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I met Bob in London last week to film some interesting Epstein locations, which was great. The full film will be shown at our Film Evening on the 19th of May. This is another film that we did that day. Although Epstein and Churchill were neighbours and friends, Churchill apparently complained sometimes about the loud music coming from 18 Hyde Park Gate. Enjoy.
Ken Ardley Playboys, Window Box, Party!
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.
The results are in…
The most watched Bob and Roberta Smith and the Epstein video so far is ‘Archiving with Bob and Roberta Smith’. With an eye-watering 500 views, this video has consistently outgunned the competition.
What does this mean for the museum and gallery community more generally? I think the answer is clear – the public want museums all over the country to destroy their collections. Perhaps their could be a competition to see which gallery can do this in the most imaginative way – fire the Tate Collection out of a cannon, submerge British Museum artefacts in liquid nitrogen and smash them with a toffee hammer, or strap the Magna Carta to the back of a wild stallion and film it careering into a swimming pool of ink.
The public have spoken.
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.
Theo & “One Man’s Battle with The Art Establishment”
There has been a tremendous amount of activity in the Epstein Archive over the past few weeks. Bob has been up a fair bit in the last fortnight and has created a tremendous amount of work inspired by the archive. Firstly is his sculpture of Theodore Garman, which was made last week. We made a film following the sculpture’s progress and Bob talks a little about his thinking behind it.
I must admit that I find the Theo sculpture a little terrifying and it featured heavily in a rather bizarre dream I had the other night.
Secondly, Bob made a minature theatre for a film we made last week. This play, titled “One Man’s Battle with The Art Establishment”, is a light hearted look at the life of Jacob Epstein and was tremendous fun to make. It is in two parts, so be sure to watch both!
The gallery’s Youtube channel is filling up with all the short films that Bob and I have been making over the last few months. We feel that this is an exciting and different way of getting people interested in archives.
Last but not least, we visited Walsall College last week to give a talk to one of the art classes. We showed some of the videos we have been making and took along some objects from the archive. It was really great to take the archive to the people and they seemed to enjoy the visit as much as we did.
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.
Epstein’s personal correspondence
The first full series of letters in the Epstein Archive have been catalogued and their records will appear on the archive catalogue on the website soon, which you can find here. This is a fascinating series of personal correspondence to Jacob Epstein and there are some very recognisable names in amongst the 30 to 40 letters that have survived. They are generally from the last years of E
pstein’s life and, as you would probably expect, there are a lot gushing reviews of his work. Among the names that jump out are Somerset Maugham, John Cowper Powys, Basil Spence, John Gielgud, Rosalyn Tureck, Matthew Smith and T.S. Eliot.
The letters chart the incredible amount of works that Epstein undertook in the mid to late 1950s, such as Social Consciousness in Fairmount Park Philadelphia, Christ in Majesty at Llandaff Cathedral, St. Michael and the Devil at Coventry Cathedral, and the T.U.C. Memorial in London, along with a great many private portrait commissions.
My favourite letter, however, is from 1947 and sent by the Curator of the Central Museum Lahore. So keen was he to have an Epstein in his museum that he paid the not insignificant cost of transporting a sculpture to Lahore out of his own pocket, in the hope that he would be able to reclaim the costs from the museum’s budget in the next financial year. I wonder if he ever saw that £150 again.
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.
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