The cover of Paola Mola’s book ‘Brancusi: The White Work’ graces the wall of Haider Ackermann’s studio in Paris, photographed by Ronald Stoops for A#3.

Constantin Brancusi was a Romanian sculptor who worked in the first half of the twentieth century, and is known as one of the founding artists of modern abstract sculpture. His contemporaries in the Paris art world included Henri Matisse, Marcel Duchamp and Amadeo Modigliani.

Brancusi was also an accomplished photographer, and used this medium to shed new light on his sculptural works. He shot strictly in black and white, and went beyond documenting his work – rather celebrating his own search for perfection through the evolution of his sculptures within his beautiful atelier,  consequently creating a portfolio of photographs that stands in its own right as a further development of his aesthetic.

Brancusi created beautifully tranquil imagery through his sculpture, in natural materials such as marble, wood and bronze. Symbology in his work often involved the human body (specifically the human head), physical interaction of people, and the physicality and movement of birds and other creatures.  Hs pieces display a deft mastery of sinuous and soft curves fused with a geometric sensibility – works often mounted on cylindrical or rectangular bases that were as much apart of the artwork as the crowning feature.

Brancusi’s most famous artworks include the ‘Bird in Space’ series (above) cast in bronze, an abstract representation of the upward movement of a bird and the beauty of flight – stripping away the reality of feathers and wings to deliver a pure and graceful realisation of the action. ‘The Kiss’ (below) was one of his earliest pieces, created in 1908 shortly after his move to Paris, and was much celebrated for the abstract and delicate relationship between the male and female bodies and the synergy with the natural contours of the stone.

One can divine a certain inspiration and appreciation of Brancusi’s aesthetic in Haider Ackermann’s designs – a purity and simplicity of form and quality of finish that can only be achieved through knowledge and expertise and a unique eye.

The words of Brancusi ring true:

“Simplicity is not an end in art, but we usually arrive at simplicity as we approach the true sense of things.”

Below is a rare piece of silent black and white footage showing Constantin Brancusi in the grounds of his Paris atelier.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFauhi9opHs[/youtube]