Page 29 - Studio International - October 1972

as in the modelling and proportion of the motion by the internal modelling of the element. 'bond Jianou, 'Brancusi', Adam Books, London,
1963, p. 22 et seq., for a rich and lively account of the
element, and in the number of the units — too What has gained for the Endless Column its sculptor's early years in Rumania.
many to be visually comprehended without recent high esteem among artists — namely the 'Sidney Geist, 'Brancusi, A Study of the Sculpture',
counting, yet few enough to read as a finite idea of repetition — is seen in face of the object to Grossman, New York, 1968, p. 12o.
mean to return to this proposition in a later essay.
number. be nothing in itself, unless the unit has a 4The typical 'piling' of elements characteristic of
The impermanence of the original gilt shape-potential that repetition will develop. Brancusi's object-base ensembles is transformed in
finish on the Column was the only serious What is involved at Turgu Jiu is not an escape the Gate and Column from a decorative device to the
miscalculation made by Brancusi at Turgu Jiu. from composition, but a daring and original central motif of structures which in separate
fashions challenge and resist gravity. In the Table this
While the sculpture was never polished, to the re-statement of the antique but inescapable structural component does not appear. The linear
mirror-like finish on the bronze Birds in Space, problem of part-whole, whole-part relation. disposition of the three Turgu Jiu sculptures may be
seen as a horizontal 'piling'.
for example, it must have been intensely Certainly, as one explores the Endless 'Geist has noted the probable inspiration of Derain's
light-reflective when first executed, and the Column its character as a 'whole', as a complete Crouching Figure here. Werner Hofmann, in
difference in its expressive character from its and finite object emerges as dominant. Its `Museum und Kunst' (Beitrage für Alfred
present state must have been substantial. The appearance undergoes continuous change as one Hentzen), Hamburg, 1970, thinks the dancing
couple in Matisse's painting Music of 1907 may have
finish is now an uneven dull brown, with the changes one's position in relation to it. Its been the immediate source of the image, in the
third, fourth and fifth elements from the bottom broadest aspect (its front ?) is presented by the context of an interesting discussion of Matisse's
influence on Brancusi at this time.
still hinting at their former brightness. The diagonal view, which is aligned along the main
'Geist, p. 123.
combination of the present dark colour with the north-south, east-west axes of the park. From 'Geist, p. 124.
extended but regular proportions of the piece this view, if the light falls across the Column so
give it the feeling of wood. This is not that one side is in shadow, the near edge reads
inappropriate, considering that wood was the as such a precise vertical that it seems as though
material in which the theme was first conceived, a division between light and dark had been
and from which Brancusi carved the original painted on the sculpture. The insistence of this
module of the Turgu Jiu Column.° Nor is there vertical is so strong that one comes to realize
any sense in which the sculpture there feels that in a sculpture which is a celebration of
`wrong' now: the dark finish seems so natural verticality there is not one vertical plane or
that the original might appear forced and edge above the lowest two-third element.
theatrical to present taste. The dark, wooden, As one circles the sculpture, as one
quality of the sculpture on first acquaintance advances towards it or retreats from it, there is
gives it an 'African' character, which impression a continuous interplay also between one's
is reinforced by the optical effect of the light knowledge of its physical substantiality and its
`eating' into the flat top of the highest appearance as silhouette. Here again the
half-element, recalling the scalloped crown of modelling of the unit induces the most
King of Kings. 'Marvellous is the fact that the remarkable illusion, transforming the sculpture,
elements of the Column do not diminish in size when seen at a distance, into a string of up-ended
as they mount. The persistence of size and of ellipses, and from certain angles closer in, to a
shape, the constancy of the repetition, causes fully modelled spiral. Where the sculpture reads
the Column to remain near to the mind as it dark against the bright sky the form is
moves off from the eye. We have here a poetry flattened and the left and right hand profiles
of the actual, without illusion or compensation, take on an independent, graphic, life.
without tapering or entasis', writes Sidney At any hour of the day no two views of the
Geist.7 The optical performance of the Endless sculpture from different points can ever yield
Column is stunning. The constancy which Geist precisely the same image. The complexity and
describes is, of course, an illusion: the elements variety of the Column's perceived existence
do not appear to diminish. What happens is, stand in contrast to that perceptual immediacy
that as the sculpture moves upward, away from and unity that distinguishes Brancusi's effort in
the eye, the proportions of each element sculpture up to that time, and point to a
progressively become more squat, the breadth radically new role for sculpture, whose form
increasing proportionately to the height, the and structure would be ordered not by reference
relative proportion of the lowest full element to the external world, nor by the ideal and
being 2:I, height to breadth — of the highest full contained universe of 'the object', but by
element, possibly I :1. Of course there has been directly articulating the perception of the
an absolute perspective contraction: but the spectator whose 'world' the sculpture has
optical law is subverted by the created optical entered. At Turgu Jiu, Brancusi takes as his
fact. model for this venture first an object of common
The module with its gently swelling surface use, The Table; then an element of architecture,
giving, not given by, the precise geometric The Gate; then a structure of pure and sublime
sections, is in itself a model of entasis. Its decoration, without function or justification, the
expansiveness, as well as its geometric properties Column. The progress towards abstraction is
explain both the apparent constancy of the ineluctable. If there is one piece in the history
sculpture's proportions and the quality of 'flow' of modern sculpture which in every respect
up and down the Column. Surprisingly, the most deserves the title 'masterpiece' it is surely the
obvious positive-negative illusion, i.e. whether Turgu Jiu Endless Column. q
the element reads as convex or concave, does
not present itself as a dominant and simple
factor, but rather as the centre of a complex of
King of Kings 1920 ( ?)
ambiguities, which are both fused and set in Oak wood, 9 ft 10 1/8 in.
121