Title: Constantin Brancusi
1Constantin 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
2Historical 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
3Brancusi 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
4When 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
5The 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)
6The Flying Turtle
- One of several animal sculptures
- Echoes modernists of various mediums doing animal
themes - Highly simplistic, captures simple geometry of
complex shape
7Sleeping Muse and Mademoiselle Pogany
- Both works are of female forms
- Similar structural elements, very rounded
- Basic geometric shapes
- Essence of sculpture
- Curvilinear lines
8Which is a Brancusi?
9(No Transcript)
10We 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.