In praise of… Henry Moore

A new exhibition at Tate Britain reveals the great sculptor in darker, and deeper relief

The pleasing curves, the Yorkshire lilt, the sculptures that fit so organically with the landscape that they could have been hewn by nature herself. All of this is as true of Henry Moore as it is familiar, but a new exhibition at Tate Britain chisels away at his reputation, and reveals a darker – and deeper – relief. Curator Chris Stephens concentrates on Moore's middle years, between his early discovery of "primitive" forms and the late era, when outsize commissions for plazas and campuses made him the country's top wage-earner. During the blitz, sketches of enforced Tube huddling cemented Moore's reputation, but here we see him engage with the wider tumult of his troubled times, painting to raise funds for the Spanish civil war and responding to disturbing ideas about sex and bodies that emerged with early analysis. Moore's seemingly heartening mother-and-child sculptures often face away from each other, and he has an unsparing eye for the pit props that cage miners in physically, and for the heartstrings that psychologically imprison his reclining nudes. The fractured shards of modernity that Moore carved out are here presented as forming a sculptural equivalent of The Waste Land. But unlike with Eliot – who produces nothing but head-scratching until you've genned up on Virgil – with Moore the clever ideas are an optional extra. You can still simply stroll round a sculpture park, and feel strangely calmed by those curved faces which bring the Moomins to mind.

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In praise of… Theo Van Gogh

Geniuses reach their giddiest heights by standing on the shoulders of less-noticed giants. Marx, for one, would have got nowhere without Engels, who provided intellectual encouragement, the cash to survive, and the empathy needed to endure boils on the behind. At least Engels got some fame of his own, unlike most of those recognised in a formulaic "lastly, thanks are due to my wife" at the start of so many books. Outside the art world, Theo van Gogh is likewise obscure, but this could change with the efforts of the Van Gogh Museum to win a wider audience for his brother's correspondence, through a new exhibition at the Royal Academy and an online database. The chief draw of the letters – beyond the sketches which litter them – is the hope of gaining insight into that private mental world which found such great expression in colour. But what really shines through is Vincent's practical life, and Theo's centrality to it. Most of the mail is addressed to him, and Vincent's thanks for "the 50-franc note your last letter contained" settle the mystery about what sustained the artist who famously sold next to nothing. But Theo did more than bankroll; an art dealer himself, it was he who first persuaded to Vincent to pick up a brush. Theo held the dying Vincent in his arms, then died a few months later himself, and, a few years later again, was reburied alongside his brother. As their bodies lie together, so their reputations should together stand tall. For without the one, the other could never have been.

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