At Kew Gardens recentrly, I found myself standing for some time before a Henry Moore drawing of trees. So fascinated was I, that I forgot to check the title of the drawing, or when it was made. But in it, dark trunks rose from a tangled mass of roots, their forms twisting and straining against a pale background. It was an arresting image, full of weight and movement, but at first I saw nothing more than trees.
Then something changed.. On the left-hand side of the drawing, a root or branch suddenly appeared as a human arm ending in a clenched fist.
I had not been looking for it. The image simply emerged, and once seen it became difficult to ignore. The obvious question was whether Moore intended it or not. The trouble for me was, that neither answer seemed satisfactory.
If he intended it, the fist becomes little more than a hidden symbol waiting to be discovered. If he did not, I was tempted to dismiss it as coincidence. Yet neither explanation reflects the experience of standing before the drawing. The fist seemed meaningful, but not in the straightforward way that a symbol is meaningful. It appeared to belong naturally to the drawing itself, as though it had grown there among the roots and branches.
I have read and understood, that Moore spent a lifetime studying natural forms. He was fascinated by bones, stones, roots, landscapes and the human body. I am told, that what interested him was not simply how things looked, but the forces that shaped them: growth, weight, balance, pressure and movement.
Perhaps that is why the fist is so difficult to explain. The same underlying tensions that shape a tree also shape a human arm. A form may emerge in the creative process that belongs fully to neither category and yet is involved in both. But I guess what interests me, is not whether this explanation is correct. It is that the drawing presented me with something that I think neither artist nor the viewer can finally account for.
We often assume that a work of art expresses something already known to the artist. But perhaps creation sometimes reveals something not consciously known beforehand. Forms emerge whose significance cannot be reduced either to intention or accident.
I cannot know whether Moore saw the arm and the fist as I saw it. I cannot know whether he intended it. Nor can I fully explain why they appeared so suddenly and so convincingly before my own eyes. All I know is that it is there.