DOI issue:
No. 328 (July 1920)
DOI article:Cournos, John: Jacob Epstein: Artist-philosopher
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21360#0181
JACOB EPSTEIN: ARTIST-PHILOSOPHER
u MRS. JACOB EPSTEIN "
BY JACOB EPSTEIN
torical character like Christ is not the
simple matter that some people suppose it
to be, and that an honest artist who under-
takes the achievement, unless he imitate
other men's work, must have some philo-
sophical basis of his own upon which to
build his work. 0000
The artist, it is to be supposed, begins
his work by going to the Gospels. Let us
assume that he had been reading the
Gospels for years, long before he had con-
templated making his statue ; that the idea,
taking seed, grew up slowly, gradually,
both consciously and subconsciously ; that
in the course of many years it had been
augmented and intensified by current his-
toric events and personal emotional and
intellectual experiences ; for a great artist
is an intensely sensitive instrument, which,
automatically, in a manner almost clair-
voyant, takes cognizance of things denied
to ordinary men, and gathers to itself, as
from the very air, everything that may be
of use to the artist; in short, an artist
wastes nothing, and everything that he has
seen, heard and felt enters directly or
indirectly into his work, and helps to make
the final conception and its treatment. 0
First of all, then, Epstein has gone to the
Gospels. That is to say, he has gone to
the source of his theme ; and those who
quarrel with him can do so only on the
ground that he has gone to tradition where
it began and not where it ended. To be in
the tradition does not necessarily mean
that the artist must borrow his conception
from another artist, or get his inspiration
at tenth-hand. But to take one's inspira-
tion at the source is to be traditional in the
best sense of the word. Now, if you go to
the Gospels to learn about Christ and
compare the astonishingly virile figure of
the Book with the latter-day effeminate
confections which pass as portraits of
Christ, you begin to see that the discre-
pancy between them is as immense as the
time that separates us from the original
figure. To put all dogma and generaliza-
tion aside, however, let us consider all the
objections raised against the Epstein Christ,
175
u MRS. JACOB EPSTEIN "
BY JACOB EPSTEIN
torical character like Christ is not the
simple matter that some people suppose it
to be, and that an honest artist who under-
takes the achievement, unless he imitate
other men's work, must have some philo-
sophical basis of his own upon which to
build his work. 0000
The artist, it is to be supposed, begins
his work by going to the Gospels. Let us
assume that he had been reading the
Gospels for years, long before he had con-
templated making his statue ; that the idea,
taking seed, grew up slowly, gradually,
both consciously and subconsciously ; that
in the course of many years it had been
augmented and intensified by current his-
toric events and personal emotional and
intellectual experiences ; for a great artist
is an intensely sensitive instrument, which,
automatically, in a manner almost clair-
voyant, takes cognizance of things denied
to ordinary men, and gathers to itself, as
from the very air, everything that may be
of use to the artist; in short, an artist
wastes nothing, and everything that he has
seen, heard and felt enters directly or
indirectly into his work, and helps to make
the final conception and its treatment. 0
First of all, then, Epstein has gone to the
Gospels. That is to say, he has gone to
the source of his theme ; and those who
quarrel with him can do so only on the
ground that he has gone to tradition where
it began and not where it ended. To be in
the tradition does not necessarily mean
that the artist must borrow his conception
from another artist, or get his inspiration
at tenth-hand. But to take one's inspira-
tion at the source is to be traditional in the
best sense of the word. Now, if you go to
the Gospels to learn about Christ and
compare the astonishingly virile figure of
the Book with the latter-day effeminate
confections which pass as portraits of
Christ, you begin to see that the discre-
pancy between them is as immense as the
time that separates us from the original
figure. To put all dogma and generaliza-
tion aside, however, let us consider all the
objections raised against the Epstein Christ,
175