Black and white photo Sony A7Cii Samyang AF 75mm F1.8A 1/15 sec f/5.6 A humanoid figure that looks a bit like a battle droid with ribs, a long craned neck, and a severed arm. It's framed by two pairs of neo-classical columns inside the main hall of the Tate Britain. Tate info card: Jacob Epstein 1880-1959 Torso in Metal from 'The Rock Drill' 1913-15 Bronze Epstein began this sculpture in a period when artists in the Vorticist and Futurist movements were exploring the dynamic artistic potential of mechanisation. The original sculpture, first exhibited alongside works by Vorticist artists at the London Group exhibition of 1915, was a plaster figure mounted on top of a commercial rock drill. He later described it as 'a machine-like robot, visored, menacing, and carrying within itself its progeny... the armed sinister figure of to-day and to-morrow.' After the machines of the First World War killed millions of people, Epstein removed the drill, cut the figure down at the waist and chopped off the left hand and right arm and cast it in bronze. This newly truncated figure now looks more vulnerable, a victim rather than a perpetrator of violence.
Saw this Jacob Epstein sculpture at the Tate Britain on the weekend and thought it looked very Star Wars. The info card said it was originally displayed atop a rock drill, which also sounds like a droid ILM would design.
