Constantin Brancusi was regarded as a major figure of the early twentieth century avant-garde artistic movement. He mixed and mingled with Parisian trend-setters the likes of Guillaume Apollinaire, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marcel Duchamp, and Ezra Pound. A bit of an enigma, with no clearly defined artistic style, he has frequently been described as an abstract sculptor even though he “cloaked his pure abstractions in symbolic meaning.” [i]
Brancusi was born in a small village in Romania in February 1876. One of eight children born to peasant parents, he bristled under the repression of his abusive father and brothers, running away several times as a youth. By the age of thirteen, he escaped his oppressive home life and moved to Craiova, a neighboring city, in Romania. While working as a grocery clerk, his random hand carvings came to the attention of the store’s owner and several customers and, together they raised enough money to send Brancusi to the Craiova School of Crafts.[ii]
After graduating from the Craiova School of Crafts in 1989 with honors, he enrolled at the Bucharest School of Fine Arts to study sculpture. Upon his 1902 graduation, he held a series of menial jobs until moving first to Munich and then Paris where he settled and would spend the remainder of his life.[iii]
In 1904, he enrolled at the prestigious Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Three years later, in 1907, Auguste Rodin tapped Brancusi as a student-assistant for his Meudon studio, located outside of Paris. After only two months with Rodin, Brancusi left Rodin’s atelier because he felt that, “Nothing can grow under big trees.” In breaking from Rodin, Brancusi set upon his lifelong path: “the simplification of form to its Platonic essence”. Unlike his friend and U. S. agent, Marcel Duchamp, Brancusi was not seduced by the machine age. Instead he remained true to his Romanian craftsman traditions.[iv] Immediately following his departure from Rodin’s studio, he began to participate in exhibitions and salons, showing first at the Salon de Beaux-Arts in the summer of 1907.
Brancusi preferred his work to be seen and discovered in the context of his studio, surrounded by metal tools, salvaged wood, panes of glass, unfinished pieces, marble dust, wood shavings, and his hand-made furnishings. He constantly adjusted and staged his finished sculptures and works-in-progress, often grouping and regrouping them to ensure their best possible position. He documented the interiors of his studios in a plethora of photographs, acting as his own art director and stylist. [v]
In keeping with Brancusi’s belief that his sculptures should be viewed in his studio, we have reconstructed his studio for our exhibit: The Elemental Studio Gallery. With works on loan from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the George Pompidou Centre of Paris, we have reconstructed a replica of his 34,000 cubic foot #9 Impass Ronsin atelier[vi]. In this reconstructed Paris studio, we look to affect the harmonies Brancusi achieved by working with elemental materials in spaces he designed and remodeled, with tools, workbenches and pulley systems he devised with his very hands. On display here you’ll find singular pieces worked in wood, metal, ceramic, marble and glass.[vii] The bases for many of his sculptures originated as work tables or stools and we’ve included these in the reconstruction as well.[viii]
Among the blocks of virgin marble, recycled Parisian lumber, bronze pellets, onyx, polished steel, and glass, you’ll behold six of Brancusi’s most celebrated sculptures. Upon entering the exhibit is Brancusi’s The Prayer, a bronze female nude intended as a grave marker. Her saddened and sullen figure, bent in grief, does not repel but draws you into the sculptor’s inner sanctum. Next you’ll find The Kiss, which balances the severity of The Prayer with greetings of romance and fulfillment. Further along, placed strategically upon purpose-built, hand hewn marble, limestone, and sandstone bases are two sculptures in black and white marble known as Bird in Space. These later period sculptures represent what was “spiritually, aesthetically, and formally fundamental” to Brancusi. Of his birds he said, “My birds are a series of different objects in a central research that remains the same.”[ix]
As you move beyond the ropes and pulleys, saws and cleavers, you come upon what many consider his seminal marble, metal, and stone sculpture, The Beginning of the World. It is believed Brancusi sat for hours with this sculpture upon his lap, touching it with his hands, while he sat with his eyes closed. He said of [his] sculpture that it must be “lovely to touch, friendly to live with, not only well made.” When you look upon this piece, try to imagine yourself as he would have been…surrounded with his works, in his over-sized studio, allowing his sensitivity to materials, his tactile and visual values, and his ideals for perfecting forms to guide his life. [x]
We close the Elemental Studio Gallery exhibit with the Torso of a Young Man. Produced in maple, Brancusi looked to match the content of the sculpture to the material at hand. Here we see a male form modeled in hard wood, the trunk of the form builds upon established cultural associations, “calling to mind countless classical torsos in museums around the world.”[xi]
In all of Brancusi’s elemental works, we see an essential simplicity of forms. Many would argue that he was not an abstract artist because his sculptures retained a strong appeal to ideas. While his works may defy categorization, with each of his enigmatic sculptures Brancusi transforms the sculpture’s materiality, from an inanimate block arises pure energy, and thus, signals an “entirely unique perspective on sculpture”.[xii]
Bibliography
Ayers, Andrew. "Brancusi, Constantin." In The Oxford Companion to Western Art, edited by Hugh Brigstocke. Oxford Art Online, http://0-www.oxfordartonline.com.library.pcc.edu:80/subscriber/article/opr/t118/e364 (accessed February 20, 2010).
Faerna, Jose Maria. Brancusi. Edited by Nola Butler. Translated by Alberto Curotto. New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1997.
Miller, Sandra. "Brancusi, Constantin." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://0-www.oxfordartonline.com.library.pcc.edu:80/subscriber/article/grove/art/T010887 (accessed February 20, 2010).
Shanes, Eric. Constantin Brancusi. Edited by Nancy Grubb. New York, NY: Abbeville Press, Inc, 1989.
Tacha, Athena C. "Legend, Reality and Impact." Art Journal (College Art Association) 22, no. 4 (Summer 1963): 240-241.
[i] Eric Shanes, Constantin Brancusi, (New York: Abbeville Press, Inc, 1989), 7.
[ii] Eric Shanes, Constantin, 11. Up until this stage he was only attending the art school part time.
[iii] Ibid., 12
[iv] Sandra Miller. "Brancusi, Constantin." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, (accessed February 20, 2010)
[v] Sandra Miller. “Brancusi, Constatin.”
[vi] Eric Shanes, Constantin, 109.
[vii] Jose Maria Faerna, Brancusi. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1997), 58.
[viii] Athena C. Tacha, 240.
[ix] Eric Shanes, Constantin, 40.
[x] Athena C. Tacha, "Legend, Reality and Impact." Art Journal (College Art Association) 22, no. 4 (Summer 1963), 241.
[xi] Eric Shanes, Constantin, 56.
[xii] Jose Maria Faerna, Brancusi, 7.