Lot 2: PAUL NOBLE

B. 1963
11 HENRY MOORE SCULPTURES FROM THE EARLY TO MID-FIFTIES ON TOP OF EACH OTHER

measurements
35.1 by 22.7cm.

alternate measurements
13 7/8 by 8 7/8 in.

pencil on paper

Executed in 2006.

PROVENANCE

Donated by the artist, courtesy of Maureen Paley

NOTE

"In 1945 the US dropped atom bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The power and impact of this new force was recognised by Jacques Heim, the inventor of the world's newest and smallest swimsuit for women, 'l'atome'. Two months later, Louis Reard split 'l'atome' in two and called it the 'bikini'. After so many deaths women were bound to be mothers. 11 Henry Moore sculptures from the early to mid-fifties on top of each other is Moore as a Bellmeresque surimpressionist. " (Artist's statement, made on the donation of his work to the Whitechapel Auction, 2006)

Since the early 1990s, drawing has been Paul Noble's primary medium, in particular the construction on paper of Nobson Newtown. This fantasy city, meticulously drawn and epic in scale and intent, features its own Nobspital, Shopping Mall, Ye Olde Ruin and Nobsend (the city cemetery). Each element is rendered with extraordinary draughtmanship and described in complex architectural and textual detail. Noble has even devised his own font, Nobsfont, a three-dimensional font based on modernist architectural forms, which he uses almost like building blocks in his compositions to spell out each drawing's name; Paul's Palace, for example. The resulting drawings, monumental in scale and level of detail, constitute a major ongoing exploration into both Utopian urban planning and the ravages of contemporary urban decline, a sense of strong social conviction informing much of Noble's work.

In 1988, Paul Noble helped to set up City Racing -- an alternative gallery space run on a hand-to-mouth basis by artists in a rundown part of London -- which showed Sarah Lucas, Michael Landy and Gillian Wearing amongst many others. During the following years on state benefit he also developed Doley, a complex re-interpretation of the board game Monopoly where instead of buying properties, players try to join the dole queue.

Noble's drawings have been influenced by medieval illuminations and ancient Chinese scrolls, the map-making of artists like Oyvind Fahlstrom and Robert Smithson as well as the popular computer game Sim City, in which players construct their own city building by building with a variety of different architectural styles and functions. His drawings are composites made up of numerous smaller sheets of paper, which Noble works on individually before gradually building up the whole. Some drawings reach over four metres in height, the details of the upper sections lost to the viewer.

11 Henry Moore Sculptures... depicts bound forms that reference both Henry Moore's monumental figures, playfully piled up on top of each other; and Hans Bellmer's contorted and trussed body parts. The hard edged forms of modernist sculpture are softened and literally squashed by adopting Bellmers' more disturbingly amorphous and fluid treatment of form, while the work's accompanying text, written by the artist, draws attention to the connections he has made between both artists, their treatment of the human form and the wider historical events that shaped their practice.

This drawing could easily fit into a pocket of one of the larger drawings as a detail -- there are buried references carefully littered throughout his work to art history, literature, philosophy and political theory. Although the title refers to Henry Moore's reclining figures, as in all of Nobson Newtown, the human figure is characteristically absent, represented by what it has left behind: from abandoned buildings to plastic bags of rubbish or even faeces. It is the remnants of human presence which seem to interest Noble most. Paul Noble's Whitechapel show went on to the Migros Museum in Zurich and the Museum Boyjmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. His work has been collected by the British Council, MoMA, New York, and the Tate. CS