WORK OF EPSTEIN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20794, 10 February 1931, Page 11

WORK OF EPSTEIN.

NEW STATUE EXHIBITED FRESH CONTROVERSY AROUSED. LONDON. Feb. 8. Mr. Jacob Epstein has excelled his own record with a marble statue of a woman entitled " Genesis ' now being exhibited in the Leicester Gallery. There is every promise of a controversy which will eclipse that caused by his Rima and the underground railway statues. Already responsible critics express the opinion that tho ijew statue is not fit for public display and they adviso tho proprietors of the gallery to remove it. Mr. Epstein represents Genesis as a woman with pronouncedly primitive features and with abdomen and legs of astonishing proportions emphasised by the fact, that tho marble ends at tho kneos. The Daily Telegraph's critic describes the statu© as that of a woman with a face like an ape, breasts like pumpkins, hands twico as gross as a navvy's and hair like a ship's hawsers. Those who have seen it aro practically unanimous in condomning this study of palaeolithic motherhood as a grotesque perversion of the decencies of nature and humanity, but Mr. Epstein only smiles and says " What do tho critics matter? They aro only silly, ignorant sheep, not sculptors." Asked to explain the statuo Mr. Epstein said: "Can a man explain in five minutes what; has taken years in conception and months to create? It is beautiful.'

The Daily Express critic says: "I had not seen blasphemy in stone until to-day. 'Genesis* is a bad joko in stone, artistically absurd and anatomically comical."