It is 1926. The American Customs Service assesses a work of art intended for a major retrospective exhibition in New York as an unknown piece of metalwork.
They demand an import tariff of 40%. It concerns ‘L’Oiseau d’or’, the golden bird, by the artist Constantin Brâncuși, internationally known as Brancusi.
L’Oiseau d’or 
Constantin Brâncuși Fair Use
It is 2026, a hundred years later. The exhibition ‘The Birth of Modern Sculpture’ is on view at the H’ART museum in Amsterdam. An exceptional collection of works by Brancusi has been assembled. I walk around and wonder what inspired this artist.
Brancusi is widely regarded as the father of modern sculpture. The conflict with the border authorities and the ensuing lawsuit marked a milestone in art history, a shift in the definition of art. From then on, the artist’s intention and aesthetic vision would carry just as much weight as a realistic representation. Constantin Brancusi was an inwardly driven man. At the age of eleven, he left his parental home and sought his way through life by wandering. At the age of 26, he created an unusual sculpture: a man whose skin had been removed and whose muscles meticulously exposed. It was his first attempt to grasp the ‘real’, the inner reality, beyond the exterior. With ‘The Flayed Man’, he won the prize offered by the School of Fine Arts in Bucharest. When he was 28, he saw no future for himself in Romania. He decided to go to Paris, the art center of Europe, on foot—he had no other means of travel. In Paris, he met the already famous sculptor Auguste Rodin. Rodin hired him as an assistant, but Brancusi soon left. His main reason was: ‘Nothing grows in the shadow of big trees.’
Brancusi sought innovation. He scribbled his simple definition of art on one of his notepads: ‘Creating things you do not yet know.’
He broke with the tradition of sculpting from a model, of layer upon layer, and developed into taille directe, the direct carving and cutting of materials—stone, plaster, and wood. In this direct method of working, Brancusi experienced ‘the value of the moment.’ For him, carving and cutting was a quest for archetypes, primordial forms, primordial ideas: for the essence of existence. Removing everything superfluous and redundant to find ‘authenticity,’ to find ‘truth,’ to expose an inviolable core. As Michelangelo also said: ‘I only need to free the angel from the stone.’ Brancusi says of his fish series:
‘You think of his speed, his floating, flashing body visible through the water… well, I have tried to express exactly that (…) I only want to capture the flash of his spirit.’
With his ‘flash’, Brancusi touches my soul. The far-reaching abstraction and movement in his images touch upon the origin of life.
La Prière Constantin Brâncuși Fair Use
In 1907 Brancusi created ‘La Prière’, the prayer (2), on commission. It shows a young woman kneeling on the ground with her head slightly bowed and her arms folded over her heart. Her posture makes it clear that she is in prayer.
Leda Constantin Brâncuși Fair Use
In 1920 Brancusi sculpted ‘Leda’ in white marble and later in bronze. Leda, the beautiful but mortal queen, uniting with the immortal god Zeus in the form of a swan. Brancusi does something great here. His swan does not have a classical swan neck, but a tapering, triangular shape, in which I see the posture of a kneeling woman, comparable to ‘La Prière’. In this sculpture, Leda and Zeus have become completely one. His sculpture ‘Leda’ shows a glimpse of the truth, that mortality is inextricably linked to immortality. That the breath of eternity breathes within me, the flash of the immortal spirit dwells in all mortal beings.
Prometheus, from Greek mythology, stole the divine immortal fire from Mount Olympus to plant it in the hearts of men so that they too could dream, think and act in freedom, and even equal the immortal gods.
Prométhée Constantin Brâncuși Fair Use
Brancusi’s ‘Prométhée’ shows a slumbering, sleeping little boy. Just as in his sculpture ‘Leda’, Brancusi gives the ancient myth his own twist with ‘Prométhée’. As I take in the image, it is as if I hear Prometheus saying: the divine fire that I put into your heart, for which I suffered, still lies sleeping and fastened in your heart. Wake up. Liberate the divine fire bestowed upon you! Discover the immortal flash of the spirit within you. The sculpture ‘Prométhée’ points in an inimitable way to a new possibility of life that rests in all hearts. Brancusi gives the myth the necessary new meaning for our time.
A bird symbolizes freedom, the flight of the soul in longing for union with the spirit. Brancusi created no fewer than 27 bird sculptures in marble and bronze, and another thirteen in plaster. One of these was given a Romanian title: ‘Maiastra’. It depicts the magical bird from the fairy tales and legends of his native country.
‘The Maiastra bird symbolizes the flight that liberates man from the limitations of inanimate matter,’
says Brancusi. And further:
‘It is not birds that I sculpt, it is the act of flying. Throughout my life, I try to capture the essence of flight. Flight, what a joy!’
The slender beauty of ‘L’Oiseau d’or’, the sculpture that failed to clear customs in 1926, reflects the liberation of the inner fire. This soul-bird ascends; it breaks through the horizontal earthly laws of nature. It follows the straight line to what is above. Brancusi:
‘A good sculpture can heal.’
A good sculpture heals man and his soul into a harmonious whole with the spirit of unity, freedom, and love.
About the artist:
Constantin Brâncuși was born in 1876 in Hobita Gorj, near Targu Jiu in Romania. In 1894, he was able to start working for a barrel maker in Craiova. His talent and artistic qualities were noticed. Thanks to a scholarship, he was able to enrol in the School of Fine Arts in Bucharest. He obtained his diploma in sculpture in 1902, at the age of 26.
In Paris, he continued his studies at the École des Beaux Arts. In 1926, he achieved a breakthrough in the United States with his retrospective exhibition in New York. Brâncuși died in 1957 in his studio on Impasse Ronsin in Paris. He bequeathed his entire studio, along with all his artworks, to the French state.
Other works:
Tete d’enfant endormi (1906)
Mademoiselle Pogany (1913)
Princesse X (1915)
Une Muse (1917)
La Colonne sans fin ( 1918)
Work in three parts (1938): The Table of Silence – The Gate of the Kiss – The Endless Column: commemorative sculpture in honor of the Romanian soldiers of the First World War.
Remarks:
[1] The Pasarea Maiastra, The Master Bird, or The Wonderful Bird, is a central figure in Romanian legends, comparable to the firebird or Phoenix from mythology. The bird symbolises mastery of the art of flight, the flight to the absolute, and divine beauty. Petre Ispirescu (1830-1887) was a Romanian writer who collected, retranslated, and made accessible to his time Povesti Romanesti, Romanian fairy tales, including the Pasarea Maiastra.
[2] My homeland. My family. It is the turning earth – the wind, the passing clouds, the flowing water, the fire warming the green grass – dry grass – mud, snow. (Brancusi, studio note)
