Einstein by Epstein

nobody@flickr.com (Peter Denton) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 03:36:11 -0800

The face of Albert Einstein, sculpted by Jacob Epstein in 1933 and on view at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Epstein said later, "His glance contained a mixture of the humane, the humourous and the profound. This was a combination that delighted me. He resembled the ageing Rembrandt."

Oscar Wilde's grave

nobody@flickr.com (Peter Denton) — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 10:24:37 -0700

Peter Denton posted a photo:

Oscar Wilde’s grave in Paris is an international disgrace. It’s badly defaced by moronic people who daub it with lipstick and scrawl slogans and obscenities all over it.

Wilde shouldn’t be in this or any cemetery, of course – ‘Death must be so beautiful’ he wrote. ’To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.’

Yet here he lies in Père Lachaise cemetery, his memorial unprotected and visited by hordes of people every day of the year. No chance of grasses here, nor of listening to silence. Perhaps he’d love the attention... but at this level? Somehow I think not. He’d certainly loathe the squalid state of his fine memorial, sculpted by Jacob Epstein in 1911 – a priceless work of public art in itself.

The French authorities clearly make no effort to clean the memorial, tend it or protect it... and that, to me, is the scandal.

● There's an Oscar Wilde signature and contemporary critique here.

UPDATE, November 2011: Since posting this image and caption, the tomb has been cleaned and a perspex screen constructed around it. These daubings should now be a thing of the past.

Uploads from Peter Denton, tagged jacobepstein, with geodata

Einstein by Epstein

Oscar Wilde's grave