HE sounded pretty creepy, with hawthorn and oak leaves branching from his mouth, his head antlered with foliage - the Green Man, this was, profiled on Radio Four by Joanne Pinnock; nature's representative, found at May Day festivities and on innumerable pub signs.
He was the menacing figure who survived religion, his image physically incorporated into medieval churches. (There are more than 200 carvings of him in St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh.) But he remained overtly pagan, never got turned into St Bud of the Azaleas as part of an icon-survival deal.
In fact, there was nothing prettified or flowery about him at all. Nature's energies and graces - from the oak that built ships to the healing power of herbal medicines - were recognised as awe-inspiring and darkly sacred.
No litanies changed that understanding and he was sensibly added to the list of powerful spirits which demanded respect. So maybe it's no surprise he's back as a symbol for conservation and planetary responsibility - we still need to be freaked a bit out of our instincts for environmental vandalism.
A great celebration of the sculpture Barbara Hepworth began in the garden in St Ives she herself set out with niches for her sculptures. With Henry Moore, and her husband, Ben Nicholson, Hepworth revolutionised British sculpture in the thirties, aligning herself with continental artistic refugees like Gropius and Mondrian who fled from Hitler's strengthening hold.
Art historian Penelope Curtiss recalled Hepworth's shift from the charming small-scale figurines which typified the style of the twenties to a bold new shift of perspective.
And there was a moving tribute by Wilhemina Barnes-Graham, painter and friend, who remembered her dedication, with four children to look after, a female artist in a man's world, she said, and you could hear how desperately important it was for the speaker to witness that drive and feel the possibility of that achievement. The move to St Ives had a practical motive; it was not just the inspiration of the Cornish coast and its megaliths which drew the couple there. A painter pal of mine, like most artists, is much taken up with the financial biographies, the practical difficulties of his predecessors. And he told me all about Hepworth's second pregnancy, in the days long before scanning, which resulted in one baby appearing, then two, an unlooked for surprise, then an amazing third one appeared. They decamped from their small London flat and the rest is art history.
A new series - Great Expectations (R4) - about midwives shows how they constantly have to deal with contingency, while bolstering the confidence of women in their care. One midwife confided her own unconfident sense of being unqualified because she was not a mother, before reflecting on the madly differing experiences of labour. For some it can be a 24-hour agonising haul (the carefully chosen mood music drowned out by arias of profanity). Then she remembered attending a birth where the baby shot out and skited several feet across the polished lino.
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