"At the academy, I learned to prepare a beefsteak...I couldn’t possibly continue modelling and kneading dough like a baker."
Brâncuși
n
When you imagine Brâncuși, you probably don’t think of Écorché – pardon my French for “skin removed to show the muscles”. Like many of us, he wasn’t exactly fond of his early academic training. Yet, he admitted its role in mastering his craft.
"I became a pupil in Rodin's studio, where I reached a great technical dexterity."
Even before joining Rodin’s studio in Paris, Brâncuși had already proven his skills in 1902 when he graduated from the National School of Art in Bucharest and made the anatomical study.
Inside the exhibition room, the sculpture’s level of detail brings about a somber silence - just like a fresh corpse in a morgue. It’s time to stare and dissect the sculptor’s beginnings.
The first three rooms showed an unfamiliar Brâncuși – a student, searching, iterating, experimenting. Not just with sculpture, with photography too. But, he hadn’t yet discovered who he was really meant to be.
"I was making a sculpture each day in the style of Rodin. I could no longer live near him although he loved me. I was miserable.
These were the most difficult years, years of searching, years of seeking my own path. I had to leave Rodin. I upset him but I had to find my own path. I arrived at simplicity, peace and joy through my own intimate difficulties."
Intimate difficulties – he had quite a few of these. Most people have heard of his journey from Romania to Paris on foot. But it was no Run, Forrest, Run! Brâncuși walked until he found some carpentry work. Earn a few pennies. Pay for the next train. Then repeat. He got to Munich this way but found German(s) undecipherable.
A friend’s loan covered the ticket for his final 300km by train. Story goes that Paris greeted him with flags, brass bands, dancing and fireworks. It was July 14th, 1904 and France was celebrating 115 years since the fall of Bastille.
"France welcomed me with a marching band and military honours."
– he liked to joke. In Paris, he washed dishes to support himself and lived the not-so-romantic life of a poor artist. In 1907, he abandoned modelling and started carving directly in marble. To become a great sculptor, Brâncuși knew that he had to leave all preconceptions behind and start anew.
