EPSTEIN AGAIN

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 68, 21 March 1931, Page 24

EPSTEIN AGAIN

Mr. Jacob Epstein never gives his denouncers a rest. As soon as their outcry against one of his works flags, a new one appears to send them into yet further paroxysms of rage, says the "Manchester Guardian." It is a new situation with art in. England, although common in France, where most artists of original and potent ideas, such as Meryon, Manet, Degas, Cezanne, and Eodin, had their works, and in some cases themselves, insulted. That does not, of course, proro that Mr. Epstein or any other man of marked individuality is an artist of talent, but it might make his more violent critics pause to think how easy it would bo for this gifted, single-minded sculptor to follow their visions to popular success and reward —they will admit his astonishing skill and workmanship—instead of taking the hard ana solitary road that his genius leads him. His way certainly does not load him to iaurels or cheques. At his exhibition ax, the Leicester Galleries he shows a largo marble figure, "Genesis," ■ a bronze bust of Lord Bothernierc, and a number of lesser bronzes, most of them of women. He has brooded for several years over the "Genesis," and it represents a definite phase of his art. His early cubic "Venus" and his later "Maternity" iv different styles prepared his way. The figure is a primeval, almost simian, pregnant woman, stark and expressive, with something terrible in it like birth itself, transcending the properties of life. The sculptor's interest in negroid art in its shapes and rhythm, as in its simplicity, has probably affected his conception. The face has a blind dignity and pathos, and the forms mount up in strange rhythm from the

A VIEW OE "GENESIS" '•

vast limbs set in a rough base through emphatic stages to the head with its hard mass of hair. '. The concision of the design, still keeping the closo singleness of effect of the block of marble, is in Epstein's maturest manner. A weakness is a wavering between naturalism and formalised shape in the treatment of somo of the'parts. Like all original pieces of art, it is not a work on which one can quickly form an estimate, 'but on first study one would not rank it with his best. Cut it is serious, it has its own strange beauties, and it has a presence that would inako most modern sculpture seem trivial beside it. Epstein lias given us his conception of the primeval liiothcr of the scientists to set beside tiio "Eve" of tiio classics. There is surely room for it in the world of art. The other sculptures aro in bronze. Lord Eothormore is presented as formidable and ruthloss and important as that- nobleman may wish to appear. The contradiction between the massive, impressive form of the upper head and tho fleshy lower part is not extenuated, but Epstein has made him look a mau who matters, and has certainly brought him into art. The women's busts include a very notable one, one of his best inventions in design, and a fine one of "Isobel Powys" the writer, and "La Belle Juive," a work of fine decorative presentment and a charming head of a sprite-like young girl. As usual with Mr. Epstein's exhibitions, his preference for one distinctly racial type and his mannerisms in treatment of lips and emphasis of cheekbone tend to produce an effect of narrowness and repetition that is unfair to the individual exhibits. .