Something Thoughtful

   Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.     

                                    MY FAVOURITE PIECE OF ART

When I was a young teenager, and even before that, I frequently went to, or was taken to, the Auckland City central art gallery.  Inevitably there were some paintings that became my favourites, although some of them now seem not so great; but I still like them simply for the sake of nostalgia. The art gallery has naturally changed over many years. Some works of art have been replaced, some have been put into storage, and the layout of the gallery itself has changed radically.  But this year, carrying my pocket phone, I visited the gallery and decided to look at those works of art I once admired. [Forgive my wonky photos]

Of course I laughed a little at the 18^th century version of two tigers coming into their cave, neatly framed by the cave itself. To me they looked like domesticated puss-cats.

 

I was still awed by the violent seascape as a mighty ship is toppled into the fierce waves.    

I was still amused by the woman being duped by an old palm-reader as two other characters smirk or are confused.                       

 

And naturally I delighted in Henry Fuseli’s melodramatic version of Macbeth and Banquo meeting the witches, the two men looking more like naked Greek statues than Scots warriors. [BTW, this image was not in the gallery when I was a kid – I think it was a more recent acquisition. ]

 

But the one piece of art that I loved the best, man and boy, was Jacob Epstein’s sculpture which was labelled as “Rock Drill”. As a boy, I understood that it was not a literal image of something living, but was created by the sculptor [and as a boy I hadn’t yet learned the words “Modernism” or “Cubism” or “Vorticism”]. What I saw looked like an elongated helmet of the sort that would have been worn by a medieval knight, and yet in the lower part of “Rock Drill” there were softer images which seemed to me to be like babies or children who were trapped inside. I wasn’t afraid of it, but I was intrigued by it. 

 

 

Only much later, on my more recent visits to the art gallery, did I find a placard explaining the sculpture. “Rock Drill” was made by Jacob Epstein in 1913-15. It originally was a larger piece of work standing atop what I saw… but Epstein removed this upper part as his ideas changed when the (First) World War came along, leaving only the torso that was left; so it is now properly called “Torso from the ‘Rock Drill’ ”. I understand that the “Torso” in the Auckland art gallery is a cast that was made in 1961. I still admire it and am still intrigued by it. And the last time I went to the gallery, and as I left, I said to the good people on the front desk that it was the best thing there was in the gallery.    

Footnote: Sadly Jacob Epstein’s works are rarely seen in New Zealand, most being in England or in American art galleries. But at least I can say that, aged 11 and travelling with my parents and three siblings, I was able to see Epstein’s formidable “St. Michael’s Victory Over the Devil” on the wall of the renewed Coventry Cathedral. It was made in 1958