Henry Moore and the Jets

K ponders the Harrier, one of the two fighter planes in this year's Duveens Commission

That title might suggest this posting might actually be about Henry Moore, whereas the only link is Tate Britain - and I just couldn't resist the rock'n'roll title, Henry Moore being possibly the person I least associate with rock'n'roll....!

James commissioned us to go along to Tate and assess this year's Duveens Commission, Harrier and Jaguar, by artist Fiona Banner - so we thought we would combine it with going to see the Henry Moore exhibition before it closed. Nothing much to say about that - apart from, as K observed, grouping a whole load of Henry Moores together in an enclosed space does nothing for one's appreciation of his wonderfully abstract creations. Each one needs to be contemplated on its own terms, the way you do when you stumble across them as public sculpture, but in an exhibition environment, after a while you get fatigued by the requirement to give each one an equal share of your intellectual capacity...

The most memorable thing for me was the room dedicated to the series of drawings he made during the Second World War, especially of coal miners in Yorkshire, and of sheltering women and children in the tunnels and platforms of the London Underground. Inevitably the hundreds of sleeping figures take on the ghostly feel of Moore's signature 'recumbent forms'...

But to the Jets. As an aviation journalist who appreciates art and museums, James was keen to know what we - as two curators - thought of the current installation of two fighter planes in the neoclassical surrounds of the Tate's Duveen gallery, the implication being they had become art objects rather than objects of destruction. I am going to attempt to get my thoughts on all this in some sense of order for him here.

The first thing is that it is completely awe-inspiring. You see the jets first as beautifully-designed objects, and then you remember that they are designed that way in order to be more effective killing machines. This creates a sense of tension and awkwardness inside you which is the essence of the artist's intention, I think. This is especially so with the Jaguar, cleverly shown upside down, so you find yourself admiring the sleek engineering of its under-carriage, and then discover you're face-to-face with its gun ports.


I don't know if I'm using the correct terminology to describe any of these bits of the plane, and in fact my utter ignorance of this type of object was also part of what disconcerted me about their display. I didn't know if what I was looking at had been 'interpreted' by the artist in any way (and the text on the wall panel didn't clarify that for me, even when I finally read it) - I didn't know if the suggestion of feathers painted on the wings, nose and tail of the Harrier Hawk were put there by the artist or whether they were part of the original design of the planes; I didn't know if a Jaguar normally looked that shiny. Having watched an interesting short film about it on the Tate website (what a joy, may I say, to listen to an artist being so articulate about their work), I now know that the Jaguar was stripped back and polished for the exhibition, but there was something unsettling about my ignorance at the time I was looking at them.


I wonder if this is a female response? Most of the men visiting the galleries seemed inexorably drawn to the planes and seemed to want to 'explain' them to the women they were with - I suppose a symptom of making Airfix models as boys, and all wanting to grow up to be fighter pilots... One man - and this was extremely perturbing - posed for several photographs standing astride the long nozzle projecting from the front of the Jaguar, so blatantly phallic. These photos were being taken by a female friend or partner who seemed to think it all very amusing, but you felt you were intruding on something too intimate - not to say vulgar and rather pathetic - to be out in the open like that.

I felt the planes were poised as if they had just come to land - crash landed in the case of the upside-down Jaguar, though obviously there was no damage to it. The Harrier was just hovering with its nose a few inches off the ground, as if it had just plunged through the roof and caught in the branches of a tree or something - though the curator in me wanted to know more about the superstructure supporting it in that position... There was something slightly sinister about the 'greyed-out' appearance of both cockpits - I felt if I looked too closely I'd see someone in there, a dead pilot perhaps.

I suppose that was the tension surfacing again, the fact that you are so strongly aware of these objects' original function - these are both actual decommissioned planes which have seen action in recent international conflicts: the Jaguar was in Desert Storm. I felt happier - if that's the word - comforted even, that this meant they were authentic - that we were not just looking at them as gratuitous symbols of conflict, they had actually been there. Though, again, the tension, the unsettling awkwardness...

The polished, seemingly silver-plated, precious-metal surface of the Jaguar now reflects the architecture of the galleries enclosing them, and more than one person was taking photographs of this artistic reflection. This is deliberately part of Fiona Banner's effect - the Tate built with the funds from slavery, in the neoclassical style that was the symbol of empire at the time it was built, now housing these modern symbols and tools of empire. The display works because of its environment, in a more successful way than I have seen for a long time - seeing the planes in that space generates thoughts and feelings which I can't imagine thinking if I saw the planes in a airplane hangar or in an aviation museum. Perhaps I would, but there is something about the creative intent behind stripping and decorating them in this way, the whole idea that they are now art, that makes you look at them in a completely different way. Well, it provokes thought, and that has to be a good thing in an art installation.

So thanks James for our own commission! My head was so deeply buried in the ground during the last few months that I didn't even know about it, so I'm grateful for the excuse it gave me to start to reopen my eyes to the outside world.