Henry Moore’s Large Standing Figure: Knife Edge flows upward, pulling at different angles from its base.
The twisting, organic lines suggest a figure about to take flight.
Arriving in downtown Little Rock in 1978, Large Standing Figure: Knife Edge stood on Capital Avenue for decades.
At eleven feet and five inches, and weighing almost 1,600 pounds, Large Standing Figure: Knife Edge is a prime example of the optimistic values of post-World War II modernism.
A veteran of World War I himself, Moore’s art was often inspired by the natural objects and landscapes he returned home to in England.
A bronze casting of a clay model formed around a bird’s shoulder bone, the work walks the line between natural figure and abstraction.
The notion of flight was present from the very beginning, making the sculpture’s original title of Winged Figure equally appropriate.
Visitors to the Louvre Museum might see the influence of the marble sculpture Victory of Samothrace, a similar winged figure with a sense of flight.
Others may recognize Large Standing Figure: Knife Edge from the 1985 John Hughes film The Breakfast Club, where a replica of the sculpture stood in the middle of the school’s library.
However, The Rescue, a homeric poem by Edward Sackville-West may provide insight into Moore’s process and the momentary nature of inspiration.
West described his protagonist as having “something of a mysterious timelessness, the knife edge balance between being and not being, which only the poetic imagination seems able to achieve.”
