The teacher who inspired young stars of art world
Carl Plackman is one of the most important, influential artists of the past 30 years – though many people will not have heard of him.
He influenced - directly - generations of artists who have gone on to become leading names in their field.
In 1970, Huddersfield-born Plackman took a teaching post at Goldsmiths College in London. It was from this position that he saw his young charges go out and change the art world.
Anthony Gormley, Damien Hirst, Liam Gillick, Jo Stockham: all passed through Plackman's hands at Goldsmiths and he had an influence on them all.
Now Huddersfield Art Gallery is staging the first comprehensive retrospective of the artist and teacher since his death in 2004.
Beyond Appearances: The Sculpture of Carl Plackman is at Huddersfield until April and has been created with the support of both the Arts Council and the Henry Moore Institute.
Plackman's widow, Jane Patton Plackman, worked with Huddersfield Art Gallery curators Robert Hall and Sarah Brown, and Dr Jon Wood of the Henry Moore Institute to organise the exhibition and a catalogue to accompany it.
Walking among his work, Jane, also an artist who was taught by Plackman, is delighted that her late husband is receiving the recognition that she - and it turns out, he - felt he deserved.
"He did enjoy the fact that his former students did well, but it was also something that he found quite difficult, because he never got the same recognition himself," she says.
"He was a very shy man, he didn't enjoy attending openings at galleries and all that sort of thing that comes with being a successful artist today – he was not a self-publicist at all. What he really loved was talking to his students about art, and he would speak passionately for hours. He was a very, very inspiring teacher, but was never comfortable with the social situations involved in working as an artist."
The exhibition is full of work that is challenging. Plackman's sculptures and installations demand the observer to become involved with the pieces.
Seeing the exhibition with the woman Plackman shared his life illuminates the work in a sharp light.
Jane says: "His work reflected his interest in exploring his feelings of someone who does not quite fit in, someone who is not part of the establishment.
"His work addressed the feelings of what it's like to be an outsider, what it feels like to not feel like you belong, or feel uncomfortable in your own skin."
This point is explicitly illustrated in the first room of the exhibition, which features a selection of Plackman's work from the Seventies, along with a piece he wrote about what inspires him: "I have always felt ill at ease: my body fitting as awkwardly as my clothes, the spaces in which I move just that little too empty or too full, the air too hot or cold. Some people seem to have confidence, others are always uncertain, constantly attempting to ring their own space in the world, questioning their very identity."
That Plackman is not a household name is not something, the organisers know, that will be remedied by the retrospective. Those involved do hope, however, that it will bring his work to a wider audience.
Dr Jon Wood, of the Henry Moore Institute, states the case for Plackman in his introduction to the exhibition catalogue.
He writes: "On the one hand, he was one of the most innovative sculptors of his day, making work that challenged long upheld notions of what sculpture could be....
"On the other, he was one of this country's most influential teachers in recent years."
Sarah Brown, who co-curated the exhibition with Robert Hall, has no hesitation in describing Plackman as an "artist's artist".
"As part of an institution (Goldsmiths), he was part of a movement that allowed artists to become household names, although he didn't benefit from that himself. I think now that is changing and his work is being recognised and seen in relationship to the work and artists he has influenced."
So, it took a lifetime but now Plackman is beginning to get the recognition he deserved and, as his widow says, desired.
"He would just be so thrilled to know that this is happening," says Jane.
Beyond Appearances: The Sculpture of Carl Plackman is at Huddersfield Art Gallery until Apr 7, then touring.
Star pupils on Carl Plackman
l I envied the poetic quality inherent to his work, its use of fragmentation and its oscillation between the familiar and the unfamiliar – Phyllida Barlow
l Since his death I continually meet people who regard him as a most significant tutor; someone who trusted them to find a voice of their own. – Jo Stockham
l I was surprised when he told me that at home he let his children draw on the walls of their house. His reasoning was, that they were going to get enough rules and regulations laid on them later on in life. I couldn't help thinking about how cool he was after that. – Damien Hirst
l His ideas are gentle and his approach is full of thoughtfulness. Some of the sculptures are installations, but they are intimate, about relationships I think. The materials caress one another. – Phill Hopkins
l A man who had dedicated his life to the pursuit of this impossible art of making the world again, in materials of the world. – Fran Lloyd
l Plackman's work is not readily explainable in a text panel or label. To attempt to do so would be to go against the artist's very resistance to the constraints of language. – Natalie Rudd, Curator of sculpture, Arts Council Collection .
Nick Ahad
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