RIVALS FOR EPSTEIN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22779, 15 January 1936, Page 10

RIVALS FOR EPSTEIN

SCHOOL OF YOUNG SCULPTORS Four very young sculptors have combined to push Epstein off his pedestal, writes a London journalist. They are John and Vivian Cole, Hamish Macpherson, and Michael Foley, and they have formed themselves into a group intended to make the most advanced school of "moderns” look like a collection of old masters.

"All the so-called ‘ young sculptors ’ of to-day are about 40,” laughed John Cole. At 28, he is the senior member of the four. “Most of them should be drawing the old age pension. They are no longer modern. We cpnsider ourselves in advance of Epstein, whose inspiration is archaic.”

Hamish Macpherson, who is only 19, has farmed in New Zealand and starved in London. He is now respectably at work on panels for the first-class saloon of the Queen Mary. He added valiantly to John, "We are the babies of sculpture! ”

Judging by their exhibition, which opened recently, Epstein is due to fall with a big crash. Red-haired Mr Foley specialises in religious sculpture— Madonnas and prophets and monks. John and Vivian Cole, whose work is as "ultra” as Vivian’s pale grey neckwear and flannel trousers, run a very practical pottery kiln. Raw-boned Hamish Macpherson. taking Vivian ns his model, has produced a tormented head labelled "A Vorticist,” which even he is unable to explain. “Just an impression I got,” was all he could say about it.