Between 1913 and 1915 Jacob Epstein made this remarkable sculpture, Rock Drill, one part of which consists of a figure modelled in plaster.
The figure is sharp-edged, its limbs square in profile, and its head is a long beak-like armoured visage. The torso has what looks like armoured ribs, and in the abdomen area is an indentation containing an embryonic form.
The extraordinary thing about this mechanised abstracted human figure is that it sat on top of a real miner’s rock drill, with the name of its American manufactuer emblazoned on its side. The whole assembled sculpture was over three metres tall, giving it an amazing brooding and threatening physical presence. Of course, with the enormous drill jutting out from the figure’s loins, it has an extraordinary phallic power about it.
Yet you never quite know whether the figure is the aggressor or the victim, as it’s so dwarfed by this drill that it seems harnessed to it, rather than in control of it.
Writing about the piece in his autobiography Epstein said: “I made and mounted a machine-like robot, visored, menacing, and carrying within itself its progeny, protectively ensconced. Here is the armed, sinister figure of today and tomorrow. No humanity, only the terrible Frankenstein’s monster we have made ourselves into…”
