JACOB EPSTEIN By L. B. Powell
It appears now to be fairly generally agreed that Epstein is successful as a modeller of portrait busts, but opinion is violently divided over the merits of his carvings. It seems that you must either worship or hate the latter and that you may go to either extreme however moderate your view of the portrait busts may be. Mr. Powell.in his new review of the sculptor's work, Jacob -Epstein (Chapman and Hall, is. 6d.), maintains that this is all wrong and that you must pass the same judgement on the carvings as on the modellings. He is probably right in this opinion, but not for the reasons that he gives. The truth of the matter is that, though Epstein produces works of a very different kind when he carves and when he models, he attains to about the same degree of success in both techniques. That is to say, in both he is a rather good but not very interesting artist, who occasionally produces a bust of great merit such as Paul Robeson," or " Lydia," and a carving of the same sort of merit such as " Rima." On the other hand, he can fall to a very low level as in the bust of the Prime Minister, a wholly mediocre work, or in the " Day " on St. James's Park Station. In general in his carvings he seems more at ease in works conceived more or less as bas-reliefs such as " Rima " or " Night " than in those completely in the round such as " Genesis," which the shapeless modelling of the belly and the discontinuities about the breasts prevent from being entirely successful. Mr. Powell's criticisms of individual works of Epstein arc generally enlightening, but when he plunges into aesthetics he is less convincing. Ills summary of English sculpture before Epstein is too brief to be accurate and his love of undefined abstractions makes the more general passages on the function of sculpture vague and sometimes misleading.
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