Constantin Brancusi [Hardcover]

Friedrich Teja Bach (Author), Margit Rowell (Author), Ann Temkin (Author), Philadelphia Museum of Art (Corporate Author), Centre Georges Pompidou (Corporate Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 25, 1995

Romanian-born Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) is one of the most important names in 20th-century sculpture. This book accompanies a major retrospective exhibition of Brancusi's scultpure, drawings, and photographs organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. This work is illustrated throughout with photographs by the artist and images culled from a wide range of archival sources. The authors provide a detailed reassessment of Brancusi's work, incorporating and extending the revisions in scholarship that have been taking place since the last major retrospective in 1969-1970. The three major essays present 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 favour 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-colour reproductions of over 100 sculptures, with accompanying texts and visual references. In addition, 55 photographs by Brancusi in full-page duotone are shown alongside a major selection of his sculptures. There are also colour and black and white reproductions of over forty of his drawings - as well as prefatory essays on the photographs and drawings, a chronology, and bibliographic and exhibition listings.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A great artist is never a closed subject, but this catalogue is a milestone production, as useful as it is beautiful."
—Norbert Lynton, The Art Book --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Friedrich Teja Bach is Professor at the Institute for Art History, University of Vienna. Margit Rowell is Chief Curator of Drawings at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Ann Temkin is the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Twentieth Century Art at the Philadelphia Museum.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 406 pages
• Publisher: MIT Press; 1ST edition (October 25, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262023954
• ISBN-13: 978-0262023955
• Product Dimensions: 11.9 x 9.7 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,161,250 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ethereal sculpture..., July 14, 2001

By 

Dianne Foster "Di" (USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Constantin Brancusi (Paperback)

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.