Reg Butler

Pierre Matisse, New York, 1962
Private Collection, New York
Sale, Christie’s London, 13th December 2012, lot 212, where acquired by the present owner

New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Reg Butler: Recent Sculpture: 1959-1962, 30th October - 17th November 1962, cat. no.30;
London, Hanover Gallery, Reg Butler: Sculpture and Drawings, July - September 1963, cat. no.7 (another cast);
Louisville, Kentucky, J.B. Speed Art Museum, Reg Butler: A Retrospective Exhibition, 22nd October - 1st December 1963, cat. no.97 (another cast).

Herbert Read, Contemporary British Art, Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, 1964, illustrated pl.2 (another cast);
Warren Forma, Five British Sculptors (Work and Talk), Grossman, New York, 1964, p.119 (another cast);
Margaret Garlake, The Sculpture of Reg Butler, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, 2006, cat. no.215, illustrated p.51, fig.44 (another cast).

Large element: The bronze is very slightly loose on its stone base, with very slight movement. There are some areas of rubbing to the extremities of the bronze, noticeable at the corners of the upper element and at the top of the work. There are a few very small spots of oxidisation in places. The patina of the bronze is uneven in places and there is some light surface dirt in the crevices of the bronze. The integral stone base is slightly stained around the edges and there are a few minor chips to the extreme edges, including one to the lower front left corner. Subject to the above the work is in very good overall condition. The larger section of the work is sold with a varnished wood plinth. Smaller bronze figure: In excellent overall condition, with some light areas of rubbing to the top of the head and shoulder lades. There are traces of casting residue in the crevices of the figure's back and light surface dirt in places elsewhere. The figure is freestanding. Please telephone the department on 0044 297 293 6424 if you have any questions.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Tcheekle Macaw's Head belongs to an important body of work for Reg Butler, and he explained the significance extensively himself:
'The boxes that preoccupy me so much - the tcheekles, the towers - have gone on for a very large part of my life. I've always been interested in boxes - camera boxes, radio boxes, magic boxes, containers with things happening in them and so on - and in this particular phase, this sort of 1960-63 period, I seem to have turned the boxes into towers, as it were...I think of them as great structures as much as the English follies of the eighteenth century.

'The boxes, the towers, the tcheekles that I've made that have been projects for big ones, of course, were intended to be very large indeed. The one called The Macaw's Head is, in fact, a project for a tower about sixty or seventy feet high, and it's intended to have staircases and labyrinths and trap doors and rooms all built in bronze with figures in them, or empty, and slots and windows and so on. In a sense, it's kind of symbolic architecture because it transcends the normal sculptural scale, and I think one of the reasons for that may be that perhaps now, in the twentieth century, there's something a little indecent about visualizing figurative sculptures of enormous size. We don't think of mankind as being a suitable occasion for great God-like constructions. I think we have lost that in the existence of Freud, in the existence of Newton, in the existence of Galileo - the whole idea of man being the center of the universe - and therefore a right and fitting subject for a God-like sculpture may be something which no longer exists, certainly not in my world, anyhow. But I do like to project myself and think about huge sculptures, and perhaps these boxes are the solutions I've found for that particular problem.

'This tower of mine, the one I call The Macaw's Head, raises a slightly peculiar problem because, you see, for me the sculpture consists of two parts. It consists of this tower, which is in one sense an object in its own right, and in another sense a maquette for an enormous object sixty to seventy feet high. It consists of that and it consists of a man. Now the man is not in scale with the tower; it is not intended to be, and he's not intended to inhabit precisely the same space as the tower...They are connected, but the connection is emotional and not physical. Maybe the man is me, or maybe the man is the eternal observer of the tower...Always I had the man around, and he stood and looked at the tower, or stood behind the tower or at the foot of the tower, and he belongs to it and it belongs to him; but, as I say, not in the physical sense, in the emotional sense.'

(Reg Butler, quoted in Warren Forma, 5 British Sculptors (Work and Talk); Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Reg Butler, Lynn Chadwick, Kenneth Armitage, Grossman Publishers, New York, 1964, pp.119-123)