Constantin Brancusi: Shifting the Bases of Art (Yale Publications in the History of Art) - Hardcover

Chave, Ms. Anna C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300055269 ISBN 13: 9780300055269

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1994

Synopsis

Constantin Brancusi - the most influential sculptor of the twentieth century - is usually viewed as a sculptor of pure, perfect, essential forms and as a lone visionary and exotic peasant-sage, aloof from both the social concerns of his age and from avant-garde affiliations.
In this fascinating book, Anna C. Chave explodes many of the myths about Brancusi, offering a revised view of the sculptor as an artist creatively responding to avant-garde and social concerns of his day. Using both feminist and social-historical lenses to view Brancusi's art, she explores the complex ways in which his works undermine established cultural hierarchies, challenge the fixed nature of sexual identity, and renounce notions of mastery and authority. She discusses, most specifically, how the imperiled status of the subject in an alienated, technological age is addressed by Brancusi's fragmented figures and by the displacement of the masculine by the feminine subject in his production; how the inward-looking, modern subject is invoked by Brancusi's polished, mirroring sculptures, which invite narcissistic reflection; how the changing status of the handmade object in the age of mass production is suggested by Brancusi's use of repetition; how the perceived erosion of gender boundaries in the modern age is treated in numerous sculptures involving scrambled sexual signs; and how the search for new means of transcendence and liberation is evinced in the reinvigorated image of sexual love and spiritual striving glimpsed in certain of Brancusi's most important works. By examining these achievements and his reimagining of the concept of the base - which he generally poised in a dialogic and shifting relation to his sculpture - Chave shows how Brancusi shifted the foundations of art.

About this title

About the Author

Anna C. Chave is a visiting lecturer in art history at Yale University and visiting associate professor at Hunter College.

Reviews

This scholarly study of the radically inventive Romanian abstract sculptor looks at his life and work from a poststructuralist point of view. As she draws upon Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, among other things, Chave's obvious love for the outwardly simplistic beauty in Brancusi's oeuvre becomes quickly mired in the impenetrably abstruse prose of the academy. Chave states that she employs "a hermeneutic model of psychopoetics," fashioning a "counterorthodox or reinventive approach" to his sculpture. For all but those in academe to whom poststructuralism remains a viable paradigm, such language is excessive. Brancusi himself once cautioned his critics, "Don't look for obscure formulas or mystery. I offer you pure joy." Only those academic libraries seeking comprehensive coverage of 20th-century art need consider buying this. A far better purchase for most collections would be Radu Varia's handsome Brancusi (LJ 3/1/87), which remains in print.
Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300055269
• ISBN 13: 9780300055269
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352