Brâncuşi and Britain
Spring & Summer 2024
This research season encourages scholars and practising artists to reconsider Constantin Brâncuşi (1876-1957) and his impact amongst British artists, writers, and thinkers.
About this season
As the Centre Pompidou prepares for an ambitious new exhibition of work by Constantin Brâncuşi (1876-1957), the Henry Moore Foundation is hosting a series of events aimed at re-examining the artist’s relationship with Britain, as well as his ongoing influence upon contemporary sculpture.
Brâncuşi is one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. He was born in the small village of Hobiţa, studied art in Craiova and Bucharest, before leaving his native Romania for Paris in 1904, where he joined the École des Beaux Arts. He remained in Paris, where his sculptural practice flourished and garnered vast acclaim, until his death in 1957.
This Research Season will encourage emerging and established scholars, and practising artists to reconsider Brâncuşi, his period, and his impact amongst British artists, writers, and thinkers.
We want to pose new questions of how artists working today can respond to and challenge Brâncuşi’s legacy, with the aim of revealing fresh insights into his significance within twenty-first-century popular and academic discourses.
As well as using a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to his life and work, we will consider his exhibition history in Britain and abroad, the complicated reception of his work in Britain, and wider cross-cultural exchanges between Romania, France, and Britain.
This research season has been conceived and organised in collaboration with Dr Alexandra Parigoris (University of Leeds) and Dr Jonathan Vernon (independent).
The Brâncuşi and Britain Research Season has been kindly supported by the Romanian Cultural Institute.
Events in this season
Curatorial discussion
Ariane Coulondre and Matthew Gale
18:00–19:00
Book your free ticket
Conference
Brâncuşi, Britain and the Idea of Modern Sculpture
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Who is Brâncuși?
Our research season ‘Brâncuşi and Britain’ re-examines the life and impact of Constantin Brâncuşi (1876-1957) among British artists, writers and thinkers. But who was Brâncuşi?
Join Brâncuşi expert Dr Jonathan Vernon in this film as he explores the life and art of the artist, discussing his profound impact on modern art.
Reading list
The Henry Moore Institute’s Sculpture Research Library in Leeds offers unparalleled access to material on sculpture.
Books available in the library
Books available in the library
Brezianu, Barbu, Brâncuşi în România, Bucharest: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste Romania, 1976
Deac, Mircea, Constantin Brancusi, Bucharest: Meridiane, 1966
Bach, Friedrich Teja, Rowell, Margit, and Temkin, Ann, Constantin Brancusi: 1876–1957, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995
Barassi, Sebastiano, ‘The sculptor is a blind man: Constantin Brancusi’s Sculpture for the Blind, in Dent, Peter (ed.), Sculpture and Touch, Farnham: Ashgate, 2014
Cabanne, Pierre, Constantin Brancusi, Paris: Editions Pierre Terrail, 2002
Chave, Anna, Constantin Brancusi: Shifting the Bases of Art, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993
Cooke, Lynne, ‘New Abstract Sculpture and its Sources’, in Sandy Nairne and Nicholas Serota (eds.), British Sculpture in the Twentieth Century, London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1981
Coulondre, Ariane (ed.), Brancusi: “L’art ne fait que commencer”, Paris: Éditions du Centre Pompidou, 2024 (forthcoming)
Croitoru, Alexandra, Brancusi: an afterlife, Bucharest, Berlin: Salonul de Proiecte, 2015
Curtis, Penelope, Sculpture 1900–1945: After Rodin, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999
Epstein, Jacob, An Autobiography, London: Hulton Press, 1955
Lemny, Doina, Brancusi: Sublimation of Form, Brussels: Palais des beaux-arts, 2019
Carabas, Irina and Nitis, Olivia, After Brancusi: proceedings of the International Conference organized in the frame of the project ‘the Saint of Montparnasse’ from document to myth: a century of Constantin Brancusi Scholarship, Bucharest: Unarte, 2014
Gale, Matthew and Giminez, Carmen, Constantin Brancusi: the essence of things, London: Tate Publishing, 2004
Geist, Sidney, Brancusi: A Study of the Sculpture, New York: Grossman, 1967
Getsy, David J. (ed.), Sculpture and the Pursuit of a Modern Ideal in Britain c.1880–1930, Adershot: Ashgate, 2004
Giedion-Welcker, Carola, Constantin Brancusi, 1876–1957, Basel: Schwabe, 1958
Hultén, Pontus, Dumitresco, Natalia, and Istrati, Alexandre, Brancusi, London: Faber, (1986) 1988
Krauss, Rosalind, Passages in Modern Sculpture, New York: Viking, 1977
Lemny, Doina, Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2012
Lewis, David, Constantin Brancusi, London: Alec Tiranti, 1957
Martin, J.L., Nicholson, Ben, and Gabo, Naum, Circle: An International Survey of Constructive Art, London: Faber, 1936
Mercer, Kobena, Alain Locke and the Visual Arts, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022
Miller, Sanda, Constantin Brancusi, London: Reaktion Books, 2010
Parigoris, Alexandra, ‘Behind the Scenes: Legitimation and Marketing Strategies of Brancusi’s Posthumous Bronze Casts’, in Hecker, Sharon and Karol, Peter J., (eds), Posthumous art, law and the art market : the afterlife of art, New York; London: Routledge, 2022
Parigoris, Alexandra, ‘Between Material and Text: Marble’s Material Culture in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries’, in Gamboni, Dario, Wolf, Gerhard and Richardson, Jessica (eds.), The aesthetics of marble : from late antiquity to the present, Munich: Hirmer, 2021
Parigoris, Alexandra, ‘Filling the frame: Brancusi’s film stills of ‘Leda’ and the manifestation of attention’, in Wood, Jon and Christie, Ian (eds.), Sculpture and Film, Farnham: Ashgate, 2018
Potts, Alex, The Sculptural Imagination: Figurative, Modernist, Minimalist, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000
Read, Herbert (ed.), The Art of Sculpture, London: Faber & Faber, 1956
Rodin, Brancusi, Moore: Through the Sculptor’s Lens, London: Waddington Custot Galleries and David Grob, 2015
Rowell, Margit, and Paleologue, André, Brancusi vs. United States: The Historic Trial, 1928, Paris: Adam Biro, (1995) 1999
Shanes, Eric, Constantin Brancusi, New York: Abbeville, 1989
Tabart, Marielle, and Monod-Fontaine, Isabelle, Brancusi Photographe, Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1979
Tabart, Marielle and Parigoris, Alexandra, Princesse X : les carnets de l’Atelier Brancusi, Paris: Centre George Pompidou, 1999
Tarbega, Gabriela et al (eds,), Brâncusi La Apogeu. Noi Perspective, Bucharest, Univers Enciclopedic, 2001
Tucker, William, The Language of Sculpture, London: Thames & Hudson, 1974
Tucker, William, ‘Modernism, Freedom, Sculpture’, in Art Journal , Winter, 1977-1978, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Winter, 1977-1978)
Vernon, Jonathan, ‘Brancusi, Romania and the United States: a love story in the summer of ‘69’, Sculpture Journal, vol.31, no.2, 2022
Wood, Jon, ‘Brancusi’s ‘White Studio’’, in Jacob, Mary Jane and Grabner, Michelle (eds.), The Studio Reader: On the Space of Artists, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010
Wood, Jon, Hulks, David, and Potts, Alex (eds.), Modern Sculpture Reader, Leeds: Henry Moore Institute, 2007
Wood, Jon, ‘Shine: Sculpture and Surface in the 1920s and 1930s. An Introduction’, Leeds: Henry Moore Institute, 2002, pp. 3-8
Further reading
Further reading
Araeen, Rasheed, ‘A New Beginning: Beyond Postcolonial Culture Theory and Identity Politics’, Third Text, vol.14, no.50, pp. 3–20
Beck, Ernest, (ed.), Brancusi’s Endless Column Ensemble, World Monuments Fund & Scala, 2007
Boden, Nicola, Gale, Matthew, Glennie, Sarah, Harrison, Michael. Kettle’s Yard and its Artists: An Anthology, Cambridge: Kettle’s Yard, 1995
Brancusi: The Sculptor as Photographer, New York: Callaway and London: David Grob, 1979
Comarnescu, Petru, Eliade, Mircea, and Jianou, Ionel, Témoignages sur Brancusi, Paris: Arted, 1967
Green, Christopher, Art in France 1900–1940, New Haven and London 2000
Jianou, Ionel, Constantin Brancusi, Paris: Arted, 1963
Juliff, Toby, ‘A New Generation of British Art: A Problem of Provincialism’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, vol.18, no.1, 2018
Lemny, Doïna, and Robert-Velescu, Cristian, Brâncuşi inedit. Însemnări şi corespondenţă românească, Bucharest: Humanitas, 2004
Magid, Deborah Menaker, ‘A Note on Brancusi and the London Salon’, Art Journal 35, no.2, winter 1975–76, pp.105–6
Rumanian Art of the 20th Century. Brancusi and his Countrymen, London: Royal College of Art, 1966
Tacha, Athena C., ‘Brancusi and Contemporary Sculpture’, Arts Magazine, vol.46, no.2, November 1971
Wood, Jon, ‘Dieu-Table-Cuvette: Maurice Raynal, Brassaï et la répresentation de l’atelier du sculpteur, Minotaure (1933)’, Paris: Ligeia, (special number on Brancusi and twentieth-century sculpture), 2005
Wood, Jon, ‘Rituals of Reception: Brancusi’s impasse Ronsin studios and their visitors’, in Ames-Lewis, Francis and Paszkiewicz, Piotr (eds.), Art-Ritual-Religion, Institute of Art, Warsaw, 2004
Zervos, Christian, Constantin Brancusi: sculptures, peintures, fresques, dessins, Paris: Cahiers d’Art, 1957
Additional resources
Additional resources
Listen to A Column for Infinity (BBC Radio 3)
Patrick McGuinness travels to Targu Jiu in Romania to explore Constantin Brâncuşi’s First World War memorial The Endless Column, now considered a modernist masterpiece.