Imagine seeing Claude Monet’s water-lily paintings not in the Musée de l’Orangerie but at his home at Giverny, in Normandy, where they were painted and whose lush grounds and elaborate landscaping form their subject. You would not only see—indeed, inhabit—the views that had inspired him, but by toggling between the artwork and its source in nature you would more deeply understand the workings of the creative imagination. An aesthetic experience of that order is now available at Tate St. Ives, in Cornwall, England, which has just opened “Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life,” on view through May 1, 2023.
Nominally a retrospective of the British sculptor’s work, the show, organized by the Hepworth scholar Eleanor Clayton, emphasizes the transformative impact that locale had on her art. Hepworth moved from London to St. Ives in late August of 1939. She could thus be said to have had a “good war,” since it was in St. Ives that she produced her finest work.
