Wayne Forte
charcoal on paper

1977
Jacob Kainen
oil and collage on paper
Smithsonian American Art Museum

Sir Jacob Epstein

1940

The Tate Collection, London

This monumental group depicts an episode from the book of Genesis (Chapter 32, verses 24-32). According to the Biblical story, Jacob was forced to wrestle with an unknown assailant through the night. In the morning his opponent blessed him because he had not abandoned the struggle, and revealed himself to be an angel and messenger from God. Jacob gave thanks saying, ‘I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved’. During the early 1930s Epstein had read and re-read the book of Genesis and executed a series of unconventional water-colours on Old Testament stories. The subject of Jacob and the Angel fascinated him and may have had personal significance, not least because of the fact that Epstein’s first name was Jacob.

Before executing the large alabaster carving, Epstein made a watercolour entitled Jacob Wrestling which was included in his 1932 exhibition at the Redfern Gallery. Another drawing of the same subject was one of Epstein’s illustrations for Moshe Oyved’s Book of Affinity (1933).

In the carving, the night-long struggle between Jacob and his assailant is translated into a strangely ambiguous embrace between two colossal male figures. Jacob is depicted with his eyes closed and head thrown back; the angel is holding him in a tight grasp, as if squeezing his last breath from him. ‘The Herculean proportions of the figures permitted the sculptor to generalise and balance the relationship of the masses while simultaneously maintaining the impact of their embrace. True to his usual practice in carving, the primary views reflect the mass the original block, but the interlocked arms also encourage the viewer to move around it. Some areas, such as Jacob’s back and the angel’s wings, can be read abstractly; Epstein’s habitual relish for the subtle interplay of barely perceptible assymetries manifests itself in the rhythmic cadence of back, buttock, thigh and calf.’

Jacob and the Angel was completed in 1940. John Rothenstein later wrote how, in Jacob and the Angel, Epstein ‘seems to have tapped the mysterious source of energy that so often animates primitive sculpture, without imitating any actual features’. The use of this primitivist style when dealing with religious subject matter was found shocking by many of Epstein’s contemporaries.

1965
Shraga Weil

1936

Hananiah Harari

olio su tela di canapa

Museo americano Smithsonian di arte

Gustave Moreau 1878

watercolor su carta

Musée Gustave Moreau, Parigi

Da Gustave Doré 1855

Accumulazione di Granger, New York

Paul (Eugène-Henri-) Gauguin

1888; Galleria nazionale della Scozia

Nella visione dopo il Sermon, o in Jacob che Wrestling con l’angelo, Paul Gauguin ha desiderato mostrare i folkways celtici antichi e intatti ed il piety cattolico degli uomini e delle donne agricoli in Brittany. Gli elementi nell’immagine si compongono per mettere a fuoco l’attenzione dei visori sull’idea e per intensificare il relativo messaggio. La scena è stata sottratta in un modello in cui la prospettiva è torta ed i colori sono artificiali ed unmodulated.

Come il suo nome suggerisce, il lavoro di Gauguin è stato ispirato dalla verità interna piuttosto che esterna. Ha unito le immagini stilizzate delle figure bretoni in uno spazio pittorico poco profondo con “una visione” nel giusto angolo superiore. I mondi così “reali” ed immaginati rappresentati, sono separati dalla forte diagonale dell’albero, che è stato ispirato dalle stampe giapponesi.

Come gli Impressionisti, Gauguin ha studiato stampe del Giappone e perfino adottato il loro uso delle zone piane di colore solido. Le figure sono distribuite in modo non convenzionale, tagliando ed incorniciando il bordo della tela di canapa alla parte di sinistra e nella priorità alta. Nessuna fonte luminosa identificabile è usata, un dispositivo che si osserva in seguito negli sviluppi del Fauvism.