Peasant Wisdom: An Analysis of Brancusi's Rumanian Heritage
by Zachary Ross

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Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), whom many historians consider to be the most important sculptor of the 20th century, made producing a body of sculpture that embodied a sense of the spiritual and the sacred his primary concern. In his early works Brancusi explored the sculptural styles of a variety of non-Western, so-called "primitive" cultures. He followed a mimetic sculptural process in an effort to draw himself closer to the implied spiritual content of these traditional art forms. By doing so, Brancusi hoped to construct a visual language capable of expressing his spiritual views of the universe. As he probed various non-western sculptural styles for meaningful symbolic representation, he either accepted or rejected the forms based on the compatibility of each style's implied spiritual content with his own views of the universe. By 1925, having entered the mature phase of his career, Brancusi had assimilated a variety of formal influences and had joined them together in a style that is at once unique and referential to the sculptural traditions of other cultures.

Recent critics have sought to deconstruct the individuality of Brancusi's sculptural style by analyzing the formal similarities between his work and "primitive" art forms or ideas: African tribal art, archaic art, Eastern religions - particularly the writings of the Tibetan monk Milarepa - among others. The readings of these similarities are then supported by several types of evidence, including Brancusi's position within the circle of Parisian avant-garde artists, evidence of his trips to museums known for their "primitive" art collections, quotes from the artist, other secondhand accounts, etc. Most Brancusi scholars agree that each of the sources mentioned above have had some influence upon his art; they each tend to acknowledge the work of others while proceeding on with his/her own thesis.1

Brancusi's Rumanian heritage, however, is one source of artistic inspiration that has elicited a disparate array of responses. Critics have had a hard time accounting for the degree to which Brancusi drew upon Rumanian folk traditions for inspiration in his work. Some critics maintain that there is only slight evidence of a link to these traditions, while others maintain that Brancusi's ancestral origins provide the fundamental basis of his work. Although the range of interpretations is wide and varied, the readings of Brancusi's ties to Rumanian folklore occupies a central position in the critical discourse on Brancusi, serving as the major point of distinction among scholars.

The search for Rumanian sources in Brancusi's art is a complicated matter. The reasons for this are several: There are few direct references to Rumanian folklore in his art (only one sculpture, Maïastra, has a Rumanian title), and the formal elements of his work that have been identified as Rumanian in nature also resemble images and concepts from a variety of other cultures and religions. Clouding the issue is the fact that Brancusi actively promoted an identity of himself as a Rumanian peasant tied to the ancestral traditions of his homeland. This self-construction has tempted critics to read in Rumanian sources in Brancusi's work despite the scant evidence of direct ties between his art and folk art traditions of his homeland. This has led to the reception of Brancusi as a sagely peasant living in Paris, an outsider to the trends of modernity sweeping across the city. This essay attempts to define the central role that Brancusi's self-construction has played in influencing the readings of his work. It then relates this discussion of identity to two works by Brancusi that critics have put forth as evidence of links between his style and visual motifs from Rumanian folk art, the Maïastra and the Endless Column.

Brancusi was born in a rural region of Rumania known as Oltenia, in the town of Hobitza. His parents were peasants and small landholders. Around 1887, at which point Brancusi would have been the age of 11, 2 he ran away from home to Tirgu Jiu, where he later erected his only public monument. There he stayed until 1892, when he went to Craiova. Three years later, at the age of 22, he graduated with honors from the Craiova School of Arts and Crafts. He received a grant and went to Bucharest to study at the School of Fine Arts for three more years, where he distinguished himself and won many awards. In 1904, he left for Paris, most of the way on foot, and he remained there, with the exception of a few short trips, for the rest of his life.

In 1907, Brancusi became an assistant in Rodin's studio. At the time, Rodin's studio was a bustling production line, with approximately 50 assistants working under the great sculptor. Brancusi worked there only one month. 3 When asked later as to why he left, Brancusi responded with one of his typical aphorisms: "Nothing grows in the shadow of great trees." After leaving Rodin, Brancusi changed his sculptural style completely. He eschewed Rodin's sensual and dramatic aesthetic in favor of new, minimalistic forms. He dropped the traditional modeling techniques and moved to direct carving as he began exploring a new, wholly distinctive sculptural style.

Many scholars have sought to deconstruct Brancusi's style by locating exact sources of formal influence. Most of these efforts have surrounded the influence of so-called "primitive" sculptural styles, that is, sculpture from outside the Western academic tradition. These investigations have revealed a variety of such sources of artistic inspiration.

What must be understood before a formal analysis of the connection between Brancusi's art and these "primitive" sculptural traditions can be undertaken is that, from the very beginning, the critical reception of Brancusi's art has been shaped by the perception of his Rumanian heritage. It has been noted that Brancusi's art "betrays the grafting of a fin de siècle Paris onto the mystic and rough trunk of folkloric Rumania."4 This type of analysis has tended to work in Brancusi's favor, for his "peasant" identity oftentimes placed him, by the hands of the critics, closer to the essential qualities of "primitive" arts, and thus above reproach for appropriating "primitive" styles. In this vein, he has been described as "like a forest creature"6 and as "half god, half faun."6 As Claire Guilbert said in 1957 about Brancusi, while other artists of the Parisian avant-garde "submitted to the influence of negro masks and primitive arts, this Rumanian peasant, who is a real primitive, found himself on an even footing with them."7 Analyses such as these serve to subjugate the influences of ideas from other cultures to those of Rumania, in effect classifying them as secondary and derivative.

Brancusi's Rumanian heritage has also functioned in a seemingly opposite fashion. A contemporary account of his work from the 1930s maintained that "instead of examining the negroes like the cubists had done Brancusi simply recalled the memories of his childhood, the immaculate whiteness of Rumanian churches perhaps, the purity of their marvellously [sic] free and outlandish style, where Byzantine, Roman and Gothic dispute their titles and positions with folklore." 8 This is interesting in that although Brancusi's Rumanian heritage is used here to repudiate the influence of African art on his work (which irrefutably had an impact on Brancusi9), Brancusi's heritage is again offered as a spiritually "pure" source of stylistic inspiration. Another more recent critic elevates Brancusi's status as an outsider to Western sculptural tradition to a fundamental position in 20th-century art by positing that sculpture "needed the detachment of a sculptor brought up in an alien tradition to move beyond the accomplishments of Rodin."10 The contexts in which his ancestry has been invoked both during his lifetime and up to the present are too many to number.

Brancusi's Rumanian heritage thus serves as a frequent point of departure for all subsequent formal analyses of his work. One cannot undertake any study of Brancusi's sculpture without addressing the question of his origins. Brancusi himself encouraged his audience to make this assumption: "My laws are those of Craiova where I spent the decisive years of my youth."11 Indeed, the major reason critics have looked to Rumanian folk traditions for sources of influence in Brancusi's sculpture is due to the artist's own efforts to portray himself publicly as a Rumanian peasant. Brancusi kept his studio in the fashion of a peasant's home. He often wore peasant's clothing, even to formal occasions.12 He carved all of his own furniture, including the stove. He treated his sculptures as his family - he's even said to have wept at the sale of one of his works.13 But most of all, Brancusi promoted himself as a peasant by speaking in colorful aphorisms, in essence promoting a popular idea of "peasant wisdom."14

Many of these aphorisms refer to his life as a Rumanian:
In my native village in the Carpathians life was happy, without quarrels and illnesses; this was because the civilization that spoils everything had not yet arrived.15

From the plenitude of my sunny province, I built a reserve of joy for my entire life; only in this way was I able to resist.16

Life was happy, without quarrels or sicknesses, because the civilization that makes things false had never come there.17

These quotes are interesting because, even though he ran away from home at a very early age, and left for Paris once he had the chance, as he grew older, Brancusi felt a need to idealize those traditions as part of his self-fashioning.

Brancusi's self-portrayal as a peasant had a predictable effect on his critics: "Wearing white pajamas and a yellow, gnomelike cap, Brancusi today …leads the same humble life he led as a peasant boy in Rumania before the turn of the century,"18 and it was presumably there that "he began his lifelong quest for forms which would convey the essence of things."19 This type of reductive comparison to a child was espoused on many occasions, with critics describing his art as portraying "a universe seen with childlike innocence and rendered with archaic simplicity."20 Brancusi reinforced this perception by maintaining that "when we are no longer children, we are already dead."21 Under this construction, Brancusi's "childlike" vision gave him access to a formal language beyond the limits of the "modern" adult. Brancusi's identity as a "peasant" as well as a "child" thus served to position him on the outside of modern society.

Brancusi was frequently viewed not only as an outsider to society, but also to the Parisian avant-garde circle. Having been described in the 1920s as not "one of the Montparnasse gang,"22 Brancusi's outsider status was thus confirmed. Equally telling is this account by a visitor to Brancusi's studio: "He was not in the least annoyed by the intrusion, but was like the peasant who is glad of an excuse to lay down his hoe or his ax…He was not voluble nor even fluent as so many of the modernists were, but seemed to be hunting for words…wasting none of them."23 Unlike Picasso, whose outsider status as a Spaniard was overlooked by the Parisian avant-garde and their critics, Brancusi was, in essence, forced to go it alone. However, each artist benefited from their relative position within the art world. Picasso enjoyed tremendous success as he distinguished himself as one of the avant-garde's leading members, whereas Brancusi exploited his outsider status in order to differentiate his work from that of his contemporaries. Brancusi seemed happy to be perceived as an outsider as he preferred not to be identified with any particular art movement:

I am not Surrealist, Baroque, Cubist, nothing of this kind. My new I comes from something very old.24

I do not follow what is happening in art movements. When one finds his own direction, he is so busy there is no time.25

Those who let themselves be tempted to follow in the tracks of competition at the same time allow their creative forces to degenerate.26

Brancusi catered to people's notions of what a peasant is like, "representing something that people wanted artists to be."27 In doing so he created a personal identity that could be associated with his work. People were much more likely to accept the polycultural references in his sculpture once they understood his "peasant" personality. Finnish architect Alvar Aalto perhaps summarized this view best when he said that Brancusi's art defined "the point of intersection between Western and Eastern culture."28 Brancusi was viewed as being closer to the secrets of the universe because he came from a more "primitive," less "modern" world.

Brancusi also followed a ritual-like pattern of production in his work, repeating forms and ideas over and over again. This is illustrated in his several series of works such as his birds and eggs. According to Mircea Eliade, serial production is "a method characteristic of above all folk and ethnographic arts, in which the exemplary models must be indefinitely reworked and 'imitated'" in order to discover the sources of their spirituality.29 Another formal attribute of his work that reflects this sort of ritualistic behavior is the brilliant and shiny finish on his bronzes, which required extensive amounts of work at smoothing and polishing. He never allowed any of his assistants to help in polishing, reserving this meditative habit exclusively for himself.

Another aspect of Brancusi's work that has been compared to Rumanian folk tradition is his interest in wood carving. Critics cite the prevalence of wood carving traditions in Rumania, and make the unmistakable connection between this and Brancusi's work. Brancusi had been trained in Craiova and Bucharest in wood carving,30 so he certainly had some familiarly with the medium. Yet when Brancusi arrived in Paris, he was working only in marble, stone, and bronze. In 1906, following an exhibition of wood sculptures by Gauguin, many of the Parisian vanguard artists took up direct carving as a technique in their works, including Picasso, Dérain and Matisse.31 Brancusi took up direct carving in 1907 following the examples of his contemporaries, although it is significant that he began his foray into direct carving in stone. He did not complete his first wooden sculpture until 1913, when he realized The First Step (which, as Sidney Geist perceptively has pointed out, was Brancusi's first step in wooden sculpture).32

The process through which Brancusi returned to wood carving is essential to understanding the development of his style. Brancusi only returned to wood carving at the time he began his Africanesque sculptures. Once his consciousness was provoked by the African sculptures and their implications, Brancusi began to add wood carving to his repertoire. Brancusi's process of self-discovery, in which he learned to draw upon the folk art techniques he learned in Rumania, grew out of contact with the avant-garde, in which artists looked to "primitive" art for a new visual language.33 Aside from the Africanesque pieces, he made wood models of other works which he then executed in marble or bronze, as well as his famous wooden bases.

There are few direct references to Rumanian folklore and tradition in Brancusi's work, making a formal analysis difficult. In fact, Brancusi only made one such sculpture, Maïstra (fig. 4), 34 one of his earliest sculptures. According to Rumanian folklore, the Pasarea Maïstra is a mythological bird figure that is a princess in disguise. The Maïstra, as it goes, sings a song so beautiful that it can resurrect the dead, with its other major quality being the beauty of its feathers, which shine "like a mirror in the sun."35 With Brancusi's Maïastra's upwardly directed open mouth and brilliantly polished finish, Brancusi captured each of these two essential qualities. Furthermore, the image of the Maïastra seems to have occupied a prominent role in Brancusi's imagination: Barbu Brezianu notes that Brancusi, in listening to a Rumanian folk singer, exclaimed "Maria! I could carve for every song of ours a Pasarea Maïastra!"36 In these ways one can argue convincingly that Maïstra relates to Rumanian folklore. Maïastra also was the first bird sculpture Brancusi attempted, after which followed a lifelong pursuit of a series of bird forms: Maïastra, Three Penguins, Yellow Bird, Golden Bird, and the iconic Bird in Space. Maïastra also was one of his first sculptures endowed with the characteristic high polish.

It is important to note, however, that the golden (or solar) bird is seen in many mythologies around the world, from China to Russia, from the Phoenix to Horus of ancient Egypt.37 Furthermore, many of the solar birds have beautiful songs that rejuvenate and resurrect as well, including the Phoenix and the Chinese Feng-huang.38 In fact, there are so many similarities between the Maïstra and other mythological bird-gods that many viewers from divergent backgrounds are able to understand the essential meaning of the sculpture without explanation. For although the reference to the Maïstra of Rumanian folklore seems obscure, Brancusi, in choosing to represent this mythological bird, touches upon ideas and associations that are widely understood and speak to a more general audience. This, in its essence, is what Brancusi strove for in his work.

One of Brancusi's works that has been identified as echoing the forms of Rumanian folk art is his Endless Column. This is Brancusi's final column, built as part of a World War I monument to Rumanian soldiers in Tirgu Jiu. The Endless Column was a motif that Brancusi had worked on for years, starting as a wooden sculptural base and eventually being transformed into a monumental sculpture in its own right.

When asked what the purpose of the Endless Column was, Brancusi replied that it was "to support the vault of heaven."39 Mircea Eliade notes that this description of the Endless Column matches that of a Rumanian folklore motif, the "pillar of the sky," which is itself an extension of a mythological theme shown to exist since prehistory. The "pillar of the sky" is an axis mundi, of which numerous variants are known: The axis mundi supports the sky and is the means of communication with the earth.40

Formally, the repeating rhomboidal elements of the Endless Column seem to elicit a feeling of ascension, particularly the feeling that one could climb the Column as one would a tree.41 Ascension to the heavens is something Brancusi had become preoccupied with, in the form of flight, in his Bird in Space. Brancusi once exclaimed: "All my life I have only sought the essence of flight. Flight! what bliss!"42 Given that it is a monument to the soldiers killed in WWI, the Endless Column's form seems germane to its symbolic evocation of ascension to the heavens.

One author has attempted to connect the shape of the Endless Column with the forms of Oltenian porch pillars and cemetery death poles.43 The argument follows that the monolithic and solemn qualities of the death poles may have inspired Brancusi in the search for his column's form, especially in considering the commemorative nature of the Tirgu-Jiu monument. It is more likely, however, that the Endless Column is simply an extension of the form that Brancusi had conceived for the column years earlier, when he employed its form as a sculptural base.44 It is also unlikely45 that Brancusi had the death poles in mind when he originally conceived the form of the Endless Column.46 Rather, Brancusi seems to have been preoccupied with the ideas of both ascension to, and support of, the heavens. As a sculpture in its own right, the Endless Column serves symbolically to support of the heavens and elevate the spirit, while as a base the Endless Column can be seen as projecting the sculpture upon it into space, in addition to serving its function as a support.

As with Maïstra, what makes the Endless Column so compelling is that it is representative of the mythological and spiritual beliefs of a great number of cultures. The sculpture's simple form conveys a meaning that is accessible to all. The Endless Column has therefore elicited a wide range of critical interpretation: Its serrated motif has been identified as "strikingly" African,47 and has, more fancifully, been related to the "liturgical recitative of Gregorian Chant."48 It has also been likened to the Hindu myth of the Lingam.49 There are many other such comparisons.

As seen in the two cases considered here (Maïastra and Endless Column) critics have struggled to identify exclusively Rumanian sources of influence in Brancusi's work. This is due to the fact that the symbols Brancusi chose to employ in his art are somewhat ambiguous, and thus speak to a wider, more general audience. While it is interesting to explore the possible culturally derived sources in his work, it ultimately proves to be somewhat futile, as the artist's intention was to embody a timeless and universal sense of mysteriousness and of the sacred. He attempted to dissuade viewers from looking for non-western formal influences in his work: "Do not look for obscure formulas or mysteries. I give you pure joy. Look at my works until you see them. Those that are closest to God have seen them."50 Further evidence of Brancusi's desire to avoid comparison with non-traditional western sculptural traditions - including Rumanian folk art - is supported by a statement he offered for a 1925 Paris exhibition to which he contributed several works, in which he described his nationality as "Terrestrial, human, white species."51 Brancusi's goal was to produce a body of work that, although it would draw upon ideas and forms from spiritually oriented sculptural traditions, would speak universally about his own inner convictions. Because of this, one needs ultimately to understand his Rumanian heritage metaphorically rather than literally, owing it to the "artist's state of mind"52 that he endeavored to enrich his visual lexicon with formal concepts that helped him express his spiritual views in a universal formal language.

References:

1. That Brancusi delved into sculptural forms from other non-western cultures is well established, as is the effect that these explorations had on the development of his personal style. Major works are cited in the bibliography should be referred to for these arguments.

2. There is no clear consensus as to when Brancusi left Hobitza; he is presumed to have left between the ages of 9 and 11.

3. The length of time that Brancusi spent with Rodin is not entirely certain, although most accounts settle on the one-month time period.

4. Anna Chave, Constantin Brancusi: Shifting the Bases of Art (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), p. 189.

5. Eugène Ionesco, "Recollections of Brancusi," Harper's Bazaar (Feb. 1962), p. 104, cited in Chave (1993), p. 173.

6. Herbert J.Seligmann, Alfred Stieglitz Talking: Notes on Some of His Conversations, 1925-1931 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Library, 1966), p. 69, cited in Chave (1993), p. 173.

7. Claire Gilles Guilbert, "Propos de Brancusi," in Prisme des Arts, vol. 12 (1957), p. 6, cited in Chave (1993), p. 173.

8. Anatole Jakovski, "Brancusi," in Axis (July 1935), p. 3, cited in Chave (1993), p. 175.

9. There have been many convincing analyses of the influence of African art on Brancusi. For an excellent treatment of the subject, see Sidney Geist, "Brancusi," in Primitivism in 20th Century Art, William Rubin, ed. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1984), pp. 345-67.

10. William Tucker, "Brancusi: the Elements of Sculpture," in Early Modern Sculpture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 43. Italics are mine for emphasis.

11. Lipsey, Roger, "Constantin Brancusi: Negating the Labyrinth," in An Art of Our Own: The Spiritual in Twentieth Century Art, (Boston: Shambhala, 1988), p. 246.

12. Chave (1993), p. 174.

13. Edith Balas, "Object-Sculpture, Base and Assemblage in the Art of Constantin Brancusi," Art Journal, vol. 38/1 (Fall 1978), p. 38.

14. Margit Rowell, "Timelessness in a Modern Mode," in Bach, et. al., Constantin Brancusi: 1876-1957 (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995), p. 47.

15. Edith Balas, Brancusi and Rumanian Folk Traditions (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 1.

16. Lipsey (1988), p. 227.

17. Lipsey (1988), p. 227.

18. Life magazine, 1955, cited in Chave (1993), p. 174.

19. Chave (1993), p. 174.

20. Sidney Geist, Brancusi: A Study of the Sculpture (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1968), p. 143.

21. Carola Giedion-Welcker, Constantin Brancusi (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1959), p. 219.

22. Brooklyn Eagle (28 Feb. 1926), as cited in Chave (1993), p. 173.

23. Samuel Putnam, Paris Was Our Mistress: Memoirs of a Lost and Found Generation (New York: Viking Press, 1947), pp. 199-200, cited in Chave (1993), p. 173-4.

24. Lipsey (1988), p. 242.

25. Lipsey (1988), p. 244.

26. Lipsey (1988), p. 244.

27. Arthur Danto, "Constantin Brancusi," The Nation (January 22, 1996), p. 33.

28. Chave (1993), p. 174.

29. Mircea Eliade, "Brancusi and Mythology," in Ordeal by Labyrinth (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 198.

30. Balas (1987), p. 22.

31. For more information on this, see Ron Johnson, The Early Sculpture of Picasso, 1901-1914 (New York: Garland Pub., 1976), pp. 105-110, cited in Balas (1987), p. 22.

32. Geist (1984), p. 347.

33. Eliade (1982), p.195.

34. Athena T. Spear, Brancusi's Birds (New York: University Press, 1969), p. 3. The following summary description of the Ma•astra is adapted from Spear.

35. Spear (1969), p. 5.

36. Barbu Brezianu (1966), cited in Balas (1987), p. 4.

37. Spear (1969), p. 6.

38. Spear (1969), p. 6.

39. Radu Varia, Brancusi, (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1986), p. 265.

40. Eliade (1982), p. 198.

41. Eliade (1982), p. 199.

42. Giedion-Welcker (1959), p. 220.

43. Balas (1987), p. 29.

44. See Francis Naumann, "From Origin to Influence and Beyond: Brancusi's 'Column Without End,'" Arts Magazine, vol. 59/9 (May 1985), pp. 112-118.

45. Naumann (1985), p.116. Naumann notes that some of the pillars to which the Endless Column has been compared date to the period after the erection of the monument at Tirgu-Jiu, thus displaying the reverse influence of Brancusi on Rumania!

46. Geist (1984), p. 357. Geist maintains "no claimant for a Rumanian source has been able to find, in the rich lexicon of Rumanian columns, anything resembling the Endless Column." Evidence in this essay points to a contrary position.

47. Geist (1984), p. 354.

48. Giedion-Welcker (1959), p. 33.

49. Bette Spektorov, "Endless Columns," Studio International, vol. 198/1008 (March 1985), p. 55.

50. Lipsey (1988), p. 242.

51. Pontus Hulten, et, al., Brancusi (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987), p. 169, cited in Chave (1993), p. 196.

52. Petru Cormanescu (1966), p. 1, cited in Balas (1987), p. xiv.

© 2000 Part and Zachary Ross. All Rights Reserved.