If you’ve read Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, published in 1985, you likely will have called it to mind frequently in recent years — and perhaps especially since last November. The book depicts a fascist US society that responds to ecological destruction with oppression, using the language of Christianity to hide and justify the real structures of power.
It is impossible to separate Barbara Hepworth’s work from its method. Although she was far from the first artist to choose carving over other methods of sculpture, it remained a less popular and prestige method, and her choice remains significant.
Carving a sculpture begins with something pre-existing—the wood or stone it is carved from — and consists of changing this thing rather than creating something anew, so the art can never be seen as entirely man made.
