THE ART OF ANDY GOLDSWORTHY P This is the most comprehensive and
detailed study of British artist Andy Goldsworthy, and is the only
full-length exploration of Goldsworthy and his art available
anywhere. /P P Fully illustrated, with a revised text. Bibliography
and notes. /P P EXTRACT FROM THE CHAPTER ON GOLDSWORTHY'S
LEAFWORKS /P P It is the leafworks that are the most colourful of
Andy Goldsworthy's sculptures. What the leaf sculptures show is
how beautiful the colours of nature are: Goldsworthy shows the
viewer these subtle colours by contrasting one leaf with another.
Maple patch grouped the red/ orange/ yellow of Japanese maple
leaves together; Poppy leaves contrasted the red poppy leaves
against the mid-green of an elderberry bush; a Stone Wood sculpture
of 1992 consisted of poppy leaves wrapped around a hazel branch,
the red constrasting vividly with the wet green leaves; Dock Leaves
interwove red leaves in green grass stalks. Two sycamore leafworks
of 1980 and 1981 are very simple: a leaf black from cow shit is
placed against pale Autumn leaves; another leaf, bleached white, is
set down on a bed of dark leaves. He pins together two colours of
sycamore leaves (sycamore is a favourite Goldsworthy medium) in
Sycamore leaf sections (1988), and hangs the line of leaves from a
tree. Shot with the sun behind them, the photograph of the leaves
shows them glowing green and gold, the two classic colours of
poetry and alchemy. The Autumnal colours of course connote
nostalgia, decadence, sensuality, Romanticism, time passing, the
decay of the year, and so on, all those things John Keats wrote
about in his 'Ode: To Autumn', and in a billion other
poets' art. Goldsworthy's aim in the leaf pieces, though,
draws attention to the fragility and delicacy of leaves, as well as
their strength and function. A leaf, after all, is a complex
biological factory, so the natural scientists say. 'There is a
whole world in a single leaf', remarked Goldsworthy.
Goldsworthy's leafworks do not have a scientific agenda.
Rather, they celebrate the presence of leaves, the
being-in-the-world of leaves, so to speak. /P P AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY/P
P William Malpas has written books on Richard Long and land art, as
well as three books on Andy Goldsworthy, including the forthcoming
Andy Goldsworthy In America. Malpas's books on Richard Long and
Andy Goldsworthy are the only full-length studies of these artists
available. /P
