Wild Thing: Epstein, Gaudier-Brzeska, Gill
Royal Academy, until 24 January 2010
Supported by BNP Paribas and The Henry Moore Foundation
It’s an unlikely grouping, this alliance of Epstein, Gaudier-Brzeska and Gill. In many ways, this should be an Epstein solo show, or possibly an Epstein and Frank Dobson show (to link two key modernist sculptors who currently deserve reassessment), but neither of those interesting permutations would have pulled in the crowds. The popular appeal in Wild Thing is Eric Gill’s unorthodox sex life and the fact that the young rebel Gaudier died so romantically fighting ‘pour la patrie’ in the first world war (currently very fashionable). It helps that Epstein also had something of a racy reputation (affairs with models), so much so that he could be described by Gill as ‘quite mad about sex’. With all this alluring biography to pique and titillate the public imagination, the art and its radicalism becomes almost incidental to the show’s success.
Perhaps the sex even manages to distract attention from the fact that the work on view in the Sackler Galleries is of very uneven quality. The exhibition begins with the least considerable sculptor of the trio, Eric Gill. Predictably, it is his Portland stone relief of a couple making love that greets the visitor. ‘Ecstasy’, as it’s called, is not nearly as erotic as ‘Votes for Women’, now lost, a much more ecstatic image, but it serves to set the tone for an exhibition that trades on its risqué associations. To the left is a stark and moving Crucifixion with naked Christ and ‘A Roland for an Oliver’, which depicts a naked woman with legs wide apart; thus sacred and profane, the twin poles of Gill’s idiosyncratic moral code. A series of Madonna and Child sculptures are not impressive and the pseudo-archaic ‘Garden Statue’ is surprisingly weak in execution. The Crucifixion evidently inspired him more, as evidenced by a group of three relief carvings from 1913, the one from the Tate being especially effective. The best Gill sculpture here is the painted Portland stone ‘Boxers’, in which the dynamic is enhanced, not diminished by stylisation.
Gill was a considerable carver of inscriptions and reliefs, not a great sculptor in the round, and didn’t think of himself as an artist at all, preferring the designation of craftsman. Epstein, on the other hand, was a great sculptor, but there are mostly only smallish pieces in this show to demonstrate his overarching genius. Entering the Epstein gallery, the visitor passes the back of the original bronze torso of the famous ‘Rock Drill’ and is greeted by the tall marble nude ‘Venus — second version’ (c.1914–16). This is arguably the most important Epstein sculpture in this show and yet it is pushed against the wall, preventing the viewer from experiencing it fully in the round. Willowy yet angular, this is an exceptional carving, a towering Cycladic figure of cool sensuality and magnificent structural presence. On loan from Yale University, it is a key exhibit, and one of the several reasons why a visit to this show is recommended.
Epstein is the primary justification. Down the centre of his gallery is a group of three sculptures of doves mating, arranged in order of size and sculptural resolution. Around the walls is a fine selection of his powerful drawings, and other sculptures include the wonderfully contorted Flenite female figures and a magnificent bronze head of Iris Beerbohm-Tree. (How good Dobson’s ‘Osbert Sitwell’ would look here.) Moving into the Gaudier-Brzeska room, the eye is at once captured by the hieratic great head of Ezra Pound (though the carving is a 1973 replica), together with a couple of superb ink drawings of Pound nearby. I’ve always liked Gaudier, but the representation of his works here hardly does him justice. ‘Birds Erect’, for instance, seems a very dull piece. The drawings are much better, especially ‘Cows’ Heads’ and ‘Design for Vorticist Ornament’. The best sculptures are the bronze ‘Bird Swallowing Fish’, ‘Red Stone Dancer’, the hefty lead ‘Wrestler’ and the plaster relief of wrestlers. The two pastel portraits, of himself and his great love Sophie Brzeska, are proof of his great skill in drawing. The sculptural genius is something his early death persuades us to take almost on trust.
In tandem with the RA’s handsome catalogue (£19.95 in paperback), eloquently written by the exhibition’s curator Richard Cork, I have been browsing a new book by Raquel Gilboa. Entitled …And there was Sculpture: Jacob Epstein’s Formative Years 1880–1930 (Paul Holberton publishing, £20 in paperback), it is a passionate and densely written study. There is much biographical-critical material here and perhaps it will help to stimulate a revival of general interest in Epstein, who has been unfairly neglected of late. He is a major artist, and England cannot boast so many of those as to allow one now to slip through the critical dragnet.
I was saddened to learn of the death last week of Mark Glazebrook. A distinguished figure in the art world, former director of the Whitechapel Gallery and for many years an art critic and lecturer, he was a dealer when I first got to know him in the 1980s, showing such artists as Craigie Aitchison, William Roberts and George Rowlett. In later years, his contributions to The Spectator were always enthusiastic and urbane. He will be much missed.
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