taylor that recognition would not come to him before the age of forty, but Taylor did not help himself when he, seemingly, refused to comply with the conditions specified by a London gallery who promised to 'turn him into a household name'.
His close friend Alan Davie once remarked to him:' I don't understand why I was picked up and you were not'.

When the wave of ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM and MINIMALISM  reached Britain from the US, during the 1950s, the new brand of 'Abstraction' — with its contentious claims to be free from the School of Paris and of European avant-garde artistic traditions, 'non referential' and autonomous — was sympathetically received in Britain, where it soon became the new orthodoxy.

The uncritical acceptance of these hegemonic claims from the US, described by Serge Guibaud in his book 'How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art', led the British art establishment to accept a US version of Modernism that distorted the reality on the wider  (international) ground and constituted a canon on arbitrary grounds. Today, this canon is reflected in the official versions of post-war art history, as written and taught in the UK (aligned on US versions), and in the content and emphases of our public art exhibitions and collections.

British art historians, for instance, would do well to read David Smith's remarks* about his debt to Gonzales before erroneously casting Smith as the instigator of a new practice based on a break with the European tradition as American critics claimed.

* D. Smith, Gonzales: First Master of the Torch, in; Julio Gonzales, Tate Gallery, 1970.

BACK TO THE PHOTO…
Standing at the back, behind his snapily-dressed colleagues, Bruce Taylor, wearing a knitted (cricket) jumper over a shirt, cut the image of a quiet outsider, looking on from behind; his gaze avoiding the camera… The well-trimmed beard and the fact that he priced his works in guineas connoting a refined bohemianism.

Five of the six artists were members of the Penwith Society. Gwen Leitch (from Australia, temporary resident in St Ives) exhibited, on occasions, with them, as guest.

Among the sculptors Roger Leigh, Denis Mitchell and Brian Hall, all worked, at some time, as assistants to Barbara Hepworth during the 50s. All three achieved some public notoriety as exponents of the 'St Ives School'; helped by their association with Hepworth, who, with Henry Moore and Jacob Epstein, represented British contemporary sculpture: nationally and on the international art scene, till Lynn Chadwick* was awarded first prize at the 1956 Venice Biennale and his works set new directions for British sculpture.
*Chadwick was one of four artists representing British sculpture at Documenta 2, in 1959, alongside Henry Moore, Kenneth Armitage and Reg Butter.

Instead of developing and working in a single homogeneous style, Taylor experimented both with 'MASS' (in his bronzes) and 'STRUCTURE' (in the welded steel pieces for which he was noted), producing works characterized by a  humanism that he evolved from his study of living organisms (like Wols), his experience of WWII**; and that converged with the aims of the Artists International Association, where he exhibited, in 1962*. 

[reference in exhibition catalogue (Arnolfini, 1963)]

** Taylor's experience of the war in Germany, especially his involvement in the liberation of a concentration camp, turned him into a pacifist, and informed much of his early works, which hovers between a meditation about the infinite richness of life and the impending threat of destruction by war [See the list of titles on the right].

Taylor also produced some wood carvings. One of them was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. A small carving is in the collection of St Ives artist Roy Conn.

*  *  *

The 5 June 1959 issue of the St Ives Times and Echo reviewed what was described as 'the first non-state supported Open-air exhibition of sculpture held in Britain'. Set in Trewyn Gardens, the artists were Barbara Hepworth, Roger Leigh, John Hoskin, John Milne, Denis Mitchell, Barbara Tribe, Bruce Taylor and Brian Wall. 
We do not know which work/s Taylor exhibited there.

2. 'OUBLI'

Whereas works by Leigh, Mitchell and Hall were included in the 1985 Tate Gallery retrospective exhibition St Ives: 1939-64, Bruce Taylor was only mentioned incidentally in the catalogue, for his election as chair of the Penwith Society in 1957.

In St Ives Revisited  (1994) Taylor is also mentioned, in passing, for having introduced Roger Leigh to 'practical pottery'.

In After Trewyn: St Ives Sculptors since Hepworth (2001), Taylor is mentioned once for exhibiting with Brian Wall at the Drian Gallery exhibition (see photograph above).

The absence of references to Taylor's works in books and catalogues about St Ives testifies to his having been edited out of art history. 

This is surprising given the quality of his work, the active part he played in the cultural life of St Ives, and his discrete approach to drawing and sculpture, unlike that of his St Ives contemporaries. It is all the more surprising since Taylor was considered, at the time of his solo show at the Drian gallery, in 1958, as 'one of the earliest serious artists to work in this medium' (welded steel) [Drian Galleries: a short history,2009, p.12].

The suggestion, by Keith Sutton, that, at the Drian Gallery, in 1958, the exhibiting artists's 'interest in materials' was 'at the expense of content'  (After Trewyn, p. 70) echoes Alan Bowness remarks, in the catalogue, and, like him, fails to acknowledge Taylor's engagement with subject-matter and the ambiguous symbolism of his work; evident in the title of such works as 'May Bug' and 'Crucifixion' as significant or relevant.

For the critics and curators engaged in promoting 'pure' or 'total' abstraction, Taylor's early work must have seemed too grounded in figuration; too referential and symbolic. 

A look at the sculptures he produced and exhibited in St Ives shows that Taylor's work was distinctive, albeit in a non sensationalist (or opportunistic) way.

The fact that it did not fit neatly within the fashionable dualism 'figuration . abstraction', and that it retained a strong humanist concerns with political implications well after the Political Clause had been deleted in the statutes of the Artist International Association, in 1953, shows that Taylor's neglect may be linked with the prominence of unfashionable ethical concerns in his works, and by the fact that he did not chase galleries and critics, but quietly (and confidently) went on producing his works in the margins.
Taylor turned down a London gallery's offer to 'turn him into a household name' if he moved to London and focused all his attention on his art (at the expense of his family). 

The 'humanist, organic element', that gave Henry Moore's sculpture its 'vitality' [p. 68] is present in Taylor's bronzes and may well have been missed, in St Ives, where Barbara Hepworth's influence and stature was considerable.

Such works as Sentinel would have fitted better than some of the works selected by Herber Read for the Venice Bennale (1952), and promoted by the sensationalist slogan of  the 'Geometry of Fear'. 

CONTEXT: 'HOW NEW YORK STOLE THE IDEA OF MODERN ART'… 

Taylor's demise may be explained by the fact that he was born a few years too late and, due to the interruption of the war, missed the opportunity to study in time to benefit from the commissions generated by the Festival of Britain (1951), the Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner  competition (1952-) , the momentous 1952 Venice Biennale and other high profile exhibitions such as the Battersea and Holland parks open air sculpture exhibitions, as well as the Sculpture in the Home exhibitions (1949, 1951-), through which young sculptors were able to launch their career in London; and, like Lynn Chadwick — who represented Britain at the 1956 Venice Biennale and won the international prize for sculpture (against Giacometti) — internationally. 

In 1951, for instance, the Festival of Britain and the Arts Council had commissioned works from Robert Adams, Reg Butler, Lynn Chadwick, Frank Dobson, Jacob Epstein, Barbara Hepworth, Karin Jonzen, F E McWilliam, Bernard Meadows, Henry Moore, Uli Nimptsch and Eduardo Paolozzi. Some commissioned works were sited at Battersea Park, in the open-air sculpture exhibition that ran concurrently with the Festival.

By July 1952, when Taylor (1921-1989) left Corsham, Reg Butler (1913-1981), Lynn Chadwick (1914-2003), Kenneth Armittage (1916-2002), Bernard Meadow (1915-2005), Edoardo Paolozzi (1924-2005) and William Turnbull (1922-2012) had already established a reputation at the Venice biennale, as a new generation of artists who had broken away from the Moore-Hepworth-Epstein classic-modernist tradition, and were opening new avenues for sculpture. Herbert Read heralded this new wave with the sensationalist 'geometry of fear' slogan that caught the public and critics' imagination and fueled controversy. 

As Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and Pop Art impacted on London galleries; many London-based artists and critics repositioned themselves somewhat opportunistically. 

In late 1959-60 Anthony Caro switched from making figurative sculptures of the human figure (with an emphasis on mass): 

Anthony Caro, Woman Body, bronze, Battersea Park,1960. Press photograph.

to making abstract geometric constructions in welded steel, after seeing the works of David Smith in the US. Thus, Caro's Midday (1960), was exhibited in Battersee Park in the 'Sculpture in the Open Air' exhibition (1963) that combined contemporary British and American works:

A. Caro, Midday, 1960. Welded steel. 

It was as if Woman Body had been replaced by the metal structure that supported it!
Caro's debt to Smith was openly acknowledged in a sculpture titled Homage to David Smith in 1966.

[Meanwhile the assimilation of Pop Art, facilitated by a series of exhibitions organized by the Independent Group as early as 1951, and prefigured by Paolozzi's ground-breaking 'BUNK' collage series, as early as the late 40s, opened a new dimension and new sets of parameters for making and for viewing sculpture].

The CIA-backed exhibition Modern Art in the United States, at the Tate Gallery, in 1956, and the 'New American Painting' contributed, with other such exhibitions to establish the cultural hegemony of American art on British art, artists, dealers, critics and curators; trying to establish it on the rest of the world, as part of a general program to promote The United States as a land of freedom and expose the repressive ideology of Communism.

TAYLOR IN ST IVES

Soon after arriving in St Ives, in 1956, Taylor established a practice that took organic life forms and life energy, as its subject-matter: in painting ('Ore Stream'), drawing, welded steel and bronze sculptures, and ceramics. 

Michael Canney's notes 'Artists in Cornwall'  lists Taylor as an exhibitor at Newlyn [but, surprisingly, not in St Ives].

The earliest record of Taylor exhibiting in Cornwall I have found is his participation, at the Passmore Edwards Art Gallery, in Newlyn, in 1956, with some ceramic works. 

[100 Years in Newlyn: Diary of a Gallery, 1995, p. 108]

Like his other works in welded steel — Sentinel, War Head, Buckler, etc.— May Bug consists of forms that are not illusionistic but, like the creature in Kafka's Metamorphosis, suggests transformation in the making that resonate with symbolic meanings. 

Superficially May-bug seems to justify Sutton's remarks about the work being more about process than content (a fact confirmed by Taylor in a statement of 1963); for the sculpture emphasizes the tearing of sheet metal with the oxy-acetylene cutter; as a future director of the Courtauld Institute noted in his copy of the catalogue; a remark intended to valorize the work in a formalist key. The sculpture could, thus, be seen as a 'drawing cut into space'; however, it would be premature to read the work in purely formalist terms.

It sit in a strand alongside Sentinel (1958) and other welded steel sculptures of that period (War Head) that present the human body as an agent of resistance (against the incumbent threat of war and mass destruction by the nuclear bomb), and convey HUMANIST values akin to those promoted by the AIA before 1953.

Taylor's experience at the front and the violence he witnessed, turned him into a pacifist, and entered his work, in different guises.

Stylistically, whereas Henry Moore's Warrior with Shield (1953-54) emphasizes mass, giving his warrior the appearance of an archaeological remain — with parts of its legs and arms missing:

 — in Taylor's Sentinel, formal elements are synthesized and condensed into a hybrid semi-abstract symbol of resistance; an allegory that confers upon it the quality of a monument.

In a very different vein from the biomorphic syntheses of Moore and Hepworth, Taylor's forms express a concern with life, which he expressed through stylized representations of semi-abstract/imagined organisms whose existence seem to testify to the resilience of life in the face of impending threats.

Taylor's work contradict critics's affirmation that by the 1950s, the impact of war was no longer present in art and was replaced by a concern with abstraction. It is certainly reflected in the Artist International decision to remove the political clause out of their agenda but was not abandoned by all artists.

Whereas Moore focused on the Human figure (individuals and pairs) and Barbara Hepworth distilled forms abstracted from the landscape, Taylor developed hybrid life forms from nature which he set against an implied background of human history.         

In his bronzes Taylor's humanist values are expressed through ambiguous organic forms imbued with a secular Vitalism: hovering between celebration of life and warning against forces that threaten Life's survival.  

To Greenberg, apologist of a formalist (allegedly 'non referential') aesthetics, Taylor's works would have appeared too 'referential', too figurative and too grounded in the concrete and in the past (Rodin's tradition for his bronzes) ; too Aristotelian, and too humanistically expressive. 

However Rothko's remarks that even with works that 'have no direct association with any particular visual experience', [one should add as consciously recorded] 'in them one recognizes the principle and passion of organisms' (Possibilities I,1947; Chipp: 549), and Barbara Hepworth's declaration that 'In the contemplation of nature we are perpetually renewed, our sense of mystery and our imagination is kept alive, and rightly understood, it gives us the power to project into a plastic medium some universal or abstract vision of beauty' (A Pictorial Autobiography: 30), imply that 'non-referentiality' and the utopia of a 'pure' abstraction was a pious wish, not to say a semiotic impossibility; for the formal transformations and transmutations operated by the mind — however disconnected from life they may seem to the artist — have their origin in life experiences grounded in concrete realities. Choosing to ignore them does not not mean they are absent or inoperative in the works, as Elaine de Kooning pointed out.

The hegemonic claims made, on this contentious semiological ground, by American artists like Barnett Newman (Chipp:553) and critics like Greenberg and Rosenberg, in support of Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism, need to be reconsidered in the light of David Smith's acknowledgement that the new sculpture, including his own, was developed in response to (and in continuity with) the iron constructions of Picasso, Gonzales, Giacometti, Miro and Calder, and did not 'spring out of nothing' as a piecemeal rejection of (and free from) the European tradition implied.

SCULPTURE IN THE HOME EXHIBITIONS

The second Sculpture in the Home exhibition showed that by 1950-51 works by Reg Butler, Paolozzi, and William Turnbull were offering radical alternatives to the more figurative representation of the human figure by Jacob Epstein, Uli Nimptsch, Ben Franklin, E.C.N. Folkard and Keith Godwin and to its abstract stylizations by Henry  Moore, Barabara Hepworth, Bernard Meadow. 

See Paul Evans, Sculpture (1957). 

Had Taylor remained (and played the 'gallery-game') in Britain, as Ben Nicholson suggested [Nicholson told him that he would be recognized by the age of forty; i.e. around 1961) his work would have fitted well in this 'domestic' category, and in Edward Lucie-Smith's exhibition of figurative sculptures in Holland Park in 1975,where, the curator stated; 'It is the notion of transformation and transmutation that dominates the show' (Catalogue:7).

Not driven by or influenced by the fashionable new trends promoted by 'progressive' London galleries, Taylor developed his works as a series of laboratory experiments, some of which he exhibited in group (and two solo) shows (London, 1958;  Bristol, 1966], but without chasing fame in London, nor courting influential critics and curators.  His artistic ambition focused on making works that expressed his combined aesthetic and ethical concerns. 

The majority of his works collected for this exhibition is suitable for display in domestic settings; and his larger welded steel sculptures were not particularly suited for long-term display out of doors. However, he deliberately placed some around his open air studio in the Pyrénées, watching them being slowly eroded by the elements. 

Next to the increasingly larger public works produced by his contemporaries and exhibited in parks, biennales and at other spectacular venues that called for monumental works, Taylor's 'chamber' works may have been 'dwarfed' and appeared less impressive or significant.

Taylor's neglect could also be explained by the fact that he left a small oeuvre; not large enough, as it stands, to have fuelled the art-market and supplied the collections of public art museums.
His works exists mostly in private collections.

Finally, Taylor's disappearance from public consciousness may be seen as part of the large collateral losses accepted by the art world in the process of writing the history of  art. For art historians and curators (since Vasari) work to perpetuate a cult of celebrities; following on from gallerists and critics who carry out the selection process.  Accepting the canon, art historians are not inclined to challenge the 'star system' and its hierarchies. Neither do they give themselves the means to produce micro-histories that may provide more detailed, diverse and inclusive accounts of what actually happened at the time. More histories of commercial success and social ecognition than history of what really happened…

It is useful, at this point, to distinguish  between  (and not to confuse) 'Art History' as the written account of what allegedly happened at the time, and 'art history' as the sum of events that actually happened. The first belongs to the realm of discourse, the second refers to a course of events, which necessarily exceeds the scope of that (and any)  discourse.

The two, however, should never be conflated.

To overcome the limitations of these 'partial', selective versions of history, which become the norm, the 'canon', we need to cast our net further; and give ourselves the means to do so: to produce fuller and more comprehensive accounts of what happened in the field, and take into account works and experiments that may have seemed less significant (and, thus, more expendable), or simply not noticed…

Conformism or intellectual laziness?

EXHIBITING

By 1961 Taylor was seen renovating a large house at Painswick, near Stroud and two years later he acquired a house near St Ives, where he built a studio where he could cast small bronzes, by the lost wax process.

Although he went on exhibiting in St Ives with the Penwith Society, his exhibiting now shifted to Bristol and Gloucester.

In 1961, Taylor took part in a group show of St Ives artists at Arnolfini, with Barns-Graham, Michael Broido, Bob Crossley, Roger Leigh, Alexander Mackenzie, Denis Mitchell, Simon Nicholson, Tom Pearce, Jack Pender, Tony Shiels. 

He exhibited again at Arnolfini, in 1963, in'Four Sculptors': Bruce Taylor, Michael Pennie, Mark Ingram and Roger Leigh.

A solo show at Arnolfini, in 1966, is the last exhibition I have been able to trace before he left the country, around 1969, after spending two years teaching in a school, with his wife, in Grantham, Lincolnshire; to save enough money in preparation for settling abroad. 
To produce the works for this exhibition Taylor took a six month unnpaid sabbatical from the school where he taught.

[An email to the St Ives archive, from 2006, by the director of collections at the Arts Council of Wales, requesting information about Bruce Taylor confirms that Bruce Taylor had 'fallen off the map'.

The correspondance shows that soon after acquiring  'King and Queen' (from Arnolfini?), during the late 1960s, Arts Council Wales had succeeded in contacting Taylor at his home in France, and had received a reply from him in 1970. 

By 2006, no one in Britain, including the St Ives Archive, [except members of his second family] knew what had happened to Bruce Taylor, after he left St Ives; nor that he had died in 1989. His artist friend Roger Leigh and his family went on visiting him regularly in the South of France (at Mas Fourtou) on their way to Spain where they spent their annual Summer holidays.

*  *  *

7. Facts of Life: From Corsham to St Ives

6. FACTS OF LIFE

Taylor's life is enigmatic.

BIRTH: 

In spite of Penwith and other  catalogues giving Yorkshire as his place of birth, the (3nd) marriage certificate in the 'mairie' of Prunt-et- Belpuig states that he was born on 26th Janyary 1921 in Salford. Although registered as 'Arthur Taylor' he was  known as Bruce Taylor by the time he arrived in St Ives.

Taylor married his third wife Judith Medlycott (born at Sleaford, on 24th February 1944) on 27th January 1979.

They moved from Mas Fourtou to Taulis soon after, where the mayor helped them find a house in the village.

MILITARY SERVICE:

Taylor served in the air force from 1941 to 1946. He was part of the offensive force sent to Germany. The experience of death at the front and of liberating a concentration camp marked him deeply and turned him into a pacifist.
A traumatic experience he bottled up and refused to talk about to his family afterwards.

EDUCATION: 

After the war, for a while, Taylor worked as an entomologist at Halifax Museum, then went to Corsham Academy of Art in Bath (as a mature student), to study on the certificate in art education course, from September 1950 to July 1952.

On the course, he met Jennifer, eight years his junior, whom he married.

The presence at Corsham of artists from St Ives may have inspired him to move to Cornwall in 1956.  

In Corsham, Taylor was probably taught by or exposed to the works of Kenneth Armitage, who taught there from 1946 to 1956.

Janet Simpson posted her reminiscences on the alumni web site for the period 1950-54, when she was at Corsham. The list of staff is impressive:    

'Most memorable were the staff of that era: Rosemary & Clifford Ellis of course (with daughters Penelope & Charlotte) and William Brooker, William Scott, Bryan Wynter, Tony Fry, Terry Frost, Peter Lanyon, Kenneth Armitage, Harry Cliffe, James Tower, Peter Potworowski, Margaret Lester-Garland, Andrew Wilson, Stephen Russ, Bill Turnbull'.

Reminiscing about 1950, alumno Pam Pebworth wrote: 

'The Corsham experience was so rich, the well known painters and sculptors from London and St.Ives who came to teach us were William Scott, Bryan Wynter, Peter Lanyon, Ken Armitage and Bernard Meadows. And not to be forgotten, Andrew Wilson tall and austere encouraging us to improve our handwriting in the Marion Richardson style. And then there was the fun, end of terms parties with various themes, Waistcoats, Dogs and Mexico.'

Rosamund Gilbert (Osbourn) rembers: '

the wonderful house and its setting, the cycle rides from Monks Hall and the army huts in which we lived, the library full of fantastic art books, tutors such as Peter Lanyon, William Scott, Litz Pisk, Isabelle Symons, Helen Binyon, James Kirkup, Colin Thompson, Peter Potworowska and, of course, Clifford and Rosemary Ellis.

Particularly vivid memories include tea-time Marmite sandwiches at Corsham Court, stretching and dancing in black leotards on the lawns at Monks Hall and sketching each other according to Litz Pisk's directions. I also remember waiting on the platform of Bath railway station, for a train home to the north of England, and hearing an announcement of the death of Stalin.'.

Photographs of the sculpture school from 1959-60, as well as student Bruce Clark's remarks, gives some indication of the type of work students were engaged in:'"We worked in metal with John Hoskin, clay & plaster with Michael Werner and stone, wood & wax with Peter Startup". 

Another set of photographs of Corsham suggests that carving was a major (if not the main) form of sculpture practiced by students at Corsham.

AFTER CORSHAM

A photograph of 'biological models for Halifax Museum' , inscribed by Jennifer Taylor (?) carries the address:

A.B. Taylor

5a Honeycroft,

Welwyn Garden City

Herts.'

During that period, it would seem that Taylor taught in a school and lived in a caravan park with his wife and later their first child, Penny.

PROFESSIONAL LIFE: ST IVES (1956-1966) AND AFTER:

The Taylors arrived in St Ives in 1956. [This is also the date of Bruce's first participation to an art exhibition].

The following year he was elected chairman of the Penwith Society, and from then on he regularly exhibited with the Society; till he left St Ives, in 1965.

During the ten years Taylor spent in St Ives (with a brief period away in Painswick), he was an active member of the Penwith Society and seems to have spread his time and energy between making art, exhibiting, teaching and helping organize exhibitions.

In 1958 he took a six month sabbatical from his teaching post to prepare his first solo show at the Drian Gallery.

The minutes of the general meeting of the Penwith Society, dated 10th June 1957, with Denis Mitchell 'acting chair', lists Taylor and his friend Brian Wall as member of the hanging committee for sculpture.

[Alex Mackenzie, Patrick Heron, Kate Nicholson and Trevor Bell had the same responsibility for painting].

Taylor owned a studio with living accomodation at 36 Fore Street, that he lent for the exhibitions of the Penwith Society. Besides doing his own work, Bruce ran pottery courses for children and adults and also 'taught at Treswithian Secondary School, Camborne, in the late 1950s', as his pupil Michael Dennis kindly reminisced. His studio was also used to run lithographic workshops.

In 1957 he sold a house, 'Heights' at Consols, to fellow artist Dorothy Bordas. Roy Conn rented a house from the Taylors soon after they arrived in St Ives.

In 1961 the family moved to Painswick, where Jennifer's aging mother lived (to look after her). Fellow artist Paul Francis recalls doing some gardening work for them, whilst they renovated an old house, 'King's Mill' ?  or soon after they moved to 'Old Weaven' (?).

Bill Bordass [D. Bordass son] recalls that during the two years Taylor spent in Painwick, he may have taught at Cheltenham College of Art. 

During that period Taylor exhibited at Arnolfini (Bristol) in the group show 'Art from Cornwall' with Wilhelmina Barnes-Graham, Michael Broido, Bob Crossley, Roger Leigh, Alexander Mackenzie, Denis Mitchell, Simon Nicholson, Tom Pearce, Jack Pender and Tony Shiels.

In 1962 he exhibited in 19 Young Sculptors  (organized by Gloucestershire County Council), in  Hillfield Gardens, Gloucester (1962), alongside Lynn Chadwick.

Feeling that he needed to be in Cornwall to be creative, the family moved back to Cornwall, with some reluctance, in 1963. At Towednack he built a studio where he could cast small bronzes. It was there that he packed the wood sculpture acquired by MOMA (New York), and where he may have spent his most productive years as an artist.

Between 1963 and 1966 he exhibited three times at Arnolfini (two group and one solo show). During that period he also exhibited in St Ives with the Penwith Society.

EXHIBITIONS Raisonnées

The catalogue of the Penwith Society of Arts touring exhibition, organized by the Arts Council in 1957, shows that Taylor exhibited four works under the three categories of Paintings and Drawings, Sculpture and Pottery; and was the only artist to do so.

During the following year, he exhibited   11 drawings, 11 sculptures and 5 'ceramic pieces' at his first solo show at the the Drian Gallery, in London (9th-26th April 1958). Later on, that year, he exhibited 8 pieces at part of the 4 Sculptors 2 Painters' group exhibition (1-9 July).

The catalogues of the Penwith Society exhibitions in St Ives show that he regularly contributed works, but lack of photographic and related evidence (including sizes) and the ambiguity of titles do not enable us to match the known works with their title, nor to establish a chronological sequence for the work I have gathered.

It seems that Taylor worked concurrently in welded steel and bronze; for his studio at Towednack had facilities for casting small pieces by the lost wax process.

See section on the right listing all the known works >