Constantin Brancusi
29 January - 23 May 2004

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The totemic wooden works in this room give a sense of how Brancusi peopled his imaginative world with powerful presences. He seems to have engaged more energetically and spontaneously with his wooden pieces than with stone, more readily allowing them to change in the process of production. This may reflect his sympathy for the (once) growing and previously functional material; many of these pieces were carved from reclaimed house-timbers, a history he made no attempt to disguise. The results are resolutely vertical, naturally recalling both a tree and a human at once. They are sometimes, as in Sorceress (1916-24), complex in structure and difficult to decipher. At other times, especially in King of Kings (c.1938) and Adam and Eve (1921), the viewer is confronted with a presence at once benign and mysteriously like a religious idol.

 
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