Familiar Sensation

Up stood Sir Cooper Rawson, Conservative, in the House of Commons fortnight ago.

"May I ask the Home Secretary," he cried, "to take due and proper steps to guard against any breach of the peace which might be provoked by this spectacle."

The spectacle to which he referred was an 11-ft., 7-ton statue of Christ propped against the wall in London's swank Leicester Galleries, the latest work of a heavyset, U. S.-born Jewish sculptor, Jacob Epstein. Entitled Ecce Homo ("Behold the Man"), the great bas-relief slab showed a huge square head, nearly as large as the torso, with thick sad lips, sightless almond eyes, and two great hands tied with rope. That was about all (see cut).

Probably no sculptor in the world has infuriated a large public so long or so successfully as has Jacob Epstein. Ever since 1908, three years after he moved to London, the appearance of almost every new Epstein statue has been greeted by angry crowds, smears of paint, blasts from the Press, apoplectic roarings from the pulpit. Fortunately for Sculptor Epstein, there have also been moneyed collectors quick to realize the technical proficiency of the man, the great power of most of his work.

In 1908, when Sculptor Epstein was 28, it was the 18 enormous nudes symbolizing the life of Man which he erected across the front of the British Medical Association building in the Strand.

Next there was the tomb of Oscar Wilde in Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Paris. The Prefecture of Police covered it up with an awning and attached a large bronze fig leaf. Infuriated students rioted in the cemetery, led a parade down the boulevards to the Cafe Royale. The leader wore the fig leaf like a medal around his neck.

In 1925 came the great Rima bas-relief in Hyde Park. Outraged Britons screamed about the lady's "hamlike hands," made speeches on street corners and smeared with green paint this portrayal of the ethereal heroine of Naturalist William Henry Hudson's Green Mansions (TIME, June 1, 1925).

In 1920 Epstein's first statue of Christ, a dignified, rather Assyrian figure in bronze, raised howls of "sacrilege." There were just as violent outbursts against his sombre Mongoloid figures on the Underground Railways building (TIME, July 22; Aug. 26, 1929) and his great marble statue of a pregnant Negroid woman known as Genesis (TIME, Feb. 16; April 13; Dec. 14, 1931).

Last week the old familiar Epstein sensation was going full blast again. The Daily Mirror, stirred to the depths of its cylinder presses, refused to reproduce a photograph of it.

Cried Catholic Pundit Gilbert Keith Chesterton: "It is one of the greatest insults to religion I have ever seen!"

Used to such ruckuses, Sculptor Epstein said nothing at all, merely let it be known that the asking price for his latest sensation was $15,000, that he would like to see it erected in some modern church.

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