EPSTEIN'S "MORNING."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20333, 14 August 1929, Page 8

EPSTEIN'S "MORNING."

" ATAVISTIC " SCULPTURE.

CRITICS SUPPORT PUBLIC*

GORILLA-LIKE FIGURE.

FEET RECALL CHAPLIN'S,

[FEOII OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] LONDON, July 12

Mr. Jacob Epstein's " Morning" on the ijcw Underground building in Westminister Broadway has been unveiled. As was the case with " Night," no ona understands what it is all about; facetious peoplo poke fun at it; and the seiious critics talk profoundly, but say littlo or nothing.

One sees a large gorilla-like figure. A smaller human figure stands in front, Tho arms are twisted so that the hands may rest on tho shoulders of tho greater figure. Ono might suggest that tho smaller figure represents- man, a littla fearful of starting out on his day's pilgrimage, and holding timidly to a parent body. The hands of the gorilla-lika figure aro in a position to give the littla man a push at the appropriate time. " 'Morning' took tho place by storm,", says the Daily Chronicle. " Little groups of peoplo gathered below it all day, and, if the passing opinion of tho man in tha street were any criterion, there could bo no gainsaying that a more hopeless dawa never broke upon Broadway.

" Epstein has never issued a mora direct challenge to the public tasto thau he has with this block of stone carved with his fantastic conceptions of tho human figure.

" Epstein himself spent .close on two hours in the street, viewing his work from all angles and varying distances. In that time he heard sufficient to realise that 'Morning' will never be popular art in our time; but that worried him not at all. He was the one thoroughly satisfied person in Broadway all day."-

No Sense of Design. Mr. R. 11. Tatloek, art critic of thft Daily Telegraph, attempts to write seriously of the figure. " After looking at 'Morning' with all the sympathy for tiio artist and'all the open-mindedness toward tho work of art at my command," ho says, "I am compelled to admit that tlia impression made upon me, as in tho casa of 'Night,' is that as a work of art it is almost negligible. Indeed, honesty forces mc to go farther than that. To me, at any rate, the sculpture is aesthetically meaningless, in design uncouth, and in.sentiment slightly repulsive.

" It is all the more unpleasant to hare to express these opinions, because thera is no doubt whatever that, as a, sculptor, Jacob Epstein's gifts arc numerous. Like many artists and craftsmen, however, liq docs not know his own limitations.

" Epstein is a supreme and superb psychologist of the instinctive order. By, that 1 mean that he has a rare and delightful gift for revealing through his portrait .studies tho soul behind 'tho human face divine.' " On the other hand," continues Mr* Tatloek, "tho reputation lie has acquired as a great designer seems to me to ba unjustified. And it is that quality which is the ono essential in a sculptor.: Throughout art history there is not a single great master who was not sessed of it."

Epstein, as "Night" and " Morning'' abundantly testify, has a poor eye for; formal beauty. His sense of design is dia« tinetly shaky.

As a-symbolist, which is what lie ap-. parently is trying hard to be, the hope* lessness of his failure must surely ; ba obvious to all. Over and over again he has insisted on demonstrating his ■incompetence in this respect. One gets the iini pression from Morning" that it is tha creation of a mind attempting to formulate a theory with insufficient material. Ex-Aucklander's Views. " Mr. Epstein acknowledges the validity of tradition by quoting Michael Angelo in justification of the monstrous liberties lie takes with the human form," ■writes Mr, W. Page Rowe, late of Auckland, in a letter to tho Morning Post. " Tho whole history of art proves that its greatest masters in every medium hava not run counter to tho common. sense of their time, however far they may havo departed from its conventions. Wo have but to place Michael Angelo's ' Night' and ' Morning' beside Mr. Epstein's interpretations of those subjects to prove a fundamental difference between the two, and to make Mr. Epstein's appeal to Michael Angelo disastrous to his argument. That difference, moreover, is perceivable by common sense, unaided and uncontradicted by any deep knowledge of art.

" Mr. Epstein and certain of his brethren who are contributing sculpture to the same building aro actually examples of atavism, since the common sense which might justify their works is that, of primitive cultures, fundamentally different from the cultural inheritance of tho nations to which these artists belong. This NeoPrimitive attitude is untenable. Artists may undoubtedly learn much from tho simplicity of primitive art, but when they, elect to* practise simplicity within the limits of primitive mentality they run as counter to tho common sense of higher culture, and with as unjustifiable results, as would a contemporary writer who employed tho languago of Chaucer." Another writer in the Post expresses tho hope that Mr. Epstein's " Morning" was not premeditated. " Tho position of tho feet of the smaller figure seems to mo to be an infringement of Mr. Charles Chaplin's copyright," ho says, " and that of tho hands on the shoulders of the larger figure would appear, taken in conjunction with tho front-facing torso, (o be impossible to any but a professional contortionist.

" As I turned away a, passing workman turned to glare at the . ' masterpiece.' ' Well,' said he, ' that ought to ho pulled down, any'ow.' But lie, of course, vaq an ignorant Philistine."