On the back of his
reliefs Gill incised the symbol of a hand with an eye set in its
palm. He first carved this device in 1908 as a small wood
engraving, at a time when he was getting to know Ananda
Coomaraswamy. Gill drew it again against the date of 11 November in
his diary for 1910. This was the day after he had had a meeting
with Augustus john and Jacob Epstein in London, and Gill had stayed
the night with Epstein. Gill and Epstein had become professionally
close during the Summer of 1910, sharing as they did a commitment
to direct carving in stone, and an interest in sculpture that was
not Greek and Roman, for example Egyptian and, most significantly,
Indian. In January 1911 Gill wrote to William Rothenstein, who was
travelling in India: 'Epstein . . . and I agree with you in your
suggestion that the best route to Heaven is via Elephanta, Elura
and Ajanta'.
On 10 September 1910
Epstein went to stay with Gill at Ditchling in order to inspect an
outdoor site on the Sussex Downs as the possible location for a
projected new version of Stonehenge which they had recently
conceived together. Their grand scheme for a twentieth-century
Stonehenge was never written down but clues remain to reveal that
Gill and Epstein planned a vast outdoor temple with upright
standing stones, carved by themselves, to fit into a grand scheme
celebrating the fertile life force of man.
Four sculptures by
Gill, all made during plans for the Stonehenge project, bear the
symbol of the eye in the hand, a symbol that occurred in Gill's
diary when he was discussing these matters with Epstein. For that
reason, it may be possible to see these four sculptures as relating
in some way to the temple scheme. The four are Crucifixion, A
Roland for an Oliver, Ecstasy and a small relief of Cupid. The
subject-matter of these four was religious renunciation symbolised
by a nude male figure, pagan sensuality provided by a nude female
figure, the act of human copulation with nude male and female
figures, and a small nude child symbolising the messenger or
catalyst for human love.The art critic C. Lewis Hind gathered
material in 1910 for a book entitled The Post-impressionists,
published in 1911. One chapter of his book was devoted to
Post-impressionism in sculpture and drew information from both Gill
and Epstein about their current work. Epstein had recently carved
the stone head of Augustus John's young son Romilly and this
crudely carved head sat on top of a stone plinth with the letters
'ROM' carved into it by Gill. Epstein revealed to Lewis Hind
that
'Rom . . . is the Eternal Child, one of the
flanking figures of a group apotheosing Man and Woman, around a
central shrine, that the sculptor destines in his dreams for a
great temple'.
Epstein did not
carve a group apotheosing Man and Woman, but Gill's relief Ecstasy
fits the description well. Ecstasy can be seen as the apotheosis of
Gill's views at that time on the canonisation and amalgamation of
sacred and profane love.
The sources for the
male and female figures in Ecstasy have been identified with
Gladys, Gill's sister, and Ernest Laughton, her first husband.
However, Gill's depiction of a naked human couple involved in the
act of copulation, although relating to people he knew very well,
has a much more abstract and universal content. Gill wrote that
'All creative acts have God for their author. The human act of
begetting is a type of divine creative power.' The lovers in
Ecstasy are based on intimate friends ( indeed Gill began an
incestuous relationship with Gladys around this time), but Gill was
soon to transform this subject, via many wood engravings and
smaller sculptures, into a metaphor for divine love. Perhaps he was
able to view his relationship with his sister in the light of
making it an act of homage to God. Gill converted most further
renderings of this subject into Christ the Bridegroom and Ecclesia,
the Church, or His Bride.
Medieval
theologians, starting with St Ambrose and St Augustine, had
proposed an interesting relationship between the Virgin Mary and
Christ. By virtue of her position as the vehicle for the
incarnation of our Lord, she was considered to be the Bride of God.
Likewise, the Church was defined as the Bride of Christ. St Paul
enjoined husbands to love their wives 'as Christ also loved the
Church and gave Himself for it'. In the Book of
Revelation, the Church, symbolised as the New Jerusalem, came down
from heaven 'prepared as a bride adorned for her husband'. Gill's
Ecstasy was not the only sculpture of his to celebrate physical
union; a small relief entitled Votes for Women (present whereabouts
unknown, but a rubbing of it exists) also shares the same
subject-matter. The composition shows a naked female adopting a
crouched position on top of a recumbent naked male. The title
implies that this woman is a new woman who is able to express her
own will and that her role is a superior one. Both take up quite
contorted, even athletic poses which are dictated primarily by the
restricting shape of the oval outline which circumscribes the
figures.
Figures in athletic
poses begin to appear in Gill's sculpture around 1911. A handful of
sources suggest their inspiration. The first is a knowledge of
Indian temple sculptural programmes such as Elephanta and Elura
with their contorted erotic figures; then there is Gill's love of
the circus and the music hall. And finally many figures in Western
medieval architectural sculpture, especially capitals and
misericords, take up acrobatic poses, which are often quite profane
in their genital display. Rodin set many of his figures in
contorted poses, which drew attention to their genital areas.
Gill's tumblers and contorted acrobats were usually on a small
scale, on average about seven to ten inches in size. They were
often conceived with more than one balancing point and therefore
could be rotated by hand to take up different orientations, as seen
in The Rower. Gill's acrobatic sculptures such as Splits 1 and
Splits 2 could be seen as concrete expressions of ideas and
emotions and these acrobatic nudes in unashamed revealing poses
symbolise complete freedom from inhibition.
Gill marked out his
stone reliefs before carving with outlines that indicated the depth
to which each part should be cut, by half an inch, an inch, and so
on. Then he cut backwards from the front skin of the stone,
removing material layer by layer, by following the outlines drawn
on the stone. It was a methodical and logical procedure which
produced direct yet rather heraldic images. David Kindersley, an
apprentice letter- cutter who joined Gill's workshop in the
mid1930s, recalled how Gill worked with sureness and
clarity:
"His attention was remarkable in degree and
duration . . . No tool was ever forced beyond its capacity. All
stages were in process at once over various parts of the carving,
the projections always being a stage ahead so that, for all the
world, it appeared a simple question of removing a series of skins
of differently textured stone. Strength and firmness of form were
assured not only by the clarity of his vision but in no small
degree through his technique. All form for Mr Gill was of a convex
order. Concavities were the result of the meeting of two
convexities."
Through his eager
assimilation of the essence of Indian temple art, Gill was able to
unite his innate aptitudes for the crafts of engraving and
sculpture, in one seamless process of creativity. His
engravings are flattened sculpture and his sculptures are puffed up
line-engravings.
