In 'The Pliable Plane', curator and historian Penelope Curtis traces the ways sculpture infiltrated architectural thought over the post-war period. Her study identifies the wall as a particular locus of creative thinking - a surface which produces both continuity and separation, and which similarly unites and distinguishes the two disciplines. Surveying a series of walls - carved, cast, applied, imagined, and even conceptual - in such places as bomb shelters, caves, war memorials, and public buildings, Curtis introduces a cast of renowned and lesser-known practitioners who defined the three-dimensional conception of the years 1945 to 1970. With close readings of the work and lives of Henry Moore, Anni Albers, Frederick Kiesler, Jorge Oteiza, and Mary Martin, among others, Curtis's fluid and perspicacious history encompasses the developments of wartime production, the discovery of the Lascaux Caves, and the rise of relief art. Turning away from familiar pairings and dichotomies, it considers spaces and surfaces of coalescence and influence. Curtis compels us to understand the wall as support as much as partition, arguing for the centrality of this very pliability to the entwined development of both sculpture and architecture.

About the Author
Penelope Curtis is an established scholar and author with particular interest in inter-war art and architecture and in contemporary art, and often writes at the invitation of artists. Her publications include Sculpture 1900-1945 in the Oxford History of Art (Oxford, 1999) and Patio & Pavilion: the Place of Sculpture in Modern Architecture (Ridinghouse/Getty 2007). In 2010 she took up the Directorship of Tate Britain where she oversaw the Millbank Project and was Chair of the Turner Prize. In 2015 she gave the Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery in London and at Yale University. From 2015 to 2020 she was the director of the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon.


Book Information
ISBN 9781913620844
Author Penelope Curtis
Format Paperback
Imprint MACK
Publisher MACK