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Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Bird Swallowing a Fish, 1914 (cast made in 1964)
Bronze 31.7 x 60 x 29 cm Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge
Photo Peter Mennim |
Looking beyond
basic instincts
Remembering a soldier’s death adds poignancy to Wild Thing, a powerful show about three artists who shaped the future of sculpture, writes John Evans
A FRENCH soldier wrote from the trenches to his father to say he had been doing some small pieces of sculpture, including a “Maternity statue” from the walnut of a German rifle-butt.
Would that it had survived, because the artist was Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and, within months, in 1915, he would die in action aged 23.
As we approach Remembrance Day the measure of our loss can be tasted in this exhibition. Curator Dr Richard Cork examines how in the 10 years from 1906, Jacob Epstein, Gaudier and Eric Gill transformed British sculpture.
New Yorker Epstein and Englishman Gill collaborated, and Epstein and Gaudier knew each other well, but they worked autonomously each seeking the essence of sculpture.
The title is taken from poet Ezra Pound’s description of Gaudier as like “…some soft-moving, bright-eyed wild thing”.
More than 90 works have been brought together for this compact and powerful show.
Gaudier’s precocious talent is evident from his sketches and early pieces, including Wrestler 1912-13. We see development, innovation and “geometrical extremism” in Redstone Dancer 1913, and the striking Head of Ezra Pound 1914 (which Wyndham Lewis dubbed “Ezra in the form of a marble phallus”) marks Gaudier’s acceptance of the new Vorticism.
Bird Swallowing a Fish is harbinger of war and commentary on mechanised power.
These are complemented by Epstein’s Rock Drill, both bronze torso and reconstruction of the original man-robot and real power tool. Alongside is his Venus – second version, a monumental “beautiful tower,” over two metres of pregnant marble, complete with copulating doves. Loaned by Yale, this is its first UK outing since 1917.
The tension between the secular and sacred is the perverse cross Gill chose to bear; famously documented by his biographer Fiona MacCarthy.
Gill’s skill is clear, from the provocative Ecstasy, to his delicate reliefs of the crucifixion. Mother and child are crucial to all three men.
Notes and jottings often highlight basic instincts. An Epstein study for Oscar Wilde’s tomb lists the following words: covetousness, envy, jealousy, anger, shock, wandering thoughts, fornication, slander, sodomy, evil.
Seven deadly sins were not enough.
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