Art: Sculptor Lets Fly

I don't like the family Stein: There is Gert, there is Ep and there's Ein; Gert's poems are bunk, Ep's statues are punk, And nobody understands Ein.

Plenty of people—including Critic Adolf Hitler—would agree that punk is a mild word for Jacob Epstein's statues. But those people would have plenty of contrary-minded to deal with: not the least of them Sculptor Epstein himself. For 30 years this pudgy, bumptious, Manhattan-born sculptor has kept London's salons mouth-frothing. At the same time, a respectable squad of critics has admitted that he is one of the world's foremost portrait sculptors.

Epstein's statues have started riots, thrown...