A D R I A N  S T O K E S

Adrian Stokes and the Psychoanalytic
by
Ron Graziani

Responding to the then popular practice of having outside foundries do the actual casting of the work, Stokes attempted to further explain the "merging" or interdependence of the modeling and carving poles in his subsequent review of "Mr Henry Moore's Sculpture." Stokes used Moore's "new, unfamiliar" carved concrete pieces—once set the concrete was carved—as an example of "how intense had been the plastic aim"³⁷ in contemporary sculpture. Moore's art was a useful example of how carving and modeling were present in every art work. More importantly, it verified how sculptors who concentrated exclusively only on the actual carving had a "less pure carving conception."³⁸ Despite this awareness that stone was losing its use and importance as a material in the modern world, Stokes still hoped the plastic conception might once again be tied to the "stern demands of materials."³⁹

Stokes' final review, "Matisse and Picasso," completed the initial introduction of his new schema. Relegating Matisse to the level of a modeller, Stokes concentrates on the etchings of Picasso. Stokes now defined the carving mode as "not so much from reducing the concrete world to terms of his own personal rhythm [the modeller] but from the depth of his feeling for the concrete world as something unalterable, as fixed in space, a permanence...in terms of which all feeling, all rhythm all that is temporal, can be translated by the artist...making his fantasies stone."

The Mediterranean mode of contemplation was the source of the carver's ability to "turn this subject into object." It was around the Mediterranean that "the artists evolved this complete and vital power of projection through their art, a power so sure that without loss of resilience it gains for living things the finality of stone." Stokes concludes that "the Mediterranean mode of contemplation alone possess the sanity and resilience to create a culture out of a machine age."⁴⁰

Having expanded on these themes in Stones of Rimini (1936), Stokes developed his second stage solution. Thus the stone blossom and incrustation elements of the Quattrocento are redefined through the carving and modeling modes.

What becomes evident in Stones of Rimini is that once the carving/modeling modes are tied to the idea of the "emblematic" expressed in The Quattro Cento, they also become something more than a set of techniques. they become innate categories of aesthetic experience. They are not only aesthetically innate to the medium, but articulate the artist's tie to it, which involves both his manipulation of material and its resistance.