quest to achieve vaginal orgasm, with the help of Sigmund Freud.
Around this time he began crafting the bases for his sculptures with much care and originality
because he considered them important to the works themselves.
He began working on the group of sculptures that are known as "Bird in Space" — simple shapes
representing a bird in flight. The works are based on his earlier "Măiastra" series. In Romanian
folklore the Măiastra is a beautiful golden
bird who foretells the future and cures the
blind. Over the following 20 years, Brâncuși
would make 20-some versions of "Bird in
Space"
out
of
PhotographerEdward
marble
or
bronze.
Steichen purchased
one of the "birds" in 1926 and shipped it to
the United States. However, the customsofficers did not accept the "bird" as a work of art and
placed a duty upon its import as an industrial item. They charged the high tax placed upon raw
metals instead of the no tax on art. A trial the next year overturned the assessment.
Athena Tacha Spear's book, Brâncuși's Birds, first sorted out the 36 versions and their
development, from the early Măiastra, to the Golden Bird of the late teens, to the Bird in Space,
which emerged in the early '20s and which Brâncuși perfected throughout his life.
Armory Show, 1913, North end of the exhibition, showing some of the modernist sculptures.
In Arts Revolutionists of Today (1913), the caption for this photo reads: "At the left of the picture
is a much-discussed portrait bust of Mlle. Pogany, a dancer, by Brâncuși. This freak sculpture
resembles nothing so much as an egg and has excited much derision and laughter..."
His work became popular in the U.S., however, and he visited several times during his life.
Worldwide fame in 1933 brought him the commission of building a meditation temple in India
for Maharajah of Indore, but when Brâncuși went to India in 1937 to
complete the plans and begin construction, the Mahrajah was away
and lost interest in the project when he returned.
In 1938, he finished the World War I monument in Târgu-Jiu where
he had spent much of his childhood. "Table of Silence", "The Gate
of the Kiss", and "Endless Column" commemorate the courage and
sacrifice of Romanian civilians who in 1916 fought off a German
Magazine Without Borders
Issue n°1
23/45