Art: Virile Adam

Sculptor Jacob Epstein was born in Manhattan, but he has made his reputation in London, where he moved a generation ago. There he is known as the bad boy of the English art world. Justly famed for gaunt, incisive portrait heads, he has kept the public roaring at his huge, paleolithic figures, whose potent brutality has shocked the prissy, angered the academic and given him the biggest headlines of any contemporary artist. Last year Sculptor Epstein produced his latest shocker, a three-ton, seven-foot, simian statue of Adam in pinkish alabaster, whose bull-bold virility made pulpits seethe, strong men blush and the...

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