Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays
"The studio was all white, which was rather unusual at the time, I recall that he gave me a tour when I first arrived. All his sculptures were his 'babies.' He would keep black cloths over most of them. He would carefully take off the cloths, fold them, preciously store them away, and shine each piece before he would show it to you." Jacqueline Matisse Monnier, excerpted from Memories of Brancusi in Constantin Brancusi & Richard Serra: Resting In Time and Space.
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Edited with text by Anne Umland. Text by Mia Matthias, Samantha Small.
Dissatisfied with how others represented his work, the legendary sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876–1957) took up the camera himself. Over his lifetime, he produced more than 1,000 photographs documenting the evolution of his artworks and the unique setting in which they were made. These luminous duotone images capture his ever-changing studio over the course of four decades, ranging from intimate studies of individual sculptures to wide-angle views of carefully arranged ensembles. Layered scenes of in-progress artworks, tools and raw materials—including salvaged oak beams and rough blocks of marble—offer behind-the-scenes glimpses of Brancusi’s creative process. Photographs of the artist alongside an array of visitors, including Man Ray, Berenice Abbott, Marcel Duchamp and Mina Loy, illustrate the studio as a lively space of work, play and display. Brancusi’s photographs bring to life his art and his studio as he wanted them to be seen, with extraordinary vividness and intimacy. Featuring more than 130 photographs taken by the artist, this lavishly illustrated volume offers a revealing portrait of Brancusi’s dynamic environment that ultimately became a work of art in its own right.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Friedrich Teja Bach, Raphaël Bouvier, Alfred Pacquement.
In recent years, critics and curators have pursued fascinating lines of analogy and sympathy between the sculptural oeuvres of Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) and Richard Serra (born 1939). Foremost among these shared qualities is the awareness of surrounding space both sculptors foster in the viewer, compelling a spatial encounter in which the sculpture resonates well beyond its own formal achievements. Serra and Brancusi also enjoy a mutual fascination with stacking elements, with spreading and concentrating forms and with stressing weight and material. But the distinctions between their oeuvres are also very telling: where Brancusi plays with the function of the base in his sculptures, making them an integral component of the work, Serra rejects the base altogether and uses the floor, walls and surrounding architecture as part of his enterprise. Constantin Brancusi and Richard Serra: Resting in Time and Space explores this retroactive art-historical conversation by juxtaposing 35 key Brancusis with a selection of Serras from across the artist's career. Key works in marble, bronze, wood and plaster are oriented within the themes outlined above, which position the oeuvres of Brancusi and Serra as the purest and most innovative articulations of abstract sculpture of the past century.
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Text by Carolyn Lanchner.
The elegant and exquisitely shaped sculptures of Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) are easily among the most iconic sculptures created in the twentieth century. "There are those idiots who define my work as abstract," he once said; "yet what they call abstract is what is most realistic. What is real is not the appearance but the idea, the essence of things." This volume includes 35 color images; a commentary by Carolyn Lanchner, a former curator of painting and sculpture at MoMA, accompanies each work, elucidating its significance and its context.
Constantin Brancusi & Richard Serra: Resting In Time and Space
Constantin Brancusi