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Romania’s Brâncusi in Paris and New York

19 Feb 2011 -
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Brancusi's Sleeping Muse

“Ce qui est réel n’est pas l’apparence mais l’idée, l’essence des choses.”—Constantin Brâncusi 

Today Google is celebrating the 135th birthday of Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncusi (1876-1957) with a doodle that features seven of his sculptures.

Brancusi was born February 19, 1876 in Romania and died March 16, 1957 in Paris, my hometown.Brâncusi is considered one of the founding figures of modern sculpture and one of the most original artists of the twentieth-century. His groundbreaking carvings introduced abstraction and primitivism into sculpture for the first time, and were as important as Picasso’s paintings to the development of modern art.

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Brancusi's sculptures googled

Brâncusi grew up in the village of Hobisa Romania, close to Romania’s Carpathian Mountains, an area rich in a tradition of folk crafts, particularly woodcarving. Geometric patterns of the region are can be seen in his later works.

His parents were poor peasants who earned a meager living through hard labor. As a boy Constantin herded the family’s flock of sheep. He showed talent for carving objects out of wood, and often ran away from home to escape the bullying of his father and older brothers.

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Constantin Brancusi

Brâncusi trained initially as a carpenter and stonemason. When Brâncusi was 18, an industrialist, impressed by Brâncusi’s talent for carving, entered him in the Craiova School of Arts and Crafts (Scoala de meserii), where he pursued his love for woodworking. He graduated with honors in 1898, then enrolled in the Bucharest School of Fine Arts, where he received academic training in sculpture. One of his earliest surviving works, under the guidance of his anatomy teacher, Dimitrie Gerota, is a masterfully rendered écorché (statue of a man with skin removed to reveal the muscles underneath) which was exhibited at the Romanian Athenaeum in 1903. Though just an anatomical study, it foreshadowed the sculptor’s later efforts to reveal essence rather than merely copy outward appearance.

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Toulouse relaxes by the Seine with Notre Dame behind

Eventually Brâncusi traveled to Munich and then settled in Paris in 1904, where the avant-garde community of intellectuals and artists openly welcomed him. 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.”

Drawing inspiration from African and oriental art in addition to Rodin’s work, Brâncusi found his own unique voice in the simple form. Reminiscent of the clean poetic strokes of Canadian Group of Seven artist Lawren Harris, Brâncusi was a “purist” who sought to reduce his art to a few basic elements. His art was subtle yet complex, like a deep pool waiting to embrace you. Complexity lay coiled inside each polished piece, poised to reveal the poetry of its deepest intimacy. “Witness the studied serenity and distilled eroticism of Sleeping Muse,” proclaimed Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson in their book World’s Greatest and Most Popular Artists and Their Works. This 1910 bronze (pictured above) can be viewed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York—another one of my favorite places—and maybe one of yours.

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Toulouse enjoys the Met in NYC

A reconstruction of Brâncusi’s studio in Paris is open to the public. The Brâncusi Atelier lies near the Pompidou Centre, in the rue Rambuteau. It’s worth a trip and while you’re at it, check out the Pompidou Centre.

Brâncusi’s sculptures are very fetching; what I mean is they fetch a great deal! In 2002, one of his sculptures named Danaide sold for $18.1 million. It was the highest that a sculpture piece had ever sold for at auction. In May 2005 one of his pieces from Bird in Space broke that record, selling for $27.5 million in a Christie’s auction. Then in February 2009 in the Yves Saint Laurent/Pierre Bergé sale his sculpture Madame L.R. sold for  €29.185 million ($37.2 million), setting a new historical record. Well, don’t look at me. I didn’t buy it…(but I know who did…meow)!

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Brancusi's Le Baiser (The Kiss)

I’m Toulouse LeTrek, the COOL Travel Cat! Meow…

“Munceste ca un sclav, porunceste ca un rege, creeazs ca un zeu.” (work like a slave, command like a king, create like a god)– Constantin Brâncusi 

 

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Category: Art and Culture, Cities of the World, Interesting Places, New York, Paris, World Travel  Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  5 Comments

New York City: Art Up Close with Toulouse at the Met

03 Mar 2010 -
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Toulouse in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

“Since we’re going to Central Park, let’s go to the Met too!” Nina said in joyous inspiration as I drank my espresso, unimpressed. I hadn’t agreed to go to Central Park and she already had us touring a museum! Wasn’t Central Park that black hole where innocent little animals disappeared? Nina isn’t renowned for her inner-GPS at the best of times. I had visions of us wandering its labyrinthine paths until dark engulfed us, trapping us there. Never mind the Met…

I just sipped my espresso without a word.

“Look!” she pointed at the brochure she was holding. “They’re showing the drawings of Bronzino!” She knew that would twig my interest, but I wasn’t biting. I didn’t look up and continued to sip in silence. Back in the 1500s, Bronzino was a painter, draftsman, academician, and enormously witty poet, who became famous as the court artist to the Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici in Florence. His sketches are evocative celebrations of lyrical sensuality.

So, don’t get me wrong… I’m Toulouse LeTrek, the cool cat, the cultured cat. A famous artist was named after me, after all. I visited le Musée d’Orsay

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Central Park in Winter in New York City

when I was just a kitten. I climbed the cobbled streets and steps of Montmartre to watch the artists paint. I used to scamper between the legs of up-and-coming artists, testing their balance and fortitude. I appreciate good art. But getting lost in Central Park to get there wasn’t my idea of a civilized tour.

But Nina had already observed that my coffee was gone and I was holding the cup just to stall. She grinned. Out came her blue backpack and in I went. POOF! (I hate it when she does that.) She darted out of our tiny hotel room in the Pod (a Euro-style hostel-like hotel) and took the subway to 86th  Street. From there we walked… and walked… and walked…

You get the picture.

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Springtime by Pierre Auguste Cot, Metropolitan Museum

We finally found the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the eastern side of Central Park at 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd  Street. Nina had her heart set on seeing the Roman and Greek sculptures on the first floor. I, of course, was eager to re-acquaint myself with my favorite Impressionist artists and the Bronzino drawings on the second floor. We agreed to separate and meet at the American Wing Café in two hours. Well, it sounded like a good idea at the time…

I made my way upstairs and first toured through the Bronzino exhibit. I then ambled along the B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Gallery where Academic Classicist painter Pierre Auguste Cot’s splendid paintings, The Storm and Springtime hung. I had to linger for a time, breathing in his incredible use of light to evoke vibrant life, movement and intensity of presence. He’s one of my favorites; and that’s not just because he studied at l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Toulouse before going to Paris. :-3

From there, I entered the Annenberg Collection of 19th and Early 20th Century European Paintings, ranging from French Romanticism to Post-Impressionism. I wandered from gallery to gallery, peering at works by the likes of Manet, Degas, Pissarro, Renoir, Monet and Van Gogh.

I nosed up to them, appreciating the brashly visible brush strokes, open composition, and emphasis on light in its changing qualities. Impressionists often

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Sunflowers by Claude Monet at the Met

chose ordinary things to depict in their art, taking mundane scenes and portraying them from unique angles and giving them movement. The Impressionists captured the transient effects of sunlight by painting en plein air. They broke from tradition with short “broken” brush strokes of mixed and pure unmixed colour, not smoothly blended or shaded. Pissaro’s and Monet’s works, particularly, are good for studying the use of textured brush-strokes, using light to dapple, highlight, focus or diffuse. Impressionists painted with vivid light. They gave it a human emotion. One of the best places to see French Impressionist art is at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, but the Met has its share.

I’d parked myself in Monet’s gallery and was minding my own business, “communing” with La Grenouillère, Sunflowers, Rouen Cathedral, Path in Vetheuil, when a tiny shriek behind me broke my reverie. A young women and her daughter had discovered me!

“What a sweet stuffed cat!”

Had she no shame? No decency? I puffed myself up as best as I could and

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Toulouse discovered at the Met

offered her a cultured scowl. Didn’t she recognize me? I wasn’t just ANY stuffed cat. I was ”stuffed” with a dinner’s worth of escargots, mussels and spaghetti. I was Toulouse LeTrek, the COOL Travel Cat! Perhaps separating wasn’t such a good idea, I reflected, searching for the quickest way to escape as they approached me with covetous curiosity glinting in their eyes.

I scampered out of there and scurried downstairs–my little heart thumping like a drum–and looking for Nina. It was early yet and she wouldn’t be at the restaurant. Fearing other covetous people loitering at the café, I looked for Nina in the likely place: the Roman and Greek galleries. I found a very nice and safe “lady” to chill with and waited for Nina to find me; of course, she did.

All’s well that ends well.  I’m the COOL Travel Cat… :-3

Go to Toulouse’s page “Art Up Close with Toulouse” for more details and more articles like this one.

Photos by Nina Munteanu

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Toulouse safe with a Greek Muse at the Met

This site is powered by donations. For your reading pleasure I do not clutter it with advertizing; nor do I charge any of these fine establishments, events or places for my reviews. If you are a patron who enjoys my articles or at the receiving end of one of my reviews you can show your appreciation with a donation (see right top sidebar). 

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Category: Art and Culture, Cities of the World, New York, North America  Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  6 Comments