Table of contents

I. Introduction
II. The story of the greatest man
III. The sculpture that determined Brncui to walk on
down until Paris
IV. Artworks
V. Personal life - The women in the life of Brncui
VI. The controversies of Constantin Brncui
VII. Death and legacy
VIII. How changed Brncui the customs legislation
IX. Conclusion

Introduction
Constantin Brncui is often regarded as the most important sculptor of the twentieth
century. He was the pioneer of modern abstract sculpture whose works in bronze and marble
are characterized by a restrained, elegant use of pure form and exquisite finishing. A
 passionate wood-carver, he produced numerous wood sculptures, often with a folk flavour,
and he frequently carved prototypes for works later executed in other materials. He is best
known for his abstract sculptures of ovoid heads and birds in flight.

The great sculptor had a great dream: to be someone, to become famous, to hear about
him all over the world. Behind his renown is hiding yet something almost forgotten today,
when we delivered millions of success stories, recipes for success in life. That something has
a name. It is called toil.

In the history of Sculpture, the artist is a beginning and an end. He is an end insofar
Brncuis work means plenitude an entire sculptural complex, a school, as they say in the
textbooks of art, depicting , in the immense parable of his art, few generations in budding.

And his work is a biginning because it throws countless bridges towards the shores
unknown worlds, new worlds, worlds where miracle is normal, at last, a kind of new life, in
a way that is without beginning and without end, giving in some way and in a word, a
measure of the endless and of immortality.

Brncui no longer belongs to our country, and no longer belongs to any other. He
belongs to the world.

The story of the greatest man

Constantin Brncui was born on 19 February 1876, in Hobia, a small village from
Petiani, Gorj County, at the base of the Carpathians. He was the fifth child of Maria and
Radu Nicolas Brncui. Although descended from a family of wealthy peasants, Brncui lead
modest, but one of them he have to collect parts which will guide the artistic vision of late.

Remembering his childhood and the places where he grew up, the artist was going to
confess, in a meeting with Petre utea, in Paris in 1933: "In those days, life was beautiful and
harmonious. For millennia, people were happy, lived a patriarchal life. Everything passed
quietly from one season to another. And you know why things have changed? The civilization
of the great city has come down to us." Brncui's childhood was far from one idyllic.

One of the moments spent in the first years of life is highly suggestive for the combination
of purity and violence that have characterized the future sculptor, the years spent in his native
town. The moment is reproduced in the paper "Brncui. A biography", written by Alexandru
Buican. In 1879, Constantin Brncui have 3 years. In the fall of that year, when plum brandy
was made at "the cauldron", following those who are tasting the liquid to see if the process is
unfolding as it should, Brncui catch a general moment of inadvertence. He fill the hollow of
the hands with plum brandy and drink without breathing. He falls asleep almost instantly.

The first people notice only after a few minutes. Mother goes into panic, then into hysteria,
believing that her son died. In the evening, when his father, Radu, returns from vine , coming
with fiddlers, he sees in the distance desperate signs of those who waits him with baited
breath. Party turns immediately into the mourning. The father thinks already about burial.
However, someone finds that's good to call Biddy (Baba) Brndua , a woman who cure the
diseases with methods empirical and who is the maid of Brncui.

Brndua had cured the boy, and the next day, father and son meet through the orchard.
Radu Brncui said to Constantin to gather some rods and bring them to him. His father put
the children with his head downward and, with the rods bring by the boy, he beat him as to
bear in mind.

Little Brncui was beaten by older brothers and his father, facts that made him to leave
home from a very early age. As opposed to his father, who beat him with rods, his mother was
a woman with a good soul, which he often mention with nostalgia and whereof he spoke with
much tenderless. The poverty of other children and the beating whereupon he receive when he
was little remained deeply in memory, becoming actual across observation of the sad
spectacle of Parisian streets, where children were maltreated by their parents.

Brncuis parents, Nicolas and Maria Brncui, were peasants who lived in the Romanian
countryside; like other village children of that time, Constantin did not go to school. From the
age of seven he worked as a herdsman, first watching the family flock, then working for other
people in the Carpathian Mountains. It was then that the young shepherd learned to carve
wood, a popular art in rural Romania for making spoons, bedposts, cheese presses, and
facades of homes, all of which were ornamented with carvings. The style of these ornaments
would influence several of Brncuis works. In his tastes, his bearing, and his way of life he
would forever maintain the uncomplicated tastes of his origins.

When he was nine years old, Brncui went to Trgu Jiu, a town near Petiani, in the
Oltenia region of Romania, to look for work. First he worked for a dyer; two years later he
went into the service of a grocer in Slatina; and then he became a domestic servant in a public
house in Craiova, Oltenias chief town, where he remained for several years. He retained his
taste for working in wood and undertook elaborate carving projects, such as the construction
of a violin from an orange crate. Such feats attracted the attention of an industrialist, who in
1894 entered him in the Craiova School of Arts and Crafts. In order to attend the school,
Brncui had to learn how to read and write on his own.

In 1896, at age 20, Brncui began to travel for the first time: he went to Vienna on the
Danube and hired himself out as a woodworker to earn money for his stay. Since his ambition
was to be a sculptor, in 1898 he entered to the contest for admission to the Bucharest School
of Fine Arts and was admitted. Although he was far more attracted to the work of the
independents than to that of the academicians at his school, he nevertheless studied
modeling and anatomy seriously.
 A sculpture that determined
Brncui to walk on down until Paris
In 1903, Brncui receive the first command of a public monument, a bust of general
Doctor Carol Davila, who was installed at the Military Hospital in Bucharest, and represents
the only public monument of Brncui from Bucharest. This bust was commissioned by a
board made up of his former Professor Dimitrie Gerota, to help Brncui to pay the way in
Paris. The payment of the monument was divided into two portions, the first half being paid
before he start working, and the next tranche after Brncui finished the bust. When he
finished his work, it was presented in front of the Council, but reception was unsatisfactory,
different people in the Council having regard to the opinions to the contrary about the
physical characteristics of the General, for example requesting change of the nose, and also,
different opinions in connection with placing the epaulets. Incensed by the inability of the
Council to understand the sculpture, Brncui leaves from meeting room in amazement of all,
without receiving the second half of the money needed for his departure towards France, he
deciding to do the road to Paris by foot.

Carol Davila - Sculpture by Constantin Brncui from 1903, exposed in 1912

in the Central Military Hospital in Bucharest ; Source: self-made

Later, Brncui commented on this incident as follows: It would have been an easy job,
but as a prostitute, which would have brought to me those some money what I had to pay a
ticket way iron up to Paris. But something that is innate in me and on which felt that
increases, year of year and several in a row, it broke out runaway and I could not endure.
I made about-face, without any military salute towards the great panic and fear of Doctor
Gerota, at this moment ... and went I was mentioning their mother.

The road from Bucharest to Paris led him first through Hobia, where he say goodbye to
his mother. He kept going, stopping in Vienna for a limited period, during which time he
worked as a decorator of furniture at an workshop. In Vienna he began to visit museums with
works of art inaccessible in Romania. Here he become acquainted with Egyptian carvings that
have influenced opera in later life.

From Vienna he left in 1904 towards Munich, but after six months he starts walking
through Bavaria and Switzerland and till to Langres, France. Close to Lunville, after a heavy
rain where he is caught, Brncui gets a infectious pneumonia and, in critical condition, he is
received at a hospital of nuns. After a period of recovery thinking about that he has no longer
powers and no time to traverse the road to Paris on foot, so that the last piece of the road he
browse through train. He arrived in Paris in July.

In 1905, Brncui entered the cole des Beaux-Arts, where he again entered an
academicians workshop, that of Antonin Merci, who derived his work from Florentine
Renaissance statuary. Brncui worked with him for two years, but in order to earn a living he
worked odd jobs. Orders for portraits from a few compatriots also helped him through
difficult times.

In 1906, he exhibited for the first time in Paris, in the state-sponsored Salon and then at
the Salon dAutomne. With a spirit that was still quite Classical but showing great energy, his
first works were influenced by the sinewy work of Rodin. In order to get away from that
influence, Brncui refused to enter Rodins workshop, for, he said, "Nothing can grow under
big trees.

After leaving Rodin's workshop, Brncui began developing the revolutionary style for
which he is known. His first commissioned work, The Prayer, was part of a gravestone
memorial. It depicts a young woman crossing herself as she kneels, and marks the first step
toward abstracted, non-literal representation, and shows his drive to depict "not the outer
form but the idea, the essence of things." He also began doing more carving, rather than the
method popular with his contemporaries, that of modeling in clay or plaster which would be
cast in metal, and by 1908 he worked almost exclusively by carving.

In the following few years he made many versions of Sleeping Muse and The Kiss,
further simplifying forms to geometrical and sparse objects. His works became popular in
France, Romania and the United States. Collectors, notably John Quinn, bought his pieces,
and reviewers praised his works. In 1913, Brncui's work was displayed at both the Salon
des Indpendants and the first exhibition in the U.S. of modern art, the Armory Show.

Brncui's Paris studio, 1920, photograph by Edward Steichen

One of his major groups of sculptures involved the Bird in Space - simple abstract
shapes representing a bird in flight. The works are based on his earlier Miastra series. In
Romanian folklore the Miastra is a beautiful golden bird who foretells the future and cures
the blind. Over the following 20 years, Brncui made multiple versions of Bird in Space
out of marble or bronze.

His work became increasingly popular in the U.S, where he visited several times during
his life. Worldwide fame in 1933 brought him the commission of building a meditation
temple in India for Maharajah of Indore, but when Brncui went to India in 1937 to
complete the plans and begin construction, the Mahrajah was away and lost interest in the
project when he returned.

In 1938, he finished the World War I monument in Trgu-Jiu where he had spent much of
his childhood. Table of Silence, The Gate of the Kiss, and Endless Column
commemorate the courage and sacrifice of Romanians who in 1916 defended Trgu Jiu from
the forces of the Central Powers. The restoration of this ensemble was spearheaded by the
World Monuments Fund and was completed in 2004.

The Trgu Jiu ensemble marks the apex of his artistic career. In his remaining 19 years he
created less than 15 pieces, mostly reworking earlier themes, and while his fame grew he
withdrew. In 1956, Life magazine reported, "Wearing white pajamas and a yellow gnome-
like cap, Brncui today hobbles about his studio tenderly caring for and communing with the
silent host of fish birds, heads, and endless columns which he created."

Brncui was cared for in his later years by a Romanian refugee couple. He became a
French citizen in 1952 in order to make the caregivers his heirs, and to bequeath his studio
and its contents to the Muse National d'Art Moderne in Paris.

Artworks
In 1909, Brncui establishes the domicile and the workshop on Montparnasee Street. The
famous address, 54 Rue de Montparnasee, will become a true place of pilgrimage for all
artists.

In 1907, commissioned to execute a rich landowners funeral monument in the Buzu

Cemetery in Romania, Brncui sculpted a statue of a young girl kneeling, entitled The
Prayer, which represented the first stage of his evolution toward simplified forms. He
participated for the first time in the Artistic Youth exposition, an annual exhibition of new
talent, in Bucharest, and rented a workshop in the Montparnasse area of Paris.
 Sculpture The prayer, Dumbrava Cemetery in Buzu
https://www.wikiart.org/en/constantin-brancusi/the-prayer-1907

Rodins influence appeared in Brncuis work for one last time in 1908 in the first version
of the Sleeping Muse, a sculpture of a womans face in which the features suggest an
unformed block of marble.

Sleeping Muse
https://www.wikiart.org/en/constantin-brancusi/sleeping-muse-1909
 Also in 1908, Brncui executed his first truly original work, The Kiss, in which the
vertical figures of two entwined adolescents form a closed volume with symmetrical lines. In
one of his first experiments with direct carving, he affirmed the pure, organic use of form that
was to become his trademark and that would influence the work of numerous artists, most
immediately a series of sculptures executed by his friend Amedeo Modigliani starting in
1910.

The Kiss
https://www.wikiart.org/en/constantin-brancusi/the-kiss-1912

In 1910, Brncui executed a seminal version of the Sleeping Muse. The sculpture is an
isolated, ovoid-shaped head executed in bronze, with details of the face drastically reduced so
that the work has polished, pristine curves. Brncui would experiment with this ovoid form
frequently over the years in both plaster and bronze.

Sleeping Muse II
 https://www.wikiart.org/en/constantin-brancusi/sleeping-muse-ii

In 1924, he created a pure marble ovoid shape devoid of any detail entitled Beginning of
the World; as the title suggests, for Brncui, this ovoid mass represented the very essence
of form, or a sort of primal foundation of form that the artist did not care to alter with
traditional sculptural techniques of modeling.

Sculpture for the Blind (Beginning of the World)

https://www.wikiart.org/en/constantin-brancusi/sculpture-for-the-blind-
beginning-of-the-world-1916

Brncui extended his experiments with simplifying forms to his exploration of the bird in
1912 with Maiastra, a sculpture named after a miraculous bird from Romanian popular
legends. The first version of the work was made of marble, with the bird, purified in form,
represented with its head raised in flight. Brncui followed this with 28 other versions over
the next two decades. After 1919, his birds evolved into a series of polished-bronze
sculptures, all entitled Bird in Space. The elliptical, slender lines of these figures put the
very essence of rapid flight into concrete form.

Maiastra
https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/660
 During these years of radical experimentation, Brncuis work began to have an
increasingly large, international audience. In 1913, while continuing to exhibit in the Paris
Salon des Indpendants, he participated in the Armory Show in New York, Chicago, and
Boston, showing five works including Mademoiselle Pogany, a schematized bust that
would have numerous variations. Already known in the United States, Brncui found faithful
collectors there over subsequent decades. Meanwhile, critics around the world attacked the
radical nature of his work.

Madamoiselle Pogany
https://www.wikiart.org/en/constantin-brancusi/madamoiselle-pogany-1913
Above all, Brncui loved carving itself, which required, he said, a confrontation without
mercy between the artist and his materials. He often carved in oak or in chestnut objects that
he would later treat in bronze or marble. His work reflected the African tradition of direct
carving. Indeed, like many avant-garde European artists at the time, Brncui was interested
in the primitive qualities of African arts. His first sculpture in wood, The Prodigal Son, in
1914, was very close to abstraction; it is a piece of rudely carved oak with the scarcely
perceptible features of a human being. He would follow this path with a whole series of wood
sculptures that are among his strangest works. He attached great importance to the wooden
base of a sculpture and always constructed it himself, sometimes out of five or six
superimposed pieces. (Brncui even constructed his furniture, most of his utensils, and his
pipe with his own hands.)

In 1918 he sculpted in wood the first version of the Endless Column. Created through
the repetition of superimposed symmetrical elements, this column, inspired by the pillars of
Romanian peasant houses, embodied the need for spiritual elevation that Brncui often
expressed in his works.
 The Endless Column in working

In 1920, he developed a notorious reputation with the entry of Princess X in the Salon.
The phallic appearance of this large, gleaming bronze piece scandalized the Salon and,
despite Brncui's explanation that it was simply meant to represent the essence of
womanhood, removed it from the exhibition. Princess X was revealed to be Princess Marie
Bonaparte, direct descendant of the younger brother of Napoleon Bonaparte. The sculpture
has been interpreted by some as symbolizing her obsession with the penis and her lifelong
quest to achieve vaginal orgasm, with the help of Sigmund Freud.
 Princess X
https://www.wikiart.org/en/constantin-brancusi/princess-x

In 1922 he sculpted the first versions of The Fish in marble and the Bust of a Young
Man in wood.

Fish
https://www.wikiart.org/en/constantin-brancusi/fish-1930

Constantin Brncui returned to Romania for the first time in 1924, and in 1926 he visited
the United States for an important exhibition of his works at the Brummer Gallery in New
York. His shipments from France involved him in a two-year court case with U.S. customs
officials because a work in copper, Bird in Space, was so abstract that officials refused to
believe it was sculpture: Brncui was accused of clandestinely introducing an industrial part
into the United States. In 1928 he again traveled to the United States, where he had numerous
buyers, and won his court case.

The Maharajah of Indore went to see Brncui in Paris in 1933 and commissioned him to
create a temple that would house his sculptures. Brncui worked several years to create this
temple, and in 1937 he went to India on the maharajahs invitation. The latters death,
however, prevented Brncui from realizing the project. In the meantime, Brncui had
returned to New York for a new exhibit at the Brummer Gallery in 1933, and in 1934 he
participated in the exhibition 20th Century Painting and Sculpture at the Chicago
Renaissance Society. He returned to Romania again in 1937 and in 1938 for the inauguration
of three monumental works in a public garden in Trgu Jiu: new enormous steel versions of
the Endless Column, Gate of the Kiss, and Table of Silence.

The Endless Column

http://www.mihai.photo/coloana-infinitului-targu-jiu-romania-20-iulie-2014/

Gate of the Kiss Trgu Jiu

http://www.trilulilu.ro/imagini-calatorii/tg-jiu-toamna-la-poarta-sarutului

Table of Silence Trgu Jiu

Foto: lifescrazypace.blogspot.ro
 In 1939, Brncui made his last trip to the United States to participate in the Art in Our
Time exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He continued to explore his
favourite themes in his late years, including the bird. His last important work was the Flying
Turtle in 1943. Henceforth, numerous exhibitions in the United States and in Europe would
secure his fame. The largest was an exhibit at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New
York City in 1955. By a naturalization decree dated June 13, 1952, he acquired French
citizenship.

Flying Turtle

Brncui willed to the Muse National dArt Moderne in Paris everything his workshop
contained (more than 80 sculptures) on the condition that the workshop itself be moved to the
museum and restored to its original condition. Part of this gift included hundreds of
photographic prints he took, beginning in the 1920s, of his work and studio.
The women in the life of Brncui
Although it is not known a lot about his earliest loves of Brncui, it is said that in Hobia,
in his youth, Brncui loved Ioana, a washerwoman in Craiova, which the sculptor asked her
in marriage when she was only 18 years old.

Margit Pogany was the first famous love from the life of Brncui. She was a Hungarian
painter whom she served to the master as model in 1909. He said to she "the immortal lover."
In 1913, Brncui exposes in the United States the work Madamoiselle Pogany, a sculpture
that has a tremendous success. There are several versions of this sculpture. It is said that, after
the war, Margit emigrated to Australia, where for 30 years she kept correspondence with
Brncui.

Eileen Lane, Irish-American, with 20 years younger than the master, is another model that
became his muse in 1922. In the fall of that year, Brncui and Eileen have spent a holiday in
Romania. "Why don't you come in Romania? That will change you the ideas, you don't have
to make problems why people say, I'll be presenting you to people as my daughter!". It is said
that after this holiday, Eileen Lane would want to become his wife, but master told she that he
doesn't have the call for husband. After this story of love, the sculptor has made the work
"Eileen Lane".

Another love of the artist is the Peggy Guggenheim, a billionaire American , who came
into the Studio of Brancusi in the late '30s to buy a version of the sculpture "Bird in the air".
In order to obtain a reduction in prices, the American which, later, the artist will cuddle her
"kid" and "Peghia", she tries to seduce him. Among them was born a passionate relationship.
Peggy Guggenheim said about Brncui that he is now a "cunning peasant", then a "true God"
and write about him that "he used to dress nicely and take me out, when he didnt cook. He
have a complex of persecution and always he was obsessed that people spying on him. He
loved me very much.. ". Finally, billionaire American is forced to give 4000 dollars to buy the
sculpture "Bird in the air".

Another famous love of Constantin Brncui is from Romania. The sculptor has met Maria
Tanase in 1938 in Paris. They have met at a folk art exhibition in Paris, and they lived a brief,
but a passionate relationship, although the difference in age between the two was 37 years
old: Brncui have 62 years and Maria have 25 years. In 1939, Maria Tnase splits of
Constantin Brncui. She avowed, at one time, that love of them "came at the right moment
and lasted exactly how supposed, until we got bored of each other". Brncui has not made a
sculpture of Maria Tanase.

The pianist Vera Moore, Jewess New Zealand, was one of the biggest love of the artist.
She gave him a child, Moore Constantin Brncui, was born in London on 15 September
1934, but the sculptor did not officially recognized his son. Moore Constantin Brncui
became a professional photographer at the Crazy Horse in Paris and he said that he saw his
father once, but they have not spoken at all.
 Constantin Brncui

The controversies of
Constantin Brncui
Brncui made his name by rejecting traditional views of sculpture. Instead, he favoured
simplified, stylised, curved works which expressed, or at least suggested, ideals or non-
concrete concepts. According to Brncui, the abstract was itself a reality, and what was
important was to show the essence of things, rather than their outer form. In his view, "the
decline of sculpture started with Michelangelo.. How could a person sleep in a room next to
his Moses? Michelangelo's sculpture is nothing but muscle, beefsteak beefsteak run
amok.". It was an approach which would inevitably attract both extravagant praise and
extravagant criticism.
 The first involved elements guaranteed to arouse popular interest a mystery woman and
a bitter row over whether Brncuis depiction of her was obscene. The second, potentially
more serious, called into question whether Brncuis sculpture qualified as art at all. Both
disputes, in their own way, would play a role in helping to define the boundaries of art.

Part One:
Princess X: the essence of woman, or just lewd?
On 28 January 1920, Brncui exhibited one his works, rather coyly titled Princess X, at
the Salon des Indpendants in Paris. The work features a slightly inclined ovoid head and a
long neck terminating in a full bust. Tiny ripples at the junction of the head and neck denote
the hair. The work had been shown before, at the Society of Independent Artists in New York,
without significant incident. But in Paris, it happened that one very famous visitor accounts
differ as to whether it was Picasso or Matisse drew attention to it by exclaiming, Here it
is: the phallus!

The comment evidently struck a chord; it is true that from many angles the work takes on
a noticeably phallic appearance. With the French Minister just about to have an escorted walk
through the exhibition, the embarrassed organisers forced Brncui to withdraw the sculpture
on the ground that it was liable to cause incidents. One apparently expostulated that you
could not march the Minister past a pair of balls.

The matter quickly became a cause clbre. For Brncui, the rejection and subsequent
public furore made him feel like someone who is been knocked senseless in the dark. He
stated the rationale of the sculpture in a newspaper interview:

My statue is of woman, all women rolled into one, Goethes Eternal Feminine reduced to
its essence For five years I worked, I simplified, I made the material speak out and state the
inexpressible. For indeed, what exactly is a woman? Buttons and bows, with a smile on her
lips and paint on her cheeksThat is not woman. To express that entity, to bring back to the
world of the senses that eternal type of ephemeral forms, I spent five years simplifying,
honing my work. And at last I have, I believe, emerged triumphant and transcended the
material. Besides, it is such a pity to spoil a beautiful by digging out little holes for hair, eyes,
ears. And my material is so beautiful, with its sinuous lines that shine like pure gold and sum
up in a single archetype all the female effigies on Earth.

Later he would put it this way: A nose does not make you, nor are your ears a part of the
essence of you I look at what is real to me. We are all alike. We have one nose, two ears,
two eyes, but in architectural shape we are different. A thing which would pretend to
reproduce nature would only be a copy. I am trying to get a spiritual effect. If you put an ear
there it would be in the way.

Clearly, it would have been dispiriting for Brncui to labour for five years in creating the
essence of womanhood, only to end up with something that many felt looked more like a
phallus.

The extraordinary Marie Bonaparte:

Back in about 1909, Brncui had been asked by a lady from Paris, a princess to carve a
bust of her. He demurred he had a horror and miserably low opinion of bust sculpture.
But the princess was not to be put off, he said, and coquettishly asked me to make an
exception. Brncui reconsidered: she had a beautiful bust, but ugly legs and was terribly
vain. She was looking in the mirror all the time, even during lunch discreetly placing the
mirror on the table, looking furtive. She was vain and sensual.
 The upshot was that he created a sculpture called Woman Looking in a Mirror ,
depicting the princess head as being bent to catch her reflection. It seems that it was this
sculpture, later destroyed, that Brncui spent his five years simplifying into Princess X,
with the role of the mirror being recalled by the new work's highly reflective bronze surface.

The sitter was actually Princess Marie Bonaparte. She was the great grand-niece of
Napoleon, and would be the aunt of both Princess Marina (the Duchess of Kent) and Prince
Philip (the Duke of Edinburgh). Her family was enormously wealthy her grandfather owned
a large part of Monaco.

Marie would go on to achieve considerable fame, particularly in France, for her wide
range of interests and achievements -- as a prime mover and practitioner in the
psychoanalytic movement in France; a pioneer sex researcher; translator and author of
multiple books ranging from a massive biography of Edgar Allen Poe (1949) to a story about
her dog Topsy; and for using her wealth to enable more than 200 Jews (including Freud) to
flee from the Nazis.

Princess Marie Bonaparte

Over time, Marie had a variety of lovers, including Aristide Briand, Premier of France, but
her self-perceived lack of an appropriate sexual response became a major preoccupation for
her. In 1924, she published an article Considerations on the Anatomical Causes of Frigidity
in Women, in which she concluded that one cause of frigidity the one which she herself
believed that she suffered was related to the distance between a womans clitoris and her
vagina. Based on measurements carried out on a large number of women, she argued that
those with short distances (the paraclitoridiennes) achieved orgasm easily during
intercourse, while women with longer distances (the "tleclitoridiennes") did not.

In accordance with the theory, Marie later took the extreme step of undergoing multiple
surgical attempts to correct her own genitalia, but these all proved ineffective. She also
underwent intense psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud, who considered that she had bisexual
tendencies. Although Freuds therapy also proved to be unsuccessful in solving her physical
problem, it did succeed in giving Marie more peace of mind.

Part 2
Bird in space, and in court
Six years later, Brncui would be embroiled in an even more vexatious situation, arising
out of the import of one of his works into New York A Customs appraiser, F J H Kracke, was
presented with an unusual, highly polished object made of bronze, whose status had earlier
been questioned by customs officials. After consultation, Kracke classified it as a
manufactured implement and imposed the normal 40% customs duty applicable to metallic
household utensils. He was probably unaware that his decision would lead to one of the more
celebrated court cases in art history.

The object in question a towering nine feet high including base, and titled Bird in Space had been

For Brncui, this situation would have been even more infuriating than the Princess X incident. Whil

In bringing an action in the United States Customs Court for recovery of the duty,
Brncui had to challenge a dictionary definition of a work of art that had been adopted by
the courts ten years before. In that case, known as Olivotti, the court had ruled that:

Sculpture is that branch of the free fine arts which chisels or carves in stone or other solid
material or models in clay or other plastic substance for subsequent reproduction by carving
or casting, imitations of natural objects, chiefly the human form, and represents such objects
in their true proportions of length, breadth and thickness, or of length and breadth only.

This definition, reflecting the traditional view that a work of art must be realistic and
representational, was clearly too restrictive to cover Brancusis work. In fact, despite its title,
Bird in Space lacked any of the attributes of a bird bill, claws, feathers or even wings.

Death and legacy

Brncui died on March 16, 1957, aged 81. He was buried in the Cimetire du
Montparnasse in Paris. This cemetery also displays statues that Brncui carved for deceased
artists.

In 1962, Georg Olden used Brncui's Bird in Space as the inspiration behind his design
of the Clio Award statuette.

At his death Brncui left 1200 photographs and 215 sculptures. He bequeathed part of his
collection to the French state, after it was refused by the Romanian Communist government,
on condition that his workshop be rebuilt as it was on the day he died. This reconstruction of
his studio, adjacent to the Pompidou Centre, is open to the public. Brncui's studio inspired
Swedish architect Klas Anshelm's design of the Malm Konsthall, which opened in 1975.

Brncui was elected posthumously to the Romanian Academy in 1990. Brncui's piece
"Madame L.R." sold for 29.185 million ($37.2 million) in 2009, setting a record price for a
sculpture sold at auction. Google commemorated his 135th birthday with a Doodle in 2011
consisting of seven of his works.

Brncui's works are housed in the National Museum of Art of Romania (Bucharest), the
Museum of Modern Art (New York) and other museums around the world. The Philadelphia
Museum of Art holds the largest collection of Brncui sculptures in the United States.

In 2015 , the Romanian Parliament declared February 19 "The Brncui Day", a working
holiday in Romania.
 Brncui versus U.S.
The secrets of a controversial
process that has completely
changed the concept of the modern
art
In the fall of 1926, at Brummer Gallery, one of the famous galleries in New York, was
going to pass off an exhibition with works of Brncui. 20 operas have come in customs, but
not all have passed customs control, which were dumbfounded of the form of the work. They
considered that one of the works, "Bird in space" cannot be framed in the field of art, so they
taxed it with 40% of its value. Thus, Brncui was ordered to pay 240 dollars to repossess
sculptures.

Brncui was in United States of America to prepare the exhibition and he was outraged
after the chance from customs. The work had been purchased , already, by Edward Steichen,
american photographer, who wanted to get into her possession after it will be exposed. In
press has been reported differently in this event. Some publications condemned with all the
severity the meaningless sculptures of Brancusi, while others defend them and have
appreciated the art of sculptor born in a village in Gorj County. Eventually, tax collectors have
catalogued the sculptures as "kitchen utensils and hospital equipment" and could be exposed,
thus, without the payment of any fee across the Brummer Gallery in New York and at the
Chicago Art Club.

The works of Brncui, confiscated by customs

The conflict has not ended here. The customs assessor F.J.H. Kracke has established ,
after consultation with some so-called experts, that the works does not fall into the category of
art and overlap, in this conditions, taxs. Several worrks were taken in the custody of the
customs house , requiring the payment of customs duties.

Afoot of the process

Brncui challenged in court the decision taken by the customs, acting against the State.
Brncui was not presented at trial and he assigned the photographer Edward Steichen, who
had purchased the "Bird in space", the lawyer Maurice Speiser, an art lover who had accepted
the case without claiming any honorarium, and the Charles Lane, another lawyer.

The trial began on October 21, 1927. The trial judges who remained in the history of art
were George Young and Byron Waite. The cause of Brncui was backed by some of the
leading men of American culture: the sculptor Jacob Epstein, Forbes Watson, editor of the
publication The Arts, Frank Crowninshield, an editor at Vanity Fair, William Henry Fox,
Director of the Brooklyn Museum of art and the art critic Henry McBride. The american
Government's position was supported by the sculptors Robert Aitken and Thomas Jones, two
artists who have a minor importance in art history. In the courtroom was exposed and the
work which was the object of interpretations, "Bird in space".

The lawyers had to prove that Brncui is a professional sculptor, that the work belongs to
the domain of art, that it is original and that it does not have a practical usage. The defenders
of the sculptor have faced difficulties in terms of demonstrating the originality of the work,
especially as there were still five variants. Indignant, Brncui send a letter:

Customs officers make the error of believing that all birds that you've exposed are all the
same and only the title differ. To finish with this error should expose them publicly on all,
and only then they will realize what mistake do. They will realize then that its are he fruit of
my labor legitimate and that my goal was not to produce serial articles for making profit ".

The verdict
In the fall of 1928,the judge Byron Waite has made public the verdict:
"The object now in question is nice and symmetrical in its forms and even though there
may be some difficulty in his associating with a bird, is no less pleasing watched and
appreciated from an ornamental point of view, and now that we have the evidence that it is the
product of a professional sculptor and that, in fact, is a sculpture and a work of art in
accordance with the abovementioned statements of persons , we support the protest and we
decide that it have the right to entry into the country without having to submit to customs
duties ".

"Brncui changed the American law, and devoted the style and in front of a courts and he
has rightly earned the reputation as the father of modern sculpture", note the writer Ion rlea
from Gorj.