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Sir Jacob Epstein was an outspoken and controversial American-British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture.
Background
Jacob Epstein was born on November 10, 1880, at Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the third of eight children in a Jewish family with roots in Russia and Poland. As a youngster, he was so enthralled by the excitement of city life, and by drawing it, that he remained in a rented room on the Lower East Side after his parents moved to a better apartment uptown.
Education
Epstein studied art in his native New York as a teenager, sketching the city, and joined the Art Students League of New York in 1900.
However, in his early twenties, Epstein grew rapidly as an art student, gaining admission to the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris despite not knowing French. He graduated from it in 1904.
At an old age, Epstein was also honoured with a 1953 honorary doctorate from Oxford University.
Epstein visited Florence, Italy, and London in 1904, and settled permanently in the latter city in 1905, becoming a British subject at age thirty. During the first decades of the century, he studied portrait modelling and obtained his first commissions for public stone carvings. His first significant work appeared in 1907 when he was commissioned to carve 18 figures for the British Medical Association Building in the Strand, London. Completed the following year, these pieces solidly established the young sculptor's reputation; thus began the many privately commissioned portraits, which continued throughout his career.
About 1910 Epstein became keenly interested in African sculpture and amassed one of the finest collections of African art in Great Britain. He continued his pursuit of mastering the form language of other cultures and was drawn particularly to the sculpture of Egypt, Assyria, and pre-Columbian America.
He was then briefly, in 1913, associated with the Vorticist school of modern artists, though for most of his career he was independent of group affiliations, considering himself a solitary creator in the great tradition. He was repeatedly denied commissions or forced to modify his works: a memorable incident occurred in 1928 when he was compelled to shorten the penis of a sculpted male nude in the London Underground building.
During World War I, Epstein served with the Artists Rifles, after being turned down for the War Artists program.
With the dissolution of the London Group in 1916, Epstein began to work in the two modes for which he is best known. Works of the first mode, mostly religious and allegorical figures such as Genesis (1930) and Ecce Homo (1934–35), consisted of crude, brutal-looking forms carved directly into a megalith, often revealing the shape of the original block. The second mode, a multitude of bronzes cast from modelled clay, forms the bulk of his work.
In 1924 he received a commission for the W. H. Hudson Memorial, in Hyde Park. The president of the Royal Academy demanded its removal, and hoodlums splashed paint on it. In 1929, he was asked to carve two groups above the entrance of the new head offices of the underground railway in Westminster, London, and chose the subjects Night and Day. These two sculptures also met with public censure and Day was attacked with tar and feathers. He did not receive another public commission until 1951 when he did Youth Advancing for the Festival of Britain.
In his later years, Epstein became a vehement opponent of abstract sculptors. In 1958 he became ill but continued working until his death in London a year later.
(Two members of the Whitechapel Boys they influenced Briti...)
sculpture
Female Figure in Flenite
1913
Albert Einstein
1933
The Rock Drill
1915
The Visitation
1926
Doves
1914
Euphemia Lamb
1908
Reclining Nude Turning
1946
Views
Quotations:
"There are infinite modes of expression in the world of art, and to insist that only by one road can the artist attain his ends is to limit him. "
"The artist who imagines that he puts his best into a portrait in order to produce something good, which will be a pleasure to the sitter and to himself, will have some bitter experiences. "
"A sculptor is supposed to be a dull dog anyway, so why should he not break out in colour sometimes, and in my case I'd as soon be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. "
"When I was doing Professor Albert Einstein's bust he had many a jibe at the Nazi professors, one hundred of whom had condemned his theory of relativity in a book. 'Were I wrong, ' he said, 'one professor would have been enough. "
"A wife, a lover, can perhaps never see what the artist sees. They rarely ever do. Perhaps a really mediocre artist has more chance of success. "
"I cannot recall a period when I did not draw; and at school, the studies that were distasteful to me, mathematics and grammar , were retarded by the indulgence of teachers who were proud of my drawing faculties, and passed over my neglect of uncongenial subjects. "
"The artist is the world's scapegoat. "
"To think of abstraction as an end in itself is undoubtedly letting oneself be led into a cul-de-sac and can only lead to exhaustion and impotence. "
"Why dont they stick to murder and leave art to us?"
Personality
Epstein was a burly man with a forceful personality.
Connections
Epstein married Margaret Dunlop in 1906. Despite being married to and continuing to live with Margaret, Epstein had a number of relationships with other women that brought him his five children: Peggy Jean (born 1918), Theo (1924–1954), Kathleen (1926–2011), Esther (1929–1954) and Jackie (1934–2009). Margaret generally tolerated these relationships – even to the extent of bringing up his first and last children. In 1921, Epstein began the longest of these relationships, with Kathleen Garman, one of the Garman sisters, mother of his three middle children, which continued until his death.
Margaret Epstein died in 1947, and in 1955 Epstein married Kathleen Garman.
Father:
Max Epstein
Mother:
Mary Solomon Epstein
Daughter:
Kathleen Godley
Daughter:
Esther Grace Garman
Son:
Theodore Garman
Wife:
Kathleen Esther Epstein
ex-wife:
Margaret Dunlop
Daughter:
Peggy Jean Epstein
Son:
Jack Epstein
References
Jacob Epstein: Sculpture and Drawings
Sir Jacob Epstein was a pioneer of modernism in his use of "direct carving" and of "primitive" art as a means of conveying the deepest abstract feelings. First published in 1987, this is a catalogue of the artist's work.
1989
Jacob Epstein
Jacob Epstein (1880-1959) was a pioneer of modern sculpture in Britain. Yet he always felt an outsider in his adopted country, subjected as he was to relentless attacks and vilification. With his determination to break the taboos surrounding the depiction of sexuality, and his use of expressive distortion of the figure in a manner modeled more on non-Western art than the classical ideal, he aroused hostility throughout his career. Such controversy has meant that considerable attention is paid to certain aspects of Epstein's long and productive career, while in other respects the true nature of his overall achievement has been overlooked. This book intends to redress the balance. It provides a fascinating account of a sculptor who had a profound influence on successive generations of artists--not only for his carving but also for his courage.
1999
Demons and Angels: A Life of Jacob Epstein
“I feel that I can do the best, most profound things and life is short. How I wish I was living in an age when man wanted to raise temples to man or God or the Devil.” Jacob Epstein was thirty when he wrote these impassioned words. Now recognized as a seminal figure in the history of twentieth-century art, his powerful and often explicit sculptures, monumental in scale, were hailed as the work of a genius by a few contemporary figures such as Ezra Pound and Augustus John, but produced hostility and censoriousness from the art establishment. His is a true rags-to-riches story. Epstein was born in 1880 in the Jewish Ghetto of New York but emigrated to Europe to live a bohemian life, with a wife and several mistresses in a domestic menage. By the time of his death in 1959 he had met almost everybody of importance in the art world and many in political and other spheres. He endured public scandals caused by the nudity of his so-called Strand Statues (1907-1908; destroyed 1937) and the debauched-looking angel on his 1912 memorial for Oscar Wilde, but in 1946 he modeled the portrait of Sir Winston Churchill and was himself knighted in 1954. It is a comment on changing tastes that Epstein’s magnificent carving in alabaster, “Jacob and the Angel,” once refused by the Tate Gallery, now stands in the Central Sculpture Hall of Tate Britain. His sculpture, drawing, and other work are to be found in museums and art galleries all over the world. Daemons and Angels, the first biography in fifty years of this controversial sculptor, features black-and-white photographs throughout. “I feel that I can do the best, most profound things and life is short. How I wish I was living in an age when man wanted to raise temples to man or God or the Devil.” Jacob Epstein was thirty when he wrote these impassioned words. Now recognized as a seminal figure in the history of twentieth-century art, his powerful and often explicit sculptures, monumental in scale, were hailed as the work of a genius by a few contemporary figures such as Ezra Pound and Augustus John, but produced hostility and censoriousness from the art establishment. His is a true rags-to-riches story. Epstein was born in 1880 in the Jewish Ghetto of New York but emigrated to Europe to live a bohemian life, with a wife and several mistresses in a domestic menage. By the time of his death in 1959 he had met almost everybody of importance in the art world and many in political and other spheres. He endured public scandals caused by the nudity of his so-called Strand Statues (1907-1908; destroyed 1937) and the debauched-looking angel on his 1912 memorial for Oscar Wilde, but in 1946 he modeled the portrait of Sir Winston Churchill and was himself knighted in 1954. It is a comment on changing tastes that Epstein’s magnificent carving in alabaster, “Jacob and the Angel,” once refused by the Tate Gallery, now stands in the Central Sculpture Hall of Tate Britain. His sculpture, drawing, and other work are to be found in museums and art galleries all over the world. Daemons and Angels, the first biography in fifty years of this controversial sculptor, features black-and-white photographs throughout.
2002
...Unto Heaven Will I Ascend: Jacob Epstein's Inspired Years 1930-1959
As an American living in England, a conscious Jew who utilized Christian symbols, a skillful modeler who introduced direct carving into England, and a modernist who eventually came to dislike abstraction for its own sake, Epstein did not fit neatly into the artistic categories of his time. Apart from his still widely admired naturalistic bronze portraits, Epstein’s oeuvre remains poorly understood and his reputation is dominated by his famous Rock Drill from before World War I. As this book shows, Epstein remained an avant-garde artist throughout his life, even if he ignored modernist dogma as well as man-in-the-street prudery. Gilboa’s text reveals the man in all his genius, interpreting many works in the light of Epstein’s personal circumstances. In an atmosphere of polarized attitudes to art and polite anti-Semitism at the end of the 1920s growing rather less polite thereafter, the outsider Jew Epstein deliberately became estranged from London’s art world. He responded to society’s attitude towards him in a series of bold projects – the monumental Genesis (1930) and Primeval Gods (1931–32); the smaller carvings Chimera and Elemental (1932); Behold the Man (1934–35); Consummatum Est (1938–39); Adam (1938) and Jacob and the Angel (1940); the bronze Lucifer (1944–45) and again a carving, Lazarus (1947). One cannot ignore the symbolic names of these sculptures. The discussion in this book will reveal that in each case the name has a definite relation to the sculpture’s theme and essence, as well as to the personal concerns of the sculptor. Almost all of these sculptures that Epstein produced from the 1930s aroused a public outcry, causing one critic to state that “a new carving by Mr. Epstein – good, bad or indifferent – can still steal the headlines when criminal assault, private or political, is out of season”. It was only during the 1950s, following the trauma and emotional shock of World War II, that new requirements for the expression of ideas and emotions rather than for mere forms with which to play renewed the demand for ‘an Epstein’ and his kind of ‘content’ sculpture, mainly in public commissions. Epstein, by then in his seventies, was flooded with work, and his sculpture – which employed Christian imagery to convey universal ideas of consolation and hope to a war-weary England – became newly relevant, gaining him the status of grand old master of English sculpture.
2014
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Thirty years after its publication, The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as "perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning....[It] can also be seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still be read for pleasure even by those who long ago absorbed and appropriated the book's arguments." Jane Jacobs, an editor and writer on architecture in New York City in the early 60s, argued that urban diversity and vitality were being destroyed by powerful architects and city planners. Rigorous, sane, and delightfully epigrammatic, Jacobs's small masterpiece is a blueprint for the humanistic management of cities. It is sensible, knowledgeable, readable, indispensable. The author has written a new foreword for this Modern Library edition.