Newsnight Review discussed Barbara Hepworth: Centenary at Tate St Ives.

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(Edited highlights of the panel's review taken from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight Review.)

JUDE KELLY:
It's a magnificent exhibition. I think the fact that she made St Ives her home, and her garden, makes it fantastic that this centenary exhibition is happening in St Ives. I also have to say, though, that I felt angry that the rest of the country weren't witnessing the scale and depth of her work. She was one of the sculptors who really understood so many different kinds of materials. She talked about the fact that her left hand was her thinking hand, because she used her left hand to consider, almost intuitively, how she worked with her different materials. It's really stunning. I have never seen all of her work put together like this.

KIRSTY WARK:
When she was doing a lot of work on the maternal work particularly, it was as if she was, in the eyes of the very male establishment, being diminished by doing maternal.

ALKARIM JIVANI:
I have a real problem with this, because the exhibition notes make a big deal about the fact that she likes a mother and child figure. Henry Moore liked the mother and child figure, almost every old master did a Madonna and child, and yet everybody says they did this because they were fathers. I think there is a real problem here, which is that there is a sense that somehow, because she was a woman, she could do less. We were told that when she went to St Ives, she couldn't work because she had two young children. Let's not forget that when she left Hampstead to go to St Ives at the beginning of the war, she took a housekeeper and a nurse with her. She wasn't entirely on her own. The reason why she didn't do much work, initially, in St Ives, was because she didn't have a studio to work in. You can't work if you haven't got a place to work in. I think the problem is that when she was working, sculpture was seen as very much a male form, that basically it was taking huge hunks of stone and marble, taking big chunks of wood, chipping out of them with sharp tools, and somehow weren't supposed to do this. I'm hoping this exhibition will actually rehabilitate her, because she can stand her ground against any sculptor of the 20th century, without a doubt.

KIRSTY WARK:
Paul Morley, there's a whole set of the scented wood sculptures in front of the big window at St Ives. You imagine, she's got 17 tonnes of this wood sent over to her, and she creates, in two years, the most glorious, tender, very tactile pieces.

PAUL MORLEY:
It's incredibly beautiful stuff. I've always loved Barbara Hepworth, not least because when you wander down Oxford Street you're going to see a little smear of it on the side of John Lewis, the winged figure. It's incredibly moving to see it all collected. What's interesting, though, is that I'm so glad that I went to the garden. It's like a parallel universe. I felt somehow that some of these beautiful pieces were caged somewhat. To see them in their true setting, with the plants and the sea in the distance, and the atmosphere, then spending the rest of the day in St Ives and getting the third, fourth, fifth dimension how it all works. To go from the caged versions, to the free versions, to the actual places where she was inspired to get this beauty was an incredible adventure.

KIRSTY WARK:
The use of paint on her sculptures is of a completely different dimension. I had never thought of that before.

ALKARIM JIVANI:
Towards the end of her life, she started making these bio-morphic forms, which had these brilliantly coloured interiors, bright blue, bright pink, or bright red. In that sense, she presages the work of Anish Kapoor, who wasn't working until 20 years after her. Paul's point about these huge sculptures in the Barbara Hepworth Museum and not in the Tate, these huge things, it puts paid to the old joke about Barbara Hepworth, that she carved the bits that were left behind after Henry Moore had gouged out his gigantic holes. She can do monumental as well as any other person. When she does her pieces, they're much more lyrical. There's a balance and poise, a calm and simplicity about them. She deserves the international stature that Henry Moore has, and hasn't had because she has always lived in his shadow.

JUDE KELLY:
You want to praise St Ives, absolutely, but why isn't it in the Tate?

ALKARIM JIVANI:
This should be available to everybody.

KIRSTY WARK:
Open to everybody, but every exhibition is particular to its space. They can't all be in the Tate.

PAUL MORLEY:
Everybody should go on an art break and spend the day there.

ALKARIM JIVANI:
She's not a St Ives artist, she's an international artist, and everybody should have the opportunity to see it.