Consummatum Est

Extract

Speaking as one less wise in such matters, I should say that Mr. Epstein's object in the grotesqueness of his sculptured figures is twofold: first, to bring out, by deliberate over-emphasis, points that others might overlook; and secondly, to balance the inadequacy of his medium, stone.

The first point explains the exaggeration of feature in his figures. And how justifiable this is I was able to note upon seeing in the flesh the original of one of the busts, exhibited in the Leicester Galleries, standing alongside the bust itself. To look at the original immediately after seeing the reproduction was to see how much one had missed in the former —and what a great sculptor Mr. Epstein is.

The second object explains what one might call the brutality of his technique, the hard mathematical lines, the artificial disproportions, and the rough, clay-model surfacing. A sculptor’s problem is this: he has to produce out of stone upon the observer the same dynamic effect as a living personality produces. Stone with the lines of a human face is something much less than the lines of a human form in flesh and blood vitalized by a human personality. The deficit has to be made up. There are many ways of making it up. Mr. Epstein’s way is to change the lines or usual appearance so that the thing presented is calculated, by its very strangeness, to jolt the mind and encourage the recognition of underlying realities, or suggested realities.