Jacob Epstein

 

Jacob Epstein

Controversial Anglo-American modernist sculptor

Source:Mantex Information desing

Jacob Epstein (1880-1959) was a sculptor who became a controversial pioneer in the world of modernist British art. He was born in New York’s Lower East Side to Jewish immigrant parents who had escaped anti-Semitic pogroms in Poland. When the family moved to a more respectable neighbourhood, he chose to remain amongst the ‘Russian, Poles, Italians, Greeks, and Chinese’ who clustered in what was then a very unfashionable part of the city.

 

Jacob Epstein

Rock Drill

 

In 1902 he travelled to France, enrolling at the Ecole de Beaux Arts and visiting Rodin’s studio. He was a fan of his fellow countryman Walt Whitman, and there is a distinct element of homo-eroticism in his early works that parallels the celebration of the human body (largely Male) that features in Whitman’s poems. This is an element of his vision that became important in later works and his battles with censorship and even the mutilation of his statues and carvings.

 

In 1905 he transferred to London and quickly made contact with people such as George Bernard Shaw and Augustus John. Even more surprisingly he secured a large public commission at the age of only twenty-seven. This was for a series of decorative statues for the new headquarters of the British Medical Association in the Strand.

 

The nude figures he produced depicting maternity and Hygieia (goddess of health and cleanliness) became the target of outraged prudish hostility, and a press campaign was mounted by the Evening Standard. The project was completed, but it was twenty years before he received another architectural commission.

 

He was supported and befriended by Eric Gill, who had similar ambitions to bring primitive elemental forms into public art. They planned to build a private temple in Sussex where they could express their enthusiasm for nudity and sexuality without hindrance. The project was never completed, but the celebration of human physicality pervaded almost everything they went on to produce.

 

Epstein’s next major work was the now-famous tomb of Oscar Wilde in Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris. This was admired by the young fellow-immigrant artist Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, but the French authorities protested against the winged figure’s nakedness and ordered its genitals to be obliterated. They were later hacked off by protesters more than once.

 

Meanwhile his domestic life was no less controversial. He was married to Margaret Dunlop but at the same time he had a number of lovers who his wife not only tolerated but allowed to live in the family home, along with the children who were conceived by them as a result.

 

Epstein isolated himself in a Sussex coastal village and produced a number of excellent abstracted figures of pregnant females and copulating doves, clearly influenced by the work of Constantin Brancusi who he had met in Paris. It has to be said that the works of Epstein, Brancusi, and Gaudier-Brzeska became almost indistinguishable around this period.

 

Just before the outbreak of war, in 1913 Epstein produced the first drawings for what was to become his most important work – Rock Drill. In its first version the dramatically modelled figure of a quarry worker was mounted astride a tripod, handling a real drilling machine.

 

Nothing could have better symbolised the Vorticist movement which championed his work in the second (and final) edition of its magazine BLAST. But Epstein refused to join the group founded by his supporter Wyndham Lewis. In fact Epstein was so appalled by the mechanised slaughter of young soldiers in the conflict of 1914-1918 that he removed the drill and tripod from the original sculpture.

 

This turned out to produce a much more aesthetically pleasing result – the futuristic head and torso which seemed to symbolise the machine age. Yet following this success his activity more or less split into two parts. The first was producing traditional bronze portrait busts for celebrities in a style that could have come from any time in the previous two-hundred years. The second was his far more interesting series of monumental carvings and sculptures that expressed something of the modern age. The first part provided him with an income; the second with continued notoriety.

 

Jacob Epstein

Femaile Figure

 

It is amazing to recall the virulent hostility (and anti-Semitism) that his work aroused. Even the Royal Academy participated in the mutilation of his public commissions. Following the exhibition of his controversial Adam (1938) the statue was sold off for next to nothing and later displayed in a Blackpool funfair. Visitors were charged a shilling entry to view its enlarged genitals as a form of pornographic amusement. The same fate befell his next major work, Jacob and the Angel (1941) – though this has since been rescued and is now in the relative safety of the Tate Gallery.

 

He participated in the Festival of Britain 1951) but by this time he was being outflanked by younger contemporaries such as Henry Moore, Eduardo Paolozzi, and Lynn Chadwick. He completed further commissions for religious figures, notably on the re-built Coventry Cathedral, but his final secular work was the magnificent war memorial that stands in front of TUC headquarters at Congress House in London.

 

He was knighted in 1954, but his later years were marked by personal loss. His son died of a heart attack in 1954, and his daughter committed suicide later the same year. Epstein himself died in 1959 at Hyde Park Gate in Kensington – next door but one to the birthplace of Virginia Woolf.

 

© Roy Johnson 2018

More esculpor art

Bernard Shaw

Nan the Dreame

Jacob Epstein, National PortrBust Gallery, London

tudy of cat   Epstein

Other drill rock  Epstein

Mary Mac Evoy Epstein

Gabriel against Satanas Epstein

Figure to study Epstein

Portrait don bronce of Mrs.Jacobo Epstein

Self portatit  Jacobo Epstein

Baby awake  Epstein

The visitation 1926 Epstein

Sketch 1954 Epstein

Kitty 1954 Stein

Euphenia Lamb 1909 Epstein

Esther 1949 Epstein

With affection,

Ruben

 

Story :The Boy and the Wolf

 

The Boy and the Wolf

Henry Henry .Longfellow                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

                      

                                                         

                                                                                                                                                                                           

Inspirational Story

In France there once lived a famous man who was known as the Marquis de Lafayette. When he was a little boy, his mother called him Gilbert.

 

Gilbert de Lafayette's father and grandfather and great-grandfather had all been brave and noble men. He was very proud to think of this, and he wished that he might grow up to be like them.

 

His home was in the country not far from a great forest. Often, when he was a little lad, he took long walks among the trees with his mother.

 

"Mother," he would say, "do not be afraid. I am with you, and I will not let anything hurt you."

 

One day word came that a savage wolf had been seen in the forest. Men said that it was a very large wolf and that it had killed some of the farmers' sheep.

 

"How I should like to meet that wolf," said little Gilbert.

 

He was only seven years old, but now all his thoughts were about the savage beast that was in the forest.

 

"Shall we take a walk this morning?" asked his mother.

 

"Oh, yes!" said Gilbert. "Perhaps we may see that wolf among the trees.

But don't be afraid."

 

 

His mother smiled, for she felt quite sure that there was no danger.

 

They did not go far into the woods. The mother sat down in the shade of a tree and began to read in a new book which she had bought the day before. The boy played on the grass near by.

 

The sun was warm. The bees were buzzing among the flowers. The small birds were singing softly. Gilbert looked up from his play and saw that his mother was very deeply interested in her book.

 

"Now for the wolf!" he said to himself.

 

He walked quickly, but very quietly, down the pathway into the darker woods. He looked eagerly around, but saw only a squirrel frisking among the trees and a rabbit hopping across the road.

 

Soon he came to a wilder place. There the bushes were very close together and the pathway came to an end. He pushed the bushes aside and went a little farther. How still everything was!

 

He could see a green open space just beyond; and then the woods seemed to be thicker and darker. "This is just the place for that wolf," he thought.

 

Then, all at once, he heard footsteps. Something was pushing its way through the bushes. It was coming toward him.

 

"It's the wolf, I'm sure! It will not see me till it comes very near. Then I will jump out and throw my arms around its neck and choke it to death."

 

The animal was coming nearer. He could hear its footsteps. He could hear its heavy breathing. He stood very still and waited.

 

"It will try to bite me," he thought. "Perhaps it will scratch me with its sharp claws. But I will be brave. I will not cry out. I will choke it with my strong arms. Then I will drag it out of the bushes and call mamma to come and see it."

 

The beast was very close to him now. He could see its shadow as he peeped out through the clusters of leaves. His breath came fast. He planted his feet firmly and made ready to spring.

 

"How proud mamma will be of her brave boy!"

 

Ah! there was the wolf! He saw its shaggy head and big round eyes. He leaped from his hiding place and clasped it round its neck.

 

It did not try to bite or scratch. It did not even growl. But it jumped quickly forward and threw Gilbert upon the ground. Then it ran out into the open space and stopped to gaze at him.

 

Gilbert was soon on his feet again. He was not hurt at all. He looked at the beast, and—what do you think it was?

 

It was not a wolf. It was only a pet calf that had come there to browse among the bushes.

 

The boy felt very much ashamed. He hurried back to the pathway, and then ran to his mother. Tears were in his eyes; but he tried to look brave. "O Gilbert, where have you been?" said his mother.

 

Then he told her all that had happened. His lips quivered and he began to cry.

 

"Never mind, my dear," said his mother. "You were very brave, and it is lucky that the wolf was not there. You faced what you thought was a great danger, and you were not afraid. You are my hero."

 

When the American people were fighting to free themselves from the rule of the king of England, the Marquis de Lafayette helped them with men and money. He was the friend of Washington. His name is remembered in our country as that of a brave and noble man.

With affection,

Ruben

 

Felix Hoffmann

 

Felix Hoffmann

Pharmacy advertising Aspirin on Adolf Hitler Strasse in Wermsdorf, Saxony, Germany, in 1936. Wikimedia

Fuente:Quimica facil.net

From Wikipedia, the free enciclopedia

Felix Hoffmann (21 January 1868 – 8 February 1946) was a German chemist notable for re-synthesising diamorphine (independently from C.R. Alder Wright who synthesized it 23 years earlier), which was popularized under the Bayer trade name of "heroin". He is also credited with synthesizing aspirin, though whether he did this under his own initiative or under the instruction of Arthur Eichengrün is contested.

 

Career

Felix Hoffmann was born on 21 January 1868 in Ludwigsburg, Germany, the son of an industrialist. In 1889, he started studying chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich to study pharmacy and ended it in 1890 with the pharmaceutical state exam. In 1891 he graduated magna cum laude from the University of Munich. Two years later he earned his doctorate, also magna cum laude, after completing his thesis titled "On certain derivatives of dihydroanthracene".[1] In 1894, he joined Bayer as a research chemist.

Here's a lovely story :Here's a lovely story that some of you may know.

A chemist named Felix Hoffmann witnessed his poor, arthritic father's stomach ache every day due to the medication prescribed to alleviate his illness, salicylic acid. Since he worked for the pharmaceutical company Bayer, he decided to take advantage of his position as an employee in the sector to try to put an end to this painful family situation.

A chemist named Felix Hoffmann witnessed his poor, arthritic father's stomach ache every day due to the medication prescribed to alleviate his illness, salicylic acid. Since he worked for the pharmaceutical company Bayer, he decided to take advantage of his position as an employee in the sector to try to put an end to this painful family situation.

 

On 10 August 1897 Hoffmann synthesized acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) while working at Bayer under Arthur Eichengrün. By combining salicylic acid with acetic acid, he succeeded in creating ASA in a chemically pure and stable form. The pharmacologist responsible for verifying these results was skeptical at first, yet once several large-scale studies to investigate the substance's efficacy and tolerability had been completed, it was found to be an analgesic, antipyretic and anti-inflammatory substance. The company then worked to develop a cost-effective production process that would facilitate the promising active ingredient to be supplied as a pharmaceutical product. In 1899 it was marketed for the first time under the trade name "Aspirin", initially as a powder supplied in glass bottles.[2]

 

He also synthesized diamorphine (heroin), previously achieved by Charles Romley Alder Wright[2] by acetylating different molecules. It was named Heroin due to its "heroic" nature since it was used to medicate a variety of medical illnesses from child coughs to war injuries. It was also used to cure morphine addicts and would result in worse addictions and increasing tolerance levels to the drug over time.[3]

 

Following the synthesis of aspirin and heroin, Hoffmann moved to the pharmaceutical marketing department where he stayed until his retirement in 1928.[1]

 

Hoffman was never married and died on 8 February 1946 in Switzerland. He had no known children.

 

Aspirin invention controversy

Hoffmann first claimed to be the "inventor" of aspirin (as opposed to just the synthesizer) in a footnote to a German encyclopedia published in 1934, saying that his father had complained about the bitter taste of sodium salicylate, the only drug then available to treat rheumatism. The large doses (6–8 grams) of sodium salicylate that were used to treat arthritis commonly irritated the stomach lining and caused patients considerable pain and irritation. He claimed that he began looking for a less acidic formation which led him to synthesize acetylsalicylic acid, a compound that shared the therapeutic properties of other salicylates but not the strong acidity that he believed caused stomach irritations.[4][2]

 

An alternative credit for developing aspirin has also been offered. In 1949, ex-Bayer employee Arthur Eichengrün published a paper in Pharmazie, in which he claimed to have planned and directed Hoffman's synthesis of aspirin along with the synthesis of several related compounds. He also claimed to be responsible for aspirin's initial surreptitious clinical testing. Finally, he claimed that Hoffmann's role was restricted to the initial lab synthesis using his (Eichengrün's) process and nothing more.[5] Eichengrün died the same month he published in Pharmazie.

 

The Eichengrün version was ignored by historians and chemists until 1999, when Walter Sneader of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow re-examined the case and came to the conclusion that indeed Eichengrün's account was convincing and correct and that Eichengrün deserved credit for the invention of aspirin.[6] Bayer denied this in a press release, asserting that the invention of aspirin was due to Hoffmann.[7]

 

Legacy

In 2002, he was inducted into the US National Inventors Hall of Fame.

With affection,

Ruben

 

 

Famous Inspirational Poem

 

Famous Inspirational Poem

Rudyard Kipling was an English poet who lived from 1865-1936.

He also wrote many children's stories. The poem's line, "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same," is written on the wall of the players' entrance at Wimbledon.

If

By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

 

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same:.

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings,

And never breathe a word about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

 

Rudyard Kipling. "If." Family Friend Poems, https:

With affection,

Ruben

 

  

Story : Saving the Birds

 

Saving the Birds

Inspirational Story

 

 

 

One day in spring, four men were riding on horseback along a country road. These men were lawyers, and they were going to the next town to attend court.

 

There had been a rain, and the ground was very soft. Water was dripping from the trees, and the grass was wet.

 

The four lawyers rode along, one behind another; for the pathway was narrow, and the mud on each side of it was deep. They rode slowly, and talked and laughed and were very jolly.

 

As they were passing through a grove of small trees, they heard a great fluttering over their heads and a feeble chirping in the grass by the roadside.

 

"Stith! stitch! stith!" came from the leafy branches above them.

 

"Cheep! cheep! cheep!" came from the wet grass.

 

"What is the matter here?" asked the first lawyer, whose name was Speed. "Oh, it's only some old robins!" said the second lawyer, whose name was Hardin. "The storm has blown two of the little ones out of the nest. They are too young to fly, and the mother bird is making a great fuss about it."

 

"What a pity! They'll die down there in the grass," said the third lawyer, whose name I forget.

 

"Oh, well! They're nothing but birds," said Mr. Hardin. "Why should we bother?"

 

"Yes, why should we?" said Mr. Speed.

 

The three men, as they passed, looked down and saw the little birds fluttering in the cold, wet grass. They saw the mother robin flying about, and crying to her mate.

 

Then they rode on, talking and laughing as before. In a few minutes they had forgotten about the birds.

 

But the fourth lawyer, whose name was Abraham Lincoln, stopped. He got down from his horse and very gently took the little ones up in his big warm hands.

 

They did not seem frightened, but chirped softly, as if they knew they were safe.

 

"Never mind, my little fellows," said Mr. Lincoln "I will put you in your own cozy little bed."

 

Then he looked up to find the nest from which they had fallen. It was high, much higher than he could reach.

 

But Mr. Lincoln could climb. He had climbed many a tree when he was a boy. He put the birds softly, one by one, into their warm little home. Two other baby birds were there, that had not fallen out. All cuddled down together and were very happy.

 

Soon the three lawyers who had ridden ahead stopped at a spring to give their horses water.

 

"Where is Lincoln?" asked one.

 

All were surprised to find that he was not with them.

 

"Do you remember those birds?" said Mr. Speed. "Very likely he has stopped to take care of them."

 

In a few minutes Mr. Lincoln joined them. His shoes were covered with mud; he had torn his coat on the thorny tree.

 

"Hello, Abraham!" said Mr. Hardin. "Where have you been?"

 

"I stopped a minute to give those birds to their mother," he answered.

 

"Well, we always thought you were a hero," said Mr. Speed. "Now we know it."

 

Then all three of them laughed heartily. They thought it so foolish that a strong man should take so much trouble just for some worthless young birds.

 

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Lincoln, "I could not have slept to-night, if I had left those helpless little robins to perish in the wet grass."

 

 

Abraham Lincoln afterwards became very famous as a lawyer and statesman. He was elected president. Next to Washington, he was the greatest American.

With affection,

Ruben