Constantin Brancusi

Descriptive Essay # 102394

Art > Sculpture

Constantin Brancusi

An analysis of the works of the sculptor Constantin Brancusi.

759 words () | 3 sources | MLA | 2006 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how Brancusi is one of the defining figures of twentieth-century sculpture, and one of its most seminal artists. The paper looks at how the sculpture "Blond Negresse", created within 1926 to 1933, is one example of how his revolutionary carvings introduced abstraction and primitivism to modern sculpture. It also examines Brancusi's complex relationship with the tradition of artistic classicism that shaped him and which considered sculpture with highest form of artistic expression.

From the Paper:

"Taking a look at Brancusi's first steps as a sculptor confirm that he took his classical heritage very seriously, that he in no way undertook it simply as an academic exercise that had been imposed upon him. Brancusi's intense re-workings of Hellenistic sculpture are evident in his first Parisian works: Sleeping Child (1906-7), Torment (1907), The Kiss(1907-8), Sleep (1908), and Torso (1909-10). Many models from the past have been proposed for these works, as well as contacts with the work of his contemporary Rodin. "Sidney Geist, for example, suggested that Torso may possibly have been inspired by a similar element in a painting by Cezanne, a feasible hypothesis since Brancusi's attitude to classicism is very similar to Cezanne's. "

Sample of Sources Used:

Constantin Brancusi: The Essence of Things, C. Gimenez and M. Gale, Tate Publishing, 2004
Constantin Brancusi, Margit Rowell, MIT Press, 1995
http://muse.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/access.cgi?uri=/journals/modernism-modernity/v004/4.3er_burke.html