Gaudier-Brzeska: A MemoirEzra Pound's book on the French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was first published in 1916. An enlarged edition, including thirty pages of illustrations (sculpture and drawings) as well as Pound's later pieces on Gaudier, was brought out in 1970, and is now re-issued as an ND Paperbook. The memoir is valuable both for the history of modern art and for what it shows us of Pound himself, his ability to recognize genius in others and then to publicize it effectively. Would there today be a Salle Gaudier-Brzeska in the Musée de L'Art Moderne in Paris if Pound had not championed him? Gaudier's talent was impressive and his Vorticist aesthetic important as theory, but he was killed in World War I at the age of twenty-three, leaving only a small body of work. Pound knew Gaudier in London, where the young artist had come with his companion, the Polish-born Sophie Brzeska. whose name he added to his own. They were living in poverty when Pound bought Gaudier the stone from which the famous "hieratic head" of the poet was made. Pound arranged exhibitions and for the publication of Gaudier's manifestoes in Blast and The Egoist. And he wrote and sent packages to him in the trenches, where Gaudier--a sculptor to the last--carved a madonna and child from the butt of a captured German rifle, just two days before he died. |
Contents
| 17 | |
| 20 | |
| 25 | |
| 27 | |
| 30 | |
AN OPEN LETTER | 36 |
THE MAN | 39 |
IV | 41 |
XII | 95 |
GAUDIERBRZESKA | 102 |
ANALYSIS OF THIS DECADE | 111 |
XIII | 118 |
XIV | 124 |
XV | 125 |
XVI | 126 |
PARTIAL CATALOGUE OF THE SCULPTURE | 128 |
V | 44 |
VI | 51 |
LETTERS TO ME | 55 |
LETTERS TO MRS SHAKESPEAR | 66 |
LETTERS TO EDWARD WADSWORTH | 72 |
THE FRIENDSHIP WITH BRODZKY | 75 |
XI | 81 |
THE DRAWINGS | 131 |
XIX | 134 |
PREFACE TO THE MEMORIAL EXHIBITION 1918 | 136 |
A POSTSCRIPT 1934 | 140 |
PEREGRINATIONS 1960 | 146 |
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Common terms and phrases
abstract æsthetics alabaster Allied Artists animals appreciation of masses artists Auceps beauty believe Bird swallowing Blast boches Brodzky bronze Brunnenburg Brzeska bust carved catalogue Chinese colour Coney cubism DANCER DEAR EZRA decade drawings EDWARD WADSWORTH Egoist emotion energy Epstein essay expression EZRA POUND Gaudier Gaudier-Brzeska German Greek H. S. Ede HEAD OF EZRA Henri Gaudier Henri Gaudier-Brzeska HIERATIC HEAD history of sculpture Hueffer ideas Imagisme impressionism impressionist intensity interesting Kandinsky least letter Lysippos marble masses by planes masses in relation mean ment mind modern night NUDE painter painting Pen and Ink perhaps phrase poem poetry portrait present prose Renaissance reproduced Richard Aldington Rodin Sculptural ability sense of form Shakespear sort sphere stags statue stone stupid talk Tate Gallery things thought tion tradition trenches Veined Alabaster VORTEX vorticism vorticist Wadsworth Whistler Wolmark woman writing Wyndham Lewis