RIP PHYLLIDA BARLOW | MONUMENTAL SCULPTOR

Phyllida Barlow, Folly, Venice Biennale 2017. Photo by Fred Romero. CC by 2.0

For four decades the artist Phyllida Barlow, who died this week aged 78, dedicated her life to teaching her students at the Slade School of Art. She was, by all accounts, a brilliant teacher. Some of those students made a big name for themselves: Rachel Whiteread, for example. Tacita Dean. Douglas Gordon. Ángela De La Cruz. All this time she was making her own work, quietly, in her Finsbury Park studio. Large temporary structures, made of industrial materials. Built to impress; built to disappear.

She decided to retire, like many, at the age of 65, in the summer of 2009. Retire from teaching, that is. This allowed her to throw herself whole-heartedly into her art. And, remarkably soon, the art world started taking more notice of her monumental sculptures. She quickly became something of a superstar. In 2011, after a show at the Serpentine, she was taken on by Hauser and Wirth. In 2012 she enjoyed a solo show at the Ludwig Forum, in Aachen, Germany. Other exhibitions followed in Edinburgh, Florida, and Zurich. In 2014 she was commissioned to produce new work for the Duveen Gallery at Tate Britain. In 2017 she represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale, with her Folly Chupa Chups spilling out of the Pavilion and into the courtyard. There were shows in New York, and Switzerland. In 2019, already an Academician, she was awarded a solo exhibition at the Royal Academy, a collection of brutalist sculptures created in response to the RA’s Burlington House.

Her work wasn’t to everyone’s taste. It was always asymmetrical, often irrational, and occasionally absurd. It was scruffy, lumpy and disturbingly top-heavy. It loomed. But it was also brave, and radical, and thought-provoking. And most of all, it was fun. Phyllida Barlow was a great entertainer, doling out equal measures of playfulness and menace. Would she have worked with such freedom had she not been noticed so late?