Page 26 - Studio International - October 1972

Temple of Meditation essentially a structure to piece to piece), their symmetry and
house objects, rather than an architecture, in the completeness of gestalt: their strangeness (the
sense which the Turgu Jiu group was to assume. physical presence belies the facile attribution of
Thus the early ios found Brancusi looking Brancusi's sculpture to Rumanian folk-art) — all
for the opportunity to extend the reduction and these factors tend to isolate and distance them
refinement of the Birds into a more public, less from the environment, to which they are
protected realm; with possible models in the otherwise so nicely adjusted.
Endless Column and various bases; yet with a It is a remarkable achievement, especially in
persisting desire to make his vision 'public' by view of the changes that time and nature have
creating a specialized and theatrical viewing brought about, even in the last 25 years.
place around it, in effect a designed and However, it is an achievement of skill, rather
idealized 'studio'. Perhaps we should be thankful than of art, and it is as art that the three pieces
that this dream of Brancusi's remained at Turgu Jiu must separately be evaluated.
unrealized, or at least that the commission at The Table and the Gate form a group, in a
Turgu Jiu evoked a response of nerve — drawing common area, and may be considered quite
on the experience of 30-odd years of making apart from the Column. It is true that there is a
sculptures conceived and executed from hand continuous relation along the line down which
size to life size; to be experienced within the all three sculptures are placed from Table,
limits of human scale, of the grasp and touch, through Gate, to Column; between ground and
albeit implied, of hands ; of the intimate sky, between horizontality and verticality, from
proximity to a portrait head, or one's reflection massiveness to lightness, from opacity to
in a mirror. transparency. But these graded relations arrive
It is a remarkable paradox that Rodin, who from a study of the design, rather than of the
struggled all his working life to make a morally objects themselves, and the objects, even within
engaged and edifying public art on the grand the public park, strongly assert their
scale should have achieved so little of his separateness. The Gate is visible from the Table
great projects, each one in varying degrees but only as a small white silhouette; the Table is
frustrated, flawed and incomplete. Brancusi, by virtually invisible from the Gate. Of the three
contrast, after virtually perfecting an ideal of pieces, the Table has to be seen from close to, in
sculpture that was the antithesis of Rodin's — order for the ellipses of the top surfaces to read
private, silent, withdrawn, morally neutral — was at all, and this effect of concealment of the piece
to put at risk this whole achievement in the from a distance is emphasized by its placing on a
realization of public sculpture on a gigantic slight incline when approached from the Gate.
scale, not attempted in his time by advanced The Table is by far the least satisfactory of the
artists of serious pretensions. The Table is sculptures at Turgu Jiu; its low elevation would
7 feet, the whole ensemble with stools about submerge it in the accidental distractions of the
18 feet in diameter: the Gate is over 17 feet environment, even were the present absurd
high, 21 feet across, and 6 feet deep, and the fence removed, while the horizontal top
mass of stone in the lintel is physically surfaces of both table and stools render them
enormous : the Column is 96 feet high, each of liable to be obscured by the contingencies of
the is complete elements being the height of a weather, and any deviations from the horizontal
man. And yet none of the three sculptures at plane become very noticeable; the ground under
Turgu Jiu appears even large, and certainly some of the stools has subsided, disturbing the
does not dominate or diminish the spectator simple symmetry that is the main feature of the
(photographs, especially of the Gate, are most sculpture's composition. Even allowing for these
misleading in this respect). Brancusi is reported accidents of time and nature, and considering
as saying : 'If you had to live in the same room as the piece purely as sculpture, I find a certain
Michaelangelo's Moses you couldn't stand it, deadness, an inertia, a withdrawal from the
even if you admire his genius. We shouldn't be highest standards implicit in Brancusi's art,
made to feel like atoms in the presence of a work both in the conception of the piece and in its
of art . . .' Whether by organizing factors of internal proportions and relations. The squat
distance, perspective, and existent elements in massiveness of the table does carry an authority,
the environment, or the drawing, disposition or but it is the authority of a 'good' and artless
proportions of the sculptures themselves, found-object, a millstone or whatever. The
Brancusi achieves at Turgu Jiu the design of the stools again seems `good'; but in
reconstitution of that intimacy of the spectator design terms -that is, not the product of a
with the single object that would seem possible wholly sculptural inspiration (the presence of
only in the changed and cloistered ambience of variant stools of the same conception, but
the studio. It is possible that the sculptures are square instead of round in section, on either side
so large that their absolute size, in relation to of the path nearby, reinforces this impression).
human scale, is neutralized: they take on a The placing of the twelve stools around the
dominantly optical rather than a physical table, the distance between the stools themselves,
character, through the absence of tactile and the stools and the table, also seems unhappy
referents : but this extraordinary effect of (though there is apparently a doubt here as to
privateness, of intimacy, is brought about whether Brancusi's intentions as to the grouping
largely, I feel, by their character as objects: their of the stools were correctly carried out).2
abstraction (though this varies in degree from In all, it seems a sentimental piece,
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