Jean
Warren, Rebecca
Life Story
Jean, 2017, is one of a group of large brutalised vertical semi-abstract, semi-biomorphic, bronze sculptures that teeter on the border of figuration and abstraction. Characteristics of a female body are present and yet any sense of an actual human figure seemingly melt away. Though not quite a body, elements bring the spectator back in search of recognisable attributes; a head, a braid of hair, a skirt, breast, leg or foot. Simultaneously beautiful and grotesque, and awkward yet elegant. Her casual hand-painted surface treatment serves to amplify the playful and mischievousness of her work. The sculpture is mounted high on a pastel pink coloured plinth.
Rebecca Warren is known for challenging Western sculptural traditions. Her works is knowingly disrespectful and irreverent and purposefully provokes a dialogue with the established cannon of heroic (male) modernist sculptors. They serve to counter the perceived pomposity of the art historical cannon that Warren is knowingly responding to. Immersed in the history of sculpture, she will happily riff or sample motifs from a multitude of sources and pop cultural reference points. [1] Her works often have exaggerated physical characteristics, such as very large breasts or buttocks. Warren challenges what sculptures should be or look like, and provides a wry commentary on the ways that so many male artists have distorted women’s bodies. Jean (2017) is installed in the west-end garden in dialogue with Henry Moore’s, Draped Reclining Figure (1957-8). The work was first shown in All That Heaven Allows: New and Recent Works, the inaugural exhibition at the new Tate St Ives in 2017.
Rebecca Warren (b.1965) is one of the most important British sculptors working today. She was born in London and studied at Goldsmith’s College and the Chelsea College of Art. From 1993 to 1994, Warren was an artist-in-residence at The Ruskin School at the University of Oxford. Nominated for the Turner Prize in 2006, she received the Vincent Award in 2008. The Kunsthalle Zürich mounted a solo exhibition of her work in 2004; the Serpentine Gallery, London in 2009; and the Kunstverein Munich in 2013. In 2016, the Dallas Museum of Art hosted a major exhibition, Rebecca Warren: The Main Feeling, her first in the USA. This major survey show focused on her output from 2003 to 2016. A major show followed at Tate St Ives in 2017 and the Now Voyager, Belvedere 21, Vienna, Austria in 2022.
Warren became a Royal Academician and has also served as Professor of Arts at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf since 2014. She lives and works in London and is represented by Maureen Paley Gallery and Matthew Marks Gallery. In October 2020, she was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for her contributions to the field of art in the United Kingdom.
Calvin Winner, May 2023
[1] Laura Smith, All That Heaven Allows: Rebecca Warren, published by Tate, 2017, p.57
Further Reading
All That Heaven Allows: Rebecca Warren, published by Tate, 2017
On display
Title/Description: Jean
Born: 2017
Object Type: Sculpture
Measurements: h. 2690 x w. 980 x d. 980 mm
Accession Number: L.236
Copyright: © Rebecca Warren
Credit Line: Courtesy of the artist