Elisabeth Frink

Elisabeth Frink was a highly successful establishment figure, a Dame of the British Empire, honoured with a retrospective of her work at the Royal Academy in 1985. Throughout her career major public commissions flowed in.  Recent auction prices prove that a decade after her death, the best  examples of her work are more in demand than ever. Her popularity with a wide audience has to some extent played against Frink's more serious critical reputation. Her expressionistic animal figures were the most popular and commercial of her oeuvre. But there is a far deeper and darker side to her work. It is her portrayal of the male figure and her understanding of the male condition - his capacity for heroism, for corruption and brutality for suffering and redemption - that sets her apart and makes her one of the most profound sculptors of the human condition this century has produced.

Frink's career was launched by the time she was 22. Recently graduated from Chelsea College of Art, she held her first show at the Beaux Arts Gallery in 1952 from which the Tate purchased a bird sculpture. A year later, she won a prize for her entry for the competition "Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner" and was exhibited at the Tate. Although her menacing, spiky works of the 1950s were associated with the so called post-war 'Geometry of Fear' school, along with Reg Butler, Lynn Chadwick and Kenneth
Armitage, Frink soon proved she had her own independent path to follow.  She eschewed the 1960s wave of abstraction, which swept Britain propelling Anthony Caro, Phillip King and Eduardo Paolozzi into the lime light, resolutely holding to her figurative ideals as the tide of modern art turned against them.

Frink's obsession with the male psyche and the male figure has its roots in her childhood. A regular cavalry officer her father was away for the duration of the war and was one of the last soldiers to be picked off the beach at Dunkirk. She was brought up in the Suffolk countryside surrounded by the RAF air bases. These dashing, airmen and her absent soldier father were her male role models. Planes were frequently shot down around her home and the sight and smell of the burning wreckage and the sudden death of
these heroic young men formed a lasting impression on her. At the end of the war Frink¹s father was stationed in Trieste and the young woman skipped a year of her convent education to join her parents embarking on a round of balls and operas in the company of young officers while taking in the sights of Venice.

In stark opposition to this role model of man as the dashing hero sacrificing all for his country, came gruesome images of Belson and other
horrific war footage shown in the news cinemas at the end of the war. The horrors of the Nazi camps devastated the vulnerable teenager. Man was not ruled by the codes of honour that governed the officer's mess. He was a fickle, evil character, capable of baseless acts of horror and degradation. For the rest of her life, Frink struggled to come to terms with these contradicting views. Her work went through periods of extreme pessimism where man is portrayed as a brutal assailant, to periods when he runs naked with the ease and confidence of Adam before the fall. She was more interested in the generic than the individual and disliked accepting portrait commissions. Her preoccupation is not so much with man but with mankind which explains her tendency to work in series and return to the same themes throughout her life. While her work may appear to draw inspiration from ancient myths and legends, the subjects are her own - she invented her own myths.

Her earliest large-scale head Warrior's Head of 1954 is an image of nobility linked by its classical helmet to an ancient and honourable civilisation. A decade later in Soldiers Heads of 1965, the men have become mindless louts with vicious eyes, heavy jaws and smashed noses. They prepare us for the more sinister evil of Goggle Heads of 1967. These heads are smoothly sculpted, breaking away from the more Expressionistic earlier pieces. They are images of cunning despotism, with the protruding thug like jaws spreading nostrils and eyes obscured by sinister goggles. At the time, Frink was living in the Camargue and these heads are a direct response to the Algerian war, the goggles relate to the evil Moroccan, General Oufkir who always hid behind dark sun-glasses. Yet in her penetrating understanding of the male psyche, Frink has also captured the vulnerability of the bully, the weakness around the mouth, the goggles that hide the cowardice and self-doubt that lurks in the heart of the murderous fanatic.

Frink was a paid-up member of Amnesty International and identified strongly with human rights issues. Her Tribute Heads of 1975 are universal images of man's suffering and vulnerability. The facial type is radically different, she turned to a more refined masculine ideal, their eyes are closed in suffering their mouths pursed in endurance, their faces revealing the scars of relentless torture. This theme is continued in the Prisoner's Head of 1982, one of the most haunting images in this exhibition where despite the pain of relentless persecution the victim still retains his Christ like dignity in the face of overwhelming suffering With her move to Dorset in 1976 and her marriage to Alex Csáky, Frink¹s working technique gradually nderwent a subtle change. Her home nestled in the ancient Blackmoor Vale, overshadowed by the looming presence of Bulbarrow Hill and shrouded in winter mists for much of the year, was a very different landscape to the harsh light and shimmering planes of the Camargue. Frink worked her next two series of heads with a far more textured surface in response to the flatter light. The plaster is modelled and sculpted and left to dry and then vigorously carved with a chisel. We see this in the Easter Head of 1981 and the Desert Quartets of the same year.

The Easter Heads are a reference not to Easter Island but to the Resurrection, while the Desert Heads were inspired by a trip to Tunisia. Both these series reflect a quieter more contemplative mood where Frink is trying to create an ideal type. Their deep set, staring eyes and monumental presence refer back to Byzantine art. One edition of the Desert Heads painted white, remain in situ at Frink¹s Dorset House, incongruous enigmatic guardians of the landscape. They stand beside the Riace Figures who appear to be emerging like primeval spirits from the woods. In her later work, Frink, influenced by aboriginal art, experiments with colour. The heads of the Riace Figures are painted white which gives them a sinister masked appearance referring back to the earlier Goggle Heads.

Frink also produced images of great optimism where man exists in perfect harmony with his surroundings. Running man of 1980 in the exhibition, is an image of supreme self-confidence. This is not a man running from danger but running for the supreme pleasure of pitting himself against his own strength and endurance. Running and Standing men were themes she returned to throughout her life. Frink relishes the male figure for its virility and potency. Her Flying Men of 1982 included in this exhibition wear the flying goggles of World War II pilots. This time we are dealing with a race of gods that stand posed for flight about to transcend their mortal properties and soar into the skies.

The relationship between man and animals is a recurrent theme in Frink's work. In her male nudes she celebrates the maleness or physical and animal attributes of the race. Towards the end of her life Frink was working on the depiction of baboons. She completed dozens of drawings of baboons and was planning a life size group of a man confronted by a baboon exploring the relationship between them. Frink is celebrated for her horse and rider series where man appears at one with the animal. Her riders are not individuals, these works are a seamless fusion of man and beast descended from more ancient times. One exception to her customary naked rider is the robed horse and rider in the exhibition. This was inspired by figures of Arabs on horse back which she saw in Tunisia. The figure is more individualised than her other riders and gazes at the viewer with an alert expression.

Frink never used models and in her maturity preferred to work in relative isolation, even turning down an offer to become President of the Royal Academy. She drew inspiration from those closest to her. Her figures take on the facial characteristics of those she knew best, many bear a striking resemblance to herself. Frink acknowledges her debt to Rodin and to Giacometti and critics have ascribed the skinny legs and ill proportioned muscular torsos of her work in the mid to late 1950s to the latter¹s influence. However, according to her son, Lin Jammet, works of this period such as First Man of 1964 exactly represent the physiognomy of her second husband, Edward Pool. While the large heads of the 1980s, resemble the features of her third husband Alex Csárky.

Such was her preoccupation with the male there is only one female image in Frink's entire oeuvre, the compelling Walking Madonna in the Cathedral Close at Salisbury not far from her Dorset home. The figure was not intended as a self-portrait but when confronted with a commission for a female figure Frink involuntarily sculpted her own face. The work could be construed as a metaphor for the artist¹s life. This is no conventional, modest Madonna lurking in the security of a Cathedral alcove. She strides with singleness of purpose oblivious to the distractions of those around her. There is an integrity in her gaze, a sense of purpose and iron strength in her gaunt frame. Most importantly, she has turned her back on the sanctuary and security of the Cathedral. Choosing instead to stride out into the town to meet the world full on and grapple with the fundamental condition of mankind.

Elspeth Moncrieff

2004