PURCHASER OF “ADAM”

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 167, 18 July 1939, Page 7

PURCHASER OF “ADAM”

AUSTRALIAN GOLD MINING DIRECTOR. JACOB EPSTEIN’S STATUE. LONDON, July 16. It is revealed that Mr. Charles Stafford, a gold-mining director, of Australia, purchased Jacob Epstein’s “Adam.' The American magazine Time, commenting on Epstein’s “Adam,” says: "Sculptor Jacob Epstein is no charmer. In London, where he has lived for 34 years, the American-born Epstein’s elemental stone cutting has regularly shocked the prissy, amused the laity, enraged the pretty and made news for the Press. It all happened again when his latest work, a three-ton figure in pink alabaster, entitled ‘Adam.’ was exhibied in the Leicester Galleries. In general mass and demeanour ’Adam’ resembled an unusually upright gorilla with his fists at his chest and his face lifted manlike toward the stars. The conception was obvious and the execution direct. “Art critics who have learned their lesson this time paid ‘Adam’ respect. ‘A piece of giant brutality, rugged power and exultant energy." said the London Star. ‘A figure more powerful than the most powerful animal, indeed a being that is king of all creation.' said the London Evening Standard. Said bushy-haired sculptor Epstein, king of the primitive move- : ment in sculpture. ’I saw Adam as the questing, mysterious, primitive man. 1 saw him as the fount of all mankind.’ ” i