Book Description

Amazon.com

It's hard to imagine a more perfect depiction of love than "The Kiss," Constantin Brancusi's blocky stone sculpture of a nose-to-nose, belly-to-belly couple bound by encircling arms. Brancusi's powerful elemental shapes, carved from stone, wood, and marble, remain touchstones of modern art. But compared to contemporaries like Picasso and Modigliani, the Romania-born artist, who died in 1957, still remains something of an enigma. A slender, attractively designed book, Constantin Brancusi: The essence of things examines the artist's folkloric cultural and artistic heritage, his years in Paris and his revolutionary sculptural language. Along the way, the essayists attempt to refine the standard view of Brancusi as the poster boy for "truth to materials"-—the self-reliant peasant who struck a blow for modernism around 1907 by cutting directly into the stone block and responding to its unique qualities. Unfortunately, many of the scholarly adjustments to the legend come across as nitpicking footnotes that don't illuminate the bigger picture. (So what if his father was a small landowner in a poor Romanian village, not a real peasant? Why must we therefore view his self-identification with humble folk as a phony public image?) Yet the book contains key insights into Brancusi's stunning reductions of human and animal form, some from the artist himself. About his large marble "Fish" from 1926-—a smooth oval shape with a single facet—-he wrote, "When you see a fish . . . you think of its speed, its floating, flashing body seen through water. . . . Well, I've tried to express just that." While a reproduction of "Fish" appears in a small photo alongside the text, quite a few of the works discussed by the essayists are not illustrated at all. Even when Brancusi is supposedly boiled down to his "essence," as in this book, it seems a shame not to grant him a better showing. The 37 full-sized color plates correspond with the contents of an exhibition organized by the Tate Modern in London and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (where it is on view through September 19, 2004). —Cathy Curtis ... Read more

Book Description

In twentieth-century sculpture, one name towers above all others: Romanian-born Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957). This book accompanies a major retrospective exhibition of Brancusi's sculpture, drawings, and photographs, organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Profusely illustrated throughout, with photographs by the artist and images culled from a wide range of archival sources, it is the most definitive work yet published on this influential artist. The authors provide a detailed reassessment of Brancusi's work, incorporating and extending the profound revisions in scholarship that have been taking place since the last major retrospective in 1969-1970. The three major essays present new information on such diverse issues as the sculptor's sources of inspiration, his formal approach, and the works' original presentation. Friedrich Teja Bach rejects the notion of Brancusi's oeuvre as hermetic, timeless, and pure, and examines instead the heterogeneous combinations of form and material that make Brancusi's works compellingly paradoxical. Margit Rowell explores the sculptor's place in the artistic climate of Paris in the 1910s and 1920s and his rejection of dominant styles and subject matter in favor of non-Western sources, particularly Asian art. Ann Temkin traces the history of Brancusi's American patronage during his lifetime by such influential collectors as John Quinn, Katherine Dreier, James Johnson Sweeney, and Louise and Walter Arensberg. The plate section features full-color reproductions of over 100 sculptures, with accompanying texts and visual references. In addition, 55 photographs by Brancusi in full-page duotone are shown for the first time alongside a major selection of his sculptures. There are also color and black and white reproductions of over forty of his drawings -- the richest documentation to date of this aspect of Brancusi's work -- as well as prefatory essays on the photographs and drawings, a chronology, and bibliographic and exhibition listings. Distributed for the Philadelphia Museum of Art ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Ethereal sculpture...
In the Sucevita Cloisters in Sucevita Romania a painted vault depicts a repeated rhomboid design in the shape of a pillar. Wooden funery columns in Loman Cemetery in Hunedoara, Transylvania, Romania also exhibit the rhomboidal design, albeit on a much more articulated, differentiated, and elaborate scale.

The Romanina artist, Constantin Brancusi brought the image of the rhomboid pillar to his wonderful sculpture the "Endless Column." For Brancusi, the rhomboid pillar was the embodiment of the "axis mundi", the world's axis, the tree of life, the pillar of the sky, the pivot of the universe. He once referred to these columns as stairways to heaven. Peoples all over the world have used the metaphysical pillar to link the earth and the sun, the source of all life.

The pillar image may not seem as fresh today as it did when arrived on the Paris art scene in the early 20th Century, but today, many art critics view the Romanian-born Parisian sculptor Brancusi as a major player in the Modern art movement. Along with Picasso, Brancusi introduced the notion of using traditional art forms in Western art--including 'totem' poles or sacred pillars, stone plinths, and other metaphysical carvings.

BRANCUSI was published by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in conjunction with a major retrospective of his work. Brancusi apparently deplored analytic attempts to understand his art (he felt his works should simply be "enjoyed" i.e. the fill the viewer with joy). However, the book is filled with material designed to help the reader "understand" and to a great extent, I feel it accomplishes it's goal.

The layout includes photographs showing how Brancusi may have found inspiration for his many birds, heads, and other organic and metaphysical works, including his rhomboidal columns. For example, one series of photographs shows Brancusi's famous "Muse" series executed in marble, bronze, and other media, and includes possible sources of inspiration such as a photograph and self-portrait of Margit Pogany. The various "Muse" may have evolved from a semi-formal bust similar to those executed by more traditional artists to a fully evolved "essence" of "head" more akin to Modern art.

I recommend this book to anyone who desires a pictoral record of the artist at work as well as many flat representations of his wonderfully formed three-dimensional sculptures and carvings. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Brancusi
I found this book a useful source of information about Brancusi. It captures the essence of Brancusi himself and what made his scultpures so good. I liked the fact that Brancusi's comments about his sculptures and how he made them were included in it, it somehow, made you feel more about the sculptures themselves. His life story is interwoven with his sculptures in this book, just as his life and art are interwoven. What I don't like about the book is the way it is set out. It is confusing and does not give you a clear picture, altogether. Although, the author said that he hoped the reader could get more out of it that way, it somehow does not work. It was set out, not in a chronological order but with specific titles like 'The Human World'. Overall, though I liked this book as it analyzed the sculptures very well however, it raises the issues of abstract scupture versus represational in Brancusi's art without actually stating anything about it??? I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in Brancusi or would like to find out mroe information on him.

interest in sculpture
Not very well known, but one of the most important artists in his style ... Read more

Reviews (2)

not much more than a train reading
this a very modest summary on brancusi's works. it's rather superficial and at times it's wasted on tangents of little value--such as the reference to brancusi's sexuality.

i gave it 2 stars mostly for the photo reproductions.

Not much meat to this book.
I was looking forward to receiving this book but was disappointed. It did not provide any more than a few visual cues on the artist's best known pieces. I had hoped for notes on his start, inspirations, and other less known pieces of artwork. ... Read more

Book Description

Constantin Brancusi-the most influential sculptor of the twentieth century-is usually viewed as a sculptor of pure, perfect, essential forms and as a lone visionary and exotic peasant-sage, aloof from both the social concerns of his age and from avant-garde affiliations. In this fascinating book, Anna C. Chave uses both feminist and social historical lenses to explode many of the myths about Brancusi, offering a revised view of the sculptor as an artist creatively responding to his artistic and social environment. ... Read more

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Siempre!, published by Edicional Siempre on December 4, 1997. The length of the article is 703 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: El transformable Brancusi 4. (Constantin Brancusi, escultor rumano)(TT: The convertible Brancusi 4) (TA: Constantin Brancusi, Rumanian sculptor)
Author: Roberto Vallarino
Publication: Siempre! (Refereed)
Date: December 4, 1997
Publisher: Edicional Siempre
Volume: v44Issue: n2320Page: p63(1)

Article Type: Biography

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description

Bogdan sets forth criteria and methods of a structural analysis of the pictorial language as a first step toward a more adequate understanding of the semiotic system of visual arts. A structural approach to this pictorial language is presented along with a discussion of an information-processing model applied to optical illusions and computer simulations, and treatment of specifically paradigmatic case studies. Bogdan also discusses the Funeral Monument of Targu Jiu by Constantin Brancusi, one of the most important innovators in modern art. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

explaining a great deal of brancusi's roots of inspiration
professor balas, restitutes the origins of brancusi's works back to the romanian folk traditions. in doing so, the author 1) compares brancusi's output to romanian folk art (employing photos of sculpture, tapestry, etc.), 2) quotes brancusi, 3) places brancusi's works, conceptually, as a reflection of romanian fairy tales and myths.

when balas looks at the touted influence of african art on brancusi she does so very carefully and manages to convincingly limit the scope of such influence--in time and artistic output.

as a footnote, the author, coming herself from romania, shows a great level of understanding of the brancusian formative environment.

the only exception one would take with this work might be with a note associating brancusi with a romanian-hungarian tradition. it is hard to see such association and it should probably be considered an oversight.

for a conceptual approach towards brancusi's place in the space-time continuum called history, mircea eliade in his 1967 essay 'brancusi and mythology' (available in 'ordeal by labyrinth') offers great insight too. ... Read more