Henry Moore’s Reclining Figure is the plaster model for a large bronze cast presented at the 1951 Festival of Britain. It lies supine across a broad table and is reared upwards at its shoulders, supported by cocked forearms. The lower body rests significantly on the left side, with curvaceous thighs tapering into slender legs. Strikingly, the head projects vertically upwards as if the figure has been startled. Its eyes are wide and questioning. Decorating the surface of the sculpture are strings embedded into the plaster that emphasise its bold curves and swellings, particularly in the elbows and hips, and the breast-like projection beneath the head. The sculpture is inescapably human, but it is puzzling that we recognise this so immediately. Aside from crude pit-like eyes, it lacks a mouth, a nose, ears and a chin. The grotesque torso, with a breast hanging from the armpit, morphs at its base into two large masses that merge onto what we assume to be the left thigh. The right leg actually emerges from the side of the left. On close inspection, the lines on the legs give more of an impression of hooves than toes. Considered coldly, it is difficult to define human qualities in the contorted mass of plaster and string.
Despite the phenomenal abstraction from human anatomy, our keen eyes seek out the familiar and transform the beast into a graceful reclining figure. Not only this, it has sex, it seems aware of its observer, and the posture even indicates a sense of self-consciousness. We construct human beings from the slightest indications of arms and legs, a neck and a head. In fact these clues would be rather generous. Consider which components of Moore’s model could be sacrificed without being at the expense of its human identity. For the majority of us the most important part of the model would be the head. While we could remove the lower part of the body and still recognise an awkwardly poised bust, we would have more difficulty in finding human shapes if the figure were decapitated. This applies even with the head simply a hollow upward projection decorated with symmetrically located eyes and strings. The conclusion we have to make is that human qualities are projected onto objects in our environment rather than necessarily being essential to them. We actively seek out traces of ourselves, and find faces in architecture, shrubbery and food.
It is an unsettling prospect that what we ‘see’ does not necessarily reflect what lies ahead of us in our field of vision. There are a number of reasons for this, each of which demands separate discussion. Poignant to Moore’s model is the layer of subconscious interpretation that lies between light hitting the retina and the sensation of seeing. In a sense, the human brain is trained to know what it’s looking for. It knows which curves and edges define a face, and will apply this knowledge to the visual information hurtling up our optic nerves before we are aware of it. These preconceived ideas of shape and structure are of vital importance. In terms of evolution it is advantageous for us to be able to rapidly recognise our peers with scarce visual clues and immediately focus on them in our visual fields. For instance in low light or as a family member dashes past chased by a wild cat. A most striking example of the power of these preconceptions and their projection is in a famous optical illusion involving a rotating Charlie Chaplin mask (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_bg1H7fst4). As the mask rotates and its concave surface is exposed, our brains invert the image such that a pale face projects towards us. Although the face is actually concave, it is too much of a challenge to our preconceptions for it to be ‘seen’, and thus the abnormality is rectified before we are aware of it.
As we realised earlier, the secret to making an object more human seems to be to give it a head, and it is primarily faces that we seek out in our visual fields. Perhaps, scientifically, this makes sense. While it is indeed helpful for us to identify the hands or feet of individuals in our dimly lit surroundings, these are primarily devices that we use for our personal locomotion and manipulation of objects. In contrast, the head is of wider significance. Facial structure informs of identity as friend or foe, expressions inform of changes in social dynamics, and the movement of the lips is vital for the interpretation of speech. Furthermore, because the head houses our major sensory organs it is where most of us would locate our senses of self. As an object, it therefore wields huge importance in our preconceptions of human identity, and it is perhaps the only indispensible part of Moore’s model.
We jump to the conclusion that the reclining figure is human because of our preconceptions of human form, acquired through personal experience and evolutionary history. We actively seek out human shapes in our environment, perhaps reflecting our dependence on cohesive group behaviour for survival and sanity. Through considering the plaster model, an abstraction of human form, we also realise the core constituents of a human being. Unsurprisingly, we are most adept at identifying and responding to heads and faces around us, for they are hubs of sensation, identity and consciousness. The rest is dispensable. The loss of limbs and organs does not challenge one’s humanity, or the demand for its recognition. The loss of a head, however, is dehumanising, and in turn is necessarily coupled to the impossibility of life.
The Anatomical Snuffbox 