Word: adams
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...ADAM, Jacob Epstein's recent statue, was subjected to a barrage of mixed criticism when first presented before the public. The piece shocked many people because of its virile display of masculine strength which was convicted by the sculptor in no uncertain artistic terms...
...vision completely free from academic stodginess. In many respects Epstein occupies the same relative position in his medium of expression, that of stone, as James Joyce does in the world of the novel, and his work is as difficult to grasp as Joyce's. To the religious person, the ADAM looms large as a distasteful desecration of the scriptures; some people gaze in silent admiration; others use the statue as the butt of obscene vilification...
...description of the statue would prove nothing. Its force of creative distortion would be frozen by the ice of descriptive wording. And in order to arrive at a fair evaluation of the ADAM'S worth, it would be necessary to devote many finely printed pages to a discussion of the statue, a discussion which would include Epstein's purpose, the complexity of various contemporary movements in sculpture, and a searching investigation of many other works of art which have been similarly received when first exhibited. Still the concentrated strength embodied in ADAM is penetrating enough to cause even the most...
More important, however, than any evaluation of the statue is an estimate of the effect, beneficial or deleterious, which the ADAM may have on the average person's attitude towards the art has crawled out of the precarious position it occupied during the nineteenth century, a position between the pit of conservative morality and the pendulum of progressive realism, certain fundamental questions are still unanswered. We find ourselves still confronted with the time-worn, but nevertheless basic, problems. Shall we accept brutal, brazen phases of the world as art on a par with the more pleasant and morally pure aspects...
Robert Henry Troescher, Robert Glenn Tyson, Adam Yarmolinsky, Joseph Marvin Young...