Brancusi's "Golden Bird": A New Species of Modern Sculpture Author(s): Margherita Andreotti and Brancusi Source: Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies , 1993, Vol. 19, No. 2, Notable Acquisitions at The Art Institute of Chicago since 1980 (1993), pp. 134-152+198-203 Published by: The Art Institute of Chicago Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4108737 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies This content downloaded from 37.188.252.31 on Thu, 24 Sep 2020 08:37:17 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Brancusi's Golden Bird: A New Species of Modern Sculpture MARGHERITA ANDREOTTI Associate Editor The Art Institute of Chicago n 1990, the Art Institute added Golden Bird (pl. i) by Even a brief description of Golden Bird begins to Constantin Brancusi, the most widely admired sculp- suggest the considerable complexity underlying the tor of our time, to an already strong collection of his sculpture's apparent simplicity. A remarkable variety of works.' In so doing, the museum strengthened immea- materials-wood, stone, bronze-and forms-from the surably its collection of this artist's work. Golden Bird geometry of the base to the fluid curves of the bird fills a significant gap by representing a theme that pre- -have been brought here into exquisite balance. As occupied Brancusi more than any other in his career, Brancusi himself put it, "Simplicity is complexity itself. resulting in a series of almost thirty Birds. It is also ...Beauty is absolute balance," and Golden Bird seems arguably one of the most beautiful works of this series. indeed to embody both of these concepts.4 Photographed repeatedly by Brancusi before it left his From the bottom of its wooden base to the tip of the studio in 1920 for the collection of the American lawyer bird's open beak, Golden Bird rises in an accelerating John Quinn, Golden Bird was placed by the sculptor rhythm of stacked elements to a height of about seven on the fine base on which it rests today in 1926 on the feet. Composed of two truncated, wooden pyramids, the occasion of a major show of his works at the Brummer bottom section (215/8 X 9 x 9 in.) is a slenderer and more Gallery in New York.2 When the exhibition traveled rectilinear version of one of the components of Brancusi's to the Arts Club of Chicago in 1927, the sculpture Endless Column (an idea the sculptor explored in a num- was purchased by the club, a pioneering organization ber of variations ranging in date from 1918 to 1937; see largely devoted to the exhibition and support of con- fig. I3).' The central element of the base, a rectangular temporary art, where it remained until it entered the Art wooden block (I7?/4 x II5/8 x II5/8 in.), overhangs the bot- Institute's collection. tom section by an inch or so on all sides. Because it is It will be one of the purposes of this article to take a over five inches taller than it is wide, the wooden block preliminary look at the early history of this sculpture, retains the upward movement established by the bottom since, surprisingly, considering Brancusi's preeminent section, despite its bulkier shape. This central element is place in twentieth-century sculpture, even the most basic circumstances surrounding this work (its date, its relation to similar works and to the base on which it stands) are FIGURE I. Constantin Brancusi (French, born Romania, I876-i957). often unclear. Because of Golden Bird's important place View of the studio, c. 1920. Photo: Marielle Tabart and Isabelle within the history of America's and especially Chicago's Monod-Fontaine, eds., Brancusi, Photographer (New York, 1979), early support for modern art, this study concludes with a pl. I5. On the right, the Art Institute's Golden Bird is shown on survey of its early provenance and exhibition history. It is a series of stacked elements closely resembling the base on which it stands today (with the exception of the zigzag motif traced in hoped that this effort will provide a useful introduction chalk on the wood block). The sculpture in the foreground is a to some of the major issues affecting this sculpture and bronze version of Mlle Pogany II, which was sold with Golden will point to avenues for further research.' Bird to the lawyer John Quinn in 1920. 135 This content downloaded from 37.188.252.31 on Thu, 24 Sep 2020 08:37:17 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Notable Acquisitions AT THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO SINCE 1980 This content downloaded from 37.188.252.31 on Thu, 24 Sep 2020 08:37:17 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ,,. Ia.n re 4k4 -r- IL AlzA -i '3Y i- * "?' :; * '' . ,., . ..- , : ! .-rJi' ? -. ) ..* -' This content downloaded from 37.188.252.31 on Thu, 24 Sep 2020 08:37:17 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms distinguished by the strong pattern of tree rings visible on carvers and netsuke makers [who] produce tiny objects two of its sides (pl. i). Brancusi once described the wood which also maintain themselves on extremely minute of this base as "yellow," which may have referred to its foundations." Elsewhere in his essay, Pound used the original tonality.6 The wood is now a reddish brown. Birds to illustrate what he described as, Both of these wooden sections are clearly marked with Brancusi's monogram, the letters "CB" within a circle, [Brancusi's] maddeningly...difficult exploration toward getting which appear twice on the top of the middle section and all the forms into one form; this is as long as any Buddhist's once on the upper segment of the bottom section. The contemplation of the universe or as any mediaeval saint's contemplation of divine love.... It is a search easily begun and geometric rigor of this part of the base seems a perfect wholly unending, and the vestiges are let us say Brancusi's Bird. counterpoint to the buoyant shape of the bird. The limestone section (85/8 in.) that directly supports Similarly, Jeanne Robert Foster, a writer and poet who the bird (373/4 in.) echoes the bottom section of the came to know Brancusi through the collector John Quinn, wooden base, but is composed of four rather than two her lover during these years, marveled at the power and truncated pyramids and is of much squatter proportions. beauty of Brancusi's latest Birds: The shape of this stone section turns out, on close inspec- tion, not to be strictly geometric. The four truncated Like Picasso, who can in a very small painting of great pyramids constituting this part of the base diminish in figures give a sense of immensity, Brancusi can in his birds of marble and bronze give the sense of space or flight in the height and overall size as they rise, so that the bottom ele- air. One would like to see his last bird [Yellow Bird] in its ment, consisting of one of the four truncated pyramids, is perfected form crown a tall column. He has made many significantly larger than the top element, in part, proba- birds in bronze and marble. An essay could be written on bly, for reasons of stability.' From this stone pedestal rise the development and evolution of Brancusi's birds. In their the "incandescent curves" (to use a phrase coined by the last forms [referring to the Golden Bird and Yellow Bird] poet Mina Loy to describe this sculpture) of the bird they are sheer perfection."o itself, which appears to surge upward from a small hole in Finally, Mina Loy was clearly referring to the Art the stone.8 The narrowness of the area from which the Institute's Golden Bird in the poem she published in 1922 bird rises, no more than an inch or so in diameter (33/4 in. in Dial." She could have easily seen the sculpture in a in circumference), is one of the most dramatic features of show held that spring (March-April) in the Sculptors' the piece, and one that continued to challenge Brancusi in Gallery in New York, if not in Quinn's own collection. In all of his subsequent Birds. The cross section of this nar- a poem that is both witty and perceptive, she referred to row area is not perfectly circular but oval, flatter at the the bird as "the aesthetic archetype / As if / some patient back and narrower in front, echoing the shape of the bird peasant God / had rubbed the Alpha and Omega / of as a whole. Along the bottom, Brancusi signed the piece Form / into a lump of metal." She described the bird's dis- by etching his name, "C Brancusi," into the bronze. From tilled form as "A naked orientation / unwinged unplumed / this attenuated beginning, the sculpture swells upward -the ultimate rhythm has lopped the extremities / of crest toward the bird's expanding breast, reaching a maximum and claw / from / the nucleus flight." She then proceeded circumference of twenty-one inches.