B.B.C. SCULPTURE

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 121, 25 May 1933, Page 21

8.8.C. SCULPTURE

NEW WORK COMPLETED

The scaffolding and canvas which for four .months stood above the. entrance to Broadcasting House, was taken do.wn recently, and the public saw* for the first time Mr. "Eric Gill's ' symbolic iigur.es of J'ros.pero and Ariel, ,reports the London" '' Daily TeFegfaph"." ..' ■ Mr. 'Gill- climbea "25ft tip "a ladder four .or five., times a,day -for four month? to .work, .on these, figures, ..his only pro feet-ion from wind, Tail), 'And s'noSv bci-ng ii-naTroW-sheet of glass suspended just above Prospero's bead. "1 have had .bronchitis, influenza, and about everything else," he'said. ■Commenting on the finished work, Mr. Gill said: "In a way 'Prospero and Ariel' were an obvious choice' for the figures. The 8.8.C., looks upon.itself as a wise, beueyplcnt Prospero .sending wisdom forth by in can's of an aerial.' ; "This and the figure of the Sower, which I carved in the entrance hall, are not sculpture, however. Sculpture is something which is part of the building, not mere ornament.. Prospero and the. Sower are-what I call 'furniture pieces.' They are ordered by the owners for decoration. Prospero is a, symbolical piece, rather like the tlireej balls outside a pawnbroker's shop." i Mr. Gill has spent two years on the four pieces of work he has done at Broadcasting House. "SOMETHING RICH AND STRANGE." The central features of Eric Gill's: series of works are the conspicuously placed external group of Prospero and Ariel and the figure of the Sower in the interior. The latter, the symbolic significance of which is obvious, is in the conventional stylo to which tho Koyal Academy has accustomed us, writes Mr. K. *K. Tatlock in the same paper.. \ The other lias more character. It consists of a gigantic bearded figure between whose knees stands Ariel. The group will no doubt be compared ' toEpstein's Morning at St. James's Park, but, both aesthetically- aod technically, it is utterly different. Epstein is a coarse and insensitive- carver, but an extraordinarily good modeller. Gill, on the other hand, is at his best, as here, when he is eutitng into hard Portland ■stone. It is then, and only then, that he becomes fancy-free. I shall not say that his Prospero and Ariel are the exact equivalents in sculpture of Shakespeare's verse. That was not the intention. It is a far cry between verse and stone. In Gill's hands the semi-god and his beloved sprite have suffered "a sea-chango into something rich and strange." Tho imprcssiou made by the Prospero and Ariel was altogether satisfying. The toolmarks are undoubtedly sensitive, and tho general disposition of the main forms impressive. I am satisfied that there is both poise and rhythm in these figures, and am not sure that the group Avill not prove to be the best work a very remarkable sculptor has yet produced.