Art: Nebraskans v. Beard

The Lord told the Prophet Ezekiel to “. . . take thee a barber’s razor, and cause it to pass upon thine head and upon thy beard. . . .” (Ezekiel v, i.) But the Biblical record failed to specify 1) that Ezekiel had a beard, 2) that he complied with the Lord’s command, 3) whether he stayed cleanshaven or let another beard grow. When Sculptor Lee Lawrie designed the eight figures for the base of the tower of the new $10,000,000 State Capitol at Lincoln, Neb. he gave his Ezekiel a beard. Last week Nebraska Bible students protested. A beardless Ezekiel would be news in art. Michelangelo gave Ezekiel a round bush of a beard. Gustav Dore gave him a waist-long mare’s tail beard.— But beard critics said that the shaving command was conclusive proof that Ezekiel was smooth-shaven at the time he was doing his best prophesying. Since Ezekiel kept his standing as the Lord’s prophet for many years afterward, he must have obeyed the Lord’s command. The case of the beard defenders was that, while the shaving order implied the existence of Ezekiel’s pre-shave beard, it did not deny the probability of a new post-shave beard. Sculptor Lawrie, who is doing the sculptural work for the main entrance of Rockefeller Center’s Radio Corporation building, is 54 but beardless. It was his contention last week that all prophets have beards.

*Paul Gustave Dore’s monumental illustrations of the Bible and of the Inferno of Dante Alighieri gave a large part of the last generation a thoroughgoing picture of Heaven and Hell. Last week at the Petit Palais in Paris, a representative exhibition of his work marked the centenary of his birth. Born in Strasbourg, he never took drawing lessons, made fair pictures at 6, relying on an amazing photographic memory. From his versatile illustrations for Rabelais. Dante. Cervantes, Ariosto, La Fontaine, Dumas. Hugo, Edgar Allan Poe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, et al., he earned in 35 years of work the prodigious total of seven million francs (nearly $1,500,000 at that time).