Both the work and the life of Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) would seem a far remove from the violence and alienation of Bacon’s imagery, and the restless grief of Celan. Rooted in a different era, a magical past, he produced sculpture of elegance and mystery, which was nevertheless foundational to the opening up in the arts, of which Bacon and Celan were inheritors.
Born in rural Romania, Brancusi spent his formative years in a village near the Carpathian Mountains, herding sheep belonging to his family from an early age, and learning the skill of woodcarving inherent to the area and its folk tradition. He was a skilled craftsman almost from childhood, steeped in the land based art forms of traditional culture.
Following casual jobs during his youth, he enrolled in the Bucharest School of Fine Arts around the turn of the century, where he received formal sculptural training. He subsequently moved to Paris, where for one month he worked in the studio of Rodin. Interestingly, in contrast to his own approach, here he was engaged in the mechanical translation of Rodin’s clay maquettes into final marble forms, a common sculptural practice of the time. Upon leaving he expressed sentiments of being overshadowed in the presence of a great artist, subsequently becoming involved in the Avant Garde life of the city, associated with artists such as Modigliani, and going on to himself become a foundational giant of the modern age.
Central to his subsequent practice was a physical involvement with materials, and a reviving of the sculptural practice of “direct carving”, as carried forwards by practitioners such as Barbara Hepworth, for whom the chisel was equally important.
This essay will concentrate on two elements in his oeuvre - that of the bird, a subject to which he returned some 30 times during the course of his life, and the recurrent stacked diagonal motif of Endless Column - originating in the modest, directly sculpted oak version of 1918 in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and culminating in the 29.3 metre tall, metallic and manufactured version of the Targu Tiu sculptural assemblage in 1938 .
Brancusi referred to his own bird subject as a magical symbol of flight with the possibility of freedom from the usual constraints of earthly life.
His first visit to the theme was entitled “Maiastra”, referred to a Romanian legend, about a beautiful bird with a magical, superlatively enchanting song.
In this, the polished, ovoid bird-form stands erect over a rough hewn base, punctuated by oblong and square stone pieces. Pure and polished it alternately hovers over, and militarily dominates, the ground of the supporting column, sharing something of the relation of a word to the unconscious.
As with much of his work, it is a celebratory piece - not least, of the materials in which he demonstrates his variety of skills and approaches - in contrast for instance to the darknesses and alienation of Bacon.
Here as elsewhere Brancusi incorporates the “plinth” as much as the “sculpture” itself, into a rhythmic whole, an almost musical progression, rising through compartments of space from the floor upwards, suggesting a similarity to a sequence of musical bars, the song of the magical bird frozen into physical form. Later images (. )incorporate the same lyrical expressiveness and rhythm of form, progressively freeing the energy locked into this first visitation, into an upward curving leap.
In this context it is interesting to note Brancusi’s friendship with the (then obscure) composer Eric Satie - whose works embody a similar compartmentalised simplicity.
Similarly, with Endless Column, a theme on which he worked for twenty years, there is a flowing, if jerky, upwards progression, in this case opening at the top, as if a beak or mouth is giving out song, into the potential for infinity. His ultimate expression of the form, in the Targu Tiu sculptural assemblage, memorialises Romanian soldiers who died in the First World War, and is offered alongside two other pieces - The Table of Silence and The Gate of the Kiss, on an east-west axis. Despite the joyousness of his expression, here an elegiac tone is suggested by the context .
In his search for simplicity, Brancusi was seeking the ultimate within the form, truer to the thing itself rather than a departure to the abstract.
In this arguably he shares a common impulse with much that is labelled Primitive, an essential wellspring of modern art. Mostly this is understood in its proximity to indigenous and land based cultures. Never the less, both within and beyond such cultures is the world of animals - a magical world in which Brancusi’s upbringing was steeped - and whose simplicity, mystery and vulnerability is inextricably voiced in the human artefacts. Those who live close to the land have a much clearer access to this magical kingdom, and it is the energy of this that shines through many of Brancusi’s sculptures.