Word: lipchitz
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What were the two intertwined figures doing on the park grass in the heart of Amsterdam? Burgomaster Arnold D'Ailly bustled up for a close look last week, and turned a fiery red. Sculptor Jacques Lipchitz had called his big, blocky, semi-abstract bronze The Couple, and it was all too clearly a labor of love. The burgomaster ordered the sculpture removed that very night to the museum cellar from which it was borrowed...
...intuitively reached the same decision," one of them said later. "Maybe the burgomaster's action can be explained, but for us it's indefensible. The Lipchitz is a fine bit of plastic art, and, anyway, not many people realized what it represented. Most everybody thought it was a turtle." Another added: "The Couple was a pretty statue, and it looked just fine the way it stood there. I don't know what the burgomaster should have done, but it was a real nice show and it's a pity it had to end this...
...Sculptor Lipchitz himself was far from the scene of the fracas, working at home in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. When he heard the news, the fierce, brilliant old Frenchman grinned like a turtle. "How touched I am," he said. "How warm in my heart...
...Lipchitz remembered The Couple well. While he talked of it, his hands shaped the air as if he were caressing his bronze: "I made it in 1928. That summer I had lost my father and, three weeks later, my sister. I was desperate. But then my optimistic nature came out: I saw that life must go on. From this came the statue. Life must go on-that's what the statue expresses. It is lovers, which means affirmation, but it also looks like an animal in pain. This is because life is a tragic scene and a hopeful scene...
...Lipchitz himself is not at all convinced that his current style is the last word in the development of his sculpture. He is always changing his approach, hopes to keep doing so. He feels that the lesson he learned from the fire in his studio ("If you are thrown off a horse, you have to get right back on") is basically the same as that which is apparent in his current show. Says he: "One must go ahead. Life is an irreversible movement, and that's the way with sculpture . . . I think I will now start my career...