Constantin Brancusi, Bird in Space, 1928, bronze, limestone, wood (Museum of Modern Art, New York)
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Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:00] We’re in the Museum of Modern Art, and we’re looking at Constantin Brancusi’s “Bird in Space” from 1928. Brancusi was a Romanian who worked for almost his entire career in Paris. He worked in lots of media, and often pushed the materials to really new expressions.
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:19] Is this bronze?
Dr. Zucker: [0:21] It’s bronze that has been really highly polished.
Dr. Harris: [0:24] It looks like gold.
Dr. Zucker: [0:25] But it’s not just bronze, because for Brancusi, the pedestal was part of the sculpture.
Dr. Harris: [0:30] And it’s got a stone pedestal?
Dr. Zucker: [0:31] It’s got limestone below that, and very often you would actually see a wooden pedestal even below that, creating a kind of hierarchy of materials from what he considered the most primitive to the most industrial…
Dr. Harris: [0:41] Is there a kind of Neoplatonic idea of ascending from the material up to the immaterial?
Dr. Zucker: [0:47] I think that that’s exactly right. In fact, the reflectivity of the bronze really drives that point home, because it is really about light, and actually about movement.
Dr. Harris: [0:57] Yes, it is.
Dr. Zucker: [0:58] This is not a sculpture that is in any way a literal depiction of a bird. It’s a depiction really of this gentle, organic arcing of this soaring figure. It’s not a bird so much as a representation of the thing that birds do that we love.
Dr. Harris: [1:13] As one moves around it and looks at it, the light that reflects on it shifts and changes and flickers.
Dr. Zucker: [1:20] It does.
Dr. Harris: [1:20] It does have a sense of something almost kinetic.
Dr. Zucker: [1:24] Well, that’s right. It’s as if it were moving and soaring, but it’s not a propulsion that seems mechanical, even though it is metal. We see it almost as a kind of industrial material.
[1:33] There’s a great story about this sculpture and actually it’s this sculpture in particular. This was included in the famous 1936 exhibition at MoMA called “Cubism and Abstract Art.” When this came over from France, the customs agents kept it and wouldn’t let it out.
Dr. Harris: [1:47] Why?
Dr. Zucker: [1:47] Because MoMA was claiming it is a work of art, and they didn’t believe it. This is 1936, and they thought it had some industrial use and therefore could be taxed. MoMA said, “No, it’s a work of art. It should not be taxed.” It was actually held, and there was a little bit of a court case about it.
Dr. Harris: [2:02] What purpose could this possibly serve?
Dr. Zucker: [2:05] If I remember correctly, the paper suggests that it may be in some way a propeller or a piece of a propeller.
Dr. Harris: [2:11] Interesting.
Dr. Zucker: [2:12] It really does speak to the radicality, which I think we forget, of just how abstract this is.
Dr. Harris: [2:18] To us, it doesn’t really, in some ways, look so abstract. It does suggest flight and upward movement, and we’re used to things suggesting things like that.
Dr. Zucker: [2:29] I think that that…
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