WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.260
[background music] We're in the Museum of Modern Art

00:00:02.367 --> 00:00:06.536
and we're looking at Constantin Brancusi's "Bird in Space" from 1928.

00:00:06.536 --> 00:00:08.618
Brancusi was a Romanian who worked

00:00:08.618 --> 00:00:12.026
for almost his entire career in Paris.

00:00:12.026 --> 00:00:14.951
He worked in lots of media and often pushed

00:00:14.951 --> 00:00:19.455
the materials to really new expressions.

00:00:19.455 --> 00:00:20.803
This is bronze.

00:00:20.803 --> 00:00:23.791
It's bronze. It's been highly polished.

00:00:23.791 --> 00:00:25.786
So it looks like gold...

00:00:25.786 --> 00:00:28.260
But it's not just bronze, because for Brancusi

00:00:28.260 --> 00:00:29.746
the pedestal was part of the sculpture.

00:00:29.746 --> 00:00:31.744
And it's got a stone pedestal.

00:00:31.744 --> 00:00:34.611
It's got limestone below that and very often you'd see

00:00:34.611 --> 00:00:37.212
a wooden pedestal even below that creating a hierarchy

00:00:37.212 --> 00:00:42.175
of materials what he considered the most primitive to the most industrial.

00:00:42.175 --> 00:00:45.101
It's kind of a Neoplatonic idea of ascending

00:00:45.101 --> 00:00:47.866
from the material up to the immaterial.

00:00:47.866 --> 00:00:49.676
I think that's exactly right.

00:00:49.676 --> 00:00:53.483
The reflectivity of the bronze drives that point home.

00:00:53.483 --> 00:00:58.015
It is really about light and movement, right?

00:00:58.015 --> 00:01:01.136
This is not a sculpture that is in any way

00:01:01.136 --> 00:01:02.679
a literal depiction of a bird,

00:01:02.679 --> 00:01:06.663
it's a depiction of this gentle organic arching

00:01:06.663 --> 00:01:07.944
of this soaring figure.

00:01:07.944 --> 00:01:10.254
It's not a bird in so much as a representation

00:01:10.254 --> 00:01:12.560
of the thing that birds to that we love.

00:01:12.560 --> 00:01:15.814
As one moves around it and looks at it,

00:01:15.814 --> 00:01:19.900
the light that reflects on it shifts and changes and flickers,

00:01:19.900 --> 00:01:23.480
so it does have a sense of something almost kinetic.

00:01:23.480 --> 00:01:26.192
As if it were moving and soaring,

00:01:26.192 --> 00:01:28.701
but it's not a propulsion that seems mechanical,

00:01:28.701 --> 00:01:32.900
even though it's metal and we see it as an industrial material.

00:01:32.900 --> 00:01:35.183
There's a great story about this sculpture.

00:01:35.183 --> 00:01:40.451
This was included in a famous 1936 exhibition at MoMA

00:01:40.451 --> 00:01:41.887
called "Cubism and Abstract Art"

00:01:41.887 --> 00:01:43.813
and when this came over from France,

00:01:43.813 --> 00:01:47.317
the customs agents kept it and wouldn't let it out.

00:01:47.317 --> 00:01:47.901
Why?

00:01:47.901 --> 00:01:50.221
Because MoMA was claiming it is a work of art

00:01:50.221 --> 00:01:51.662
and they didn't believe it.

00:01:51.662 --> 00:01:54.971
This is 1936 and they thought it had some industrial use

00:01:54.971 --> 00:01:56.251
and therefore could be taxed

00:01:56.251 --> 00:01:57.883
and MoMA said "No, it's a work of art,

00:01:57.883 --> 00:01:59.531
it should not be taxed"

00:01:59.531 --> 00:02:00.999
and it was actually held in.

00:02:00.999 --> 00:02:02.261
There was a court case about it.

00:02:02.261 --> 00:02:04.909
But what purpose could this possibly serve?

00:02:04.909 --> 00:02:07.614
If I remember correctly the papers suggested

00:02:07.614 --> 00:02:11.500
it may be a propeller or a piece of a propeller.

00:02:11.500 --> 00:02:15.105
It does really speak to the radicality

00:02:15.105 --> 00:02:18.333
- which I think we forget - of just how abstract this is.

00:02:18.333 --> 00:02:21.985
It doesn't really in some ways look so abstract.

00:02:21.985 --> 00:02:25.077
It does suggest flight and upward movement

00:02:25.077 --> 00:02:29.880
and we're used to things suggesting things like that.

00:02:29.880 --> 00:02:31.554
[background music]