JACOB EPSTEIN.

Auckland Star, Issue 111, 13 May 1935, Page 5

JACOB EPSTEIN.

HIS PERSONAL VISION.

A SCULPTOR OF THE SOUL

Willi* WOT COMPROMISE. (By SAFDAR JANG.) Jacob Epstein has been carried from crest to crest of his career on a-stormy tide of sensation. Twenty-seven years ago, when he was 28 and unknown, he stirred up London with the sculptured frieze which decorates the British Medi cal Association's building in the Strand. A year or two later Paris was in a ferment over his monument for Oscar Wilde's tomb in the cemetery' of Pere Lachaise. His statue of Venus was a carved epitome of paganism; it was as bitterly denounced as his earlier and the more recent and much discussed figure of Christ. It is an old story, the clash of personal vision with the shibboleths of the crowd; but in Epstein's case the reverberations have been unusually loud and prolonged. This has been at once good and ill fortune. It has brought his genius under the eyes of the world at large, and the world at la"rge cares very little for fine sculpture, but it is insatiable for "scandal." Relentless Individualist. It is, none the less, a pity that his serious and important achievement should be obscured by the nine days' notoriety of such "sensations." I do not believe that Epstein has ever set out to shock any more than he has ever troubled to avoid shocking, the bourgeoisie. He is simply a relentless individualist, grimly working out his own artiste salvation and determined to make no compromise in doing so. Epstein the man is completely untroubled by the social graces. His dress and bearing are a rejection of

life's fripperies; a loose check suit emphasises the bulkiness of his figure; strands of dark curly hair straggle from beneath his broad-brimmed black hat; his loose-collared shirts are of the kind one buys at the workmen's shops in the Rue cle la Gaiete in Paris —royal blue or black spotted with white. His capable craftsman's hands hang loosely by his side as he .walks with a quick, shuffling gait. He has none of the selfconscious parade of the "great man," his manner deprecates recognition rather than invites it. The Vanishing Sculptor. He is most at ease in what it is convenient to label as a "Bohemian" milieu, although he is not by any means boisterously sociable, nor are his friendships free and easy. For some years his favourite resort at dinner time was the now vanished Harlequin Cafe in Soho, where over the coffee he could talk and smoke with such friends as Bernard van Dieren, the composer—music is Epstein's one recreation —and Cecil Gray, the iconoclastic musical critic, with Mrs. Epstein and a model —Kathleen, Dolores or Betty May —making excursions into the conversation. At ten o'clock, however, when the cafe became crowded, Epstein would vanish. Nowadays his appearances in such quarters are in frequent; he spends much of his time at his cottage in Epping Forest, or at the Cafe Royal, which wags have christened "Epstein Forest." There is a sculptural quality of repose about the sculptor himself as you see him in leisure moments in his untidy studio—workshop would be an apter word—opposite the Foundling Hospital in Bloomsbury, London; but this immobility endures only until some phrase in the conversation stirs up one of his passionately-held likes or dislikes. Then the pale face is awakened, into animation by the eager eyes andj the mobile mouth. He talks in an iinexpectedly soft voice, with an emphasis that is all the more earnest because H is subdued. To the world he is a revolutionary, but no academician couM be more intolerant of those who attempt to make the. evasion of tradition a short cut to'success in art. He is equally tapabent o those artistic showmen who ibst, ,to «_ empty superficial ■ of to achievement.

The Modern Spirit. In his early work Epstein gave himself up to ari. almost mystical contemplation of the abstract relations of form. Now "the soul with all its maladies" has entered into his work, troubling its surfaces and investing its shapes with a strange, feverish energy. In all the women he portrays there is something exotic and untamed; like the hero of Pater's "Imaginary Portrait," they seek something which is not to be found in this world in any satisfying measure. And is not that the keynote of the modern spirit?