In the steps of brancusi sur les pas de brancusi

In the Steps of Brancusi/ Sur les Pas de Brancusi

An Anglo-Romanian eTwinning Project/ Un Projet eTwinning Anglo-Roumain

Undertaken by Winchester College and Colegiul Stefan Velovan Entrepris par Winchester College et le Collège National PÊdagogique Stefan Velovan

Participants/Les Participants: England/ Angleterre

Romania/ Roumanie

Ben Donaghue

Bianca Baluta

George Garnett

Alexandra Vasile

Munavwar Hussain

Loredana Dragan

Peter Jiang

Mihai Cosmin Dumbrava

Tommy Leasor

Andrei Catalin Durla

David McKenna

Albert Adelin Gabriel Filip

Kieran Tam

Georgiana Grigorie-Telteu

Maximilian Thackray

Alexandru Marian Lungu

Felix Vardag-Hunter

Andreea Valentina Mandescu

Andreas West

Eliza Cristina Mandreci

Bryan Wong

Marius Cristian Poparascu Ciprian Mogosanu Nicoleta Sulea

Teachers/Professeurs: Dr. David Ceiriog-Hughes

Doamna Simona Cerasela Bocai

eTwinning Project/ ProjeteTwinning 2013/2014 Published on Issuu/ Publié sur Issuu @2014 In the Steps of Brancusi/Sur les Pas de Brancusi Inspired by, Inspiré par « Constantin Brancusi », Miller S. (2010, Reaktion) Cover image voted by all pupils/ Image de de couverture votée par tous les élèves: Marius Cristian Poparascu Photos/images sourced from the internet and school archives, taken by the pupils Photos et images source internet, archives de l’école prises par les élèves

INDEX INTRODUCTION : Motivation for the project/Motivation du Projet Chapter 1/Chapitre 1 : Childhood/Enfance Chapter 2/Chapitre 2 : Craiova Chapter 3/Chapitre 3 : Bucharest/Bucarest Chapter 4/Chapitre 4 : Paris Chapter 5/Chapitre 5 : Studio à l’impasse Ronsin Chapter 6/Chapitre 6 : His work and friends/Son travail et ses amis Chapter 7/Chapitre 7 : Târgu-Jiu Chapter 8/Chapitre 8: The end and his legacy/La fin et son héritage Chapter 9/Chapitre 9: His works/Ses œuvres The Table of silence/La Table du Silence Sleeping Muse/La Muse Endormie Princess X/La Princesse X The Kiss/Le Baiser The Gate of the Kiss/La Porte du Baiser The Little French Girl/La Petite Fille Française Bird in Space/L’Oiseau dans L’Espace Madame L. R. The Prayer/La Prière Mlle Pogany The Endless Column/La Colonne sans Fin Chapter 10/Chapitre 10: Aphorisms, maxims and sayings/Aphorismes, maximes et citations Chapter 11/Chapitre11: Impressions and memories/Impressions et souvenirs Chapter 12/Chapitre 12 : The teams, les équipes Conclusion : Evaluation

SUR LES PAS DE BRÂNCUŞI

Introduction : Motto: « Les choses ne sont pas difficiles à faire, ce qui est difficile c'est de nous mettre en état de les faire. » Constantin Brâncuşi

La problématique de l’éducation acquiert de nouvelles connotations dans la société contemporaine, étant donnés les changements sans précédent dans tous les domaines de la vie sociale.

L’accent passe du côté informatif au côté formatif. L’éducation dépasse les limites des exigences et des valeurs nationales et elle tend vers l’universalité, vers le patrimoine valorisant commun de l’humanité.

Un curriculum unitaire ne peut plus correspondre lui seul à la diversité humaine et les desiderata de l’éducation permanente tendent à devenir une réalité incontestable.

Ainsi, sans nier l’importance de l’éducation curriculaire, il devient de plus en plus évident le fait que l’éducation extracurriculaire, c’est-à-dire celle réalisée au-delà du processus de l’enseignement, a son rôle bien établi dans la formation de la personnalité des jeunes.

Ayant en vue que nous, les enseignants, n’avons pas seulement le devoir de communiquer l’information scientifique aux élèves mais aussi la noble mission de les préparer pour la vie, on a envisagé ce projet, premièrement, comme une activité qui puisse aider les jeunes à découvrir la

réalité culturelle du pays, les encourager l’étude de l’art, des éléments du patrimoine local, régional, national et européen.

vers

En leur proposant d’autres situations d’étude et de documentation au-delà de leurs classes, en les entraînant pour le travail en équipe, en les encourageant continuellement à dialoguer et à échanger entre eux ou avec leurs collègues de l’autre pays partenaire, les professeurs ont la chance de découvrir d’autres côtés de la personnalité des élèves, ils pourront accéder plus facilement dans leur univers et ils trouveront les meilleures méthodes pour franchir les barrières de communication entre eux. Les langues de communication sont le français, l’anglais et le roumain.

L’initiation de ce projet a été motivée par: le désir manifesté par les élèves et les enseignants impliqués, de participer à la réalisation de certaines activités qui permettent l’implication et l’affirmation personnelle, ainsi que la possibilité de promouvoir l’image des collèges impliqués; ● la possibilité d’offrir ainsi, à tous les élèves impliqués, de différentes opportunités pour manifester leurs intérêts, les aptitudes du talent artistique, l’esprit d’observation et de recherche, la persévérance dans le domaine de la documentation. ●

Ce projet vise la réalisation d’un programme d’activités éducatives extracurriculaires qui permettent à tous les bénéficiaires élèves, enseignants, parents, d’assumer des rôles divers, à partir du visiteur intéressé à découvrir, au participant actif, désireux de découvrir, de mettre en pratique, de produire des éléments qui font référence au patrimoine culturel.

Le projet, conçu d’une perspective transdisciplinaire, doit apparaître comme un plaidoyer pour la valorisation du potentiel éducatif du patrimoine artistique et culturel, dans le but de la préservation et de la promotion de celui-ci sous une forme authentique, actuellement et à l’avenir.

Simona Cerasela Bocai (Collège National Stefan Velovan)

Motivation for the project

It was after reading Sanda Miller’s book “Constantin Brancusi” (2010, Reaktion), that I wished to learn some more about this extraordinarily innovative artist and introduce his work to my pupils. Winchester had established a link and a memorandum of understanding with Stefan Velovan College in Craiova, not far from Brancusi’s birthplace. I had visited Targu Jiu and Bucharest with my colleague, Mrs. Simona Cerasela Bocai, so we decided to set up a bilingual project, as we are both teachers of French, to explore his work with a class of lower sixth pupils in each country. The English pupils would write in English, but would learn some Romanian to equip them for a visit to Romania in Spring 2014. The Romanian pupils would write in French and both groups would communicate via the eTwinning twinspace.

The project was to have three focal points: an historical analysis of Brancusi’s life and work, an analysis of his major work and finally a visit to Romania to view his works “in situ”. The pupils worked hard and they evaluated their performance in an online questionnaire. The overall impression was a favourable one: they had learned a great deal, had enjoyed the process and had forged friendships, which would last long beyond the project.

David Ceiriog-Hughes (Winchester College)

Chapter 1/Chapitre 1:

Childhood/Enfance

Childhood of Constantin Brâncuşi Constantin Brancusi was born on 21st February 1876 in a tiny village in western Wallachia which was typical of rural Romania in the 19th Century: humble, and its inhabitants were poor.

Romania was primarily a country of farms and forests, and as for the house interiors of the inhabitants, they were ‘everywhere very simple’.

The church and the cemetery had dominated the village life, and no efforts were spared in constructing such sombre places.

While on the other hand, the houses were nonetheless of special significance in the life of the village, yet relatively ordinary: ‘ in every house with its white walls glistening in the sun, there is little furniture, nothing beyond the essentials of a humble life, all labour and self-denial’. Although the designs of the house itself were plain, there were the entrance gates of every household, which its ornaments and beauty stood out from the rest of Europe.

Brancusi grew up in just such a house of modest pretensions, now preserved as a museum with little alterations.

Inside the rooms were filled with coloured textiles and lovingly decorated furniture and utensils.

This was the environment that surrounded Brancusi from his birth and this became his first visual stimuli and the earliest source of inspiration for the morphology of his sculptures.

Life in Hobita during Brancusi’s childhood was peaceful, following the patterns of ancient rural communities at a time when transhumance was still practiced. It shaped Brancusi’s earliest memories and developed his love of nature with its abundance of birds and animals, which he later captured with his sculptures.

He was the fourth child of Nicolae Brancusi (1832- 1884), and his wife Maria Deaconescu, who he had married in 1872. This was Nicolae’s second marriage, for Nicolae was previously married to a woman named Illinca, with whom he had three children. Then he went on to father four more with Maria, and died when his daughter Eufrosina was born, leaving Maria to bring up seven children alone.

Brancusi’s childhood was brief, and not a happy one: he was deprived of an elementary school education at Hobita, although being described as very clever by his former classmates and friends. He repeatedly attempted to run away from home twice in 1887 and 1888. His life as a small boy seemed to be bleakly curtailed by the harsh realities of life.

In

1896-1898, Brancusi is alleged to have decorated seven wooden pillars of the loggia of a house belonging to the priest of the neighbouring village of Romanesti, when he was already a pupil at the School of Arts and Crafts in Craiova, which indicates he did not leave behind completely the Romanian world of his childhood.

But finally, these early years spent in Hobita and neighbouring villages constituted Brancusi’s earliest artistic stimuli, out of which he began to shape his artistic career.

Bryan Wong

L’enfance de Brâncuşi 1876-1888

Sa Naissance Né le 19 février 1876 à Hobiţa, dans le département de Gorj, Constantin est le cinquième enfant de Nicolae (1833-1885) et de Maria Brâncuşi (1851-1919).

L’Enfance

En 1883, à 7 ans, il quitte sa maison paternelle mais il est trouvé par sa

mère à Targu-Jiu et il est ramené à Hobiţa. Il commence l’école primaire à Peştişani puis il continue l’école à Bradiceni.

En 1884, il est puni pour avoir égratigné son pupitre avec un petit canif. Il part et il travaille comme apprenti chez un commerçant de tonneaux.

En 1885, Constantin Bradiceni.

son père meurt reprend l’école

et à

En 1887, il s’enfuit pour la troisième fois de chez soi, avant de finir l’école primaire. Il arrive de nouveau à Targu-Jiu et il travaille comme apprenti dans la teinturerie de Ion Mosculescu. À 12 ans, il quitte son département et il s’entretient seul en travaillant comme garçon de boutique à Slatina.

Son enfance est marquée de fréquents départs de chez soi et de longues années d’apprentissage dans de différents ateliers.

Pendant son enfance, il a appris à sculpter en bois pour confectionner des outils et des objets ménagers. En Roumanie, ces objets et les façades des maisons étaient souvent décorés des sculptures en bois. Le style de ces

ornements influencera l’œuvre de Brancusi.

Dans ses mémoires, l’artiste disait que sa tenue et son mode de vie ont été influencés par son pays d’origine, d’où sa simplicité, son bon sens et son amour pour la nature.

Citation

Quand tu cesses d’être un enfant, tu es mort depuis longtemps.

(Constantin Brâncuşi)

Bianca Băluţă

Chapter 2/Chapitre 2: Craiova Craiova and Apprenticeship Brancusi left his home town, Hobitsa, at the age of 12 in order to find work in Craiova, a provincial capital, where he would spend the next ten years of his life. He started out doing ridiculously long hours in cafes and restaurants waiting tables, cleaning dishes and washing glasses.

In the 1880s, the town of Craiova was undergoing westernisation. However, it lagged behind western countries in terms of sculptures and paintings so the only things Brancusi had as a reference when he was young were a large number of fin-de-siècle traditional funerary monuments. In fact, to strengthen his concept of sculpture he would wander about the cemetery.

The Faculty of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest was founded in 1865.

There are two people generally attributed to be the pioneers of Romanian modern sculpture, Giorgio Vasilescu and Constantin Balalescu. It is not known if Brancusi met these two men as they both were living in Craiova at the time of Brancusi's arrival, but it is almost certain that he had seen at least one of either's sculptures. Balalescu's style was funerary due to that being popular at the time and, like most artists, made a living off commissions. This is due to the usual commissioner being Romanian Bourgeoisie who wanted to emulate western culture.

In the final decades of the the nineteenth century Craiova was undergoing an intense period of artistic activity. Artists would do various commissions as well as teach in the equivalent of primary schools subjects such as calligraphy or drawing. It was during this era that a number of foreign painters who happened to be passing through Romania, as well as Romanian painters from other parts of the country, descended on Craiova, attracted by the sheer number of generous bourgeoisie commissioning art.

Brancusi describes his time as a waiter during this time as: 'I stayed six years and I was working an eighteen-hour shift every day. At three in the morning the carriage drivers woke me up by knocking with the handle of their whips on the door of the room where I was sleeping. they were coming to pick up their clients arriving on the early morning trains and before leaving with their cargo they wanted to be served hot sausages, cold white wine and hot horseradish.'

But in 1894, everything dramatically changed for the better. He was offered a job in an upmarket provisions store. Brancusi made himself popular with his rich clientele by his willingness to meet any challenge, however far-fetched: 'One day, someone challenged him to construct a violin , and bets were laid on the project. He took a wooden orange crate, cut it into thin, flexible slats, submitted them to a long boiling process in order to obtain the curves of the violin, procured some strings and rosin and soon completed his handiwork. A gypsy fiddler was called in to try it out, and to everyone's astonishment he charmed the audience

with the purity of the tones emitted by the young prodigy's instrument.' A rich manufacturer, Grecescu, who was also a counsellor, witnessed this event and claimed that it would be a shame to let such talent go to waste and therefore enrolled Brancusi in the Craiova School of Arts and Crafts. Brancusi started September of that

year.

The school was founded in 1874 as the Industrial School of Mechanical Arts, the place became very popular all over Europe.

The comprehensive syllabus of the school offered 26 areas to study, including foundry-work, blacksmithing, shoemaking, tailoring, metallurgy as well as sculpture, which would be more decorative than artistic at this school, amongst others. Emphasis of the program was on things like furniture and decorative pieces such as chandeliers or tables. There are a large number of objects made by Brancusi and are currently preserved in the schools museum.

During the summer of 1897, just before his final year at the school, he visited Vienna.

All that we know about what he did there was that he worked in a factory and returned to Craiova with a certificate of qualification to prove his work experience. Brancusi completed his studies in 1898.

He was finally able to feature one of his pieces of work in a local exhibition, which featured both the most premier of artists and local ones. Brancusi's first exhibition was that of a plaster bust dedicated to Gheorghe Chitu, the school's founder

.

The year that Brancusi finished his studies, the school's director, Petre Popescu, wrote that his young pupil 'completed with great success the full theoretical and practical courses of five years of the school, in the sculpture section, having at the same time a great ability in practical and theoretical studies as well as exemplary behaviour.' The following term Brancusi enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest, the capital.

Andreas West Craiova et l’apprentissage de Brancusi 1888- 1898

Très jeune, Brancusi quitte son village natal, en 1889 et s’établit à Craiova, en travaillant premièrement dans une boutique. Il travaille au début dans la gargote des frères Spirtaru qui se trouvait dans la Place de la Gare. Il y travaillait parfois 18 heures par jour, pour ramasser de l’argent.

Ensuite il travaille comme garçon de restaurant.

En 1892, Brancusi est embauché comme garçon de boutique marchandises et des épices » de Ion Zamfirescu.

au « magasin des

En 1894, il entre à l’Ecole des Arts et Métiers de Craïova où il est admis l’année suivante dans l’atelier de sculpture, puis dans celui de sculpture sur bois.

Il a une bourse de 200 lei par an.

Ici, il apprend mécanique, menuiserie, fonderie, usinage des métaux, charronnage et sculpture en bois.

Il y obtient de bonnes notes.

Il a construit un violon en employant des planches d’un coffret d’oranges, en présence des clients de la gargote, en attirant l’admiration de ceux-ci.

Brancusi modèle le buste de Gheorghe Chitu, le fondateur de cette école.

Pendant les vacances d’été de 1897, il voyage à Vienne et il travaille dans la section de

finissage artistique d’une fabrique de meubles où il obtient une attestation professionnelle.

Il a passé environ 9 ans dans la capitale de l’Olténie.

Après avoir suivi les cours de l’École des Arts et des Métiers de Craiova (1894-1898), Constantin Brancusi part à Bucarest où il s’inscrit à l’École Nationale de Beaux Arts.

En 1898, il entre à l’École des Beaux-Arts de Bucarest.

Marius Poparascu

Chapter 3/Chapitre 3: Bucharest/Bucarest BUCHAREST In 1898 Brancusi became a student of sculpture in the Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest.

He was to remain there for the next four years. Brancusi could not hope to support this lifestyle with his meagre funds and in addition to taking a job washing dishes at the Oswald restaurant in Câmpina Street he was forced to sell his inheritance. This was no small matter for Brancusi as he recounts how afterwards he feared that his father was turning in his grave.

Importantly, during this time, Brancusi encountered and befriended Peter Neagoe. Neagoe remained a friend throughout Brancusi’s life and would go on to write his biography. Bucharest at this time was undergoing rapid and extreme change. The Academy had only recently bee established (1865) and its designers had drawn inspiration from the already well established French model. It offered five year degrees in painting, sculpture, printmaking and architecture. We can attribute great importance to the sculpting course as it would educate and shape Brancusi’s style. The fact that the Academy was based on the French model was also of vital importance as the Frenchinfluenced curriculum would enable Brancusi to adapt well to the Parisian art world.

The National University of Arts (as it is now known) in Bucharest

Brancusi was first taught by the renowned Romanian sculptor Georgescu. Georgescu was extremely popular in Paris and it is possible that it was his influence on Brancusi that would lead him to produce sculptures popular in France. Unfortunately Georgescu would die in 1898, in Brancusi’s first year, and he would be replaced by Vladimir Hegel.

Bucharest had recently seen a cultural surge as venues were established to support art in its varying forms. This resulted in the emergence of wealthy patrons and collectors. Brancusi was fortunate enough to attract the attention of one of these collectors. Anastase Simu supported the young sculptor and later commissioned Brancusi to create Sleep in 1908.

A bust made of Georgescu by Brancusi

During his time at the Academy Brancusi would be convinced by his friend Ion Croitoru to join a church choir. Brancusi is alleged to have entrusted Croitoru with his sketchbook. However, this has since been disputed.

Sleep, made by Brancusi in 1908

During his time at the Academy Brancusi produced many works that unfortunately are now lost to us. One of the most important of these would have been the Ecorché, a life-sized statue of a flayed man commissioned by Dr Dimitrie Gerota, a professor of anatomy.

Brancusi visited a morgue several times in order to complete this piece accurately and it is possible that is distaste for the human form developed here. In addition, Brancusi produced a plaster bust of Vitellius, a bust of Dr Carol Davila and one of Ion Georgescu-Gorjan.

A bust of Dr Carol Davila

Ecorché by Brancusi

In 1902 Brancusi graduated and completed his military service. He then applied for a grant to travel to Italy from his sponsor the Church of Madonna Dudu in Craiova.

After being denied Brancusi listened to the recommendation of Dimitrie Paciurea, a talented but unknown Romanian sculptor who was also Brancusi’s friend. Paciurea advised him to go to Munich.

Munich at this time was experiencing a radical change in its art world. Popular trends such as Art Nouveau had emerged. It is likely that Brancusi arrived in Munich in around 1903.The city was most likely had a great influence over the sculptor. He spent most of winter visiting museums and touring the city with his friend Frederich Storck. Brancusi claimed he did not like the city which may have resulted in his sculptures almost being a reaction to the art he found there.

Dissatisfied with Munich Brancusi would, in 1904, set off for Paris.

Felix Vardag-Hunter

Bucarest

1898-1904

Pendant la brève période du début, qui coïncide comme durée avec les études poursuivies à Bucarest et ensuite à Paris, Brancusi a réussi à atteindre la maîtrise de ses grands contemporains.

Après avoir fini l’école des Arts et des Métiers à Craiova (1894 – 1898), Constantin Brancusi vient à Bucarest où il s’inscrit à l’École Nationale des BeauxArts. Lorsqu’il était étudiant, même pendant les premières années il réalise :

Le Buste de Vitellius, en 1898, pour lequel il obtient une mention d’honneur.

La Tête de Laocoon, en 1900, pour laquelle il obtient une médaille en bronze.

L’Étude, en 1901, pour laquelle il gagne une médaille en argent.

Durant deux ans, entre 1900 et 1902, à l’aide du docteur Dimitrie Gerota, professeur d’anatomie, Brancusi réalise L’Écorché, une étude pour la représentation du corps humain, un

ouvrage pour lequel on lui accorde une médaille en bronze. La précision des

détails a fait que L’Écorché soit utilisé dans les écoles roumaines de Médecine. On en a fait dans ce but quelques copies. Les exemplaires sont repartis dans plusieurs institutions du pays, l’un d’entre eux se trouvant à l’Institut Nicolae Grigorescu. Durant plus d’un demi-siècle, les jeunes sculpteurs roumains ont appris l’anatomie d’après l’Écorché de Brancusi, qui, par cet ouvrage s’est propulsé dans la sculpture de son époque. Pour réaliser cet ouvrage, Brancusi a étudié les muscles du corps humain, en travaillant presque deux ans à la sculpture d’un homme : « L’ Écorché » est une sorte de copie de la statue antique du bel adolescent grec Antinous. Cette statue a été très appréciée par la presse du temps. Marcel Duchamp va inclure la photographie de L’Écorché au cadre de l’Exposition qu’il va organiser à la fin de l’année 1933 à la Galerie Brummer de New York City.

En 1903, il reçoit la première réaliser un monument public, le Buste Médecin Carol Davila, qui sera installé Militaire de Bucarest et il représente le public de Brancusi à Bucarest.

sollicitation de du Général à l’Hôpital seul monument

Pendant cette période Brancusi est d’Auguste Rodin, dont les concepts les avant-gardistes et indignaient les sculpteur est attiré aussi du mouvement des frontières de la Roumanie, ce qui le détermine à partir pour Paris.

captivé de l’œuvre enthousiasmaient Académiciens. Le artistique au-delà

Après avoir fini l’École Nationale des Beaux-Arts et en obtenant de bonnes notes, il continue à poursuivre des cours pratiques et après son stage militaire, il sollicite une bourse de perfectionnement et de spécialisation en Italie.

Mais en 1904, sans avoir de l’argent, il se dirige vers Paris où il devra travailler pour

s’entretenir. Dans son atelier, il détruisait pendant la nuit tout ce qu’il avait réalisé pendant la journée, étant toujours mécontent, insatisfait de son travail.

Alexandra Vasile Andreea Valentina Mandescu

20th century sculptor, a main figure in modern art movement and a pioneer of the abstract. He is considered the father of modern sculpture. His sculptures stand out through their elegance and sensible usage of the materials, combining the simplicity of Romanian folk art with the sophistication of the Parisian avant-garde. The verticality, horizontality, weight, density as well as the importance given to the light and space are the main characteristics of Brancusi`s creations. His work has profoundly influenced the modern concept of form in sculpture, painting and drawing.

The Bust of Vitellius (1898)

Vitellius was sculpted in the first weeks upon entering The National School of Fine Arts from Bucharest, after a mold from the session room. He obtained an honorific mention for this bust. Even from this creation, Brancusi`s concern of rendering the nature of the model, can be seen.

This work was presented to the Consiliul Judetean al Prefecturii Dolj for the prolongation of his scholarship. It`s one

of the few remaining works of his school time.

Laocoon`s Head (1900)

Brancusi obtains a bronze medal for the bust of "Laocoon" in a contest that was organized at the National School of Fine Arts from Bucharest.

The Flayed Man (1902)

Brancusi felt more work of than the scholars from his thoroughly studied anatomy, which was "Ecorse". His work knowledge of anatomy.

attracted towards the "Independentilor" school, yet he moulding and shown in his work showed an excellent

The Bust of Doctor-General Carol Davila (1903) The Bust of Doctor-General Carol Davila, the founder of the Medical School from Romania was the first ordered work and the only public monument made by Brancusi in Bucharest.

It was casted in bronze only nine years later and positioned in the courtyard of the Military Hospital.

In 1912, when it was decided to raise the monument, it was found out that the cast was degraded and it was decided the repair of the bust by retrenchment of the damaged parts.

Alexandra Vasile Andreea Valentina Mandescu

Chapter 4/Chapitre 4

Paris

After leaving Munich on foot, Brancusi arrived in Paris on the 14th July 1904. The Universal Exhibition of 1900 had given Paris a good surge in modernisation especially with the building of the Eiffel Tower, which was built the year before, and had therefore been named Europe’s cultural capital in the years after that leading into 1937, which was the last year of the Universal Exhibition. At the time of Brancusi’s arrival to Paris, the Montmartre and Montparnasse were the two most well known artistic communities and stood side by side.

Montmartre was known for its attractive nightlife, including bars, nightclubs and cafés concerts such as Moulin Rouge. Le Lapin Agile was the meeting place for all artists and became known as ‘Le Bâteau-Lavoir’ or the laundry boat, as it was known for its ugliness.

Many artists had settled in Montmartre many years earlier in 1869, and Le Bal de Moulin Rouge’s red windmill became the landmark of the area. An artist by the name of Erik Satie, who later became on of Brancusi’s closest friends had decided to go and live in Montmartre because of its free-spirited atmosphere and the way in which everything was connected in some way. Satie had a passion for music, composing especially, and he was asked by a restaurant owner to play piano.

This gave him the opportunity to reinvent himself and he completely changed his dress sense to fit his passion for music.

Picasso had also decided that it was a good plan to set up his studio in the Bâteau-Lavoir, and is the place that he created on of his finest pieces of art, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.

While over in Montparnasse, which didn’t see much modernisation until 1905, and much like Montmartre, offered a large variety of entertainment, such as theatres and music halls. And again, like Montmartre, Montparnasse also had a meeting place for its artists, this being in La Closerie des Lilas.

Upon his arrival in Paris, Brancusi had stayed with his friend from Bucharest near Montmartre, and earned a job washing dishes at Brasserie Chartier. Throughout his first years in Paris, Brancusi found himself moving houses many times and he managed to get registered in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Here he developed his skills of bronze busts, and although they were plentiful, very little photographic evidence remains.

Following Rodin’s method of fragmentation, which enabled him to omit various body parts for increased expression, which later became popular for avantgarde sculptors, Brancusi developed a technique called ‘partial figure’ which he uses in the work ‘The Prayer’, by eliminating the right arm. Brancusi describes his relationship with Rodin as him being Rodin’s pupil.

He had met Rodin after meeting a journalist who wrote for the Romanian art magazine ‘Luceafarul’, who knew Rodin well. However, Brancusi was very unhappy during his apprenticeship for Rodin and eventually gave up his partial figure expression.

It was in 1907 that Brancusi received his first major commission for a sculpture for the death of a Romanian woman’s husband, which he been given due to the well established Romanian connections in Paris at the time. This piece was given the name ‘The Prayer’ as he had taken the literal meaning of a praying woman as he decided the appearance of a naked woman in a cemetery would have been considered inappropriate, and therefore went for the idea of praying person.

Brancusi’s inspiration for sculptures came not from other sculptures, but in fact from paintings, mostly by the artist Paul Cezanne. This is very clear in Brancusi’s kneeling figure and Cezanne’s nude bathers.

The commission of ‘The Prayer’ enabled him to move to the studio where he would spend the next nine years. He had to cope with borderline poverty after this move, and this can be shown in photographs of this sculpture’s plaster cast by looking at the background walls and scenery conditions. We can also se from photograph’s perhaps what appears to be Brancusi’s first attempt at a direct carving. The model that Brancusi used for this piece is believed to have also been his cook and mistress, after they met in Le Lapin Agile.

Brancusi is also believed to have two other appearances of female companions in 1907 and 1910: Baroness Renée Frachon and Magit Pogany, a Hungarian painter. Even though the baroness and her husband travelled a lot, she and Brancusi met regularly between 1908 and 1910. The next step in Brancusi’s career was started by his series ‘The Motifs’ in

which she was modelled for the first one, ‘The Sleeping Muse’, which can be found in Washington D.C.

It was at this point that Brancusi abandoned his style of modelling and moved on to stonecarved art. He then went on to make The sleeping muse II and The Sleeping Muse III, although it unclear as to the chronology of them as there are two versions of The Sleeping II, although they are made from different mediums.

In conjunction with Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon, Brancusi’s portraits of Magit Pogany are together seen as the most significant pieces of art to the modernisation of Paris, although Picasso decided to keep his work from public viewing until 1916, after it was supposedly completed in 1907. It was not popular with the public until it was hesitantly bought by a collector Jaques Doucet and moved to the US where it remains today.

It is believed that the introduction of Brancusi and Magit Pogany had been the result of her being brought by a friend to Brancusi’s studio in 1910.

Max Thackray

Brancusi in Paris

Brancusi was still working in clay in 1907, starting with the medium and then later casting his experiments in bronze. He also worked through a reductionist process, subjecting his experiments to rigorous simplification. The Sleeping Muse, a portrait of Renée Frachon, unlike the portrait of Margit Pogany, Mlle Pogany, still had features that were unmistakably like Frachon’s. However, despite Mlle Pogany’s being no likeness to the sitter, she still ‘felt it was me’.

Five of Brancusi’s works were sent to the doomed Armoury Show in New York (1913), they were a plaster Mlle Pogany, The Sleeping Muse I, A Muse, The Kiss, and Torso of a Young Girl. The show was later known as ‘scandalous’ and was charged with ‘insanity and charlatanism’. Brancusi had been ridiculed like this before, when Princess X, a rather phallic looking portrait of Princess Marie Bonaparte had to be removed from the exhibition before its opening. He mentioned that his statue Princess X was the very synthesis of the woman and

The Sleeping Muse

Mlle Pogany

that to add holes for eyes, hair and ears would spoil the material. His naming it Princess X obscured the identity of the sitter deliberately. It was apparently the final result of Woman Combing Her Hair after

Princess X

several instances of abstraction. Several of his other female sitters were later abstracted into phalluses or egg like shapes. Brancusi never portrayed his male friends with the exception of one.

After 1907, Brancusi started to experiment with direct carving, starting off with The Kiss, a series of at least eight sculptures. It later turned out that The Kiss was inspired by Egyptian art. He would later take his inspiration from African art indulging in his love of the animal world; birds were featured heavily in his work. This was very much because of the birds in Romanian fairy tales. Brancusi, with Bird in Space, was very intent on capturing flight, or rather, the essence. From Maiastra, the first of the series of bird sculptures, to The Bird in Space, one of the last, you can see a definite evolution as the works g et more and more abstracted. Bird in Space was so abstract that it was taxed by U.S. Customs when the authorities deemed it a ‘utilitarian implement’ and not a work of art.

Despite his austere personal life and his rigorous work ethic, he did in fact enjoy socialising with Paris’s artists. He ended up meeting Elie Nadelman, a Polish sculptor and Amadea Modigliani, both of whom would end up influencing his development. This worked both Bird in Space

ways of course because it was Brancusi (along with Nadelman) that inspired Modigliani to start sculpture and eventually abandon painting. He would later move his studio next door to

Brancusi. The three would form a triangle of inspiration: as Modigliani learned from Brancusi, Nadelman would inspire the latter to move from his directly carved, slightly primitive looking sculptures to his smooth, flowing works such as the ovoids.

As Brancusi perfected his reductionism, he started to experiment with a new material: wood.

His first work from the medium would be titled The First Step. Unfortunately, disappointed with the result, he destroyed it leaving only the head after it was exhibited at the Alfred Stieglitz Photo Secession, New York. The remains would later sprout several bronze casts which were later known as The First Cry.

The First Cry

Lastly, another important moment: he left his studio at 54 rue du Montparnasse and moved to 8 impasse Ronsin, which evolved to become what we now know as Brancusi’s Gesamtkunstwerk.

Kieran Tam

BRANCUSI à PARIS

En 1904, Brancusi part à pied vers Paris, mais il reste pour peu de temps à Budapest et puis à Vienne.

Il traverse une partie de l’Europe pour rejoindre Munich, où il s’arrête quelque temps à la Kunstakademie, pour étudier à l’Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. Pour s’y entretenir, il travaille comme infirmier.

Il passe par Rorschach, Zurich et il traverse le défilé de Saint Bernard. Près de Basel, il est surpris d’une pluie torrentielle, il tombe malade et il est hospitalisé dans un hôpital qui se trouvait sous le patronage d’une église pour laquelle Brancusi allait sculpter un crucifix.

Il traverse l’Alsace et arrive à Langres (Haute-Marne) d’où il prend le train pour Paris. En arrivant à Paris, il habitera pour quelque temps au huitième étage d’une maison de la Cite Condorcet 9. Il travaille dans la taverne Moilard. Puis il déménage dans une chambre mansardée de la Place de la Bourse. Il devient sacristain de l’église roumaine de Paris.

En 1905, il change de domicile et il habite la mansarde d’une maison de la Place Dauphine 16. C’est toujours dans la Place Dauphine qu’habitent les peintres Theodor Pallady, Otilia Cosmuta et l’un de ses protecteurs, le conseiller d’État Louis Herbette auquel Brancusi sollicite l’aide pour être admis dans l’atelier d’Ernest Dubois.

Dans la même période, il obtient une nouvelle bourse. Le Ministère de l’Instruction Publique de Bucarest lui accorde une bourse de 600 lei pour qu’il continue ses études.

En 1905, il est admis au concours à la prestigieuse École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, où il travaille dans l’atelier d’Antonin Mercié jusqu’en 1906.

En 1906-1907, diplômé des Beaux-Arts, Brancusi expose pour la première fois à la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts et au Salon d’Automne. Auguste Rodin, président du jury, remarque son travail et lui propose de devenir metteur au point dans son atelier. A cette époque Rodin jouit d’une reconnaissance internationale et près de cinquante assistants travaillent pour lui.

Un mois dans l’atelier de Rodin lui suffit pour estimer qu’« il ne pousse rien à l’ombre des grands arbres ». Suit une période difficile pour définir son propre engagement d’artiste : « Ce furent les années les plus dures, les années de recherche, les années où je devais trouver mon chemin propre ».

Dans la capitale de la France, Brancusi allait connaître toute une communauté d’artistes et d’intellectuels qui l’ont accueilli les bras ouverts, en reconnaissant son talent et pas dernièrement en lui donnant des idées pour ses futures œuvres.

En 1907, il crée la première version du Baiser, un thème qu’il reprendra sous de différentes formes jusqu’en 1940, en atteignant l’apogée par la création de la Porte du Baiser de Targu-Jiu. En 1907, il loue un atelier dans la Rue de Montparnasse et il entre en contact avec l’avant-garde artistique parisienne, en liant d’amitié avec Guillaume Apollinaire, Fernand Léger, Amedeo Modigliani, Marcel Duchamp.

Il commencera le travail à l’ouvrage La Prière, une commande pour un monument funéraire qui sera exposée au Cimetière « Dumbrava » de Buzau.

En 1909, il revient pour peu de temps en Roumanie et participe à l’Exposition officielle de peinture, sculpture et architecture.

Le jury de l’Exposition, présidé par Spiru Haret, accorde le deuxième prix ex aequo à Brancusi, Paciurea, Steriadi, Petrascu, Theodorescu-Sion.

Le collectionneur d’art Anastase Simu achète la sculpture Le Sommeil et le buste en gypse du peintre Nicolae Darascu est acheté par le Ministère de l’Instruction Publique.

Jus qu’

en 1914, il participe régulièrement à des expositions collectives de Paris et de Bucarest, en inaugurant les cycles de l’Oiseau dans l'espace/ Maïastra, la Muse endormie et Mademoiselle Pogany.

En 1914, Brancusi ouvre la première exposition aux États-Unis au Photo Secession Gallery de New York City, qui provoque une énorme sensation. Le collectionneur américain John Quin achète plusieurs sculptures de Brancusi, en lui assurant ainsi une existence matérielle favorable à la création artistique. Pendant la même année, le ministre de l’Intérieur de la Roumanie rejette le projet du monument de Spiru Haret, commandé un an plus tôt.

Brancusi gardera l’ouvrage dans son atelier et il l’intitulera La Fontaine de Narcis. En 1915, il commence à réaliser les premiers ouvrages en bois : deux caryatides, le Fils gaspilleur etc.

En 1919, il paraît à Paris le volume « La Roumanie en images » qui contient cinq reproductions d’après les ouvrages de Brancusi. Un an plus tard, il participe à l’exposition du groupe « La section d’Or » en France, à l’exposition du groupe « Arta romana » à l’invitation de Camil Ressu en Roumanie, au « Festival Dada », où il signe le manifeste intitulé Contre cubisme, contre dadaïsme.

La revue Little Review de New York publie, en 1921, la première étude d’ampleur qui contient 24 reproductions de l’œuvre de Brancusi, étude signée par Ezra Pound. D’ailleurs, le sculpteur allait réaliser ensuite un célèbre portrait de celui-ci.

Brancusi participe à un mouvement de protestation contre André Breton et en faveur de Tristan Tzara. Au 30 novembre 1924, il expose des ouvrages à la Première exposition internationale du groupe « Contemporanul » de Bucarest. Deux ans plus tard, on ouvre sa deuxième exposition à Wildenstein Galleries, à New York.

Jusqu’en 1940, l’activité créative de Brancusi se déroule pleinement. Ses principales œuvres du cycle l’Oiseau dans l'espace/ Maïastra, du cycle l’Ovoïde ainsi que les sculptures en bois datent de cette période-là. En même temps, Brancusi participe aux plus importantes expositions collectives de sculpture des États-Unis, de France, Suisse, Hollande et d’Angleterre.

Dans son atelier de l’Impasse Ronsin, au cœur de Paris, Brancusi a créé un monde à soi, ayant un cadre et une atmosphère romanesque.

Le Musée National d’Art Moderne de Paris (Georges Pompidou) garde un bon nombre d’ouvrages de Brancusi, légués à la Roumanie, mais acceptés avec joie par la France, avec tout ce qui se trouve dans son atelier, après le refus du Gouvernement Communiste de la Roumanie d’accepter les œuvres de Brancusi, après la mort du grand sculpteur.

Albert Filip Andrei Catalin Durla The least Parisian of the artists

Considered as the world's first modern sculptor, the father of modern sculpture, and also the greatest sculptor of the twentieth century, Constantin Brancusi was the creator of works of great value for the universal fine art. He was also, undeniably, an original artist, an artist of genius. Much has been written about him, enormously, especially in the second half of the twentieth century.

Constantin Brancusi is considered a French sculptor, of Romanian origin. French, because unhindered by anyone, on his own initiative, he asked, in 1951, for French citizenship, which he obtained a year later, and died a French citizen. Also it must be said, necessarily added that the Americans were the ones who discovered him, promoted him, made him great, famous, an universal class artist.

In the latter part of May, 1904, the sculptor leaves his homeland by train, heading to Paris. He then visited Budapest, Vienna, and Munich, crossing Switzerland on foot. Arriving in Paris he has several jobs in order to provide for himself, including beeing a deacon at the Romanian Orthodox Church, located on Rue Jean de Beauval.

With the support of his former teacher, Dr. Dimitrie Gerota, who sends a monthly financial aid and the Ministry of Public Education and Religious Affairs of Romania which awarded a scholarship, the sculptor, attends the School of Fine Arts under the direct guidance of artist Antonin Mercie. Following his dream Brancusi begins to improve in sculpture.

During this period Brancusi lives on Rue Dauphine number 16, in a room in the attic, on the sixth floor; on the same street also lived the Romanian painter Theodor Pallady. In this attic he starts to make his first works in plaster and clay mostly representing children's heads.

On November 10 1905, the National School of Fine Arts in Paris releases a certificate to be sent to the Ministry of Public Instructions and Cults of Romania with his grades in school: ‘’très satisfaisant’’. Theese will convince the ministry to keep funding the scholarship.

From the early works of the sculptor, the only ones that were preserved were the ones he cast in bronze in his workshops at Valsuani and Hebrard.

In 1906 Brancusi presented two times in Paris. : The first time was at the seventh “Salon of the National Society of Fine Arts”, at the Grand Palais, between April 15 and June 30 (the sculpture, “Baby”) The second time was at the fourth edition of the “Autumn Salon “, opened between October 6 and November 15, at the Grand Palais des Champs-Elysees (Portrait of G.Lupescu - bust, patina plaster. And “baby” - bust, gypsum, ”Pride” - bust, gypsum).

On the recommendation of some Romanian women, who had connections with the Parisian high class, he ends up working in the Meudon workshops with the renowned sculptor Rodin. At Meudon, Brancusi gets to know Henri Coanda and the American Alfred Steichen. Brancusi strokes a friendship with both of them – one became the inventor of the flight machine and the other a famous photographer and art collector.

Later, benefiting from an order to create a funeral assembly, which he will execute in his original way (“The Prayer” – bronze, exposed at the “Salon of the Independent Artists Society” between March 18 and May first, at Quai d’Orasy – Pont de l’Ama, under the title” La Priere, fragment d’un tombeau”).

Brancusi will move in his own workshop on Rue de Montparnasse, number 54, in the center of Paris, in a neighborhood filled with artist’s workshops and coffee shops. Now he enters a different world, his own, the artist’s. Here he meets the four Duchamp brothers, being a very good friend of Marcel Duchamp. He meets the painter Jacques Villon, the

sculptor Raymond Duchamp-Villon, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, the writer Max Jacob, Picasso, Matisse, Jean Gris, Modigliani, Henry de Waroquier and others.

The sculptor discovers an interesting model in the baroness Irana Renee Franchon, who is his source of inspiration in “Study of a portrait”, “Head of a girl”, “The portrait of the R.F baroness”, “Woman looking at herself in the mirror” and “Sleeping Muse”.

The year 1910 held two reference points in the artist’s life: he meets Margaret (Margit) Pogany, who inspired him in the art pieces series with the same name and he sculpted the first “Pasare Maiastra”(Charmed bird), the first in a series which will attract his attention for over three decades. But beside these two reference points the year 1910 holds other moments worth mentioning such as the fact that early that year “L’Association amicale des Roumains de Paris” was created. It’s purpose was to aid the fellow Romanians who had financial problems. Brancusi was one of the founding members, along with George Enescu, the actor Eduard Max, the painters Theodor Pallady, Stefan Popescu, Gheorghe Marculescu, the doctors Levaditi and Marbe and the advocate Virgil Stanescu. The sculptor was, therefor, in select company and could afford to aid Romanian students.

With “Pasarea maiastra” Brancusi began a new cycle in his creation, a cycle which had two phases, or better said two stages: the “Pasarea maiastra”(Charmed bird) and the “Pasarea in vazduh”(Bird in space). The first “bird” was created by Brancusi in 1910, the second one in 1941. In order to create “Pasare Maiastra” Brancusi was inspired by the Romanian folklore, folklore which the sculptor knew since childhood. We can say that “Pasare Maiastra” is a supernatural bird, miraculous, a symbol of flight, which never sleeps and desires to become human. It has the power to tell the past or the future, to heal the blind, it feeds itself with golden apples and sings heavenly.

Brancusi’s talent is becoming more and more appreciated, but the sculptor doesn’t work at anyone’s request.

The first world war find him in Paris, where he sculptures, especially in wood, “Coloana cu doua elemente” (the column with two elements), “Portretul doamnei Mayer” (The portrait of madam Mayer), and in 1918 he begins to carve in wood “The endless column” Brancusi’s artworks begin to be displayed in London, Berlin, New York, Bucuresti, Venetia, Anvers and Toronto. During the inter-war period, Brancusi becomes an important figure in the worldwide artistic plan. His overseas art’s admirers had an important role. The most important exhibitions, regarding the number of artworks and the best critics were the ones in USA. On this occasion Brancusi will visit many places abroad, being welcomed with admiration by the ones who loved his art. But every time he would return to Paris, to his workshop in the heart of the city, where the bohemian atmosphere dominated and he had many friends.

On June 15 1952, after spending the biggest part of his life in Paris, he receives the French citizenship. His workshops will be transformed into a sculpture museum. French citizen of Romanian origin, he would always expose his artworks as a Romanian sculptor Andrei Catalin Durla Bibliography: Paul Rezeanu-“Brancusi, Tatal nostru”

Working in Paris In 1903, Brancusi traveled to Munich, and from there to Paris. In Paris, he was welcomed by the community of artists and intellectuals brimming with new ideas. He worked for two years in the workshop of Antonin Mercié of the École des Beaux-Arts, and was invited to enter the workshop of Auguste Rodin. Even though he admired the eminent Rodin he left the Rodin studio after only two months, saying, "Nothing can grow under big trees.”

After leaving Rodin's workshop, Brancusi began developing the revolutionary style for which he is known. His first commissioned work "The Prayer" was part of a gravestone memorial.

It depicts a young woman crossing herself as she kneels, and marks the first step toward abstracted, non-literal representation, and shows his drive to depict "not the outer form but the idea, the essence of things." He also began doing more carving, rather than the method popular with his contemporaries, that of modeling in clay or plaster which would be cast in metal, and by 1908 he worked almost exclusively by carving.

In the following few years he made many versions of "Sleeping Muse" and "The Kiss", further simplifying forms to geometrical and sparse objects.

His works became popular in France, Romania and the United States. Collectors, notably John Quinn, bought his pieces, and reviewers praised his works. In 1913 Brancusi's work was displayed at both the Salon des Indépendants and the first exhibition in the U.S. of modern art, the Armory Show.

In 1920, he developed a notorious reputation with the entry of "Princess X" in the Salon.

The phallic shape of the piece scandalized the Salon, and despite Brancusi's explanation that it was an anonymous portrait, removed it from the exhibition. "Princess X" was revealed to be Princess Marie Bonaparte, direct descendant of the younger brother of Napoleon Bonaparte. Brancusi represented or caricatured her life as a large gleaming bronzephallus.

This phallus symbolizes the model's obsession with the penis and her lifelong quest to achieve vaginal orgasm, with the help of Sigmund Freud.

Around this time he began crafting the bases for his sculptures with much care and originality because he considered them important to the works themselves.

He began working on the group of sculptures that are known as "Bird in Space" -simple shapes representing a bird in flight. The works are based on his earlier "Maiastra" series. In Romanian folklore the Maiastra is a beautiful golden bird who foretells the future and cures the blind. Over the following 20 years, Brancusi would make 20-some versions of "Bird in Space" out of marble or bronze.

Photographer Edward Steichen purchased one of the "birds" in 1926 and shipped it to the United States. However, the customs officers did not accept the "bird" as a work of art and placed a duty upon its import as an industrial item.

They charged the high tax placed upon raw metals instead of the no tax on art. A trial the next year overturned the assessment.

Athena Tacha Spear's book, Brancusi's Birds, first sorted out the 36 versions and their development, from the early Maiastra, to the Golden Bird of the late teens, to the Bird in Space, which emerged in the early '20s and which Brancusi perfected throughout his life.

His work became popular in the U.S., however, and he visited several times during his life. Worldwide fame in 1933 brought him the commission of building a meditation temple in India for Maharajah of Indore, but when Brâncusi went to India in 1937 to complete the plans and begin construction, the Mahrajah was away and lost interest in the project when he returned.

In 1938, he finished the World War I monument in Târgu-Jiu where he had spent much of his childhood. "Table of Silence","The Gate of the Kiss" and "Endless Column" commemorate the courage and sacrifice of Romanian civilians who in 1916 fought off a German invasion. The restoration of this ensemble was spearheaded by the World Monuments Fund and was completed in 2004.

The Târgu Jiu ensemble marks the apex of his artistic career. In his remaining 19 years he created less than 15 pieces, mostly reworking earlier themes, and while his fame grew he withdrew. In 1956 Life magazine reported, "Wearing white pajamas and a yellow gnomelike cap, Brâncuși today hobbles about his studio tenderly caring for and communing with the silent host of fish birds, heads, and endless columns which he created."

Brâncuși was cared for in his later years by a Romanian refugee couple. He became a French citizen in 1952 in order to make the caregivers his heirs, and to bequeath his studio and its contents to the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris.

Nicoleta Sulea

Chapter 5/Chapitre 5

Studio , l’Impasse Ronsin

Brancusi’s Studios at Impasse Ronsin In 1916 Brancusi moved into a new workshop and home at 8 Impasse Ronsin, this was a 2 storey apartment with 3 rooms downstairs and 1 upstairs. He wanted to use it as a complex in which his life and work would coincide. As the pictures show he managed this to an extraordinary degree, and he stayed here until 1927 when a violent storm flooded his Brancusi’s Studio at 11 Impasse Ronsin (exterior) studio and he was forced to move across to number 11. Where he began to acquire the neighbouring flats, and by 1941 he owned five interconnecting studios which he used to display his many works.

When he first moved into Impasse Ronsin he had just begun to work with wood, which he felt recovered some of the aspects of his Romanian heritage, and yet, despite this, he was at his most experimental with it. He began creating what he called Brancusi’s Studio at 11 Impasse “sculptural assemblages” in which several superimposed Ronsin (interior) bases or bases supporting sculptures in different materials, colours and textures would switch function, The greatest example of this is “The Maiastra” (1910) now in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This idea was influenced by Duchamp’s “readymades”.

(Left to Right): Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp and Mary Reynolds

Marcel Duchamp was a close friend of Brancusi, who nicknamed him “Maurice” a title reserved for only his most trusted friends, and he later became Brancusi’s agent. They are believed to have met in 1912 during one of Brancusi’s exhibitions, at the Salon des Indépendants, and they found they shared a love of, not just painting, but aviation as well. As Brancusi’s agent, Duchamp took obvious liberties when it came to the naming of Brancusi’s pieces which being sent to exhibitions, he renamed

“Tabouret Noyer” to “The Watchdog” and he changed another from “Pierre avec socle bois (trois pieces)” to more simply “Timidity”. With Duchamp’s assistance Brancusi attempted to develop what he called “Gesamtkunstwerk” which is roughly translated from German to mean the perfect piece of art, a piece of art which is aesthetically pleasing to all audiences. In 1914 Duchamp even encouraged Brancusi to send 8 works to an exhibition at Stieglitz’s Photo-Secession Gallery in New York; these works included Mlle Pogany, Danaide and two versions of The Sleeping Muse.

While at Impasse Ronsin, Brancusi was a passionate photographer, he took multiple photographs of all of his own sculptures. Today the Brancusi Archives contain 560 original negatives, and 1250 prints made by Brancusi from existing or lost negatives. When Man Ray came to meet him in his studio, instead of asking for a portrait with one of his pieces, as Man Ray expected, Brancusi asked Man Ray to help him choose some photographic equipment and to “give him some points” regarding photography. While at 11 Impasse Ronsin, Brancusi took numerous photographs which track his progress as he turned it into his most complex installation he had ever created. He even went so far as to create temporary assemblages of various sculptures, which he called “a groupe mobile” and photographed them from various angles as a promotion of his pieces.

The Child in the World (groupe mobile)

David McKenna

Brancusi’s Studio Over the years Brancusi entertained many visitors at his studios, such as Dr Nicolae Vaschide, Victor N. Popp, Jacob Epstein and Ernest Walsh. His early studios have been compared to those of Picasso when he first began his career in Paris due to the fact that both of their studios were able to cater for their art in spite of their poverty and material want, and their beginnings have also been related to each other due to the way they lived, often forgoing footwear and just concentrating on creating more art. In reality the similarities between Brancusi’s and Picasso’s beginning stop at their poverty. Brancusi’s studios were often described as being very luminous as they were painted completely white. This obsession with purity and focus on the art work led him to alter even his clothes as part of this new lifestyle, choosing to wear white garments and a white hat, along with sabots, to protect him from dust and marble splinters. This enabled him to work more easily and with greater “purity”. His purely white atelier (workshop) was also intended for use as a multifunction space, as it could be used as his living space while he wasn’t working, the workspace itself for the creation of his sculptures, and finally as a gallery for showcasing all of his works whenever he had visitors over at his studios or was giving a sales pitch to potential buyers who may wish to purchase one of his works or commission a new one. He went so far as purchasing two electric motors which he proceeded to use as turntables for showing off his works Leda and The Seal. On the whole, Brancusi led a solitary life, very occasionally entertaining intimate friends for dinner at his studio. Friends who did attend these dinners have said that he was generous with both the food, which he cooked himself, and also his large variety of alcoholic beverages. Some visitors were also able to understand the intentions behind his sculptures when Brancusi himself would sometimes dramatically explain his sculptures to them. There were two women who featured prominently in his life, the art historian and future biographer of Brancusi himself, Carola Giedion-Welcker, and Peppy Guggenheim. While on the one hand his relationship with Carola Giedion-Welcker has been described as a purely intellectual one, his relationship with Peppy Guggenheim, on the other hand, was his friend, lover and even client at a later point.

Tommy Leasor

L’Atelier de l’Impasse Ronsin

Depuis l’unique atelier du 8 Impasse Ronsin, jusqu’à l’ensemble des ateliers du numéro 11, tels qu’ils ont été légués par l’artiste avant sa mort, Brancusi a accordé une importance capitale à la relation de ses sculptures avec l’espace qui les contient. Dès les années dix, en disposant des sculptures dans une étroite relation spatiale, il crée au sein de l’atelier des œuvres nouvelles qu’il nomme groupes mobiles, signifiant ainsi l’importance du lien des œuvres entre elles et les possibilités de mobilité de chacune au sein de l’ensemble.

L'atelier de Brancusi est dans le Musée National d'Art Moderne de Paris, le Centre Pompidou. Une fois que vous y entrez, vous trouverez le monde de Brancusi, un espace plein de morceaux de son âme. L'État romain avait refusé de recevoir son héritage en 1957, en considérant Brancusi un représentant de la bourgeoisie. À savoir, avec la venue de Brancusi à Paris, la transformation structurelle s'est produite dans son travail sur cette question, qui viendrait à la conscience universelle. Le sculpteur roumain Constantin Brancusi a fait la légende, la route de Bucarest à Paris à pied, et a constaté que, probablement, il ne mérite pas un tel voyage à faire dans le sens inverse, de sorte qu'il était l'un des nombreux artistes qui viennent à la découverte de Paris, et ont fini leur vie là-bas. Il est mort en 1957, plus d'un demi-siècle après son arrivée.

L'artiste était reconnaissant pour son pays d'adoption, laissant à l'Etat français son contenu en studio, à condition qu'il soit maintenu en tant que tel, un désir qui pourrait être atteint en installant l’atelier Brancusi Beaubourg, où des travaux ont été soigneusement remis comme ils étaient (l'emplacement d'origine était dans un bâtiment qui a été démoli). Le bâtiment est moderne, simple et presque invisible sur les abords du marché Beaubourg (aujourd'hui Square Georges Pompidou). Ainsi animé, il attire toute l'attention et pas beaucoup de visiteurs. Alors que beaucoup de gens affluent pour aller au Musée national d'art moderne, seule une poignée de curieux viennent voir la présente annexe inhabituelle à Beaubourg.

Le bâtiment est en fait une coquille qui vous permet de tourner autour des quatre chambres de l'atelier à nouveau, de voir leur contenu à travers les grandes fenêtres, qui ont remplacé les murs extérieurs, en offrant ainsi au visiteur un aperçu de l'atelier, qui est très proche de certains travaux et à quelques mètres des autres.

Les deux premières pièces sont les plus riches. Ces deux pièces, éclairées par une grande fenêtre comme tout grand atelier d'artiste, sont pleins d'œuvres de Brancusi. Il y a beaucoup de « Le Grand coq », « L'oiseau » est réduit à une série d'étapes, symbolisant la crête et plusieurs Oiseau dans L'espace, un oiseau réduit à une forme géométrique évoquant une aile d'avion, mais aussi la version superbe en bronze doré . Les portraits sont très figuratifs : tête d’enfant, une œuvre d'une jeunesse

classique, la représentation presque abstraite de la Princesse X, réduite à deux sphères, symbolisant les seins et la forme lancé , symbolisant cou et la tête, des formes qui se sont déplacées, passant à l’art stylisé de Mlle Pogany et puis à la représentation d’un jeune réduit aux fonctions essentielles. Juste à droite, on peut reconnaître une femme de l'époque, minimalisme efficace si caractéristique du sculpteur.

Les deux autres chambres sont plus utilitaires.

Dans l’Atelier 3, le travail est considéré par les nombreux outils et œuvres inachevées. Un grand disque de pierre est la base sur laquelle l'artiste a placé son œuvre monumentale avant de travailler avec des outils accrochés à un système de poulies et de chaînes. C'est le genre de détail qui nous aide à nous rendre compte que la sculpture est un travail physique, en particulier pour les grands projets.

Atelier 4 est une réserve où il existe d'autres versions de grands travaux déjà vus dans les deux premières chambres et aussi une statue monumentale en bois Africanized, évidemment rappelant que Brancusi était, comme Picasso, impressionné par la découverte des arts, en poussant les limites de la logique et de l'abstraction.

Sur les murs de l’atelier, il y a accrochés de divers outils de traitement des matières premières (bois, pierre ou métal), y

compris les outils électriques utilisés pour les travaux de polissage final. La plupart des outils ont été modifiés pour afficher des utilisations particulières ou faites par Brancusi lui-même, comme une forge. Dans ses ateliers il y a environ 160 livres, de nombreuses œuvres d'art, la mécanique de la main, de la géométrie, etc. y compris un travail autobiographique du poète Milarepa. En outre, une collection de plus de 200 disques avec de la musique de différents styles, de Stravinsky, Satie, Erik, Native American folklore, jazz, etc.

Constantin Brancusi est mort le 16 Mars, en 1957 et depuis ce moment on a commencé de nombreux conflits avec les héritiers et l'Etat français.

En 1962, la totalité du contenu des ateliers ont été déplacés vers le Palais de Tokyo (Musée national d'art moderne) dans un espace spécialement aménagé comme atelier d'origine. En 1977, il a été fait une réplique exacte de ses ateliers près du Centre culturel Pompidou, dans un bâtiment séparé, mais impropre et, en raison de ses inondations en 1984, il a été fermé. Si vous arrivez à Paris, vous avez vraiment besoin pour planifier une visite à l'atelier de Constantin Brancusi au Centre Culturel "Georges Pompidou".

C'est

dans

le

quartier

Beaubourg

du

4ème

arrondissement

de

Paris.

Initialement situé dans le quartier Montparnasse, le studio a été démoli dans les années 70 pour faire place à la Tour Montparnasse et a été reconstruit en 1997 à l'emplacement actuel.

L'atelier n'est pas grand. Il est composé de quatre pièces où il y a des sculptures exposées, socles, moulage, atelier et des outils utilisés par Brancusi. Les chambres avec fenêtres sont fermées, de sorte que les pièces peuvent être admirées que de loin.

Eliza Mandreci

Chapter 6/Chapitre 6 : Work and Friends/Le Travail et les Amis Work and Friends American collectors were the first to start collecting Brancusi’s work, at a time when he was still virtually unknown in Paris. This helped to explain the continuing admiration he enjoys in the USA and why his finest masterpieces are in American rather than French museums.

Walter Pach(1883-1958) was the first to “discover” Brancusi’s sculpture in 1910.Subsequently he became instrumental in opening the lucrative American market to Brancusi, whose reputation became established after the notoriety he achieved at the Armoury Shows. He became Brancusi’s first important intermediary and dealer. He introduced John Quinn, a lawyer as well as a collector who became extremely important in Brancusi’s life afterwards.Initially Pach acted as an intermediary between Brancusi and his distinguished new collector but eventually Pach relinquished the role by putting them in touch directly.

John Quinn(1870-1924) was one of the major collectors of European avant-garde art. The future MoMA director, Alfred Barr Jr once commended him as “ the greatest American collector of art of his day.”

The letters between him and Brancusi revealed a formal relationship.

They addressed each other formally and the subject-matter was strictly business. However, the very last letter from Quinn to Brancusi, just before his death one year later, Quinn talked for the first time about himself. He told Brancusi about his terrible headaches and the effect of his hot spring treatment. He had 31 sculptures by Brancusi in his 1926 catalogue.

Henri-Pierre Roché is another man who played a important role in Brancusi’s career. Henri-Pierre Roché is less well known through his association with the Paris avant-garde; rather his reputation rests on The film based on his novel Jules et Jim, written in 1953.the correspondence between Henri-Pierre Roché and Brancusi lasted for 38 years and there are 59 letters in total. Business remains the prime mover in their relationship, however, Roché also fulfilled the function of an excellent public relations manager by bringing collectors to Brancusi’s studio with a view to encourage them to buy sculpture.

Through Roché Brancusi was introduced to Erik Satie. An affectionate and profound friendship bound Brancusi and Satie until the latter’s death in 1925.

Erik Satie was a musician. He and Brancusi often discuss each other’s projects through the letters. Clearly Brancusi had affected his Career heavily. He remembered a conversation with Satie that reveals how his own intensity served to stiffen the composer’s resolve: “I replied ‘…it was important to eliminate a shadow from the neck…A billion lines pass through a point and I have to choose from a billions lines, one, a single line.’ Erik Satie who was working on the opera which was commissioned from him, dropped the commission and returned to his own music.” Also, his music piece was influenced by Brancusi who was himself a keen amateur violin player. His pieces showed some features of Romanians folk music.

Another possible collaboration between Brancusi and Satie involved costume design.

Brancusi designed a stage costume for the Romanian classical dancer Lizica Codreanu that may have been intended for a performance of Satie’s Gymnopédies, written many years before. Irina, a sister of Lizica, latter on became for a short time his apprentice. As a result, she said “He taught us the technique of direct carving in stone and wood…we were learning a lot…”

Peter Jiang Constantin Brancusi

The first thing that struck me was the description of what Brancusi was wearing to a dance performance by Lizica Cordreanu. He wore a "dowdy dress complemented by a ridiculous headdress consisting of a pair of conical witch-like hats made of what looks like cardboard".

It is clear from this description that Brancusi's fashion sense was eccentric. We can also see the costume that Brancusi designed for Lizica Cordreanu for her dance.

Friends Brancusi was a social artist. He made several friends one of them being Francis Picabia.

Sanda miller describes Breton's reading of Picabia's "Manifest cannibale". It's a very strange performance since Breton had a revolver attached to his head and several Diadists wore tubes or funnels on their heads. Unfortunately for Breton, the audience didn't understand what was going on so when he started reading the "Manifest Cannibale" he was pelted by tomatoes.

There was apparently a young women who was supposed to come on stage naked and shout "merde". Naturally she was petrified but Brancusi to not think about what she was expected to do but just do it anyway.

Brancusi became friends with two other Romanian poets: Ilarie Voronca (1903-1948) and Benjamin Fondane (1898-1944). In 1929 Voronca paid Brancusi to illustrate a volume of his poems called "Plante si animale". Brancusi made three drawings which reflected his love for the natural world.

This is one of his drawings of a cow.

Brancusi drew a portrait of the other poet, Benjamin Fondane. Fondane was a poet, essayist, filmmaker and director.

Brancusi was also friends with the Romanian composer M.Mihalovici (1898-1985).

Mihalovici isn’t mentioned much in any of Brancusi’s writings. However, Brancusi was particularly fond of popular entertainment, and he would go to the Mille Colonnes cinema in Montparnasse to hear his friend play the piano

Lovers As well as making friends, Brancusi had several lovers in his life. The first time he fell in love was when he was 18. The girl, called Ioana, was beautiful but poor. Her mother was a

washerwomen. One time during the Jewish celebration of Purim, Constantin and Ioana exchanged clothes. This could be the beginning of his eccentric fashion sense. Nothing much happened between them except for one kiss which Brancusi later says “I will never forget for as long as I live.

Brancusi’s most famous lover was Margit Pogany (1870-1964). They met in 1910 when Margit arrived at Paris from Budapest to study painting. She was an artist herself and was reasonably successful in Paris. In the 1910 Salon held in the Grand Palais, she had two paintings “Nature morte” and “Femme Lisant”. The 1910 Salon was fairly important as artists such as Matisse had made paintings in the gallery. Her relationship with Brancusi spanned 26 years (1911-1937). The relationship is described to have started as youthful romance and turned into lasting friendship.

In the 1920s he had an affair with Marthe Lebherz. She was the daughter of a Swiss physician. In order to hide their relationship from her respectable family, Brancusi employed her during his first visit to New York in 1926 as his private secretary. Brancusi used to call her “Tonton” and apparently Marthe referred to him as “Tantan”. Apparently Brancusi wanted to even write a book entitled “L’histoire d’amour de Tonton et Tantan” and kept all of Marthe’s letters in chronological order. The relationship naturally came to an end in 1928.

Brancusi had several lovers, but one of the closest to him was an English concert pianist called Vera Moore, whom Brancusi met in 1930 when he was 54 years old. They had a child together called John in 1934. It is said that Brancusi was never close to his son. Brancusi’s relationship with Moore continued until he died in 1957.

During the period of his love life, he established close-friendship with several high profile women. He even made portraits of some of his lovers as well as his friends.

Here are pictures of two lovers: Margit Pogany and Princess X

Princess X

Margit Pogany

Adventures In 1922, Brancusi had two holidays. The first was very spontaneous. Brancusi was having dinner at a Swedish Restaurant with some very high profile artists and while he was going home, he came up with the idea of going to Marseille with his friend Radiguet. They took the train to Marseille a few hours later still wearing the same clothes. On the way to Marseille, they decided that they might as well go to Corsica. So, after they had bought clothes in Marseille, they too a boat to Corsica and remained there for two weeks. When Brancusi returned from his holiday with Radiguet, he got into a bit of trouble with Radiguet’s lover, Jean Cocteau. This was late resolved.

The second adventure of the year started when a women, called Eileen Lane, arrived in Paris from America and was introduced to Brancusi by Lizica Cordreanu. Eileen had just broken of her engagement so therefore in order to cheer her up, Brancusi invited her to accompany him on a trip to Romania on the 7th of October 1922. During the journey Brancusi, as a joke, introduced Eileen as his daughter as she was much younger than he was. They visited Tirgu Jiu and Pestisani, where Brancusi went to school. On the way back, the stayed in the Savoy Hotel in Rome. And then the Marseille at the Hotel Splendid. Eileen later went back to America and married a man called Howard Martindale Kinney.

AS you can see, the portraits of his lovers are very eccentric. This is what Brancusi has said which is supposed to explain why he has such a weird style when it comes to portraits.

“I give you pure joy. Look at my sculptures until you see them. Those closest to God have seen them. Being close to God is to leave behind the contingent, is to tackle the principle, the essence of things, is to steer one’s eyes towards the absolute”.

Munavwar Hussain

Chapter 7/Chapitre 7:

Târgu-Jiu

Târgu-Jiu In 1934 the National league of the Romanian Women of Gorj proposed the construction of a monument to honour the soldiers who lost their lives during World War 1 when defending the town of Tirgu-Jiu against German armies. Originally the commission was offered to the sculptor Militza Petrascu who had recently completed a similar project in Tirgu-Jiu. However, she refused the project and instead suggested her former maitre, Brancusi, should take up the project.

Brancusi arrived in Tirgu-Jiu in the summer of 1937. He would wonder round the site where the Column without end was to be placed with the engineer of the project Georgescu-Gorjan. Despite work on the column not starting until 1937 it was not the first time that Brancusi had attempted a creation of this sort. In 1916 Brancusi executed his first column. Among these first early creations only one was well documented: a nine-module wood column, which Brancusi made to be placed in the garden of his friend, the American photographer, Edward Steichen.

Structurally the Column Without End consists of fifteen modules or beads, as Brancusi liked to call them, flanked at each end by half modules. The Column Without End consists of a steel metallic core in three separate sections welded together with a square section, with a side of 40cm rooted in a pyramidal steel base encased in concrete 5 metres below the ground level, which constitutes the invisible base. Above ground the column consists of 15 beads on a string, plus two half ‘heads’ flanking it at both ends. The ration established was 1:2:4 (sides of the base; central width; height), but it was Georgescu-Gorjan who had to work out the exact mathematical proportions of the individual beads, which he established as 45 x 90 x 180cm. This determined the maximum potential height of the Columnalmost 30 metres- that it could be without disintegrating, so that a harmonious whole emerges form carefully calculated proportions.

During this time Brancusi also worked upon The Gate of the Kiss and The Table of Silence which were both placed on an axis that links the river Jiu with the Hay Market, are now know as the Tirgu-Jiu complex.

Brancusi approached his work with great vigour as was accounted by Ion Alexandrescu, who arrived in Tirgu-Jiu to assist Brancusi in carving. Ion accounts how him and Brancusi would work three to four hours every day. Afterwards they would go down to the local market where Brancusi would enjoy photographing and filming peasants as they chattered, haggled and hurried about.

Brancusi’s overall plan of the assemble is conceived as a straight axis crossing the town and linking the Column in the centre of the Hay Market through to the Gate situated inside the public gardens, from which an alley flanked by the 30 square clepsigdra stools placed in groups of three in niches on each side lead finally to the Table of Silence placed by the riverbank. There were however many people who objected to this, one being the Church of the Holy Apostles situated in the middle of the complex. Brancusi appealed to Mme Tatarascu (the wife of the prime-minister, and the woman who commissioned the project). Having promised that it would be moved and the planned railway diverted neither were accomplished upon Brancusi’s return in October 1938. To add insult to injury the avenue of trees asked for

by Brancusi to blank the Avenue of the Heroes had not even been planted.

Upon the revealing of the project there was a huge amount of public distaste to the modern artwork, many laughed, others protested. On the day of the unveiling Mme Tatarascu had invited king Carol II of Romania to attend the ceremony of the blessing of the church, almost certainly in a diplomatic attempt to deflect attention from the anticipated negative impact of Brancusi’s modernist work. King Carol duly arrived, and duly avoided the complex, attending only the religious ceremony.

When Brancusi returned from Tirgu-Jiu has was rebuffed and a depressed silence is said by Brancusi’s friend and biographer Ionel Jianou to have ensued and endured. According to Jianou, Brancusi never mentioned the project again after 1938.

Here is what Brancusi had to say about his ongoing work in Tirgu-Jiu before the unveiling.

“Nature creates plants that grow up straight and strong from the ground: here is my column…

Its forms are the same from the ground to the top. It has no need of pedestal or base to support it. The wind will not destroy it; it stands by its own strength… In a few days I hope to see this installed in Romania: it is thirty metres high and you that my friend there once told me that he had never been aware of the great beauty of his garden until he had placed my column there. It had opened his eye… that is what artists are here for… to reveal beauty.

In the spring of 1939 Brancusi made a trip to America, which lasted approximately one month. Upon his return the skies of Europe were already darkening as war had broken out.

By this point Brancusi was in his sixties, however work continued, albeit at a slow pace: two bronze versions of The Bird in Space, a stone version of The Kiss, a new version of The Miracle in veined grey marble, and one new work in white marble, The Flying Turtle, which followed on from a wooden version of two years previously were all his creations over the war period of 1939-1945.

The war years were a time when Brancusi returned to animalier sculpture.

George Garnett

Chapter 8/Chapitre 8:

Last works, legacy/ Dernières oeuvres, héritage

Over the last few years of his life, in that time immediately following the end of the Second World War, amid massive shifts in the post-war art world, Brancusi becomes something of a recluse; his work is centred on the replication of his previous pieces. He then dies in 1957 at age 81, leaving all of his studios and artworks to the French government.

After the end of WWII, and with the advent of the Cold War, there were huge shifts in the world of art. The importance of Europe fell, and Paris with it. This was contrasted by a marked rise in the artistic might of the US, with New York as its centre. This rise in American culture was heralded by the birth of a new artistic movement, abstract impressionism. This was the First artistic principle in history which hailed solely from America; it reflected the artistic growth of that nation, alongside its corporeal power.

Even within Europe art was changing, largely as a result of the apocalypse that was the Second World War. In response to the massive desolation of this war European art (most noticeably in those areas, such as France, which had been most heavily devastated by conflict) moved away from the abstractionism that Brancusi himself practiced and toward a more sordid realism.

Brancusi over these last few years of his life becomes more and more of a recluse. He reacts to shifts in his world (that of art) by retreating and hiding from them. The deaths of several of his greatest friends are also likely to have contributed to his increasing desire to seclude himself from the world around him. His visitors are few and far between. In the eyes of the friends who knew him best Brancusi began to seem more like a simple Romanian shepherd than a master sculptor, he isolated himself from the bustling society of Paris and lived a simple life within his own home and studio. He was described by one lifestyle magazine as “leading the simple life of a Romanian peasant he had enjoyed as a boy”.

During these last few years Brancusi’s greatest works were behind him, he spent most of his time endlessly replicating earlier pieces, his workshop was full of dozens of endless columns and birds of silence. The great works he had created for Targu-Jiu dominated his mind at this point; he seemed unable to move on from his moment of greatest glory When Brancusi died in 1957, at the ripe old age of 81, he left all of his artworks and his studio to the French government, intending that they should be preserved and displayed for posterity. It was to this end that he finally acquired French citizenship, having managed to avoid getting it up until this point.

It proved to be quite a challenge for the director of the French “Musee National D’Art Moderne”. The exhibition was repeatedly remodelled, only entering its current form in 1997. This resulted in Brancusi’s works being closed to the public eye for long periods of time. The man responsible for the Brancusi display in its current form is the architect Renzo Piano.

Ben Donaghue Constantin Brâncuși -

dernières œuvres, son héritage -

Constantin Brâncuși, souvent désigné en français par son seul nom de famille écrit sans signes diacritiques Brancusi, né le 19 février 1876 à Hobița dans le département de Gorj, en Roumanie, et mort le 16 mars 1957 à Paris, fut l'un des sculpteurs les plus influents du début du XXe siècle. Il est considéré comme ayant poussé l'abstraction sculpturale jusqu'à un stade jamais atteint dans la tradition moderniste et ayant ouvert la voie à la sculpture surréaliste ainsi qu'au courant minimaliste des années 1960.

Les dernières œuvres : 1943 – La tortue volante.

C'est sa dernière oeuvre. La tortue semble se desser du sol et elle monte au ciel, incarnant l'oppositon d’entre se trainer ou voler.

1938 - La table du silence.

Brancusi dit un jour à un interlocuteur que la ligne de la Table du Silence suggère la courbe fermée du cercle qui assemble, rapproche et unit. Exécutée dans d'autres dimensions ou avec des matériaux transformés parfois en socle, jouant aussi des rôles utilitaires et acquérant souvent des noms fantaisistes, ayant l'apparence rugueuse de 2 pierres de meule superposées, ce type de table ronde faisait partie du décor familier de l'atelier de Brancusi, mais pouvait tout aussi bien évoquer la table ronde et basse de la maison paternelle, ou la sainte table en pierre, également ronde, qui se trouve à l'intérieur de l'autel de l'église en bois de Hobita, ou de l'église du village de Românesti que Brancusi aurait pu connaître.

1937 - La colonne sans fin.

La Colonne sans fin (ou Colonne de l'infini) est une sculpture crée par Constantin Brâncuși et inaugurée à Târgu Jiu (Roumanie) le 27 octobre 1938. Cette sculpture, fondée sur le symbolisme de l'axis mundi, a été fabriquée pour honorer les jeunes Roumains morts lors de la Première Guerre mondiale contre l'Allemagne. C'est une œuvre simplifiée faisant référence aux piliers funéraires utilisés dans le Sud de la Roumanie.

La colonne sans fin fait 29,33 mètres de haut et est composée de 17 modules en forme de losange, faits en fonte. L'œuvre d'art fait partie intégrante des armoiries de Târgu Jiu.

1937 - La porte du baiser.

La Porte du Baiser, qui se trouve sur l’allée de l'entrée dans le parc de la ville, est gravée en pierre poreuse, extraite des carrières situées dans le voisinage, étant composée de grosses colonnes parallélépipédiques. Sur les façades de chaque colonne il y a le symbole du baiser, tant

caractéristique à l’œuvre de Brancusi. La Porte du Baiser a l’apparence d’une arche de triomphe, en symbolisant le triomphe de la vie sur la mort. La Porte du Baiser, dit Brancusi, « vous parle de la grande joie que l'amour reste immortel ».

1936 - Le phoque.

Une première version du Phoque, réalisée en marbre blanc, apparaît tardivement dans le répertoire des formes créées par le sculpteur.

Commencée à la fin des années vingt et terminée au début des années trente, cette sculpture s’intitule Le Miracle.

Le titre, peu descriptif,évoque la transfiguration de l’animal dans le passage entre le terrestre et l’aquatique, entre le poids de son corps sur terre et la fluidité de son mouvement dans l’eau. La seconde version en marbre bleu, datée de 1943, est actuellement présente dans l’atelier.

Les derniers amis de Constantin Brancusi et son héritage.

Sa réputation grandissant sans cesse, l’ancien bohème est devenu de plus en plus solitaire. A cause de son âge, il lui était difficile de se faire d’autres amis, donc il a choisi de se réfugier dans la solitude, même s’il recevait ses visiteurs avec la même joie. Au cours de ses derniers ans, Brancusi a été soigné par deux réfugiés roumains, qui avaient déménagé dans un appartement tout près de son atelier. Pour être en mesure de désigner ces derniers héritiers amis et pour que son atelier et ses travaux entrent dans le Patrimoine du Musée National d'Art Moderne de Paris, Brancusi est devenu citoyen français en 1953. Il est décédé le 16 mars 1957, à l'âge de 81 ans, laissant derrière plus de 1200 photographies et 215 sculptures, de grande valeur esthétique. A partir de 1963 jusqu’aujourd’hui, ils ont paru dans tout le monde plus de 50 livres, des monographies et des milliers d’études et d’articles sur Brancusi, établissant définitivement sa place comme brillant artiste et même comme “l’un des plus grands créateurs de tous les temps”.

Georgiana Grigorie-Teleu

Chapter 9 : His works/Ses Œuvres The Table of Silence

The Table of Silence is a sculpture by Constantin Brancusi. Brancusi was a famous Romanian sculptor who was born in 1876 and died in 1957. Brancusi began work on this sculpture in 1937 and the task was completed in 1938. The sculpture consists of a table surrounded by twelve round stools. It is a part of Brancusi’s larger Tirgu-Jiu exhibition. It was designed to represent the table around which soldiers gathered prior to facing their foes (in particular, Romanian troops during WWI). Brancusi’s inspiration for the piece is believed to have stemmed primarily from the painting “The Last Supper” by Leonardo Da Vinci.

The Work (shown above) compromises a table surrounded by twelve stone stools. All of them are made from limestone. The panel of the table is 2.15 metres in diameter and 0.43 metres thick. The leg of the table has a diameter of 2 metres and a thickness of 4.45 metres.

The chairs are positioned a fair distance from the table itself. The stools surrounding the table were recognised by a friend of Brancusi’s (Ionel Jianou) as being reminiscent of peasant furniture. This reflects Brancusi’s impoverished upbringing. The beauty of the piece is best experienced during direct sunlight, although it is claimed that the coldness of the sculpture viewed at night has a beauty of a sort. The table, stools, and surrounding area are constantly swept to keep them clear of leaves, litter, and other detritus.

The table of silence is simply one part of the three-part Tirgu-Jiu exhibition of Brancusi’s works. This trilogy consists of the table of silence, the gate of the kiss, and the endless column. This exhibition is actually a war memorial to those Romanian soldiers and civilians who fought off the German invasion in 1916. The exhibition was commissioned by

the National League of Gorj Women. The commission for this trilogy of works was accepted

by Brancusi in 1935, but he refused payment. At the time he was living in Paris.

Having been created 75 years ago, the table of silence has a rather long history. It has spent absolutely all of that history languishing in its place at Targu-Jiu commemorating one batch of soldiers, as another died around it in the second of the world wars. Along with the other sculptures at Targu-Jiu the table of silence was poorly maintained and cared for little during the nation’s disastrous foray into communism. After the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescou in 1989 the work of art was restored, with the primary funding for the endeavour being provided by the World Monuments Fund, and being completed in 2004.

The intent of the entire Targu-Jiu ensemble was to commemorate the dead of Romania during the First World War. The table of silence accomplished this by acting to represent the table around which soldiers would gather as the prepared to go into battle.

Hence the name; the soldiers would sit silently awaiting their fate with the dawn of the next day. The piece also has somewhat biblical overtones. The twelve stools may well represent the twelve Disciples of Christ with the table itself representing him. In this vein the piece has been compared to Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” with the twelve stools representing the places of the disciples while the table itself represents the seat at which Jesus himself sat. The table and chairs sit together, preserving forever in silence the moment before the battle. This is supported by the words of one of Brancusi’s school Friends, who claims that the real name of this piece is actually “The Apostles Table”

Another friend of Brancusi’s (Ion Alexandrecu), who worked with him on parts of the Targu-Jiu project described the exhibition as a whole, he said that the table and stools represented the family which is disappears and is left in silence, but is nonetheless unforgettable. He went on to claim that The Gate of the Kiss is the last stage of youth, after which man goes on to pursue infinite greatness – as symbolised by The Endless Column.

At the time of its creation the table was not well received. It was seen as overly modernistic and was loudly decried by many more conservative supporters of what was then academic art. The fascist element of Romania’s press (given the nod by Nazi Germany) was also quick to deplore the sculpture, calling it “degenerate art”. Since the downfall of the communist regime in Romania, however, Brancusi’s work has been viewed much more favourably.

On a personal level the power of the image of soldiers making ready to die frozen in an instant for all of time is certainly a powerful one. Even to one who was formerly wholly initiated to Brancusi’s works and to art in general the piece carries an extremely powerful message. It is both a war memorial and a religious statement. Even above that, it is an act of defiance against fascist Europe. It is a modernist art piece built to commemorate those who died fighting Germany, and the Nazi German regime is approaching its full strength. It was, not surprisingly, strongly disliked in the third Reich. It opposed the ultra-conservative fascism of the country’s government and its nationality itself. In that is a grand act of brave defiance. There is also something faintly tragic about the table’s history, the long years of communist rule during which it was almost completely ignored were not kind to the table.

This piece is surely one of the finest sculptures ever produced by one of the finest sculptors to live in modern times.

Ben Donaghue

La Table du Silence

Leçon de sculpture

Cela fait déjà quelques minutes que j’essaie de tracer dans de grandes lignes, la beauté, le désir, la pensée, l’artiste.

C’est la pluie tellement pressée qui m’oblige d’écouter mes émotions. Des gouttes froides comme des coups de couteau … du velours fluide, de la vie. Tout se déroula en silence. Cet instant me fit plonger dans la rêverie.

Je descendis une marche… plus proche du cœur, plus proche de l’esprit. Je m’assis à la table calmement, mais je faillis trébucher de moi-même. En témoin, les pierres du coin.

Oui, du coin de la partie gauche de l’âme que cette table ronde n’arrête pas de poursuivre.

Cela faisait si longtemps que je n’avais plus caché mes émotions en ces rochers… dans les pierres silencieuses.

Qui pourrait écouter mon silence mieux que l’on écoute un sanctuaire de la paix, de la discrétion, du silence ?

Je volai parmi les oiseaux, parmi les lignes, je saisis l’univers dans ma petite paume, je cueillis la soif et je la jetai à terre sur ces rochers.

J’ai toujours eu plus de patience que les autres. Cependant, je n’ai jamais vu aussi clair que maintenant. En effet, seulement l’art a la capacité de pénétrer les artifices de la vie, de calmer la nécessité de l’éloignement vis-à-vis d’un monde qui apprécie de moins en moins la vie, le hasard, la vérité, le nébuleux, le talent, la connaissance, la vertu.

Le même soir de fin de siècle descendit par des gouttes d’obscurité sur moi, sur mon âme … mon âme ouverte comme une plaie, comme une incision qu’on vient de faire à une pierre.

Je désire un ciseau afin que je puisse me caresser, me détacher du quotidien banal, de m’évader dans la révélation de l’admiration pour lui. N’importe où l’on regarde, le même mystère nous entoure. Je m’assis à table. Je sentis mes mains froides, presque humides, presque parfaites… ont-elles travaillé avec Brancusi ? La détresse ne m’attrista pas.

Ce qui me fascina surtout fut l’émotion avec laquelle je clignai des yeux quand les feuilles s’égarèrent devant moi, plus emportées par le vent, plus attirées par l’âme … sur la table.

Puis presque rien… que du silence ! Ce silence parfait, rond, cyclique.

Brancusi a non seulement créé l'art, il a aussi joué d'une façon unique de voir la réalité…

Est - il le père de la sculpture moderne?

La Table du Silence est l'un des morceaux les plus populaires de la sculpture assemblage de TARGU-JIU. Il s'agit d'une sculpture en pierre calcaire, réalisée à la mémoire de la confrontation des masses. Le temps est maintenant représenté par un agencement circulaire de 12 sièges, en forme de sablier, qui semblent le mesurer.

À côté de la Colonne sans fin et de la Porte du Baiser, La Table du Silence est encore un élément qui rende hommage aux héros de la bataille de la Seconde Guerre mondiale.

Loredana Dragan

The ‘Sleeping Muse’ by Constantin Brâncuși

In this first shot at an art review I shall look at a number of questions. Why did I choose this piece of art? What was my attraction if any to it? From where did the artwork originate? As well as exploring the emotive feeling I myself receive from it and what I perceive it to portray. Finally looking deeper into the genesis and history, not only of Sleeping Muse but its very creator Mr Constantin Brâncuși (1876-1957) and how he put life into this sleeping object.

Looking at the screen most of Brancusi’s pieces were both dark and complex to observe or lightly coloured but inertly simple, verging, I thought, toward the dull. This somber golden head popped out at me. It was neither simple nor complex. It was neither light nor dark. It encompassed both

aspects into one, and it is simply this that first drew me to it.

My impressions of Sleeping Muse have remained the same since I first saw it. Instead I just realise more about the piece as I look at it to write the review. I appreciate the simplicity of it.

Looking at its outlined form, its very pebble like: simple, smooth, and yet very suggestive of great age. Like that of a pebble, its outline looks to have been gradually eroded somewhat over time. If one lays their hand down to cover the lower side of the face you can see that the surface looks remarkably renewed when put into comparison with the lower side. I find it interesting how the lower more aged side also happens to be the side the head rests on in its sleep.

Whether suggestive of ever looming eventual death, on a rather morbid note, or just the reliance of the youth upon the wisdom that comes about with age? Regardless the lower side is put in stark contrast to the upside of the face.

Rich in colour, little definition, smooth; all conveying youth and innocence to the simple observer like myself. The piece looks almost as if the morning light shining upon it has rejuvenated what was an aging face. I also appreciate how the facial features are softened and reduced to suggestive strokes that define serenity and femininity. The slight nose that curves into eyebrows to cup the small bulges for eyes enhances this sympathetic effect.

The genesis of the piece is first and foremost Constantin Brâncuși himself but also what it was that inspired him to make the Sleeping Muse. Brâncuşi was born to a family of poor peasants in the village of Hobiţa in the Carpathian Mountains, a region with a rich heritage of folk crafts, especially woodcarving. At the age of seven Brâncuşi herded the family’s flock of sheep and showed a remarkable talent for carving objects from wood. At eighteen his employer recognizes his talent in carving and finances Brâncuşi’s education at the School of Crafts. After graduating with honors at The School of Crafts and further developing his skill as a sculptor at the Bucharest School of Fine Arts, Brâncuşi moved to Berlin and then on to Paris where he was welcomed by a community of intellectuals and artists. Brâncuşi was after two years invited to work in the studio of sculptor Auguste Rodin, but quit after two months, citing, “Nothing can grow under big trees.”

When Brâncuşi left Rodin’s studio he developed his revolutionary style for which he is known: smooth bronze and stone figures that represent life and the objects of the earth in sensual emotive shapes and constructions. And as most of his contemporaries were working in clay and plaster that would then be cast in metal, Brâncuşi exclusively worked by carving. This led many of his contemporaries

to be inspired by this newfound creative way of sculpting. It is not too soon after this that the Sleeping Muse was created in 1910 and now sits in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, located in New York City, is the largest art museum in the United States, and one of the ten largest in the world, with the most significant art collections including several of Brâncuși’s. The sleeping head, occupied Brâncuși for almost twenty years in all. The Sleeping Muse cast from bronze is based upon ‘The Sleep’, which was created 2 years earlier with less definition out of solid marble rock for which Baroness Renée Irana Franchon was the model. Until 1985 it was believed that there were only two versions of Sleeping Muse, when miraculously Sleeping Muse III was uncovered in a private collection. Again in 2000, a fourth version was uncovered in a European private auction. In the image above we can see Sleeping Muse I (1908-1910) or ‘The Sleep’ as it is sometime called in order to avoid confusion, which is, as can be seen, the basis for ‘Sleeping Muse’.

Sleeping Muse was one of 215 sculptures left behind in Brâncuși’s legacy and was one of his most renowned pieces. Despite not being as expensive as “Bird in space” or “Madame L.R” which in 2005 and 2009 were sold for $27.5 million and $37.2 million respectively it is still one of his more significant pieces. In 2011 Google even commemorated his 135th birthday with a doodle on their page consisting of seven of his most famous pieces; the centre of which was Sleeping Muse. This small head weighing only 12lbs, now 103 years old has now been viewed by tens of millions as it has travelled from place to place. Starting off in New York on its first travels in 1914 it has been to Philadelphia, The Hague, Washington and Athens; stopping at numerous museums along the way for people to go and witness one of the most intriguing pieces by Romania’s most celebrated sculptor and artist.

“What is real is not the appearance, but the idea, the essence of things.” Constantin Brâncuși George Garnett LA MUSE ENDORMIE

La Muse endormie, 1910 De 1909 à 1925, le sculpteur Constantin Brancusi définit quelques thèmes, dont celui de la Muse endormie, qu’il reprendra durant toute sa vie avec de légères variations. Son goût pour les surfaces polies et les formes simples le conduit à l’abstraction.

La sculpture La Muse endormie est une sorte d’emblème de la relation de Brancusi avec sa création. Cette sculpture représente sa volonté de s’extraire de toute expression ou sentiment personnel vis-à-vis

de son modèle, pour privilégier une forme élémentaire, universelle et intemporelle. Le raffinement particulier de La Muse endormie rappelle d’autres cultures et essentiellement les arts asiatiques que Brancusi a côtoyés au Musée Guimet.

Plusieurs variantes sur le même thème de la tête (Une Muse, Mademoiselle Pogany, Danaïde…) montrent l’importance que Brancusi accordait à ce thème dans son œuvre.

La Muse endormie représentait, à l’origine, le visage de la Baronne Frachon dont le sculpteur avait déjà réalisé plusieurs portraits en 1908-1909. Les études en terre cuite d’un premier portrait ont disparu. Le sculpteur a réalisé une version en pierre, qui n’est plus connue que par une photographie: l’ovale du visage est épuré, les traits simplifiés et linéaires sont anguleux.

Peu à peu, il continue de retravailler ce portrait par l’élimination de détails pour aboutir à sa Muse endormie.

En étudiant attentivement cette œuvre, on observe que toute l’expression se dilue dans la forme ovale de la tête. Ce visage paraît naître à une nouvelle naissance, plus spirituelle, d’où émane une impression d’équilibre, de stabilité.

Une sensibilité d’une extrême douceur affleure à la surface de la bouche, des yeux, des cheveux. Il y a un espace infime entre l’apparence possible du visage et sa disparition imminente. La main du sculpteur s’est effacée pour laisser la place à la matière particulièrement pure du marbre ou du bronze. L’être contenu dans cette forme ovale semble s’ouvrir à la conscience du monde.

Ce thème de la femme endormie peut être rapproché de celui de la femme abandonnée qui se développe vers 1890 dans le courant symboliste, aussi bien en littérature qu’en peinture.La femme devient symboliquement synonyme d’intériorisation.

Une première version de la Muse endormie date de 1909-1910. Les traits de la baronne sont lointainement évoqués, la tête repose sur le côté.

Une simple ligne continue forme nez et arcades sourcilières. Les yeux clos renforcent la sérénité de ce visage que les cheveux coiffés en chignon mettent en valeur. Le cou se remarque à peine à l’arrière. L’ovale triomphe. Cette géométrie se fonde sur la courbe et sur des détails anatomiques qui restent bien à leur place.

Brancusi se distingue ainsi des artistes cubistes

qui, à la même époque, décomposent et recomposent les figures en privilégiant les lignes droites et les angles. Enfin une légère dissymétrie annihile toute froideur et donne douceur et vie à la sculpture. Le métal est fortement poli, et le jeu des reflets accentue son élégance et sa sophistication. Trois plâtres et cinq bronzes seront tirés de la version de 1910, tous légèrement différents.

Cette émergence de la conscience en train de se constituer sera présente dans de nombreux titres de sculptures comme Le Nouveau Né, Le Commencement du monde, Le Premier Cri ou Prométhée.

Georgiana Grigorie

Princess X

Princess X is a sculpture of the French princess Marie Bonaparte made by the artist Constantin Brancusi. Princess Bonaparte was the great- grandniece of the emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. You can tell from the picture that it doesn’t resemble a women at all. Therefore there were a lot of accusations made towards Brancusi because his piece of art resembled something else entirely. The piece was ridiculed by Matisse or Picasso and one of them said (unclear who but probably Matisse) “Voila la phallus’’. It had to be removed from the exhibition even before the official opening. We don’t know a lot about Marie Bonaparte in relation to the piece of art but here is what Brancusi wrote about her: “A lady from Paris, a princess, insisted that I carved her bust. You know the horror and miserably low opinion I have about bust sculptures. She did not understand. She coquettishly asked me to make an exception. She had beautiful bust ugly legs and was terribly vain. She was looking in the mirror on the table looking furtively. She was vain and sensual. I did not intend to model the embodiment of her hidden desires. Do you think that this phenomenon happened unconsciously? I have a very low opinion of psychoanalysis’’ Looking at this quote from Brancusi, we can see that he formed a very bad opinion of this princess. This might be the reason why he made this erotic image instead of the princess even

though says didn’t intend to. This could also explain why he called it Princess X because had he given the true identity of the image, then he would have got into serious trouble with the Bonaparte family.

Princess X was originally called “Women looking at Herself in a Mirror”. There are several versions of Princess X but my personal favourite is the original. At the moment Princess X is installed at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain and it was bought by a person called Oleg Sheldon in memory of her husband, Adams Bromley Sheldon. In my view, I think it’s a strange thing to buy in memory of your husband however it must have been expensive because it is a very famous piece.

In 1920 the Princess X was removed from the Salon de independents on grounds of obscenity. In response to this, Brancusi’s friends and colleagues signed a manifesto, published in “Le Journal du Peuple” (on February 25, 1920), to protest against the authorities’ decision. Brancusi was very angry that people like Picasso and Matisse thought it was a phallus. He said that the sculpture was a portrayed of a feminine ideal and denied alternate readings that showed it as a sign of his desire for its model or that the fact he was trying to make some sort of joke. This is what Brancusi said about his thought process in making Princess X: “My statue, you understand, is the women: the very synthesis of the women, it is the eternal feminine of Goethe reduced to its essence…….And I believe to have finally won a victory by overtaking the bounds of the material. Besides, what a pity it would be to spoil this beautiful material by digging into it little holes for eyes, hair, ears. And my material is so beautiful in its sinuous lines which shine like pure gold and which embody in a sole archetype all the feminine effigies on this earth.”

From this quote of Brancusi, we can see why Princess X looks so alien. Brancusi didn’t want to add much detail to this work of art because he feels it would ruin the purity and beauty if the piece. I think what makes this piece stand out is the fact that the Princess X was something very different to Brancusi’s work. Apparently, he wasn’t a sex minded man or very controversial. This piece of work shows another side of him.

When I found out it was supposed to be a woman I was even more surprised. I dislike the shape of the object, I’m not sure if Brancusi knew what most people’s first impressions. I think what makes this piece of art different to most pieces is the thought process behind it and also the controversy. Several people were outraged at the piece that Brancusi had made.

Several people thought that it should not be shown in any art gallery. Many others thought that there was some hidden meaning and that it was not just a sex symbol. These conflicting views meant that people were talking and arguing about this piece for a very long time after it was shown. This means it became one of Brancusi’s most famous pieces. This is what I like about art. I like it when it’s controversial or no one really has any idea what it is all about.

This makes art more exclusive, exciting and interesting to talk about. This is why I chose this piece because when I first saw it, so many questions came to my mind. Also, I now know the

story behind the piece and I like the idea behind it; take a very vain princess, tell her that you will do a beautiful portrait of her, and then make something that doesn’t resemble a human being.

Munavwar Hussain LA PRINCESSE X

L'Atelier Brancusi, qui se trouve à Paris, accueille une exposition dossier consacrée à une sculpture, occupant un statut privilégié dans l'oeuvre de l'artiste.

Princesse X fait partie des expositions organisées par le Centre Pompidou sur le thème "La Série et l'oeuvre unique".

Cette oeuvre réalisée en 1916, dont la forme suggestive a provoqué le refus d’être exposée au Salon des Indépendants en 1920, a été conservée par Brancusi, qui lui vouait une affection particulière.

Autour de la sculpture il y a des photos originales prises par l'artiste, accompagnées de la projection d'une vidéo.

La tendance d’une réduction de la féminité sera toujours constante dans l’œuvre du sculpteur.

En janvier 1920, Brancusi a présenté au Salon des indépendants l’ouvrage Princesse X, en pensant avoir touché l’essence même de la femme, en la transformant en sexe masculin, afin de rappeler l’unité de l’être inscrit dans la symbolique androgyne.

A l’imitation et au dénoté se substitue un art de l’abstraction et de l’essentiel. Etant considérée intempestive et ambiguë, cette oeuvre subtile et exigeante a déclenché les hostilités du conformisme et de la bienséance au sein du salon.

Privant l’oeuvre de sa symbolique et de ses signifiés artistiques, ce jugement a été suivi d’une mise à l’écart puis d’un retrait du salon sous l’ordre du préfet de police.

La décision a déclenché une contestation objectivée sous la forme d’une lettre publiée dans Le Journal du peuple et intitulée « Pour l’indépendance de l’art ». Cette lettre a été signée par des personnalités telles que Cocteau, Picasso, Blaise Cendrars ou Marie Curie.

Ce scandale représente avec évidence le statut particulier et la portée subversive et complexe de l’art face aux structures figées et aux moeurs réactionnaires de la société.

Mais Brancusi n’a jamais cessé de représenter sa vision artistique dans sa manière très personnelle.

L’ouvrage de Brancusi Princesse X, née en pleine ère dada, joue pleinement sur le double-sens et l'ambiguïté, quoique Brancusi ait prétendu le contraire.

Une représentation féminine épurée à l'extrême, la Princesse X suggère les courbes d'un buste et d'un visage, les détails d'une main et aussi la suggestion d'une crinière de cheveux.

On évoque aussi le corps viril et androgyne d'une femme devenue sexe masculin.

Un cumul de vanité, d'érotisme et d'« éternel féminin », ce bijou luisant qui flirte avec l'abstraction a été légué à l'Etat par le sculpteur en 1957 et réside aujourd'hui dans l'atelier reconstitué de Brancusi, esplanade Beaubourg.

Ciprian Mogosanu The Kiss The kiss is a good example of abstract art works from Constantine Brâncuși. The one in Figure 1 served as a tombstone in Montparnasse cemetery in Paris, It was his third variation on the theme, but the first to include the entire bodies of the two figures. In 1908, a Romanian doctor who was a friend of him asked Brancusi for a work to put on the grave of his young lover after her suicide. Brancusi told him to take what he wants, and the kiss was his choice. In this piece, there are two figures that form a closed volume with a rather unclear symmetrical line. They are sitting with their arms wrapped around each other, and their eyes are nearly merged in to one. The details including eyes, ears hair and clothes are all extremely simplified, which cause that the two figures are rather indistinguishable. The first reason that this sculpture is attracting to me is the beauty and meaning derived from the geometric patterns. The sculpture has a rather accurate rectangular shape. This is like the two lovers sealing themselves in a closure space in order to get rid of all the noises and unhappiness from the outside world.

Dividing line between the two figures is not very. In this moment, the two lover become one showing that their

undividable relationship. In my opinion, this demonstrated a very important property of love.

Love is a sense, so it has to be private. It has nothing to do with the influence of others, simply because there is no such a kind of strong influence that can break the outer shell to reach the private world created by lovers. Thus, as long as they are still willing to embrace each other, there will be no factor can force them apart. Another important geometric feature of this sculpture is symmetry. As always, symmetry creates a sense of balance. Balance is always associated with stable and enduring, which are also the important feature of true love.

The second reason that I chose that sculpture is the simplification. By simplify the details, two figures look nearly identical to each other. This creates a sense of equity. In real life, there must be some differences between the lovers: height, weight, nationality, social status, richness. ..However, when it comes to the private world between them, these differences are no longer matters. It is the core that they really care about, but not the details. Those are all external factors. The crucial fact is that they equally need each other, and they equally love each other thus the relationship could last, and thus they are equal. Moreover, reducing the details will emphasize the important part of the work. The most obvious example is the expression of arms. Because the other part was simplified, the arms that hold the lovers together are able to stands out and create a strong visual impact. Brancusi once worked in Auguste Rodin’s workshop. Although he admired the Rodin’s talent, he left after only, two month saying, "Nothing can grow under big trees." Rodin once had made a sculpture also entitled “The kiss”, as well. “The sculpture, The Kiss, was originally titled Francesca Da Rimini, as it depicts the 13th-century Italian noblewoman immortalized in Dante's Inferno (Circle 2, Canto 5) who falls in love with her husband Giovanni Malatesta's younger brother Paolo. Having fallen in love while reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, the couple are discovered and killed by Francesca's husband. In the sculpture, the book can be seen in Paolo's hand. The lovers' lips do not actually touch in the sculpture, suggesting that they were interrupted and met their demise without their lips ever having touched.”

Compare to Rodin’s work, Brancusi’s work does not have a background story; Also, Rodin’s sculpture contains more details. The curve of muscle and figures’ body and actions are more carefully carved. Thus, it is more vivid and closer to reality. However, because of this, the work is not as catchy. The closer to reality, the art work tend to be more ordinary, because it is closer to our daily life experience. Furthermore, Brancusi’s work has given people more space of imagination due to the geometric shape and the simple lines. Overall, it is hard to say which work is better but certainly they have all approaching the title rather successfully with different ways, but personally, I prefer Brancusi‘s sculpture.

Peter Jiang

LE BAISER

La sculpture "Le Baiser" a été réalisée par Constantin Brancusi, cet artiste roumain, qui a ouvert de nouvelles voies à la sculpture, au début du XXème siècle. Le Baiser est avant tout une sculpture-idée et une oeuvre-repère pour la sculpture moderne.

En réalisant cette sculpture, Brancusi nous transmet sa conviction selon laquelle la sculpture doit être avant tout d'une exigence absolue sur les formes, la signification et sur le sens.

Le thème de l’amour est essentiel dans l’oeuvre du sculpteur. Une première variante du Baiser de 1907-1908 représente une rupture décissive dans l’œuvre de Brancusi. Le sculpteur a réalisé cette première version qui est devenue monument funéraire dans le cimetière de Montparnasse, en 1910, pour une amie à lui, une jeune fille russe, qui s'est suicidée par amour.

Brancusi reprendra le thème du baiser. Il a mis son ouvrage sur le tombeau de la femme qui s’était suicidée, comme symbole de l’amour perpéuel. Les bustes des deux corps sont prolongés par leurs jambes accolées, rappelant une tradition roumaine selon laquelle deux arbres plantés l’un à côte de l’autre, près d’une tombe, évoque la force de l’amour face à l’éternité.

«J’ai voulu évoquer non seulement le souvenir de ce couple unique mais celui de tous les couples du monde qui ont connu l’amour avant de quitter la vie », dit-il.

De cette façon, Brancusi se dégage de Rodin, parce que cette sculpture suppose la transition rodinienne mais aussi un détachement et une rupture révolutionnaire. Il commence à chercher une nouvelle réalité plastique. En choisissant pour ses idées philosophiques une sorte de bloc en pierre à quatre arêtes, la sculpture aquiert ainsi une fonction spirituelle qui ne réside pas dans l’apparence mais dans un principe de réalité inscrit au cœur de la matière. La sculpture a deux visages.

La partie d’où les deux figures embrassées se regardent est représentée d’une manière identique de l’autre côté. On respecte ainsi la vocation formelle de la pierre ou du bois

en travaillant à la taille directe, sans ébauche préalable, pour révéler « l’essence cosmique de la matière ».

Le processus de la taille directe se substitue à la représentation du modèle. « C’est en taillant la pierre que l’on découvre l’esprit de la matière, sa propre mesure. La main pense et suit la pensée de la matière. » Le Baiser de Brancusi, en ayant deux visages, nous oblige de l’entourer et de constater qu’il occupe une place concentrique dans l’univers. Et en tournant autour de lui, il nous offre, évidemment, plusieurs perspectives. Mais le matériau impose une résistance qui ne permet pas de parvenir à des détails. Pour Brancusi c’est le moyen d’atteindre à la simplicité des formes.

Le Baiser se présente comme un bloc de pierre à peine dégrossi, dans lequel s’inscrivent deux bustes vus de profil et accolés l’un à l’autre.

Seulement la différence des chevelures et le sein légèrement apparent de la femme permettent de saisir la présence des deux êtres. Cet ouvrage illustre une idée brancusienne, une idée prototype.

La jonction parfaite des bouches et des yeux et l’enlacement des bras métamorphosent les corps en un être unique vu de face. La double présence des êtres accentue fortement l’unité du bloc de pierre et apparaît comme une métaphore de l’artiste face à sa matière.

Porte du Baiser, réalisée par Brancusi en sera l’accomplissement du theme de l’amour.

La 1938,

"A travers une série de décantations du thème du Baiser, notait Barbu Brezianu, Brancusi est arrivé à réaliser une composition d'une extrême précision et ampleur ; une série de 40 couples d'amoureux face l'un à l'autre, les genoux pliés et dont la courbure pas très éloignée de la version en pierre du monument funéraire du cimetière de Montparnasse de 1910 évoque le rythme d'arcades jumelées. Une ligne médiane, interrompue par la ceinture infinie des bras qui s'entrelacent, formant un double cadre, sépare les corps collés ; de leurs figures on ne voit que les yeux, la bouche

(réduite à un minuscule trait d'union) et les cheveux, suggérés dans quelques incisions incurvées avec grâce, encadrant les visages des amoureux enlacés".

Le Baiser de Brancusi et ses variantes sont des ouvrages realisés entièrement selon une vision philosophique, synthétisée et abstraite.

Mihai Cosmin Dumbrava Porte du baiser

Constantin Brancusi’s La Porte du Baiser (meaning “The Gate of the Kiss”) is believed by many to be an evolution of one of his earlier works, The Kiss, due to the fact that the two figures from The Kiss being engraved upon the lintel of the sculpture, and also due to the fact that the gate has two sides, similar to The Kiss being made up of two lovers. The sculpture in fact is part of a larger Ensemble, including The Endless Column and The Table of Silence along with The Gate of Kiss itself. It has been revealed, however, by Dr. Traian Stoicoiu, whose father was a classmate of Brancusi himself and knew him personally, that the real names of the sculptures are in fact different to what they are known as today: The Column of the Infinite Sacrifice, The Apostles’ Table and The Monument of the Unity of the Nation, respectively. It was named The Monument of the Unity of the Nation, because it is referring back to the unification of Romania itself over the course of the late 19th and early 20th

centuries. Each half of the gate is in fact a large pillar made up of four smaller pillars. These eight smaller pillars collectively represent the original eight provinces which unified to become the country of Romania as it is today. The beam across the top, which has led many to believe that the sculpture is in fact a gate, represents the unity of the provinces, with the representation of this unification further being cemented by the engraving of the two lovers from his earlier work, The Kiss.

The sculpture itself is five metres high, six metres wide, and two metres deep. It is unknown exactly when its creation was initiated and when it was created, however, it is known that it was inaugurated, along with the other two members of the Ensemble, on 27th October 1938. It is located in Targu Jiu, a town in the south-west of Romania, where it has remained ever since its inauguration. While the Communist government was in power in Romania, the Ensemble degraded in condition due to a significant lack of maintenance by the government, and the government had even intended to destroy the entire set of sculptures, however, they were fortunately never able to put this plan into effect before they were ousted in the revolution of 1989. Due to the tilting, cracking, metal corrosion and unstable foundations that had affected the sculptures of the Ensemble for some time due to the lack of any maintenance done on them, the site was added to the 1996 World Monuments Watch by the World Monuments Fund. This resulted in the eventual restoration of the site between 1998 and 2000 as a result of a collaboration between the Romanian Government, the World Monuments Fund and the World Bank, along with a few other international groups and some Romanian groups.

It is not believed that these sculptures derived at all from any other sculptors or their works, with the only derivation being that of the engraving upon the lintel of the sculpture, however, that was derived from Brancusi’s own earlier work, The Kiss. It is based mainly on the unification of Romania, which would have deep cultural significance for Romanian citizens, especially with Romanian nationalists.

I chose to write about this sculpture not merely because of aesthetics, but also because of the significant message that it conveys so simply. In such as simple form as a gate, or two large pillars connected by a beam at the top, it is able to represent the significant message of the eight provinces coming together to form the greater country of Romania, with use of pillars forming greater pillars, which finally are joined at the top to form one great structure, very similar to a gate. It is almost as if Brancusi had intended it to be a gate, which would represent the fact that eight separate provinces had gone into a metaphorical gate, only for one united nation to come out of the other side. This seems quite probable as a gate is merely a variant of a door, and doors are often closely linked with choices, possibilities and beginnings (for example the Roman god of beginnings, transitions, endings and time, Janus, is also the god of gates, doors and passages).

Tommy Leasor

LA PORTE DU BAISER La porte du baiser est une sculpture en pierre réalisée par Constantin Brâncuși et elle fait partie de l'Ensemble Monumental de Târgu Jiu. La porte du baiser se trouve sur la voie d'accès à l'entrée de la ville.

L’ouvrage est construit en pierre poreuse, extraite des carrières dans les environs, étant composé de colonnes épaisses, parallélépipédiques, qui prend en charge une architrave avec des tailles de plus que la largeur des colonnes de 6, 45 m, la hauteur de 5, 13 m et l’épaisseur de 1, 69 m.

Chaque colonne contient le symbole du baiser, deux moitiés d'un cercle, si caractéristique à la vision de Brancusi. Ce symbole semble incrusté, un peu comme un filigrane.

En outre, la Porte du Baiser est couverte d’une sorte de toit, comme si la porte était couverte de bardeaux. La voûte de la porte a l'ornement délicatement réalisé: il y a une continuité linéaire de petits arcs et surtout, sur les trois lignes horizontales, on voit des formes ovales identiques, comme les contours du visage et des épaules.

La porte du baiser ressemble à un arc de triomphe, symbolisant le triomphe de la vie sur la mort.

Mircea Eliade disait: "Quelques-uns des thèmes de notre littérature populaire sont extrêmement riches sur le plan dramatique. Par exemple, la Porte, qui joue le rôle d’une créature féerique dans la conception populaire des Roumains veille sur tous les moments importants de la vie d’une personne. La première passe sous la porte signifie presque une entrée vivante dans la vie réelle. La Porte est le témoin d’un mariage, en apportant du bonheur et c’est toujours par-dessous la porte qu’un homme mort part, cependant, pour l'enterrement solennel. C'est donc un retour dans le monde du début : le cycle est fermé, et la porte reste là, d'un homme de moins, à regarder les autres mariages, autres décès".

Le travail a été mis sur sa place en octobre 1937 et a été sculpté au début de l'année 1938 et achevé le 20 septembre.

Comme dans le cas de la colonne de l'infini, il s'agissait d’une idée beaucoup plus ancienne que le moment de la réalisation du monument en pierre.

En 1907, Brâncuși a également eu une première version du « baiser », simplifiée, qui est devenue tombe dans le cimetière du Montparnasse, en 1910.

En 1916, le sculpteur a fini une colonne du baiser, composée en assemblant des blocs sur lesquels les chiffres et les organes, presque fondus, à peine distingués, siègent sur les quatre côtés de ce fragment architectural. Dans le Catalogue de l'exposition personnelle de Brancusi, en 1933-1934, à la Galerie Brummer de New York, on mentionne également la présence d'une colonne du « Baiser » dans le cadre du Temple de la contemplation, que le sculpteur désirait soulever à Indore.

En se référant à ces colonnes, Brâncuși avouait à la sculptrice Malvina Hoffman: « Au début, j’ai creusé en pierre ce petit groupe de deux êtres enchaînés…, puis, après de longs moments de réflexion, j’ai pensé à sculpter une porte au dessous de laquelle on puisse aller au-delà.

Maintenant, j'ai l'intention d'élaborer les silhouettes qui se trouvent audessus de la porte ». Le symbole du baiser présenté sous forme d’énormes pupilles stylisées se trouve sur toutes les faces de la Porte. Brancusi a dit « ce qui est petit en haut, agrandit en bas ».

Alexandru Lungu

The Little French Girl – Constantin Brancusi “When we are no longer children, we are already dead.” – Constantin Brancusi Genesis of the Piece

Towards the end of World War 2, Constantin Brancusi started to almost exclusively focus on sculpting with wood, a material which he considered full of metaphoric potential and with which he was familiar, having trained from an early age as a carpenter. By 1924 he was portraying himself in photographs as a Romanian peasant woodcutter working among his sculptures (unlike other sculptors of his era, for example Auguste Rodin, who often portrayed himself watching over his works). The sculpture itself is a reworked version of Brancusi’s first wood carving “The First Step” (1913) which was itself inspired by a sculpture and by a child Brancusi once knew, and the title of this piece is read metaphorically as a reference to Brancusi’s initial steps into working with wood. He also took a lot of inspiration for the piece from tribal art and sculptures, as we can tell from the elongated proportions of the figure, and the way he carved the wood into elongated, simplified forms.

History of the Piece

“The Little French Girl” was first shown in a 1917 photograph in which Brancusi arranged several of his sculptures in his studio, namely: “Little French Girl”; “Endless Column”; and “Cup II”. He called this whole arrangement “The Child in the World”. Brancusi developed a metaphorical story to explain the relationship between these sculptures, saying that “it portrayed the death of Socrates, in the presence of Plato and a cup of hemlock.” However experts believe it is more likely to be a portrait of Brancusi and his close friend Erik Satie (1866-1925), a composer whom he often called Socrates and who often called Brancusi Plato.

The form of the cup sculpture is considered to represent either a head, or an upside-down version of Satie’s trademark bowler hat.

Like many other sculptures of the time “The Little French Girl” is carved out of one single block of oak. Her pelvis appears to resemble a tortoise’s shell, and the neck clearly resembles a collapsible telescope. The head bears the clear features of a child yelling, and it later became solely a head, such as in “Nouveau Né” or “First Cry” which originated from a similar wood sculpture which broke apart.

Cultural Heritage

Brancusi often used found forms in his wood sculptures, for example the shape of a tortoise shell to represent a pelvis, the shape of a cup to represent a head and finally the shape of a collapsible telescope to represent a neck. His sculptures were also inspired by traditional African sculptures and carvings, Romanian woodwork and also by the contemporary avantgarde’s path to abstraction. These forms imbued his sculptures with additional metaphorical readings or at least associations, and he often combined these with others in his studio, and photographed them in various configurations. Many of Brancusi’s sculptures, including “The Little French Girl” remained in his studio for long periods, mainly because he couldn’t sell them. While there he often not only rearranged, but also carved and recarved, destroyed and rebuilt them.

Personal Impression

Personally I think that “The Little French Girl” is a very clever piece, as despite the fact that it does not specifically look like anything in particular, we can however tell that it is a person from the fact that it has two legs beneath a stylised body. We also automatically read the upper, larger section as a head, even though the facial features are not obvious. We can see what the sculpture represents because of the way the different elements are related to another, where they are, as opposed to what they look like. This is one of the ideas Brancusi learnt from tribal sculpture. Also the unusual, elongated proportions of the figure, and the way in which the wood is carved in simplified, geometric forms is also clearly derived from African art.

I chose this piece to review because of the way Brancusi didn’t just make the piece, then sell it or throw it away, but the way in which he used it in what he called “The Child in the World (mobile group)” and he even spent yet more time trying to improve what was a fascinating piece in its own right. We can tell how much he worked on this piece from the fact that it was originally named “The First Step III” for he had attempted and then scrapped two other pieces before that.

Also I like the fact that although Brancusi has made this entire piece out of a single block of oak, it has been made in such a way that it is surprising to find this fact out. As it looks more like the modern “found object” style of art (used by artists like Damien Hurst) which simple takes objects they had found in the world and put them together to create an image of one

thing or another. However, in this piece, Brancusi has done the complete opposite. He has taken a single ordinary block of oak and carved it such that it looks like it has a tortoise’s shell for a pelvis, a collapsible telescope for a neck and a cup for a head. Yet despite all this it is fairly simple to see that the piece is a sculpture of a figure, or a “little French girl” mainly due to the stylised legs, as the figure has no facial features at all.

David McKenna

La Petite Fille Française "Quand nous ne sommes plus enfants, nous sommes déjà morts." Constantin Brancusi

Petite fille française (1914-1918) et Madame L.R. (Portrait de Mme L.R.,19141918), exécutées donc vers la même époque, ayant en commun le sujet, une personne, ont des dimensions moyennes, une finition assez brute. Généralement les oeuvres en marbre sculptées par Brancusi étaient caractérisées par des volumes aux lignes

ininterrompues,

mais

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donnent l'impression d'être composées d'un empilement d'éléments disparates. En dépit des apparences, les oeuvres en bois ont presque toujours été taillées dans un unique bloc de bois. Pourtant, utilisant comme matière première des poutres en chêne récupérées, Brancusi pouvait difficilement y reproduire la continuité des lignes. On pourrait dire que son inspiration obéissait, à d'autres impératifs. Le sculpteur a toujours considéré que la nature du matériau dictait les formes de ses sculptures, et le bois ne faisait pas exception à la règle. Le bois lui a permis de créer un nouveau répertoire d'images et de forces spirituelles inspiré par sa connaissance de l'art africain.

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métaphoriques et dont il est familier grâce à sa formation de menuisier. Dès 1924, il se photographie lui-même à la façon d'un menuisier rural

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sculptures (à la différence de Rodin qui souvent se représentait comme « le penseur », à la marge de ses œuvres).

Brancusi avait l'habitude d'utiliser des formes rencontrées pour ses sculptures sur bois. Ses formes s'inspirent aussi des sculptures et des bois africains, du travail du bois typique de Roumanie et de la voie vers l'abstraction ouverte par les avant-gardes. Elles infusent à son travail des lectures métaphoriques supplémentaires, ou suscitent du moins certaines autres associations. Brancusi combine souvent les unes avec les autres, jouant avec elles dans son atelier comme avec des jouets et en les photographiant dans différentes configurations. Nombre d'œuvres de Brancusi sont longtemps restées dans son atelier, ne serait-ce que parce qu'il avait du mal à les vendre. Et pendant qu'elles restaient là, non seulement il les déplaçait d'un endroit à l'autre, mais aussi il les reprenait, les détruisait et les reconstruisait constamment.

Comme beaucoup d'autres pièces de cette période, Petite fille française est sculptée dans un seul bloc de chêne. Le bassin rappelle la carapace d'une tortue et le cou semble une longuevue. La tête possède les traits bien définis d'une créature en plein hurlement qui, plus tard, se transformera en une seule tête, comme dans les cas du Nouveau né ou du Premier cri, qui sont tirés d'un bois similaire à Petite fille française, qui a été cassé. La sculpture est une version de sa première œuvre sur bois, Le premier pas (1913), inspirée de la sculpture africaine et d'un bébé que Brancusi connaissait. Le titre peut s'interpréter métaphoriquement comme une référence à la première incursion de Brancusi dans le domaine du bois.

Petite fille française a été présentée pour la première fois sur une photographie de 1917 dans laquelle Brancusi dispose diverses sculptures dans son atelier (avec Colonne sans fin et Tasse II) en baptisant l'ensemble L'enfant au monde, groupe mobile. Brancusi a développé toute une métaphore pour expliquer la relation entre ces pièces, en affirmant qu'elles représentaient la mort de Socrate en présence de Platon et la coupe de ciguë. Toutefois il semblerait aussi qu'il

s'agisse d'un portrait du propre Brancusi et son grand ami Éric Satie (1866-1925), le compositeur d'avant-garde que Brancusi avait l'habitude d'appeler Socrate et qui pour sa part appelait Brancusi Platon.

Eliza Mandreci Constintin Brâncuși’s ‘bird theme’ during his career can be traced back to his series of sculptures, Măiastra (1910-1918), inspired by the legendary Pasărea maiastra, which means ‘Legendary Bird’. This theme was featured in several other sculptures of his, such as the 1919 series, Golden Bird and was eventually developed into the final series of sculptures, Bird in Space, otherwise known as L’Oiseau dans l’espace (French) or Pasărea în văzduh (Romanian).

“All my life, I have sought the essence of flight. Flight! What bliss” -Brâncuși With many of his works, Brâncuși revolutionised the way artists thought about sculpture. At the time, sculptures had very representational forms which were very true to their subjects.

Brâncuși developed what would eventually be known as abstract sculpture changing the way people thought about form and space.

The original Bird in Space sculpture was made in 1928 and was carved out of marble. With the series of sixteen sculptures in marble and bronze, Brâncuși elongated the body of the bird creating a long, flowing mass capturing the essence of flight. Gone were the wings and the feathers leaving a smooth and aerodynamic form. Unlike with Măiastra and Golden Bird , he wanted to focus not on the figure and the physical traits of the bird but rather, on its movement.

The marble versions of the sculpture were in such equilibrium that Brâncuși had to insert a metal rod up the middle of them in order to prevent them from toppling over.

Various versions of the Bird in Space now exist. The first sculpture of the series was sold in 2005 at a price of $27.5 million. This was a record price for any sculpture being sold in an auction at the time. It is now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

Two bronze casts (made in 1928 and 1941) are now kept at the Museum of Modern Art in the very same city. Two other Bird in Space sculptures, one marble (1924) one bronze (1924), can be seen at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Seattle Art Museum houses a 1926 bronze. There are four more bronze casts, two (1926 and 1927) of which are on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, one (1931) resides in the Norton Simon Museum of Art, California and the last, of unknown casting date, in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra owns a two marbles, one in black and one in white, both of which were made in 1936.

In a message which accompanied the photos of his ‘Birds’ that he sent to the Maharaja of India in 1936, he said that although ‘the differences between the most recent ‘Birds’ can scarcely be seen in the photographs’, they are ‘a series of different objects in a quest that remains the same’. They were all of different sizes, however, Brâncuși placed no importance on the size of his sculptures but rather on the proportions and the poise.

The bronze versions of Bird in Space all had wooden or marble pedestals. Brâncuși considered the pedestals a part of the sculpture and so they too were the results of a thought process. There is a progression from primitive to industrial materials. In some of the sculptures, below the marble, there was even a layer of wood. As you went up the sculpture from the wooden base up to the highly polished bronze, there would be ascension from the ‘material’ to the ‘immaterial’.

The ‘Birds have a certain feeling of momentum, movement and energy stored within their static posture with smooth and graceful curves running up the length of the works, sculpting their forms. Brâncuși managed to capture not just the essence of the bird, but the essence of its movement, the reality behind what we see. We see the bird, but what’s real, is its flow and flux. He has taken the visual and the existent and merged them into one form and the shifting reflections in the asymmetrical bronze sculptures emphasise the coexistence between the two.

In 1926, one of the bronze versions of Bird in Space was included in an exhibition at MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art) called Cubism and Abstract Art, the sculpture. However, during its transport from France over to the US, it was held back by customs officers. The

problem was that although MoMA had claimed that the piece was a work of art, U.S. Customs did not believe it thinking that it had some sort of industrial use. While works of art are not subject to tax, items of industrial use were subject to 40% tax. The confusion resulted in a court case lasting around a year. U.S. customs was forced to rethink and rework their classification of items due to pressure from artists and the public. Nonetheless, this led to a large debate on whether Brâncuși’s propeller like, bronze sculpture was indeed art. F. J. H. Kracke of U.S. customs eventually confirmed that they were to be subject to duty. In a statement to the New York Evening Post, he recounted how he was told, ‘If that’s art, hereafter, I’m a bricklayer.’ and ‘Dots and dashes are as artistic as Brâncuși’s work.’ The public simply were not ready for such figurative sculptures. Nowadays we would have thought nothing of it. The term abstract was stuck to Brâncuși’s works, which he detested.

“There are idiots who define my work as abstract; yet what they call abstract is what is most realistic. What is real is not appearance, but the idea, the essence of things.”

-Brâncuși Despite the general opposition to the ‘Bird’ being labelled art, and the establishment that sculptures that were only art if they were chiselled objects in their true proportions during the 1916 United States versus Olivotti case, Brâncuși still had several supporters. By the end of the court case, the Judges Young and Waite were in favour of the artist.

“The object now under consideration . . . is beautiful and symmetrical in outline, and while some difficulty might be encountered in associating it with a bird, it is nevertheless pleasing to look at and highly ornamental, and as we hold under the evidence that it is the original production of a professional sculptor and is in fact a piece of sculpture and a work of art according to the authorities above referred to, we sustain the protest and find that it is entitled to free entry.”

-Waite This court case was to set a milestone in the history of art, for it was the very first court decision to accept that non-representational sculpture could be considered art.

Kieran Tam

OISEAU DANS L’ESPACE

L’Oiseau dans l'espace est une sculpture créée par Constantin Brâncuși, en 1923.

Le sculpteur a réalisé 16 versions de l’Oiseau dans l'espace, dont 7 en marbre et 9 en bronze.

C’est une sculpture de forme oblongue d'environ 140 cm de hauteur, en marbre ou en bronze.

C’est un oiseau représenté sans plumes et sans ailes, dont le corps est suggéré par un renflement de la sculpture et la tête est réduite à un simple ovale plan. L’oiseau a le corps représenté verticalement et le bec se trouve en haut de la sculpture. Sa base repose sur la tête tronquée d'un cône mince et allongé qui a été posé sur un piédestal cylindrique.

La surface de la sculpture, n’importe quel soit le matériau, est l’impression d'un miroir. l'espace et 19 autres à New York à bord du œuvres d'art ne sont pas mais les douaniers bronze effilé en est une. douanier pour les objets du prix de vente, soit 2800 $ en dollars de

entièrement polie, laissant En octobre 1926, Oiseau dans sculptures de Brâncuși arrivent navire Paris. Généralement, les sujets aux droits de douane, refusent de croire que l'objet de Ils lui imposent donc le tarif en métal manufacturés : 40 % environ 230 $, un peu plus de 2010.

Marcel Duchamp, qui accompagne les sculptures depuis l'Europe, le photographe américain Edward Steichen, qui doit prendre possession de la sculpture après son exposition, et Brâncuşi lui-même protestent : les sculptures doivent apparaître à la Brummer Gallery de New York et ensuite à l'Arts Club de Chicago. Sous la pression de la presse et des artistes, les douanes américaines acceptent de revoir leur classement, mais libèrent en attendant les œuvres sous la mention « ustensiles de cuisine et matériels hospitaliers ». Cependant un expert douanier, après consultation d'artistes américains sceptiques, finit par confirmer le classement initial et déclare que les œuvres sont sujets aux droits de douane. Le mois suivant, Steichen fait appel de la décision.

Sous le régime de la loi douanière de 1922, pour que l’Oiseau dans l'espace puisse passer la douane sans droits, on pense qu’il s'agit d'une œuvre originale, sans objet pratique, réalisée par un sculpteur professionnel. Pourtant la qualification d'art de la sculpture est fortement contestée. Le cas de 1916 United States v. Olivotti avait établi que les sculptures ne sont de l'art que s'il s'agit de représentations gravées ou ciselées d'objets naturels « dans leurs vraies proportions ». La déclaration sous serment de Brâncuşi au consulat américain explique le processus de création de l'objet, établissant son originalité.

Malgré les opinions contradictoires présentées à la cour, les juges se déclarent en novembre 1928 en faveur de l'artiste. Il s'agit de la première décision de justice américaine qui accepte la sculpture nonreprésentative comme art.

En 2005, un exemplaire de la sculpture Oiseau dans l'espace est vendu aux enchères pour 27,5 millions $.

Lors de cette transaction, il s'agit d'un record de prix pour une sculpture vendue aux enchères.

En synthétisant harmonieusement les traits les plus représentatifs, humanistes et constructifs, de l’art de tous les temps, Brancusi a proposé au monde moderne un nouvel idéal classique des arts : celui du contenu, des vérités essentielles et profondes.

Brancusi considérait que « moderne » n’était pas synonyme de « dernier » mais de « plus proche de la vérité ».

Alexandru Lungu Madame LR

Being one of the earlier Brancusi works, Madame LR, was not well received by the public when it was completed in 1918, in an Oak medium, as little wooden works at this point were known to people. This dislike for piece may have brought around by the fact that the numbers of wooden works at the time were very limited. The people therefore couldn’t relate to many others to compare it to, and so they would have tended not to express their views openly.

It is now in the collection of designer label Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé in Paris. It was sold in February 2006 for 37 million dollars. This piece is one of two wooden sculptures

by Brancusi with a human subject, this one being a woman, judging from the name. The finish of this piece is relatively rough, and although it may not look like it, is actually carved from a single piece of wood. It is visually made up of several different sections: the head, which looks like a helmet of some sort, and the other parts, also of similar abstractness can easily be distinguished as the shoulders, waist, hips, single leg and feet, in the shape of a horseshoe, on a rectangular base. It has been attached to this base since it left Brancusi’s workshop in 1918.

Although it is not clear whether Brancusi was particularly interested in African art, this sculpture definitely has African origins and influence. The symmetry in the sculpture is very much favoured in the minds of African sculptors of the time. It was also not uncommon for African sculptors to carve from a single piece of wood, as it made it easier to produce the symmetry required, which interestingly enough was quite unknown to Europeans at the time, which may have been another factor to the dislike of the piece at the time of its release. This may be why it seems to be very abstract to us, but it may be a common form of art in Africa.

Another factor of the abstractness is the disproportionality of the figure, which is also shown in his work Petite fille française, which was completed around the same time as Madame LR. This one also shows the feminine characteristic that is present in Madame LR. Brancusi always maintained the motive ‘truth to materials’, which I interpret as allowing the natural beauty of the medium show, as opposed to the resin or other coating that may be placed on it. This may have been a thought of people in the early 20th century towards the African people as a whole, and is maybe the influence that Brancusi most displayed in his work. However, Brancusi was not the only artist at the time influenced by African art. A common feature of works by these artists was the lack of arms and also facial features too.

Brancusi’s style as a sculptor was not surprising considering the museums he visited, the people he knew and his exposure to African art, especially in Paris.

I chose to write about this sculpture is because of the way that it stood out to me, out of all Brancusi’s works. Even before knowing the name of the sculpture, there was the message of a woman being portrayed and the obscurity of it made it very appealing to me, as I am a fan of abstract art.

Max Thackray

Portrait de Madame L.R. Constantin Brancusi doit son exceptionnelle notoriété principalement à ses sculptures en pierre et en bronze qui, taillées ou moulées, lisses et polies à la perfection, représentent des formes idéalisées et transcendantes. Le grand public connaît peu ses oeuvres en bois, beaucoup moins nombreuses et qui, au début, furent assez mal reçues, au point d'être rejetées par les collectionneurs privés qui les trouvaient atypiques par rapport à celles aux lignes épurées qui faisait la célébrité du sculpteur.

Madame L.R. est un magnifique exemple des premières sculptures en bois de Brancusi. Par le choix du matériau et la technique de la taille directe, par l'iconographie et l'intention qui préside à sa création, cette oeuvre est, en effet, très éloignée de la production habituelle du sculpteur. Alors que L'oiseau dans l'espace-pour prendre l'exemple de son motif le plus célèbre-s'élève vers le ciel dans un mouvement spirituel et presque immatériel, les sculptures en bois sont massives, ancrées dans le sol et mystérieusement énigmatiques. Elles n'en sont pas moins essentielles à l'appréciation et à la compréhension globale de l'oeuvre du sculpteur.

Il est difficile d'évaluer exactement le nombre de sculptures en bois réalisées par Brancusi, car certaines ont été démantelées, recomposées ou détruites, mais on estime aujourd'hui qu'il subsisterait une trentaine de sculptures ou fragments de sculpture. La plupart d'entre elles ont été exécutées entre 1913 et 1925, période durant laquelle Brancusi réalise également des socles en chêne pour y poser ses oeuvres en marbre ou en bronze.

Bien qu'il ait produit quelques grandes sculptures en bois après les années 1920 et continué de faire des socles, ce sont les oeuvres des premières années qui demeurent les plus étonnantes. Commencées à une époque où le sculpteur avait déjà élaboré son vocabulaire de formes idéalisées en marbre - rappelons que La muse endormie I date de 1909-10, la première Maïastra, de 1910-1912 (The Museum of Modern Art, New York), et la première Mademoiselle Pogany de 1912 (Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris), les sculptures en bois révèlent un retour inattendu à une esthétique primitive, que l'on remarque plus tôt dans son oeuvre et notamment dans Le Baiser, et à une facture plus brute et moins aboutie.

Parmi les premières sculptures en chêne qui subsistent de nos jours, il convient de citer la Tête d'enfant (Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris) - tête qui provient d'une première oeuvre initialement intitulée Le premier pas, de 1913 - L'enfant prodigue (1914-1915; Philadelphia Museum of Art), Madame L.R. (1914-1918) et Petite fille française. Les deux dernières, exécutées vers la même époque, ont en commun le sujet - une personne - des dimensions moyennes (ni réduites ni monumentales), une finition assez brute. Contrairement aux oeuvres en marbre caractérisées par des volumes aux lignes ininterrompues, elles donnent l'impression d'être composées d'un empilement d'éléments disparates. Malgré les apparences, les oeuvres en bois ont généralement été taillées dans un unique bloc de bois.

Toutefois, utilisant comme matière première des poutres en chêne récupérées, Brancusi pouvait difficilement y reproduire la continuité des lignes et la perfection du modelé poli de ses oeuvres en pierre. Telle n'était d'ailleurs pas son intention, car son inspiration obéissait, semble-t-il, à d'autres impératifs. Brancusi a toujours défendu l'idée que la nature du matériau dictait les formes de ses sculptures, et le bois ne faisait pas exception à la règle. Il lui a permis en tout cas de créer un nouveau répertoire d'images et de forces spirituelles inspiré par sa connaissance de l'art africain.

Madame L.R. (Portrait de Mme L.R.) évoque une figure debout composée de parties visuellement distinctes, bien qu'elle ait été taillée, nous l'avons dit, dans une seule et même pièce de bois. Le titre, qui laisse entendre qu'il s'agit d'un portrait de femme, nous conduit à voir dans le motif supérieur de la sculpture une tête ou une coiffure en forme de casque ou d'éventail, montée sur un cou en forme de balustre. Les autres éléments, totalement abstraits, se devinent néanmoins comme les épaules et le buste ou le torse de la femme, suivis d'une unique jambe (à nouveau en balustre) posée sur un pied semi-circulaire ou en fer à cheval. Depuis sa sortie de l'atelier de Brancusi, la figure n'a pas quitté son petit socle rectangulaire orné de festons.

Si Constantin Brancusi a pu émettre des réserves quant à l'influence de l'art africain sur ses créations, il n'en reste pas moins que Madame L.R. (Portrait de Mme L.R.), tout comme Petite fille française, fait référence à l'Afrique sous de nombreux aspects. D'abord, ces deux oeuvres ont été taillées en un seul bloc, selon une technique privilégiée par les sculpteurs africains, qui crée une esthétique symétrique et frontale tout à fait étrangère à la

tradition européenne. Ensuite - autre aspect inhabituel pour l'époque - ces deux figures possèdent, dans leur silhouette et dans leurs proportions, une rigueur formelle et une dimension abstraite qui, en Afrique, servaient à souligner la valeur archétypale et symbolique des figures ancestrales sacrées.

Nicoleta Sulea Brancusi’s La prière La prière was the first serious commission Brancusi received. In 1907 a widow by the name of Eliza Stanescu-Popovici approached him with the request that he create a sculptor commemorating her late husband. The memorial would be placed in the cemetery in which her husband was buried. This was in Buzau: a small Romanian town in which the couple had lived. The usual design for such a sculpture consisted of a distraught and weeping woman prostrating herself at the feet of a bust depicting the deceased. However, Brancusi adopted a different format. He sculpted a kneeling, nude woman with only one arm. Given the image’s controversial nature he decided to claim the sculpture was a representation of a prayer hence the name ‘the prayer’. Brancusi is believed to have derived his inspiration from the works of Cezanne, in particular the Bathers. The model he used is presumed to be Marthe, Brancusi’s mistress and a figure we know little about.

The original sculpture was constructed from plaster while Brancusi was in desperate poverty; however, it has since been lost. Originally, it would have been erected in the Buzau cemetery and would most likely have remained the property of Stanescu-Popovici until her death. A different version, constructed later can be found on display in La Madeleine station in Paris.

Brancusi’s goal with La priere, as with most of his work, was to capture the essence of his painting in a minimalistic way. He scorned the baroque style preferring to use overly simplistic designs so as not to detract from the overarching idea of what he was trying to depict. He believed that through simple imagery it was easier for the purer idea, in this case a prayer, to emerge. The sculpture was highly controversial at the time for being so out of form with the rest of the funeral sculptures of the era and it was seen as indecent for showing the naked female form in a cemetery, a place of solemn peace and respect. It was also one of the first sculptures to take a step away from the idea that the best way to show an idea was to attempt to mimic its form exactly as the Renaissance artists had believed. La prière is a sculpture of a kneeling woman and yet the concept that Brancusi is really trying to portray is the form of a prayer. This was a movement towards abstract imagery that meant something different to what it displayed. This enabled artists to show abstract concepts such as beauty, truth and courage through representative imagery. The commission also provided Brancusi with funds that helped him to produce more famous works such as the Bird in space.

I think that La prière is an interesting piece of work and that Brancusi was successful in his attempt at portraying the idea of a prayer. However, I think that the rough shape, the crudely done face and the missing limb are all unnecessary. The idea of a prayer can be expressed by a kneeling woman. The additional features such as her nudity and her missing limb are features added in an attempt to shock the observer, Brancusi could have instead have

attempted to create something more aesthetically appealing instead of going for a more chaotic and rundown look. I think that considering the location of the sculpture, a cemetery, this was wholly unnecessary and can be seen as highly distasteful considering its general broken down, decaying look that could be seen to be representative of the decay of the bodies it is in close proximity to. People visiting their loved ones would have seen this rather distressing decaying body, with only one limb, kneeling. It could even be seen to be expressing the futility of prayer which would disgust people even more. While the sculpture in itself provides powerful and well done imagery I feel that due its location it was distasteful. Especially considering that it represents prayer through a roughly done figure, missing a limb, which looks to be slowly decaying. This almost certainly can be seen as ridiculing prayer, and therefore religion, and the belief of cemetery visitors that their loved ones are in heaven.

Felix Vardag-Hunter

Peu de gens savent que „La Prière”, sculptée par Constantin Brancusi, était au début un monument funéraire, exécuté à Paris, dans son atelier de Montparnasse.

Initialement, l’artiste avait conçu un ensemble sous la forme d’une plate-forme à trois marches sur laquelle une femme couverte d’un voile pleure courbée de douleur.

Brancusi avait étudié les monuments funéraires de l’époque qu’il avait vus dans les cimetières de Paris et qui l’avaient impressionné.

Mais la femme qui pleurait lui semblait plutôt mourir de froid et alors il se révolte contre le conventionalisme de celle-ci et le sculpteur détruit la maquette (qui est pourtant gardée dans une photo).

Alors il va refaire cet ouvrage dans un autre esprit, même au risque de ne plus respecter exactement les clauses du contrat.

Brancusi a employé un modèle, une jeune femme voluptueuse et il a pris une photo de celle-ci exactement dans la position dans laquelle il imaginait son nouveau monument.

Cette fois-ci, la femme agenouillée ne pleure plus, mais elle fait des prières avec piété.

Et ce qui est aussi important est que la femme est nue. C’était quelque chose de rare pour un monument funéraire.

Une femme nue, dans un cimetière de Buzau, aurait choqué. Pour éviter tout scandale, le sculpteur recourt à la simplification des formes, en éliminant beaucoup de détails anatomiques, en renonçant pratiquement et partiellement à la manière figurative.

Finalement, le sculpteur toujours mécontent, ne réussissant pas à trouver un équilibre de son ouvrage, décide de lui couper un bras.

“La Prière” est une sculpture qui attire et fascine, une sculpture que l’on se rappelle une fois vue.

Elle reste dans la mémoire grâce à la finesse avec laquelle elle est réalisée et grâce au message fort qu’elle transmet.

A présent, cet ouvrage est exposé dans la Galerie d’Art Moderne Roumaine du Musée National d’Art de Bucarest.

Si on connait son histoire, on peut parler de tout un itinéraire de cette statue! Réalisée en 1910 par le célébre sculpteur, comme partie du monument funéraire à la mémoire de Petre Stanescu, étant commandée par la femme du défunt, Eliza Stanescu, la sculpture originale a été emplacée dans le cimetière Dumbrava, en 1914, par Brancusi luimême. En 1956, cette sculpture a été acquise par le Musée National d’Art. Une reproduction autorisée de la sculpture, en bronze, est arrivée sur le tombeau du défunt de Buzau, en 1974.

20 ans plus tard, la reproduction a été volée, étant trouvée deux ans plus tard, dans un dépôt de Bistrita-Nasaud. En janvier 2005, la reproduction qui vaut 150.000 euros, a été de nouveau volée et elle n’a plus été trouvée.

Andreea Mandescu

Mlle Pogany The Mlle. Pogany consumed Brancusi's attention for about twenty years. Mlle Pogany was originally a marble bust, carved from memory in 1912. He then made bronze and plaster casts from the original. He later carved a second version, again in marble, in 1919. A third version was made in 1931 and is currently on display in the Philidelphia Museum of Art. Although most stylistic features are constant, the later the version, the more increasingly abstract. The eyes are large due to Brancusi deeming them to be the most beautiful aspect of Mlle Pogany.

The arms are long and slender to show gracefulness.

The bust is based on Margit Pogany, a Hungarian art student Brancusi met in December 2010, who quickly became both his model/muse and his lover before she left the city in January. She later remarked about how each time Brancusi finished a new bust in clay, each one was beautiful and she would always plead to Brancusi to keep it but he would just throw

it back into the boxful of clay that was in the corner of his studio.

Brancusi thought of Margit to be his muse so he made this out of memory after a few years of not seeing each other. Brancusi is one of few artists who completely skip the casting stage of busts and go straight to marble. He completely foregoes use of a plaster/clay cast and instead carves straight from the marble block. This makes for a harder job but significantly reduces the amount of imperfections in the finished product that may stem from things such as damage to a cast, etc.

When the original went on display in The Armory Room in New York, in 1913, it was ridiculed for looking like an egg. It was made fun of almost as much as nude descending a staircase. Brancusi just ignored them. He claimed that people were fools for calling his work "abstract" as he claimed that "abstract" art is the most real, as it represents the core, the soul of an object/creature. One particular critic, Charles H. Caffin, was noted to have understood what Brancusi was trying to accomplish even though he also wrote "is it a lady or an egg?"

However, many believe that Caffin was simply mocking the people who were at the armory show in 1913 who were making fun of it and calling it an egg due to its shape. Caffin wrote, Brancusi “has stripped away the partial disguise ‌ and revealed unashamed the naked, essential facts of structure. That he has enlarged, exaggerated, if you like, the size of the eyes, is again only following a well established principle, by which an artist may accentuate certain features of his composition at the expense of the rest.â€? The style is primarily known to be Brancusi's own style, taking little from other artists, if anything. As the versions become later, the head becomes larger and more egg-shaped, the eyes enlarge further, the arms distort more and become more alien. The final version's ears are virtually non-existent. The version's become more and more "abstract," a term which Brancusi hated due to the fact that he believed it showed the core or the soul of something and was therefore more real than just a copy of something.

Personally, I think it's a well made marble bust, if rather simplistic, with the oversized eyes giving off an impression of innocence. The impressive aspect is that Brancusi carved directly into the marble, rather than using a clay or plaster cast. It was also purely from memory, which is an accomplishment in its own right, especially since Mlle Pogany herself said it was somewhat accurate as it only uses simple geometric shapes. Then again, of course simple geometric shapes are aesthetically pleasing, that's how the mind works. It sees something it's familiar with, something which it can relate to or something which just fits the eye naturally, and it views it as beautiful or pretty or marvellous.

Andreas West

Mademoiselle Pogany est une statue créée par Constantin Brâncuși en 1913. Il avait connu le peintre hongroise Margit Pogany en 1909 et lui a demandé d’être modèle pour un buste. "J'ai posé pour lui à plusieurs reprises. Chaque fois, il commençait et terminait un nouveau buste, en argile. Chacun était beau, merveilleusement réel. Je lui demandais de le garder comme une version finale, mais il éclatait de rire chaque fois et jetait le buste en arrière, dans la boîte avec argile du coin de l’atelier, à ma grande déception ".

Margit Pogany a remarqué et ensuite consigné l'impression éprouvée à la vue d'une tête en marbre dans l'atelier de Brancusi: "J'ai réalisé que j'étais moimême, bien que la tête n'avait aucun de mes traits. Les yeux dominaient tout.

Mais, en regardant le sculpteur, j'ai remarqué qu’il me scrutait du coin de l’oeil tandis qu’il parlait avec mes amis.

Le fait que j’ai réussi à m’y reconnaître lui a fait un grand plaisir. »

Brâncuși a créé cinq versions de « Mademoiselle Pogany » pendant deux décennies : le plâtre à l'origine remonte en 1912. Il a été suivi par les performances en marbre et bronze dans les années 1913, 1919, 1931 et 1933.

"Mademoiselle Pogany" de 1913 existe aussi dans une version plus récente de plâtre et 4 versions de bronze avec les cheveux couverts de patine. Une de ces versions en bronze se trouve au Musée d'Art Moderne (MOMA) à New York.

"Mademoiselle Pogany" sculptée en 1919 est réalisée en marbre, montée sur un piédestal de pierre, qui à son tour est placé sur trois bases. « Mademoiselle Pogany » de 1931 est exécutée en marbre blanc sur un socle de pierre. « Mademoiselle Pogany III » ", réalisée en 1933, est en bronze poli et a une pierre plinthe qui est placée sur un socle en bois. « Mademoiselle Pogany » I et III (de 1912 et de 1931) se trouvent à Philadelphia Museum of Art de Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, aux États-Unis.

Une réplique de la sculpture « Mademoiselle Pogany » de Constantin Brancusi se trouve au Musée d’Art de Craiova. C’est une pièce controversée, réalisée pendant les années `50 dans le moule de Brancusi, par Octavian Moşescu, un ancien apprenti du sculpteur.

Andreea Mandescu

The Endless Column by Constantin Brancusi The Sculptural Ensemble of Constantin Brâncuși at Târgu Jiu is a homage to the Romanian heroes of the First World War. The ensemble comprises three sculptures: the Table of Silence, the Gate of the Kiss and the Column of the Infinite, on an axis 1,300 metres long, oriented west to east. The Ensemble is considered to be one of the great works of 20th century outdoor sculpture.

The Endless Column (often it is called the Column of Infinite) symbolizes the "Infinite Sacrifice" of the Romanian soldiers. ‘The Endless Column stacks 17 rhomboidal modules, with a half-unit at the top. The incomplete top unit is thought to be the element that expresses the concept of the infinite.’ 1 Brâncuși had experimented with this form as early as 1918, with an oak version now found in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The modules were made in the central workshop of 1 Wikipedia, Sculptural Ensemble of Constantin Brâncuși at Târgu Jiu, The Endless Column, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_Column

Petroşani (Atelierele Centrale Petroşani), assembled by Brâncuși's friend engineer Ştefan Georgescu-Gorjan (1905–1985), and completed on October 27, 1938. All 17 rhomboidal modules accumulate a total height of 29.3 m.

In the 1950s, the Romanian communist government planned to demolish the column, but this plan was never executed. After the Romanian Revolution of 1989 and the fall of the Communist regime, there was interest in restoring the column, which by that time suffered from tilting, metal corrosion, and an unstable foundation. For these reasons the site was listed in the 1996 World Monuments Watch by the World Monuments Fund. ‘The restoration was facilitated by the Fund, which organized meetings for the stakeholders in 1998 and provided funding through American Express. Subsequently, the site was restored between 1998 and 2000 through a collaborative effort of the Romanian Government, the World Monuments Fund, the World Bank, and other Romanian and international groups.’ 2

The main artistic work of Constantin Brancusi – the Endless Column is one of the most amazing sculptures from the last century. Austere and perfectly balanced transmits clearly its spiritual message as told by the sculptor himself: “The reality embodied by the Column – together with my other two signs in stone – is the impetus, the awareness of the wedding with the endless universe which we celebrate and the longing for the absolute which enlivens heroes.”

The citizens of Tirgu-Jiu had observed the erection of the Column with skepticism; one person suggested that it looked incomplete and ought to have a statue of a soldier on its top, or an eagle. Brancusi replied "calmly, but with a bitter smile," that he didn't want to see "anything but the sky" over the Column, and said, "You don't understand what I bestow on you here." He must have felt that the Column emanated a certain power, for he suggested to a few friends that they put their hands on it.

If there are little early descriptions of the Tirgu-Jiu Column, it has not lacked the attention of art historians in the past thirty years. One writer has stated, "The shape of the Tirgu-Jiu Endless Column derived partially if not wholly from his memory of the serrated forms of Oltenian folk architecture and artifacts, especially in Hobita [Brancusi's native village]." Yet, 2 Wikipedia, Sculptural Ensemble of Constantin Brâncuși at Târgu Jiu, The Endless Column, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_Column

the Tirgu-Jiu Column derives wholly from the several Columns Brancusi made beginning in 1918, none of which, whether in Quinn's collection, in Steichen's garden, or in his studio, had any association with either death, commemoration, or architecture. In fact, the Column and indeed all the other models in the Tirgu-Jiu monument were already present in Brancusi's studio, and they were able to be adapted to a new situation because of their continuously suggestive ambiguity. However, the suggestion has escalated to fantasy in this same writer's claim that the Column's design gives "the impression that the column has suddenly materialized out of the ground," and that "we automatically connect [the half- module at the top] with its imagined other half and the column thus seems to continue out of sight." Such notions cannot prevent us from seeing that no design could be more like a base or bottom than the Column's lower half- module with its surrounding molding, which suggests that the Column is standing there, ‘like its versions of 1918 and 1920, and that the Column is just as endless as the much shorter ones while very visibly ending at a much higher point.’ 3

The Column and its title are a poetic construct, ‘a metaphor of transcendence’, of endless ascent. ‘The succession of its grand forms, mounting as if in rhythmic pulsation, carries the eyes inexorably upward, and the spirit with them.’ 4 The Column was, most likely, never read downwards by the eyes.

Endless Column, in its ever-increasing dimensions, was not a subject for random enlargement

by Brancusi. Rather, its significance seems to have changed with the occasion that called it forth and with each change in dimensions. The first version was scaled to the size of a man.

The 231/2-foot version was related to the vegetation in Edward Steichen's garden. The 96foot Column standing in a field in Tirgu-Jiu is, in its thrust to the sky, the shape of transcendence, a link between heaven and earth. We can only imagine the special poetry of the unrealized final Column- thirteen times as tall as the previous one, in polished chrome steel, set on the Chicago lakefront. This ‘luminous image would probably not have looked dense enough to appear as a link between heaven and earth. In its seemingly transparent skin, it would have been the agent of their fusion, dissolving in its own reflections of the water below and the sky above.’ 5

Every moment the sacredness is poured on the banks of Jiu River through the Endless Column; an immense yet silent sacredness.

“This is the message of my Column, watched by the Table of Silence and the Kissing Gate … to burn like a flame … to get transformed in lightening in order to unite the sky with the earth.”

3 Sidney Geist, Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol 16, No. 1, 1990, Brancusi’s Endless Column 4 Sidney Geist, Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol 16, No. 1, 1990, Brancusi’s Endless Column

5 Sidney Geist, Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol 16, No. 1, 1990, Brancusi’s Endless Column

“Doesn’t its inner rhythm from one clepsydra to the next reveal the countless pulsations of the universes that ceaselessly expand and contract?” “I am no longer of this world; I am far from myself, separated from my own body. I find myself among essential things.” – Constantin Brancusi Bryan Wong

La Colonne sans fin

La Colonne de l’infini… Quelle signification pourrait-elle avoir au premier regard ? Elle pourrait mettre en évidence l’immortalité, l’infini sans abîme.

Paradoxalement, après une recherche plus détaillée, cette colonne a une signification totalement opposée. Si on tient compte de l’histoire et aussi du folklore, on apprendra que cet ouvrage est un symbole de la mort. Après le départ des hommes roumains à la guerre, les veuves ont demandé à Brancusi de créer une œuvre représentative pour la mort de leurs maris. Comme je viens de préciser, le paradoxe intervient lorsqu’on apprend qu’en fait la Colonne de l’Infini est composée de symboles des cercueils qui représentent les Roumains morts pendant la guerre. Ainsi de toute part, l’immortalité prend place à la mort cruelle, qui s’était installée dans notre pays, à cette époque-là. Le sentiment de la mort envahit nos âmes, dès que l’on regarde cet ouvrage de Brancusi, dont on connaît la signification. Cela pourrait sembler macabre, même trop cruel, mais finalement on se rend compte qu’il est seulement réaliste. La colonne est en fait la réflexion de la douleur, de l’amertume des Roumains et surtout des veuves en cette période-là de grande souffrance. La mélancolie éveillée dans mon esprit et dans ma raison, lorsque j’ai regardé pour la première fois l’œuvre de Brancusi, a été tout à fait différente.

J’ai saisi pour la première fois dans quelle mesure une œuvre puisse être concluante et j’ai apprécié la profondeur de son silence. L’infini dépasse les bords de l’espace et m’envahit, sans que je puisse me protéger, sans avoir aucun point d’appui… Tout est devenu étrange et sombre. Dans mon esprit il n’y a que des images de la souffrance des soldats roumains de cette période de terreur, de guerre. La mimique de mon visage a changé et j’étais presque absente, parce que mon esprit errait probablement dans le passé chargé de souffrance, un passé impitoyable. J’ai voulu m’agenouiller à la mémoire des martyrs, de leurs veuves et pourtant quelque chose

m’empêchait de le faire. Je me suis rendu compte que c’était le présent dans lequel je plongeais… Il était si proche de moi ! Je vivais au présent et je vivais pleinement. C’était d’ailleurs mon devoir envers mes ancêtres. Ils avaient sacrifié leurs vies justement pour ça… J’en étais si consciente mais pourtant je me suis fâchée pour n’avoir pas pu ouvrir mon cœur, m’abandonner pour un instant au passé, me prosterner devant la mémoire de mes ancêtres. J’ai pu seulement pleurer dans mon âme… C’est étrange, n’est-ce pas ? Tout le monde dit qu’il faut vivre le présent, qu’il est le plus important, mais quoi faire lorsque le passé inconsolable revient sans cesse et qu’il nous demande grâce ? Il faut se soumettre au présent ou offrir de la consolation et de la reconnaissance au passé ? Un mystère peut être, tout comme la signification absolue de la Colonne de l’Infini. Si on veut aspirer à l’Infini, à la perfection, allez et regardez l’ouvrage du grand sculpteur Constantin Brancusi parce que c’est lui qui peut représenter, presque totalement, la perfection !

Bianca Băluţă

Chapter 10/Chapitre 10 : Aphorisms, maxims, sayings/ Aphorismes/Maximes/ citations

Constantin Brancusi - Ses citations

Sculpteur français d'origine roumaine (1876-1957)

dont l'oeuvre

renouvela profondément les concepts modernes de la forme en sculpture.

• Regardez les choses jusqu'à ce que vous les voyiez; les plus près de Dieu les ont vues.

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Quand nous ne sommes plus enfants, nous sommes déjà morts.

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L'artiste n'est pas un animal de luxe, mais un animal austère. L'art ne se commet que dans l'austérité et le drame, comme un crime parfait.

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Les choses ne sont pas difficiles à faire, ce qui est difficile c'est de nous mettre en état de les faire.

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Crée comme Dieu, ordonne comme un roi, travaille comme un esclave!

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Ce n'est pas l'oiseau que je sculpte, mais le vol.

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Ce n'est pas l'enveloppe extérieure qui est réelle, mais l'essence des choses.

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Ma statue ..., c'est la synthèse de la femme, l'Eternel féminin de Goethe, réduit à son essence. Cinq ans, j'ai travaillé, j'ai fait dire à la matière l'inexprimable ... . Et je crois, enfin vainqueur, avoir dépassé la matière.

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Ce qui a vraiment un sens dans l'art, c'est la joie. Vous n'avez pas besoin de comprendre.

Ce que vous voyez vous rend heureux ? Tout est là.

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La simplicité est la complexité résolue.

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La simplicité n'est pas un but dans l'art, mais on arrive à la simplicité malgré soi en s'approchant du sens réel des choses.

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La taille directe est la vraie route de la sculpture mais ça n'est pas le bon chemin pour ceux qui ne savent pas marcher.

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C'est en taillant la pierre que l'on découvre l'esprit de la matière, sa propre mesure.

La main pense et unit la pensée à la matière. C'est l'acte même du sculpteur face à un matériau dont la connaissance ne s'apprend que lentement, et réserve toujours un inattendu qu'il faudra résoudre sans pouvoir jamais rien ajouter, par seul retranchement. Il faut tailler et non blesser la pierre, trouver la solution devant l'apparition d'une veine ou d'une tache non prévue : il faut savoir lutter avec la pierre, la caresser, la polir, savoir avec angoisse comme avec joie, faire surgir la forme que l'on porte en soi, mais qu'elle peut aussi nous avoir inspiré selon sa texture, la forme même du bloc que l'on a choisi ou trouvé.

Mihai Cosmin Dumbrava

Chapter 11/Chapitre 11 : Impressions and memories/Impressions et souvenirs Travelling to Romania was a truly unforgettable experience. In my relatively short period of time I got to experience their history; as we travelled around Romania witnessing world renowned historical icons from Bran Castle to The Palace of Parliament in Bucharest. I witnessed a fascinating cuisine including many delicious meat dishes along with numerous pickled food stuffs as well as having my first taste of brain when in Craiova. But most of all I got a firsthand experience of their culture, meeting some incredible pupils who showed remarkable warmth and generosity to foreigners who they knew little about upon our arrival. By the end of my short stay I certainly felt as if I had known them far longer than the few precious days I got to spend with them. I simply cannot wait to see some of you again in September and look forward to showing you what our country is like.

George Garnett

Reflections on Romania Our trip to Romania, as part of the “In the Steps of Brancusi” projects was a thoroughly memorable experience. We met our very friendly Romanian counterparts who treated us to an extremely loud traditional Romanian meal, took us to see the works of Brancusi, and showed us their school.

We also visited Brasov and Bucharest. The two most interesting locations that we visited, from my point of view, were Bran Castle and the Palace of the Parliaments. The former due to its history and location; the latter thanks to its sheer size and the power that was once wielded there.

The trip was an excellent opportunity for us to see Romania and get to know both each other and our Romanian counterparts better.

Ben Donaghue The trip to Romania this Easter was certainly something to be remembered: we saw Brancusi’s beautiful sculptures, experienced a new culture unfamiliar to us and made new friends who we will cherish for years to come! We hope to see you again sometime in the not

too distant future!!

David McKenna

Our Visit to Romania

Going to Romania was an extremely interesting trip. It was great to meet so many new, friendly and fun people and to see cities such as Craiova, Brasov and Bucharest. It was also great to see the works of Brancusi and to visit culturally important sites such as Vlad the Impaler’s castle. It was a truly amazing experience and a privilege to meet all of you. I look forward to seeing some of you again next year.

Felix Vardag-Hunter

The trip to Romania has been an utterly unforgettable experience. Throughout this project, I deepened my knowledge in Constantin Brancusi’s artwork, Constantin Brancusi himself, and most important of all: Romanian history and cultures. I was pleasantly surprised by the passionate welcome that the Romanian students have given me, and I was able to build invaluable friendships with them.

Bryan Wong

Romania is a country with a very charming culture. One of the most enjoyable things to me is walking around in the city during night time. The streets are beautiful and the foods are delicious. Most importantly, it is a pleasure to meet all people in the project. The basketball match on the last day was one of the highlights of my trip. It is very rare for me to have a chance of making friends in foreign countries and I do hope this friendship can last forever.

Peter Jiang

J’ai passé uns des plus beaux moments, dans la compagnie de nos amis, les collègues d’ Angleterre! Je suis heureuse d’avoir pu communiquer avec eux, d’avoir partagé nos connaissances et nos idéaux. J’ai remarqué qu'ils sont très réceptifs au nouveau. Ils ont voulu apprendre des choses sur la Roumanie et ont été enchantés des beautés de notre pays. Nous nous sommes amusés, nous avons ri, nous nous sommes sentis très bien ensemble, lors de leur visite à Craiova. Je suis heureuse d’avoir participé à ce projet, parce que j'ai connu des gens extraordinaires !

Andreea Mandescu

Je suis heureux que l’on ait pu connaître d'autres personnes. Je ne m'attendais pas à lier une si belle amitié dans un temps si court ! J'ai acquis une expérience inoubliable et j'ai hâte de vous revoir tous, l’année prochaine!

Cosmin Dumbrava

Le projet " Sur les traces de Brancusi" est l'un des plus beaux projets auquel j'ai participé. Je suis heureuse d’avoir fait partie de ce merveilleux projet, parce que grâce à lui j'ai rencontré des gens extraordinaires avec lesquels j'ai passé le plus beau week-end dans ma ville, Craiova, qui se trouve au sud de la Roumanie. Pendant leur visite nous avons fait un petit voyage dans la ville représentative de Brancusi, Targu-Jiu, dans le département de Gorj. Là, nous avons visité ses oeuvres et pas loin de Targu-Jiu, à Hobita, la demeure historique du grand sculpteur, classée monument national. C'est une belle expérience que je voudrais répéter tout le temps.

Georgiana Grigorie

Pour moi, ce projet a été tout à fait spécial parce qu’il m’a permis de connaître des personnes distinguées, mais pas seulement pour ça.

L'expérience gagnée, grâce à ce projet, est incroyable et je suis heureux que nous y ayons pu participer.

Alex Lungu

Cela a été ma première expérience pendant laquelle j’ai collaboré avec des étudiants d’un autre pays. Leur visite en Roumanie a été une très bonne chose parce que nous nous sommes mieux connus, nous avons lié d’amitié et nous avons passé une bonne fin de semaine. Je suis content de participer à ce projet et j'espère pouvoir rester en contact même aussi après la fin du projet.

Filip Albert

Lorsque j'ai appris du projet „Sur les pas de Brancusi", j'ai été agréablement surpris et j’ai tenu à m’y impliquer. Ce qui m'a attiré, c'était l'occasion de communiquer et de partager des informations sur une personnalité représentative de l’art roumain avec des jeunes de même âge, mais d'un pays étranger. Le projet a évolué et j'ai eu le plaisir d'interagir directement avec nos partenaires de projet. Le temps passé ensemble à Craiova et à Targu-Jiu a été merveilleux et j'ai beaucoup appris sur les gars , le Royaume Uni et sur leur lycée, Winchester College. Ce fut une expérience agréable et je me souviendrai avec grand plaisir de ce projet.

Catalin Durla

D’AUTRES IMPRESSIONS…

Seulement de très bonnes impressions sur l’expérience acquise à la suite du déroulement du projet « Sur les pas de Brancusi » ! Si j’y pense bien, je regrette quelque chose : le fait d’avoir passé ensemble seulement une journée ! Ce genre d’activités enrichissent nos connaissances et nos compétences, nous rapprochent les uns des autres, nous aident à élargir notre horizon culturel, en un mot, ce projet a contribué à notre éducation. Je rentrerais n’importe quand à Hobita, en pensant affectueusement à mes amis d’Angleterre !

Loredana Maria Dragan

Quoi dire premièrement? Il y a beaucoup de choses à avouer, tant de commentaires à faire, mais le plus important est que je suis très contente. Pourquoi? Parce que j’ai connu de beaux gens, des jeunes extraordinaires qui m’ont montré la beauté d’une amitié, même à distance, la beauté d’une autre culture.

J’ai passé une merveilleuse journée avec nos amis qui habitent en Angleterre. Je les apprécie pour leur désir d’apprendre nos danses traditionnelles et de savoir beaucoup de choses à propos de notre culture, notre langue et les plats traditionnels.

J’espère que nous resterons en contact et aussi qu’ils sont partis de Roumanie avec de beaux souvenirs.

Bianca Baluta

Chapter 12/Chapitre 12: The Teams/Les Equipes UK

Roumanie

Conclusion: Evaluation

UK responses View all responses

Summary At the end of the project, what is eTwinning for you?

Studying in a different way

2

9%

Learning about another culture

8

36%

Improving my ICT skills

1

5%

Using a foreign language

0

0%

Having fun

3

14%

Using my talents and abilities

1

5%

Learning about Brancusi

6

27%

Nothing in particular

1

5%

What did you do in the project: "In the steps of Brancusi?"

6

12%

I researched aspects of Brancusi's life and work

10

20%

I wrote and posted messages in the forums

10

20%

I wrote a message on the wall

6

12%

I communicated via a Facebook group

3

6%

I uploaded a photo/photos

3

6%

I sent messages via a blog

2

4%

I designed a logo

9

18%

I wrote a message on wallwisher

1

2%

I wrote articles

How did you communicate with others in the project?

Chat

5

24%

email

0

0%

Twinspace mailbox

8

38%

Facebook

6

29%

Whatsapp

2

10%

Which ICT tools did you use?

Chat

5

28%

Photo tools

1

6%

Word processing

9

50%

Wallwisher

1

6%

Other

2

11%

Did you learn some Romanian as part of this project?

Yes

10

91%

No

1

9%

What mark would you give to your individual work (10 to 0, 10 being the top mark)

0

0

0%

1

0

0%

2

1

9%

3

0

0%

4

0

0%

5

1

9%

6

1

9%

7

4

36%

8

2

18%

9

0

0%

10

2

18%

What mark would you give to the final result (10 to 0, 10 being the top mark)

0

0

0%

1

0

0%

2

0

0%

3

0

0%

4

0

0%

5

1

9%

6

3

27%

7

1

9%

8

2

18%

9

3

27%

10

1

9%

Did you have access to a computer suite or a computer connected to the internet at school?

Yes

11

100%

No

0

0%

Did you have the time, support and prepration needed for the project?

Yes

9

82%

No

2

18%

What did you like about the project? . n/a I liked being able to meet new people in different countries in order to share our experiences and work towards a common target Meeting our parners from Romania and visiting the historic Bran Castle Experiencing another culture and learning about its history and diversity. Talking to Romanians learning about a different culture and the history surrounding it. Meeting new people It was enjoyable learning about a foreign culture, and meeting and interacting with people from a country that I have never met anyone from

What did you dislike about the project?

It was disappointing not to be able to actually go to Romania to meet the students, and also that it was almost made to seem like a chore, as opposed to something that I could enjoy and carry out with enthusiasm. Nothing The very long car journeys . n/a I cannot think one one. Some of the poeple in it did not work hard enough. Pull their weight). Not much Rather short time spent in Romania with the people we were meant to be working with The unimpressive defenses of aforementioned Bran Castle.

How would you have improved the project? perhaps spending more time with the Romanians, fun as the Brasov section was it was a great deal of traveling. Also perhaps a more thorough research into the shower facilities of the hotels might be prudent, two out of three of them having rather questionable showers. Nothing Possibly more time spent on the interaction with the students, rather than a lot of work on Brancusi, which in all honesty I found to be quite dull. However, this is just my opinion and I'm sure some people found learning about Brancusi very interesting, but art history jut isn't my thing. . Allowed for a longer time to be spent in Craiova fewer long car journeys unknown Perhaps if we spent more time in Div. on the project and did less up to house, we would have been more productive. I would have make the slackers work harder.

At times very few people seemed to be pulling there weight. Increased the workload to the slackers in the group. Not sure

13 responses View all responses Publish analytics

Summary A la fin du projet, qu'est-ce qu'eTwinning pour vous?

10

25%

Apprendre une autre culture

6

15%

Améliorer mes capacités en TICE

3

8%

Utiliser une langue étrangere

6

15%

S'amuser

2

5%

Utiliser mes talents et capacités

3

8%

10

25%

0

0%

Etudier d'une maniere différente

Apprendre sur Brancusi Rien de spécial

Qu'avez-vous fait dans "Sur les Pas de Brancusi" ?

J'ai écrit des articles

10

17%

J'ai fait des recherches sur Brancusi

12

20%

J'ai écrit et posté des commentaires dans les forums

9

15%

J'ai écrit un message sur le wall

4

7%

J'ai communiqué par un groupe fb

8

14%

J'ai téléchargé des photos

4

7%

J'ai envoyé des messages sur le blog

0

0%

10

17%

2

3%

J'ai dessiné un logo J'ai écrit un message sur wallwisher

Comment avez-vous communiqué avec les autres?

Chat

3

9%

email

1

3%

Twinspace mailbox

10

31%

Facebook

11

34%

Whatsapp

7

22%

Les étrangers ont une personnalité très puterinica. Peut communiquer ouvertement avec eux par tout intermédiaire. Ma conjecture est que la façon la plus courante de communiquer avec eux est eTwinning.

Quels TICE avez-vous utilisé?

10

43%

Logiciel de photos

3

13%

Logiciel de texte

5

22%

Wallwisher

3

13%

Other

2

9%

Chat

Avez-vous amelioré votre francais?

Oui

12

100%

Non

0

0%

Quelle note donneriez-vous a votre travail individuel (10 a 0, 10 étant la meilleure note)

0

0

0%

1

0

0%

2

0

0%

3

0

0%

4

0

0%

5

0

0%

6

0

0%

7

1

8%

8

4

31%

9

4

31%

10

4

31%

Quelle note donneriez-vous au rĂŠsultat final (10 a 0, 10etant la meilleure note) 0

0

0%

1

0

0%

2

0

0%

3

0

0%

4

0

0%

5

0

0%

6

0

0%

7

0

0%

8

2

15%

9

3

23%

10

8

62%

Avez-vous eu la possibilitĂŠ d'acces a une salle d'informatique ou a un ordinateur connecte a Internet?

Oui

11

85%

Non

2

15%

Compte tenu du projet, non. Seulement ordinateur personnel a eu lieu toutes les implications liées à ce projet.

Avez-vous eu temps, le soutien et la préparation nécessaire pour ce projet?

Oui

11

85%

Non

2

15%

Qu'est-ce que vous avez aimé?

J'ai particulièrement apprécié le fait que l'anglais sont venus en Roumanie et que nous avons appris ensemble de Brancusi. Mais pourquoi les étrangers en général impliqués dans le projet sont l'attitude extraordinaire et digne d'apprendre de nouvelles choses, j'ai fait une impression aussi. Genre êtes une personne communicative qui aspire à être impliqué dans quoi que ce soit, et qui met l'âme dans ce qu'il fait, et dans ce projet, j'ai eu l'occasion de communiquer avec d'autres personnes, des gens extraordinaires. J'ai apprécié l'occasion de rencontrer nos collègues anglais du projet « Sur les pas de Brancusi ». travailler en equipe J’ai enrichi mes connaissances sur Brancusi et j’apprécie plus l’art à présent. J’ai aimé communiquer avec des élèves de l’Angleterre. J’ai aimé le plus leur visite à Craiova et que nous avons visité ensemble les ouvrages de Brancusi à Tg-Jiu. J`ai apprecié le plus la rencontre avec nous partenaires de projet de Grande Bretagne. J'ai aime ce que j'ai pu rencontrer des gens formidables et j'ai eu une extraordinaire experience. J’ai aimé ce projet parce que j’ai eu l’occasion de connaître de nouvelles personnes, de leur présenter les habitudes et les coutumes de mon pays, d’exercer mes connaissances en langues étrangères J'ai aimé les gens et les liens d'amitié J'ai aime le fait que j'ai eu la posibilite de comuniquer avec les etudiants dans l'Angleterre j'aime que j'ai rencontre des nouvelles persones qui ont une autre culture que moi,que nous avons fait des excursions d'ou j'ai appris beaucoup de nouvelles choses sur Brancusi et son oeuvres. `ai aimé la réunion avec nous partenaires de projet dans l`Angleterre.

Qu'est-ce que vous n'avez pas aimé rien Il n'y avait pas de choses incompris par moi dans ce projet. Je n'ai pas aimé qu'à la fin du projet, j'ai rencontré des difficultés à accéder à mon compte. Il n'y a rien que je n'aie aimé. Je n’ai pas aimé le fait qu’après tant de correspondance agréable avec nos collègues étrangers nous n’ayons eu que deux jours à notre disposition pour les passer dans leur compagnie. Je considère que s’ils avaient pu passer plus de temps dans notre pays , ils auraient pu se faire une image plus complète sur tout ce que la Roumanie représente . Depuis mars j’accède difficilement sur twinspace. J’ai tout aimé : les thèmes, la collaboration avec des jeunes de notre âge. J'aurais aimé être plus d'élèves impliqués dans le projet J'ai ete desole que les etrangers ont reste seulement quelques jours dans ma ville,j'aurais aime passer plus temps avec ils. Je n'ai aimé pas le fait que nous n'avons passé pas plus de temps ensemble Il serait bien de passer beaucoup de temps avec nous,dans Craiova Il n'y avait rien que je n'ai aimait pas de ce projet

Comment auriez-vous amelioré le projet?

Je voudrais faire un changement dans l'interface du projet pour une utilisation plus facile Plus seriosite et implication de notre parte(des eleves). J’aurais voulu pouvoir voyager à Paris pour visiter l’atelier de Brancusi. Je panse que beaucoup de réunions face à face sont bons J’aurais voulu que les amis d’Angleterre passent plus de temps à Craiova pour mieux connaître notre lycée et notre ville.

J’aurais voulu visiter leur Collège de Winchester. J`aurais amelioré le projet par l`organisation d’un voyage au pays partenaire pour l'échange d'expériences. plus documentation J'aurai plus préoccupé de visite de lieux où Brancusi les a veçu. Il est parfait comme il est. Je ne changerais rien. Je considère que ce projet pourrait s’améliorer s’il existait des moyens c’est-à-dire de l’argent, qui nous permettraient de visiter nous-aussi le pays de nos partenaires de projet, l’Angleterre, et cela offrirait aussi aux Anglais l’occasion de connaître nos traditions et notre art sans payer le voyage je n'ameliorerais le project parce que, pour moi est un project tres beau. Je crois que le projet a ete magnifique et je ne peux pas l'ameliorer

Number of daily responses