The artist who made the first modern/abstract sculpture "kiss" of the 20th century: Who is Brâncuși?

The “kiss” is not entirely abstract, but there is no doubt that it represents a big step on the way to abstract art. Because all of the art movements of Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassical, and Romanticism following the Renaissance are figurative and the artist's freedom in descriptions is limited. For example, a statue of Heracles should look like Heracles and should be likened to Heracles by everyone who sees it. You can describe Heracles' muscles and clothes differently from other artists, you can make them simpler or more ornate, more exaggerated or plain, but in the end, Heracles has to look like Heracles! This is where the radical change pioneered by Brâncuși differs, and the statue of Heracles in modern art can resemble anything, including Heracles. In a nutshell, this is the mental transformation that opens the door to freedom to create and interpret for the artist - and then the viewer.

Constantin Brâncuși (February 19, 1876 – March 16, 1957) was a Romanian sculptor, painter, and photographer who made his career in France. Considered one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th century and a pioneer of modernism, Brâncuși is called the patriarch of modern sculpture. 

Maybe we can better understand “The Kiss” if we tell you where Brâncuși took with this piece of work. For example, the sculpture “Bird in the Void”... The only thing that shows that this is a bird sculpture is the name of the work. Approximately 1.5 m. this tall statue displays a slender, vertical, rounded, smooth, bone-white object; the upper end is cut to form a flat and oval plane. That's all for Brâncuși's "bird". The “bird” has no head, wings, tail, or feet; The whole sculpture consists only of a highly stylized body.

Obviously, Brâncuși's concern is not to create a bird of the kind we know. It seems that the artist couldn't slow down where he should have carved the bird's head on the marble block he was working on, pruned the head, wings, and feathers, and kept carving until he found what he was looking for. What he is looking for is not a physical bird with a head, wings, and feet, but the inherent movement of "flying", the potential to "fly" and the abstract concept of "flying".

The works of Brâncuşi in an early period, when the movements that would mark the 20th century such as Abstract Art and Cubism had not emerged yet, are considered the first examples of modern art. Examples of Abstract Art in Painting will only be seen ten years later, with the works of Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky.

Before we talk about Brâncuși's inspirations, let's briefly tell the artist's autobiography.

Constantin Brâncuși was born in 1876 in a small mountain village called Hobiata in Romania's Southern Carpathians. His family is very poor, he does not receive any education; He spent his childhood as a shepherd, first for his own family and then for his neighbors. He became interested in wood carving at a very young age. At the age of nine, he goes to the nearby town of Târgu Jiu to work. After working as an apprentice, first in a painter's shop and then in a grocery store, he starts working as a waiter in the only local restaurant in town. On the other hand, he continues to carve wood. He was eighteen when a rich man who saw his work enrolled him in the Craiova School of Fine Arts. Before starting school, he has to learn to read and write on his own because he has never been to school before. Two years later, when he finishes school, he goes to Vienna and finds a job as a woodworker. Two years later, he passed the exam of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Bucharest and registered. He has to work at the same time during his education. Then he spent a year in Munich, where he went to learn European art. From there, his next stop will be Paris, the heart of European art. Accepted to the famous École des Beaux-Arts there, Brâncuși will live in Paris for the rest of his life.

When Brâncuși came to Paris, Rodin is the living god of sculpture, and his name is already mentioned together with names such as Michelangelo, Donatello, and Bernini. The most important reason for Brâncuşi to come to Paris is to see Rodin's works closely.

After Brâncuşi participated in an exhibition for the first time in Paris in 1906, he attracted the attention of art circles and was recommended to enter Rodin's workshop as an assistant. The young artist admires Rodin, but turns down the offer: "Nothing grows in the shade of big trees."

African Art

After that, we see that Brâncuși tends to a more conceptual and abstract style. I think that the source of inspiration for this was the African and Oceanian arts, which also influenced artists such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, André Derain, Juan Gris, Amedeo Modigliani, and Henri Matisse. I think that the masks, ornaments, and wooden sculptures brought by travelers and traders from Africa and Oceania at that time influenced European artists who were looking for a new way of expression at the close of the century, and inspired the movements of Expressionism and Cubism.

Animism, the belief that everything in nature is alive and has a spirit, is one of the inherent qualities of African and Oceanian art; I think Brâncuși was also looking for this spirit and continued to carve the piece of marble in front of him until he found it. I would like to draw your attention to the similarities in style between the "Sleeping Muse" sculpture made by the artist in 1910 and the African mask on the page.

Direct Chipping

Before concluding, we need to mention an innovation that Brâncuşi brought to the sculpture technique. The scene you see in movies, where the artist, alone, with a hammer and chisel in hand, hews a marble block, is only realistic after Brâncuși. Sculpture-making before Brâncuși is a collective production that includes craftsmanship as well as artistry. The artist first made a small model of the sculpture - usually of clay or plaster - and then a crowd of journeymen/helpers would adapt this model to the large marble block. The artist usually made only the last few corrections to this sculpture.

With Brâncuși, that too has changed; The practice of carving directly into marble or limestone without a model/model, which was later called "Direct Carving", first begins with it. The reason why Brâncuşi produced fewer works than his contemporaries is mostly because he worked alone.

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Constantin Brâncuși: The Patriarch of Modern Sculpture

https://3seaseurope.com/constantin-brancusi-the-patriarch-of-modern-sculpture/