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I am extremely excited about playing with the Ken Ardley Playboys at the Party! show next week. The Apathy Band and some of the Ken Ardley Playboys played in Pescara Italy just after we finished the window installation for the party show last week. The window installation is the largest and most involved art work we have made so far involving images and objects from the Garman Ryan Collection; see the video below. It is inspired by some very touching photo’s of Esther at a party she must have organized for Roland Joffe when he was six or seven in our version of the party at the Epstein House things have gone rather crazy and busts by Epstein have be festooned with silly string and streamers. I find the party photos very moving.
They are an insight into the personal lives of the Epstein’s. Because Kathleen does not appear in them I suspect they are her eye view of proceedings. Perhaps when people look through the portholes of the window box installation for a brief instant become Kathleen. Neil has made a wonderful job of representing our efforts so far in the Archive Gallery in the Garman Ryan Collection. He has edited the films we have made so far with ‘Pathe’ footage of Epstein. It makes for a very effective 45 minutes of film. Hales Gallery in London are interested in organizing a screening of the film. It’s always enjoyable working behind the scenes of the Gallery. Neil and I are very much involved with one aspect of the Gallery but as we were working last week I was amazed at what a cultural centre The New Art Gallery Walsall has become. During most week days the Gallery is filled with school kids. Unlike most middle aged gallery goers I don’t mind a few kids running about. When I was a student I lived in Italy. The use of museums in Italy as Educational tools is far more advanced. Because so much of what it means to be Italian resides within the museum they jam them with kids. The New Art Gallery Walsall is doing a great job of reflecting how culture is developing while showing where its roots are.
Happy Birthday. 10 years old this month.
Bob says…
Wow the archive gallery looks great. I am eager to see it in person.
It was wonderful last week to visit the Museum of Everything with Neil Lebeter and Jo Digger. We met James Brett the inspirational collector who made the Museum of Everything a reality. For those not in the know the Museum of Everything is an exhibition of what for want of a better term has been called ‘outsider art’. It’s been the smash hit of the autumn and it’s free. Its early days but I hope to collaborate with James on a project next year.
Later in the afternoon we visited the Wild Thing show at the Royal Academy. It was great to visit the show with Jo Digger who is so insightful about Epstein’s work. Jo went into a very detailed explanation of the drawings which lead up to the Rock Drill many of which suggest a kind of hybrid object involving all sorts of other elements including women and doves. After that Jo and Neil joined me at Beaconsfield, 22 Newport Street, where I have a show called This Artist is Deeply Dangerous.
I went to Chris Ofili’s show at Tate Britain last night. Ofili is an artist who is deeply interested in Art and culture that resides outside the mainstream. Ofili’s show is incredible. It made me think that in painting terms he is as powerful as Francis Bacon. He is way beyond any other painter around just now.
Followers of Museums and their Directors will note that Walsall’s Stephen Snoddy was pretty involved in Ofili’s early career.
10 years of the New Art Gallery Walsall is celebrated early next month with the exhibition ‘Party’. Neil and I will perform our play about Epstein using the puppet theatre and my band The Ken Ardley Playboys are going to play. Bring cotton wool for your ears. It’s good to reflect upon the importance of the Garman Ryan Collection and note that the whole New Art Gallery Walsall would never have existed but for the foresight of Kathleen Garman and her friend Sally Ryan and the gift of their collection to Walsall.
One mans fight against the British Art Establishment
I think our short film of the play ‘One Mans Battle with the British Art Establishment’ is oddly on the mark concerning how Epstein was sidelined by the British Art Establishment. In his biography you get a sense of his feelings of growing paranoia which lead him to be suspicious of keys figures like Augustus John, Roger Fry and Henry Moore. It’s hard now to imagine the different power groups that existed but if they are anything like what they are like now he was right to feel actively excluded.
All artists are of course paranoid. My favourite Scene was where Epstein calls Henry Moore an M.F. when Moore fails to support him as a Tate Trustee. After Epstein died, Moore wrote an obituary. I forgot to point out in the film why Morrissey narrates it. It’s, of course, because Morrissey is a fan of Oscar Wilde; whom Epstein built a tomb for. On last weeks Desert Island Discs, Morrissey chose Oscar Wild as his favourite author. My wife Jessica Voorsanger likes the appearance of Kathleen the best.
Visit to the Tate Archive
Our Visit to The Tate Archive was amazing. It is a very different set up to the Walsall archive. Seeing letters is like ordering food from an expensive restaurant. They take a while to come but when they do its worth it. I am not naturally a scholar. The most illuminating aspect was looking at the photographs the Head Archivist showed us on the extensive tour we had. They have so much great stuff back there. Turner’s model boat, Francis Bacon’s suit case. When they open Tate Modern Two they should do a show of Artist Memorabilia. Is that what you have in mind with the new exhibition case? Many of the photos were of the sculpture ‘Adam’ taken at various stages. You could see Epstein’s working method played out in the images.
Epstein at Royal Academy
Yesterday I went to the Royal Academy. The RA is amazing at the moment. There is a great show by Anish Kapoor. This show is exceptional, funny, beautiful, and architecturally quite magnificent. It put my faith back into the idea of large scale sculpture. Big lumps are good; I hope they will get him to do something really big for the Olympics. I met Kapoor recently, he is a pretty formidable person. He told me it has taken him weeks to recover from making the RA show. You can see why. The show is encyclopaedic in its enquiry of different types of meaning in sculptural forms. I imagine Kapoor to be a bit like Epstein in character.
He is fiercely ambitious and obviously lets very little get in the way of his vision. He is also seen as a bit of an outsider at least compared to Anthony Gormley who is very much more an accepted insider.
Outsider/Insider what a load of Crap. Only the English think like this. Upstairs is Wild Thing. The billing for this show is silly. The press release even mentions the Troggs song. Epstein’s Rock Drill looks great. It is clearly the iconic piece in this show rivalled perhaps by Eric Gill’s X.T.C. It’s a great show. Gaudier Brzeska’s death was a disaster for humanity. I can well imagine we might think of him like we think of Picasso had he lived. Give the RA one more chance. There is even a rather limp show about climate change round the back.
Harlow Sculpture Town
Recently I visited Harlow Sculpture Town. Harlow is the New Town which features works by iconic British sculpters of the period just after Epstein died. They have an important early Elizabeth Frink. The architecture is similar to Coventry Cathedral and is absolutely great. The Henry Moore they have is the first public commission he was given after World War 2. It was a far sighted commission that really got him started on the career that is so celebrated now. I was visiting Harlow to see a possible site for my own attempt at Public Sculpture. I had to meet members of the Harlow Sculpture Trust. I mentioned I was working in the Epstein Archive and that he was excluded from participation in the British Art World in the way he would have wanted by Roger Fry and the Bloomsbury Group. One of the Trust Members told me the critic Herbert Reid got the same treatment from Roger Fry. Not sure if they deserve such a bum rap what do you think?
Eppy Daddy and the Aztecs
In the Tate Archive we saw a signed photo of Epstein with ‘Eppy Daddy’ scrawled in the bottom corner of it. I took my kids to see the wonderful Aztec show that is in the British museum last week. My god, what a fantastic culture that was. I said to my son it was a bit blood thirsty. He said ‘”get over it Dad. We have a guy nailed to a cross, they had jugs in the shape of eagles full of human hearts. What’s the difference? And they were brutally murdered by the lot who believed in the guy on the cross.”
I replied “Ok Simon Schama…” Eppy Daddy lived around the corner from the British Museum in the 1910’s. You can see his love of Assyrian sculpture in his Oscar Wilde Tomb. All his carvings show a powerful interest in the African, Egyptian and Aztec monumental sculpture. Ecce Homo is very Aztec looking. If you think of Eduardo Paolozzi it’s impossible not to see Epstein in his work. You not only see the influence of the Aztecs through Epstein but also the fact that Epstein was the inventor of the ROBOT with the Rock Drill. I think the inventor of the robot deserves to sign himself Eppy Daddy.
When we went to the Museum of Everything, we saw some wonderful 20th century outsider robots made of wire and transistors. It would be great to do a show of the great Robots. Actually Paolozzi did a show like this in the old museum of mankind. I saw it when I was a kid. It was great.
See Esther…
After making the ‘See Esther’ film with Neil, I thought more about the process of Epstein making a portrait bust. The bust of Esther with a flower with her rather long neck is an open image of a young woman. It sits in stark contrast to the first bust which is the subject of our film. There is something unsettling in the image and I have begun to think it is the image of a young woman resisting being portrayed by her father. Nowhere in any of the letters from Esther or Theodore am I aware of them referring to their father as anything other than ‘Epstein’. Epstein’s Portrait busts were either of lovers, small children or the Famous. The first Portrait bust of Esther is uncomfortable. Esther stares ahead. Her gaze looks to the middle distance to a space beyond the viewer, beyond the artist.
I am reminded of being a teenager and relatives asking ‘what are you thinking?’ and wanting to shout at them but not being able to. Epstein called the first bust of Esther one of his best. He was right.
The default thing Art Historians say about Epstein’s busts is that he was a genius at being able to explore the psychology of his subjects. I am not sure that this is anything more than myth making. What is great about the 1st bust of Esther in his in ability to capture Esther’s psychological state.
Like Leonardo’s Mona Lisa she remains her own person resisting easy interpretation. Unlike the Mona Lisa there is no enigmatic smile.
Gormley on Epstein by Bob and Roberta Smith
Last week I listened to Anthony Gormley talking to Richard Cork about Epstein on Radio 4. Jo Digger (Collections Curator at Walsall) was included in the programme which was partly recorded in the Epstein Archive on the day we made the Lady Epstein Film.
Jo and a woman from the BBC surprised me just as I was donning Lady Epstein’s handbag and fur coat. I felt like saying in a Terry Jones from Monty Python’s Flying Circus sort of voice: ‘Let me tell you about My Husband, Jacob Epstein. He was at one with his mistresses and his hundreds of kids.’ The programme was very old school art history. It tried to get people interested in Epstein in the run up to a large show of work called Wild Things at the Royal Academy. The programme must have had some effect because when I went at the weekend I could not get in. There is also a very popular Anish Kapoor show on at the same time. Jo Digger was great. She talked about the controversy over Epstein’s Strand sculptures and gave the show its one point of historical insight. Anthony Gormley always reminds me of Monty Don who presents gardening shows on the telly. Like Monty Don, Anthony Gormley is always extolling the virtues of labour and human dignity in a rather fruity enthusiastic posh voice like a gym teacher in a ‘good’ school.
Richard Cork was really no better. The programme was rather myth making. Cork and Gormley did not mention the anti Semitism which greeted Epstein at every turn in the pre first world war period and which lead to him not being accepted as a war artist. One moment in the programme was cringe making. When talking about Epstein’s collection of African Art the BBC played some African drumming. I think what we can do at the Archive may be sometimes rather playful but I hope it will aim to give a more critical approach to Epstein while still celebrating his achievements.
Frieze Art Fair
I have been at The Frieze Art Fair all week. It’s a strange event. One can be forgiven for thinking that the art world is more about the enforcement of bizarre Hierarchies and adherence to crazy Etiquette rather self expression and curiosity. But among it all there are some wonderful things. The show stopper exhibition in London this week is, however, wholly unexpected.
It’s called the Museum of Everything. It’s a collection of American Folk Art crammed into an old night club in Primrose Hill. The show is the work of one man, James Brett. James has made a collection of American Folk art that in many ways is more impressive than the Museum of Folk Art in New York. The exhibition made me wonder about the collection of Jacob Epstein who had a massive personal collection of art from Egypt and Africa.
The Museum of Everything is an extraordinary ‘Pitt Rivers’. style exhibition where works of art are jammed into the space. It made me wonder about the house of Jacob Epstein crammed high with African sculpture. It must have looked great. I met Stephen Snoddy at the Fair and pointed him in the direction of the Museum of Everything. Any pictures of The Epstein House Neil?
Night and Day
I went to St James today to find the Epstein Sculptures, Night and Day on the London Underground headquarters. They both look worn and the weather is taking its tool but they still look pretty great given the restrained modernism of the building. I really like them. They look as if they were made urgently. They are not ponderous and I am beginning to think that what the British disliked about the work is that it was completely unapologetic with something to say. Henry Moore’s work always depends on the viewer inferring meaning but Epstein clearly knows what he wants us to think and wants the viewer to react. The film of “What happens when artists die?” should be distributed in art schools.
If you make art what happens when you die?
Dear Neil
I have just finished reading Stephen Gardiner’s biog of Epstein. It’s such a difficult story to absorb. At one moment one is disgusted at how Epstein was treated by the Art Establishment then you are appalled by his activities as a parent. One of the most misguided acts was to attend his investiture as a KBE just weeks after his sons death. Not only that but he took Esther his daughter with him. I came across a reference to her relationship with ‘a young student who fell in love with her’ who killed himself when she rejected him. This seems to have been followed by a trip to Italy an attempted suicide and then result is her actually killing herself. Is their any evidence of this relationship in the archive? I know Cressida Connelly makes mention of it in her book.
This sad episode is preoccupying me at the moment. I think we should make a more serious film which looks at what the archive can tell us about Esther. We looked at her letters from Italy two weeks ago. These seemed quite jolly and certainly not suicidal. They must be from that 1954 trip after Theo had died. Is there a way of checking? We were looking at a beautiful photo of Esther and Theo last week. It captured a moment of quiet joy. She was sitting on his lap and they are both laughing. I find this aspect of the archive heartbreaking.
On a slightly less dark note (although hardly) it was great to work on the ‘What happens if you make art when you die’ installation. It’s important to think about Epstein’s reputation now. I think it is true that Epstein is not the central figure that he was when he died. But what is interesting is how a generation of sculptors who were around at the time have passed on a visual interested in Form and narrative which goes largely unsaid. I think there is a link back to Rodin and going forward through George Fullard, and Peter Startup to Phyllida Barlow to Helen Chadwick to my generation and artists like Eva Rothschild, Jennet Thomas and Brian Griffiths. It would be great to put a show together along these lines. It would be a kind of romp through a very important area of British Art. Epstein is a fantastic connection point with Fin de siecle Paris. He might well have been included in Roger Shattuck’s book The Banquet Years.
I have grown to really enjoy his big carvings. I had a guy who works for Anish Kapoor on my Radio show last week who said he got into carving because of Jacob and the Angel. I have an idea to make a carving of Theo as part of the residency. Epstein never made a head of him. I would like to have a try.
Very excited about our visit to the Tate archive can we make a film of some of Epstein’s works in London?
Esther Film next plus the making of Theo’s Head.
Dear Neil…
Great news about the Tea cup being returned. I think that was left quite far away. Do we have contacts for the returnees? I love this project.
I am concerned we might be wasting peoples time but somehow the whole process seems to echo the feeling of going through the Archive finding things ourselves; it’s very serendipitous and depends a lot on our attitudes as much as what more objectively is there.
Your find this week of the torn notes from Kathleen Garman’s calendar of the dates that Theo and Esther died are amazingly sad. These actual fragments of paper torn by their mother from a rolodex style calendar are easily enough to make you weep. They are the first step to the formation of a show in the archive devoted to those around Epstein who were perhaps the unwitting victims of his incredible single mindedness but also of the casual cruelty inflicted by parents on their children. Or perhaps it’s just that some young people need help and support to get through their twenties. This job of going through the Archive has made me think long and hard about parenthood. I have two children; I know I am guilty of not always being around for them, often because of commitments to do with art.
Dear Neil…
I really enjoyed our trip to the MLA so that I could get to grips with some of the issues surrounding archives. It was not as dry as I expected. The element of it that really interested me was when our teacher started telling us what to watch out for when letting people use archives. There were things I expected; people leaning on documents while eating sandwiches but what surprised me was that some people insert their own documents into archives. They do this to falsify history. Putting images of art works into catalogues to create a false provenance. I found this amusing because this is exactly what we are about to do in the Garman Ryan collection with our forgetful Lady Garman treasure hunt.
There is no way of telling if Kathleen Garman, Lady Epstein, was forgetful but she was certainly concerned that she could lose her address book. Inspired by the phrase ‘please return to Lady Epstein’ in her address book, Neil and I have littered Walsall with the contents of a fictional Lady Epstein Handbag.
If you find one of these objects please return it to Lady Garman, care of The New Art Gallery Walsall, and in return we will give you a personal tour of the Garman Ryan Collection and you will receive a free gift from the museum. In addition your returned object will form part of the new Garman Ryan Bob and Roberta index in the collection to be shown with all the other returned items in 2010. Happy Hunting.
We also made a film skilfully shot and edited by Neil of me as Lady Epstein dropping items out of my handbag. This was obviously a playful and irreverent homage to Kathleen Garman. However when I wore the costume which we had hastily devised I felt an awesome responsibility inhabiting the role. How did she walk? What kind of presence did she have? As we rifle through the papers relating to Kathleen it becomes clear she was a complex and not immediately likeable person. The last chapter in Cressida Connolly’s carefully researched book concerning the deaths of her children Ester and Theo makes her seem austere and distant. What do you think Neil will we find anything in the Archive to rehabilitate her in the light of more modern approaches to parenting?
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