Page 25 - Studio International - October 1972

Brancusi at tarnished to the colour of dark bronze or wood. monuments from his own vocabulary of motifs,
in the town in which he had worked in a
One's first impression of the Column in its own
Turgu Jiu area is that it is neglected and unwanted; its dye-works when as a child of nine he first ran
substantiality both in terms of its fame, and its
away from his native village.' During his long
physical mass and engineering achievement, exile in Paris, Brancusi had cultivated his
William Tuck er evidently being more of an embarrassment than contacts with his homeland and its artistic life;
an asset to the town. The sculpture has the air he was enabled to survive during his penurious
of being rarely visited, either by the local people early years by portrait commissions from fellow
Brancusi's most ambitious sculptures, The who would have no reason to go there but to countrymen. The single most crucial sculpture
Endless Column, The Gate of the Kiss, and The look at it; by tourists, for whom it is depicted in of the pre-war period, The Prayer, was the result
Table of Silence are situated in the town of glossy brochures as one of the attractions of of a commission for a funerary monument in
Turgu Jiu in the south-west of Rumania where Rumania together with churches, castles, and Rumania; and he continued to send sculptures
they were erected in 1937. The sculptures are historic ruins; or by those artists and art back to Bucharest for the annual exhibition of
aligned along a mile-long axis across the town, writers from the West, by whom it has been so the Tinerimea Artistica (the advanced wing of
with the Table at its western limit adjoining the frequently cited and discussed in recent years, Rumanian art) from 1907 until 1914.
River Jiu and the Gate at about 15o yards when this particular work has assumed the After the First World War, when Brancusi's
distance along a broad path flanked by woodland character of a talisman. Nonetheless, the international reputation was established and
(both sculptures are in the public park): the bleakness, even hostility, of its surroundings his style and confidence were assured, he began
Column is at the other end of the town, with present the sculpture to the visitor without to reach out for new problems. The struggle
streets and the church of the Holy Apostles distraction or subterfuge, charm or excuse. I for with representation no longer obtruded itself
intervening between it and the other pieces, one have no doubt that the Endless Column into the graceful and synthetic emblems he
from which it is not visible. Finally, there is a emerges from this test, confronting one by the found for portrait heads, birds and fish. During
smaller version of the Table, without stools, plain facts of its physical existence, and stripped the twenties Brancusi sometimes conceded to,
about 200 yards beyond the Column itself, of the mythmaking of Brancusi's disciples, and sometimes fought, his own facility. In general,
which stands in a large rectangle of scrubby the misrepresentation of much recent during this period, the early rigour and
parkland rising slightly away from the town; propagandist writing, as a very great sculpture; awkwardness (for example, of The Prayer, the
traversed by gravel paths laid out in an the ambition of its size being a function of its first Kiss) are more often displayed in the wood
obtrusive radial symmetry, dotted with small conception, and no mere display of rhetoric. carvings and the bases than in the bronze and
trees, and bordered by occasional low houses The circumstances under which these marble sculptures. The first Endless Column,
which have known better days. Neither the sculptures came into existence are now of no the conception of which derives from earlier
plan on which they are laid out nor the more than historical interest. Curiously enough, bases, was made in 1918, as was the later
sculptures themselves are immediately apparent the initial commission at Turgu Jiu was for a dismantled Architectural Project. Both pieces
to the visitor to the town : only the Column, war memorial, celebrating the resistance of the signal the challenge of an alternative road for
which is nearly too ft high, can be seen from town to the Germans in 1917; but the sculpture — lean, wholly abstract, and
any distance. commission was passed on to Brancusi by the `architectural' in a concrete, rather than an
The present physical condition of the agency of the liberal government of the time, ideal sense. Over this period also Brancusi
sculptures and their immediate surroundings in recognition of his increasing fame in Western played with the idea of a more literal and more
bears witness to their problematic character as Europe and America, the sculptor virtually decorative architecture, the projected Temple
public art. The Table and Gate, located in a being given a free hand to build three of Love, like the later and also unrealized
physically pleasant and much-used place of
recreation, seem to be well looked after. The
Table has been fenced by a circle of low posts
and chains, making it both impossible to see
properly, or, if there had ever been a possibility
of such an event, to sit at. The Gate is used, in
the sense that, being set back a few yards from
the entrance to the park, people have the choice
to walk through it or around it. While they do
both, I never observed anyone actually looking
at the great obstruction in their path. At all
events, both sculptures, together with a number
of stone stools, benches, and so on, which
Brancusi designed, are accepted as decorative
elements in a public place; whose power as
art, the capacity to surprise and disturb, has
been drained off by habit and the pretence of
function'.
The Endless Column, however, stands in an
open space that has no other purpose than to
set it off. The sculpture itself has developed a
slight list, though not noticeable from every
angle, and the original bright gilt finish has

Gate of the Kiss 1937
Stone, 17 ft 3 1/2 in.
Turgu Jiu Public Park
117