"It gave me the idea for the Endless Column. May it become the spirit of your studio, too!"
Brâncuși
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No, Brâncuși wasn’t talking about funerary poles in Romanian cemeteries. Nor about the mythical Axis Mundi that connects heaven and earth in prehistoric religions (as a lot of academics speculate). He was pointing to a winepress, which he gifted to Natalia Dumitresco and Alexandre Istrati, two young Romanian artists who became his neighbours.
© Donation Denise Colomb, Ministère de la Culture (France), Médiathèque du patrimoine et de la photographie, diffusion RMN-GP
"Nature creates plants that grow up straight and strong from the ground: here is my Column. It has no need of pedestal or base to support it. The wind will not destroy it; it stands by its own strength..."
The winepress morphed into a humble base in Brâncuși’s studio, then into several columns, of lengths varying from 2 to 4 meters. One of them is here, just in front of you. A 7-meter version lived in Edward Steichen’s country house garden in Voulangis, Paris region.
Man Ray
"Steichen had returned to the States for good, abandoning his house in the country.
Brâncuși wished to recover a sculpture that had been left in the garden. It was a wooden trunk about thirty feet high, carved with zigzag notches, called the Column without End. I came around to the studio with my car; he got in carrying a large coil of rope and a saw.
There were about three feet more in the ground, he said, but it did not matter ... it was the Column without End, whatever its length. I had stood by the entire operation, just fascinated. My offer to help had been refused, but I did get a nice picture of the column."
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If the Column doesn’t impress you, you are in great company. The fascist press of the time highlighted it as an example of what is wrong in Romanian society. The Romanian art establishment in the 1930s laughed at Brâncuși’s ensemble at Târgu-Jiu. He simply smiled in contempt - he knew what the Column had meant for Steichen’s garden.
“...and you know that my friend there once told me that he had never been aware of the great beauty of his garden until he had placed my Column there. It had opened his eyes ... that is what artists are here for ... to reveal beauty."
A good reminder to be more aware of the beauty around us. Brâncuși wanted to place these reminders all over the world.
He dreamt of one in Central Park and he entertained buying an island advertised in a magazine after being frustrated by eviction notices and rent issues with his studio. He would place the Column in the middle.
Before his death in 1957, Brâncuși was exchanging drawings and plans with Chicago lawyer Barnet Hodes to build a 400-meter column next to Lake Michigan.
“It would be greater than any building, three times higher than your obelisk in Washington, with a base correspondingly wide - sixty meters or more.
It would be made of metal, and in each pyramid there would be apartments and people would live there ... and on the very top, I would have my bird - a great bird poised on the top of my infinite Column."
Today, the Column remains an endless source of inspiration. My friend, Daniel Strauss, brings his fiction to life through images generated with the help of AI tools. Brâncuși’s dreams for his Column inspired him to create the images above.
”The Endless Column, much like C. G. Jung’s Bollingen Tower, is a physical echo of unyielding dedication. In these works, I see a captivating madness – a relentless pursuit of a vision that pushes beyond the ordinary. Brâncuși’s Endless Column, a symbol of infinity and commitment, resonates deeply with Jung's hands-on creation of the Bollingen Tower.
Using the power of generative AI, I reimagined Brâncuși’s Column in contexts he never actualized, blending its hypnotic, infinite pattern with diverse environments. I wanted to showcase the profound impact of a simple shape when set against the canvas of our known world. It's a tribute to the original artist, a venture into uncharted territories, and a testament to the power of generative AI in redefining the limits of our imagination.“
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Daniel Strauss
