NARRATOR:
The sculptor Constantin Brancusi asserted:
BRANCUSI (ACTOR):
“What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things. Starting from this truth, it is impossible for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface.”
NARRATOR:
Brancusi’s Bird in Space is the material expression of this vision. He eliminated all superficial likeness, attempting to apprehend the sensation at the core of flight. The smooth gleaming shape seems to reach upward, defying gravity. It suggests a continuing trajectory into the space above it.
BRANCUSI (ACTOR):
“Like everything else I’ve ever done, there was a furious struggle to rise heavenward.”
NARRATOR:
The son of Rumanian peasants, Brancusi moved to Paris in 1904. His earlier works resemble Auguste Rodin’s bronze figures, in their rough surfaces and the sad mood of their subjects. In 1923, he began a long series of bird sculptures. The early ones were clearly based on a bird’s anatomy. But they became increasingly abstracted. By the early 1930s, when he made this polished bronze, Brancusi had left behind all specific references to visual reality. He subsequently created many subtle variations of the theme. This series of Birds in Space is his crowning achievement. In his words:
BRANCUSI (ACTOR):
“The ideal of its realization was to be an amplification to fill the whole vault of heaven.”
Bird in Space
1931
Constantin Brancusi (Romanian, 1876-1957)
On View
Brancusi produced his first Bird in Space—a sleek abstraction of flight—in 1923. He went on to create fifteen variations on the theme, working in both bronze and marble. This version, cast in 1931, was acquired by Yashwant Rao Holkar II—the young Maharaja of Indore—for his Art Deco palace. During his visit to Brancusi’s studio in 1933, the Maharaja also reserved two other Birds in Space (in black marble and white, today at the National Gallery of Australia). When Brancusi shipped these to India three years later, he enclosed a note explaining, “My birds are a series of different objects based on a central theme that remains the same throughout. The ideal of its realization is to be an amplification that fills the whole vault of heaven.”
Details
- Artist Name: Constantin Brancusi (Romanian, 1876-1957)
- Title: Bird in Space
- Date: 1931
- Medium: Polished bronze
- Dimensions: 73 in. (185.4 cm)
- Credit Line: The Norton Simon Foundation
- Accession Number: F.1972.08.S
- Copyright: © Succession Brancusi / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object Information
The artist, Paris, sold at least by April 1933, through;
[Henri-Pierre Roché, Paris, to];
Maharajah Yeshwant Rao Holkar Bahadur (1908-1961), Indore, given 1943 as part of divorce settlement to;
Peg Branyan, Dallas, by inheritance to;
Richard Holkar, Dallas, and Maharani Usha Devi, to;
[Richard L. Feigen and Co., New York, sold 1972 to];
The Norton Simon Foundation.
[Henri-Pierre Roché, Paris, to];
Maharajah Yeshwant Rao Holkar Bahadur (1908-1961), Indore, given 1943 as part of divorce settlement to;
Peg Branyan, Dallas, by inheritance to;
Richard Holkar, Dallas, and Maharani Usha Devi, to;
[Richard L. Feigen and Co., New York, sold 1972 to];
The Norton Simon Foundation.
[on loan]
- Palo Alto, Stanford University, Tressider Union, 1960 to
Constantine Brancusi 1876-1957
- Centre Georges Pompidou, 1995-04-14 to 1995-08-21
- Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1995-10-08 to 1996-02-11
Impossible Realities: Marcel Duchamp and the Surrealist Tradition
- Norton Simon Museum, 1991-07-04 to 1992-03-08
The Universe: Creation, Constellations and the Cosmos
- Norton Simon Museum, 2001-02-04 to 2001-06-04
- Varia, Radu, Brancusi, pp. 236, 239
- Bach Friedrich Taja, Constantin Brancusi, no. 248 p. 493
- Tancock, John, The Connoisseur, fig. 9 p. 240
- Geist, Sidney, Brancusi: A Study of the Sculpture, 1968, no. 184a, coll.: Richard Holkar, Dallas, Texas, ex Maharaha Holkar of Indore pp. 6, 247
- Spear, Athena T., Brancusi's Birds, 1969, no. 20, pl. 26, coll.: Private Collection, on indefinite loan to Tressider Union, Stanford University
- Geist, Sidney, Brancusi: The Sculpture and Drawings, 1975, no. 201 p. 133
- Hulten, Pontus; Natalia Dumitresco and Alexandre Istrati, Brancusi, 1986, no. 188, as acquired in 1933 p. 310
- Geidion-Welcher, Carola, Constantin Brancusi, 1987, p. 199
- Bach, F. T. ; M. Rowell, A. Temkin, Constantine Brancusi, 1995, no. 97, as 1927?-1931 pp. 256-257, 272-273
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 774 p. 337
- Stéphane-Jacques Addade, Raphaèle Billé, Julie Blum, Louise Curtis, Guigone Rolland, Moderne maharajah: un mécène des années 1930, 2019, p. 38, 66, 136, pp. 204-205; p. [206] (ill.)
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