CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI

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509 West 27th Street New York NY 10001 + 1 212 563 4474 kasmingallery.com

Brancusi & Duchamp: the Art of Dialogue

Mary Ann Caws October 3, 2018

It would be difficult to come up with a more challenging duo than this one. The exhibition is packed with sculptures, photographs, objects, films, little magazines—nothing is lacking—but we could just stop where it starts: with those two gorgeous faces of Brancusi and Duchamp by Man Ray, from 1920 and 1934, preceded by a sweater-clad Brancusi rarely seen. Here we are given the proper spin to this remarkable dialogue.

I will hone in on what most pulled me in: the extraordinary Recording of Puns by Rrose Sélavy, originally recorded in 1950 and copied in 1967 – 1968. To watch the hypnotizing spirals of Anemic Cinema, accompanied

509 West 27th Street New York NY 10001 + 1 212 563 4474 kasmingallery.com by the camera used to make it in 1920(!), or the Rotoreliefs and optical disks from 1930 and 1935 spinning in the present, while we hear the puns said aloud by Duchamp—as his alter ego (ega!) Rrose Sélavy—adds a whole other layer of meaning and experience. Of course, as the surrealists always said, “words are not playing, they are making love” and this sounding, alongside the Brancusi films of the early 1930s, was something literally unheard before.

But then there are Brancusi’s photographs of the external world such as the Temple of the Crocodile and the Endless Column at Voulangis that seems somehow to end in the sky, or his interior world—his studio, his and Duchamp’s friend Henri-Pierre Roché, with his face thrice averted, and—my favorite—Brancusi’s self- portrait in his studio of 1922. All are revelations rather than representations, as were his portraits of James Joyce in 1929 and one of an anonymous woman in 1920, whose face (so resembling Brancusi’s sculpted faces like that of Mlle Pogany) is inserted in the upsweep of her dress, all in green and red. But even more startlingly, another portrait from 1917, has just the face of Duchamp as Rrose Sélavy with that hat and those hands by Man Ray—ah, how we recognize her!

But nothing surpasses Brancusi’s film of the Inauguration of the Large Fireplaceof 1932, with Duchamp, Mary Reynolds, Vera Moore and Brancusi seated around a table celebrating. What a conversation is this! And if that is about hearing and seeing in the round, the ultimate transparency is surely Hans Schiff’s print of Duchamp’s Large Glass with Brancusi’s Leda seen through it (1949, printed in 1956 – 7). Dialogues like this— rare and unprecedented—are about speaking and seeing and making art through and around.

509 West 27th Street New York NY 10001 + 1 212 563 4474 kasmingallery.com Reading into The Artistic Dialogue Between Brancusi and Duchamp

Balasz Takac September 9, 2018

Featured image: Constantin Brancusi – Le Nouveau-Né (The Newborn I), 1920. Polished bronze, 5 7/8 x 8 3/8 x 5 7/8 inches; 15 x 21 x 15 cm. Edition of 8, cast by Susse Fondeur, Paris in 2003. © Succession Brancusi (2018) Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, NY/ADAGP, Paris. All images courtesy Kasmin Gallery.

The proponents of the early avant-garde were very well connected on the global scale and their art networks functioned the same as they do now, regardless of the technological advancements. Naturally, the communication was much easier if they belonged to the same scene and were open for collaboration.

There are plenty of examples, and one of them is the relation between Constantin Brancusi and Marcel Duchamp, two of the most iconic art figures of the twentieth century. The upcoming exhibition at Paul Kasmin Gallery titled Brancusi & Duchamp: The Art of Dialogue tends to reveal the effects of mutual support and creative exchange.

509 West 27th Street New York NY 10001 + 1 212 563 4474 kasmingallery.com Left: Marcel Duchamp – Untitled, 1968. Collage and pencil on paper, 6 5/8 x 8 inches; 16.8 x 20.3 cm. © Association Marcel Duchamp / ADAGP, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2018. Courtesy of Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, New York / Right: Marcel Duchamp – Place Card for Henri-Pierre Roché, 28 July 1917, pen and ink on paper (recto and verso). 8 7/8 x 5 3/4 inches; 22.5 x 14.6 cm. © Association Marcel Duchamp / ADAGP, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2018. Courtesy of Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, New York.

The Story of Two Artists Constantin Brancusi and Marcel Duchamp befriended in the 1910s. Around 1913, Duchamp made a huge breakthrough – he abandoned painting and embarked on a completely experimental journey; that is when he invented the ready-made, by appropriating everyday object and pronouncing it a work of art. Aside from the conceptual differences they remained friends for decades and helped each other much.

Together with Duchamp, Brancusi installed his first two major solo exhibitions in the United States in 1926–27 and in 1933–34. Along with their mutual friend Henri-Pierre Roché, Duchamp acted as Brancusi’s mediator since he lacked a dealer.

Certain similarities can be found in work of both artists from photography and moving pictures, over eroticism and gender play, the objectness of things. They were both innovators in a constant search for new possibilities and solutions which penetrated traditional understanding of art.

509 West 27th Street New York NY 10001 + 1 212 563 4474 kasmingallery.com Marcel Duchamp – Four Chess Pieces (King, Queen, and Two Pawns) for Wall-Mounted Chessboard, ca. 1930. Red colored paper, glued to cardboard disks, 12 x 13 inches; 30.5 x 33 cm, framed.© Association Marcel Duchamp / ADAGP, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2018. Courtesy of Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, New York.

A Fine Selection Of Works and Objects A number of over eighty works encompassing objects, photographs, sculptures, films and drawings loaned from various public and private collections, accompanied by rarely exhibited archival documentation will be on display. One lifetime sculpture and four posthumous casts in bronze by Brancusi will be shown together with photographic prints by his most iconic creations, such as Princess X or Leda.

Duchamp’s iconic works In Advance of the Broken Arm (1915/1964), With Hidden Noise (1916/1964), and L.H.O.O.Q. (1919/1964) will be shown as well as his early fauvist painting Nude with Black Stockings (1910), Rotoreliefs (Optical Disks) (1935), the Box in a Valise (1935–41), Female Fig Leaf (1950/1951). The chess treatise Opposition and Sister Squares Are Reconciled (1932), which he designed in collaboration with Brancusi will be displayed.

509 West 27th Street New York NY 10001 + 1 212 563 4474 kasmingallery.com Left: Constantin Brancusi – Jeune Fille sophistiquée (Portrait de Nancy Cunard), 1928. Polished bronze, 21 5/8 x 5 7/8 x 8 5/8 inches; 54.9 x 14.9 x 21.9 cm. Edition 5, cast by Susse Fondeur, Paris in 2013. © Succession Brancusi (2018) Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, NY/ADAGP, Paris / Right: Constantin Brancusi – Princess X, 1916. Polished bronze, 22 1/4 x 16 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches; 56.5 x 41.9 x 24.1 cm. Edition of 8, cast by Susse Fondeur, Paris in 2016. © Succession Brancusi (2018) Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, NY/ADAGP, Paris

This exhibition is significant since it will be the first survey entirely focused on the communication of the two art figures in any American museum or gallery. It should put a new light and enrich our knowledge on this important chapter of art history.

Brancusi & Duchamp: The Art of Dialogue is curated by art historian Paul B. Franklin and it will open at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York from 20 September until 22 December 2018.

509 West 27th Street New York NY 10001 + 1 212 563 4474 kasmingallery.com

At Paul Kasmin, Minimalism Does a Comic Turn 05-22-15 Blake Gopnik

THE DAILY PIC (#1315): The show called “Brancusi: Pioneer of American Minimalism", at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York, is gorgeous and uplifting. (The exhibition has earned the gallery its third Daily Pic in a row.) Superb works by Brancusi himself, but also by Carl Andre, Donald Judd and a few of their pals, all look stunning in the gallery's light-filled space.

For the first time that I've noticed, they also all look … funny. The show somehow brings out a comic side that that I've never noticed in minimalism, but that makes the movement seem more impressive and varied than ever.

The fun begins with a Brancusi called Jeune fille sophistiquée (shown below) a piece that I can't say I've seen in the flesh before now. Conceived in 1928, it has a blobby look that mirrors the whimsy in Betty Boop, born just a couple of years later. That fun is catching: you turn the corner and take in a Brancusi Coq that now seems more naughty and tumescent than ever.

March 13 - 18, 2015 ART BASEL IN HONG KONG DAILY EDITON 15 - 17 MARCH 2015

ArtRx NYC 05-05-15 Jillian Steinhauer

Atelier Brancusi re-created in Paris (photo by Kemy Lin)

Brancusi: Pioneer of American Minimalism When: Opens Thursday, May 7 Where: Paul Kasmin Gallery (515 West 27th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)

In 1926, perplexed American customs officials came across a thin, gold sculpture, purportedly of a bird, that had little resemblance to any avian creature. They classified it under “Kitchen Utensils and Hospital Supplies” and levied a 40% tariff against the work’s value. That sculpture, Constantin Brancusi’s “Bird in Space,” became the subject of the landmark case Brancusi v. United States, which established that nonrepresentational sculpture could be art. Brancusi’s clean, quirky (and sometimes obscene) sculptures paved the way for Minimalism in the US, and starting on Thursday some of them will be shown in close proximity at Paul Kasmin Gallery, similarly to the installation of his reconstructed studio “Atelier Brancusi” in Paris. —KL

The echt American minimalism of decades later also starts feeling lighter than air – even when it's made of thousands of pounds of wood, like Carl Andre's War and Rumours of War, from 2002, which despite its title now evokes a playground maze as much as a major sculptural monument. (Compared to that room-filling work, Andre's Steel Piece or Steel Pair, a tchotchke-sized object from 1961, feels like the shrunken Stonehenge from Spinal Tap – overwhelming ambition improbably vested in a tiny thing.)

There is an absurdist streak in all minimal art, and there's no need for even its biggest fans to deny it. Trying to make something from (almost) nothing is a peculiar thing to do, as close to Dada pranksterism as to highfalutin formalist expression. Seen in this lively light, Dan Flavin's pink and green fluorescent tubes evoke a fun fair; the stuttering arcs of Ellsworth Kelly's 38-foot Eastmore Mural read as a bare few frames pulled from a Saturday-morning cartoon, abstract only because we don't get to see enough of them, and promising more fun if we could. (Carl Andre artwork © VAGA, New York; Frank Stella artwork © 2015 Frank Stella / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York); Constantin Brancusi artwork © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris)

9 ART EVENTS TO ATTEND IN NEW YORK CITY THIS WEEK 05-04-15

Brancusi’s Le Coq (1935). COURTESY CENTRE POMPIDOU

Opening: “Brancusi: Pioneer of American Minimalism” at Paul Kasmin Constantin Brancusi’s game-changing Le Coq and Jeune Fille Sophistique sculptures will mingle with work by those he strongly influenced—the first-generation American Minimalists Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Ryman, and Frank Stella. A press release frames the show as “an articulation of the artist’s immense influence.” Paul Kasmin, 515 West 27th Street, 6-8 p.m.

Panel: “Do We Need Exhibitions Just for Women? Examining the Specialization of Exhibitions by Gender” at Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) Featuring curators, academics, and artists such as El Museo del Barrio curator Rocio Aranda- Alvarado, artist Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, and Hyperallergic senior editor Jillian Steinhauer, this talk gets straight to the point: are art shows that focus exclusively on female artists beneficial or harmful in the long run? Prime examples include MoMA’s year-long exhibition, “Designing Modern Women 1890–1990,” and MAD’s own exhibition “Pathmakers: Women in Art, Craft and Design, Midcentury and Today.”

Museum of Arts and Design, 2 Columbus Circle, 7 p.m.

November 4, 2013