Constantin Brancusi

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Constantin Brancusi
1876-1957
T H E E N D L E S S C O L U M N

• Tyler Conlan
• Survey of Art History
• 7th Hour

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Historical Context

• Middle of Modern Art period from roughly 1880s
  to 1960s-70s
• Post-Impressionist, leading towards more abstract
  art
• Contemporaries include August Rodin, Antonin
  Mercié
• Student of Rodin, he rejected Rodins realism for
  abstract functionalism, but paralleled Rodins
  independence

The Thinker
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Brancusi the Artist

• Although considered abstract/modern artist,
  considered himself a pure realist
• Focused on function as it relates to form, not
  merely form
• The people who call my work 'abstract' are
  imbeciles what they call 'abstract' is in fact
  the purest realism, the reality of which is not
  represented by external form but by the idea
  behind it, the essence of the work (see notes
  for citations)

The Kiss
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When we are no longer children, we are already
dead.

• Sold for 27,000,000, highest for sculpture
• Highly simplistic
• Focuses on capturing movement and feeling behind
  the work
• Reducing bird in flight down to most basic form
  to emphasize the essence of form in motion
• Couldnt bring it into country without paying
  duties

Bird in Space
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The Kiss

• Made many versions of this piece
• his first major work (1908)
• Combination of two forms to one, symbolizing the
  love behind The Kiss
• Essence of meaning

(1916)
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The Flying Turtle

• One of several animal sculptures
• Echoes modernists of various mediums doing animal
  themes
• Highly simplistic, captures simple geometry of
  complex shape

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Sleeping Muse and Mademoiselle Pogany

• Both works are of female forms
• Similar structural elements, very rounded
• Basic geometric shapes
• Essence of sculpture
• Curvilinear lines

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Which is a Brancusi?
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(No Transcript)
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We always want to understand something. But
there is nothing to understand. Everything that
you can contemplate here, in the atelier, only
has one merit that you are living it. What is
real is not the external form, but the essence of
things... it is impossible for anyone to express
anything essentially real by imitating its
exterior surface.