Q. “What do you know about the First World War?”

A. “Nothing apart from the fact it was a war of mass slaughter.”

In the case of Epstein and the Great War we are, as Thomas Hardy put it, at the moment of the ‘second death’. The ‘second death’, as I see it, is the dying of a person’s contemporary generation. The first dying is the physical death, the dying of the body, and the end of life. The ‘second death’ is the dying of those members of that generation who shared the same lived space and time. Epstein was of the Great War generation and was, as such, of my Grandfather’s generation. In this apparently perverse way, a piece of sculpture described as ‘seminal’ or ‘pivotal’ can be linked, through this exhibition, to a snatched childhood memory of an old man’s war medals. The war medals, as was Rock Drill, were destined for a museum. Most First World War medals, as was the original Rock Drill, have been long lost and discarded. Those that remain in private are kept in an attic, or in the corner of a drawer, or in a cupboard. A relatively tiny number of those originally handed out enter the museum space, but enter they do and on entering take on another life.

When Cook and Christopher were commissioned by Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 1974 to reconstruct Rock Drill in its original, complete form, that is with a quarry drill, it was perhaps significant for its timing. The fact that by 1974 the reason for its original dismantling was now open to dispute should not be underestimated. It was by now fifteen years since Epstein’s death in 1959 and a suitable time span had elapsed in which to set in motion a reconstruction of a work, which he, by turn displayed and dismissed, in alternate spirits of delight and dismay. Richard Loft house elsewhere in this book draws our attention to some of the questions posed by anything more than a passing reading of the reconstructed whole Rock Drill, and shows how complex the circumstances were during its original lifespan before and during the Great War. Quite compellingly, he suggests, there is much more to Rock Drill than first appears.

So what we have here is a unique reconstruction of a lost original. It is, in some way, a second life for it. Epstein himself had some kind of breakdown during the First World War. He had signed up to serve but could not face active service in Palestine in 1917. He was confined to hospital where he saw and felt all too vividly the effects of this new form of industrial warfare. Whether this had any direct impression on his determination to revise Rock Drill, cut it down, hack off a hand, cleave open the back, etc, it’s hard to say. But it is safe to say that the original conception was not seen in three dimensional form for over sixty years. It could be argued that its reappearance after this length of time led to it being too closely associated with the Great War, too closely associated with ‘prophetic’ qualities of Epstein second sighting, in 1913, the coming conflagration of 1914-1918. Its second coming in 1974 coincided with the rapid acceleration of the second dying of the Great War generation who had experienced those events either at home or abroad. It was also around 1974 that my Grandfather died and his war medals took on another dimension. Encounters with these medals in a museum or with the reconstructed Rock Drill in a gallery become further incidents in a museum, incidents that form part of another type of reading.

The Rock Drill being reconstructed in 1974 was evidence of a form of revisionism already underway regarding the Great War and Jacob Epstein. The difficulties and complexities surrounding both these disparate components, the artist and the war, were being simplified. Rock Drill equals Vorticist equals Great War. By the 1970’s the problematic and painful issues which related to Epstein personally, and the Great War generally, were being ironed out through often elaborate dramatic reinterpretations. The myth of Epstein began to look secure as did the myth of the Great War and those myths today begin to look even more impregnable. Once again, I strongly recommend you take a second look. To Epstein, Rock Drill of 1913 suddenly looked inadequate and inappropriate for 1917. The lived experience of the war both at home and abroad had outstripped the tools to describe it, so the Rock Drill reconstruction of 1974 should also be viewed in the context of the circumstances surrounding the loss of the original.

It has been said of T.S.Elliot’s The Waste Land, written in 1922, that it was the first true work of the Great War. It needed time for the impact and immensity of that war to filter through to anything approaching coherence. However, as this process continues and the eye witness becomes the recorded witness, the tendency to turn the Great War into a form of heavy theatrical cliche, a process which it had at its heart anyway, becomes ever more tempting. Just how do you describe the indescribable? Maybe cliche becomes inevitable after eighty years of trying. None the less by accessing source material and by looking at the public memorial reminders of the Great War you can begin to catch a glimpse of how all enveloping the conflict was and how its legacy, particularly its psychological legacy, permeated into every level of society. It signified the emergence of nihilism on a grand scale and also a determination to remember, if not the conflict or the cause, then to simply remember the dead. Surely the human cost of the whole event had not been that pointless? Apparently, or so it seemed during its latter stages and in the immediate aftermath. It threw the whole question of leaders and followers into, if not open revolt then open question. But, as Pathe News would have said, ‘time marches on’ and just as time marches on so would Epstein’s Rock Drill march on if it could. Rock Drill, though, is stuck with its misreadings. As is Epstein and the Great War too. I would argue they all deserve another look.

Another Space Limited commissioned six contemporary artists to respond to Rock Drill in their own way, to give it a second chance. Some were challenged, and perhaps a little intimidated. Some chose to take a second look at the Great War, some did not. All had something important to say. At the time of writing there are not more than one hundred men that remain alive in Britain who saw the trenches. One hundred out of five and a half million. It makes you think. Of all the issues surrounding this exhibition the most significant is possibly the timing. It is possibly the last time Epstein, Rock Drill, my Grandfather and the Great War generation are together in their first life. We are at the moment of the First World War’s second death.