The artist is the world's scapegoat. by Jacob Epstein

The artist is the world's scapegoat.

Jacob Epstein

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There are infinite modes of expression in the world of art, and to insist that only by one road can the artist attain his ends is to limit him.

expression world art

The artist who imagines that he puts his best into a portrait in order to produce something good, which will be a pleasure to the sitter and to himself, will have some bitter experiences.

portraits artist order

A sculptor is supposed to be a dull dog anyway, so why should he not break out in colour sometimes, and in my case I'd as soon be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.

break-out dog sheep

A wife, a lover, can perhaps never see what the artist sees. They rarely ever do. Perhaps a really mediocre artist has more chance of success.

wife chance artist

When I was doing Professor Albert Einstein's bust he had many a jibe at the Nazi professors, one hundred of whom had condemned his theory of relativity in a book. 'Were I wrong,' he said, 'one professor would have been enough.

nazi enough book

I cannot recall a period when I did not draw; and at school, the studies that were distasteful to me, mathematics and grammar , were retarded by the indulgence of teachers who were proud of my drawing faculties, and passed over my neglect of uncongenial subjects.

drawing teacher school

To think of abstraction as an end in itself is undoubtedly letting oneself be led into a cul-de-sac and can only lead to exhaustion and impotence.

impotence ends thinking

Why dont they stick to murder and leave art to us? by Jacob Epstein

Why dont they stick to murder and leave art to us?

murder sticks art

To accuse me of making sensations is the easiest way of attacking me, and in reality leaves the question of sculpture untouched.

sculpture reality way

My earliest recollections are of the teeming East Side where I was born. This Hester Street and its surrounding streets were the most densely populated of any city on Earth; and looking back at it, I realize what I owe to its unique and crowded humanity.

looking city looking-back humanity

As a child, I had a serious illness that lasted for two years or more. I have vague recollections of this illness and of my being carried about a great deal. I was known as the 'sick one.' Whether this illness gave me a twist away from ordinary paths, I don't know; but it is possible.

great child me sick

I have never found out that there was in my family an artist or anyone interested in the arts or sciences, and I have never been sufficiently interested in my 'family tree' to bother. My father and mother had come to America on one of those great waves of immigration that followed persecution and pogroms in Czarist Russia and Poland.

family mother tree father

My reading and drawing drew me away from the ordinary interests, and I lived a great deal in the world of imagination, feeding upon any book that fell into my hands. When I had got hold of a really thick book like Hugo's 'Les Miserables,' I was happy and would go off into a corner to devour it.

great me imagination happy

Early on I saw the plastic quality in colored people and had friends among them; and later was to work from colored models and friends, including Paul Robeson, whose splendid head I worked from in New York. I tried to draw Chinamen in their quarter, but the Chinese did not like being drawn and would immediately disappear when they spotted me.

me quality work people

I remember my father, who was 'somebody' in the synagogue, bringing home with him one of the poor men who waited outside to be chosen to share the Passover meal. These patriarchal manners I remember well, although there was about them an air of bourgeois benevolence which was somewhat comic.

home remember men father

My parents did not discourage me but could not understand how I could make a living by art. Their idea of an artist was a person who was condemned to starvation.

parents understand me art