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 public flock to look (TIME, June 19 et seq.). Exhibited by an enterprising purchaser as a side show at the English summer resort of Blackpool, Adam grossed some $250,000 from drop-jawed vacationists.

Adam was resold for about $8,000 to a British dress manufacturer named John Herbert, who shipped him to the U. S. on what he hoped would be a money-making junket. Last week Adam arrived in Manhattan, was unveiled to the U. S. public at 57th Street's Fine Arts Galleries, at 50-c- a peek. All indications were that, as a come-on curiosity, Adam might run a close second to John Wilkes Booth's mummy or the Cardiff giant. Said a weary gallery attendant: "It's enough to make a fella blush." "I don't know why Eve fell for that guy," muttered one observer. "My dear young woman," retorted a nearby dowager, "she had no choice."

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