Again, Epstein

In London last week a newsgatherer listened to the iconoclastic verbiage of Jacob Epstein, famed sculptor:

"Englishmen . . . are indifferent to art, and especially to sculpture, if their tastes can be judged by the monuments they tolerate. I am going back to America with an open mind . . . it is a friendlier country to artists than England. . . .

"The great cathedrals of England have stood like empty, cold barns since the Reformation--except Westminster Abbey, which is crammed to the bursting point with some of the worst sculpture ever conceived.

"One could overlook the King Albert memorial on a distinct promise that it would never occur again, but deliberately to repeat the crime in the Queen Victoria work and Nurse Edith Cavell monument makes one shudder.

"The modern War was ugly and soulless and the British sculptors have succeeded in portraying this. The War should have had no record at all in art. Modern art is all French. Italy appears to have had her say. Russia goes from bad to worse. One of her bright sculptors executed a piece showing a pyramid standing on its apex. I suppose he was portraying a revolution. England has never had a sculptor. I cannot speak for America until I have seen what there is. I should say, from what I know, their architecture is much better than that of England."

After uttering these words, Sculptor Epstein, iconoclast, inconoplast, famed for "Rima," a bird sculpture* in honor of famed Naturalist W. H. Hudson, boarded a boat for the U. S., where, it is rumored, he intends to live. On his arrival, he planned to survey an exhibition in which appears his Madonna and Child (my greatest sculpture and my best"); then he will go to Buffalo, "where they have a lively interest in art."

* Of which critics said: "It scares away the birds."