New Directions

The studio in Fordingbridge, 75 miles from London, looked oddly unlike the workshop of a great painter. Instead of easel and brushes, a wheelbarrow full of clay stood in the center of the room, the wooden kitchen table was littered with well-used sculptor's tools, and finished and unfinished busts rested on pedestals or were swaddled in damp cloth. But for all the strange clutter, it was the studio of Britain's dean of portraitists: bearded crusty old Augustus John, still vigorous and sharp-eyed at 74. In the six months, John has picked up the sculptor's knife and found a new enthusiasm for life. It's my second breath," he says, and adds, "or my second childhood."

By last week, Sculptor John had finished two strong, roughly molded character studies done with the same sure hand as his best canvases. One shows his wife, "Dodo," gentle and clear-browed in golden bronze; the other is a salute to Ireland's famed poet, William Butler Yeats slit-eyed chin thrust inquisitively forward. Now John is happily working on a third, head of his daughter Vivien, which is still in the shape where the tobacco tins he thriftily uses as filler are not yet covered over (see cut).

Cigars & Arias. John gives full credit for his conversion to a lively, young (31) sculptress named Fiore de Henriquez who first arrived from Italy three years ago. A swarthy, husky type with hot brown eyes and a mane of jet-black hair, she lives in a littered London flat, dresses like a dock-walloper and, while she works, sings arias from her favorite operas between puffs on a cigar. For an old Bohemian like Augustus John, Fiore was just what the doctor ordered.

They met last summer, and soon Fiore asked to do a bust of the master. In ten days it was finished and John was entranced by both Fiore and sculpture. "She's an amazing person," he roars waving his arms. "She's a grand girl and a very talented sculptor." Says Fiore: "We got on like shirt and bottom."

John was so interested in her work that he almost ruined her next sculpture, a bust of his wife. Every few minutes he would stomp in, watch a while, then grumble "I've done 50 portraits of Dodo. I know how she looks, don't I? She has a flat place here. And he would punch his thumb into the clay. Says Fiore: "I couldn't keep him away." Finally she brought down a set of tools for the old painter, and he has been sculpturing ever since.

The Touch of God. John hopes to have enough finished works by next fall for a London show, but so far only a few friends have seen his sculptures. Fiore, for one thinks they are magnificent. "Augustus is the only one carrying on the great tradition. Everything is done by inspiration. There is a time when God touched him."

Augustus John himself says only that sculpture "thrills me--a new material a new medium, a new problem." He has no idea what category his style falls into or what it will be a year from now. But he is sure of one thing: it won't be abstract or full of holes. "I don't want to see through a figure. Leave that to Henry Moore. Of course," he adds with a twinkle "it does save a lot of clay."

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