I was awestruck by the Brancusi art exhibition during our class visit to the National Museum of Art. The works we encountered were his originals, made prior to his formal study at Paris (though he had visited frequently before). His abstract pieces resemble simple images carved into wood and stone. The museum claims that Brancusi was influenced by Plato’s forms– a sensible conclusion considering that his sculptures seemed to aspire towards a quintessential metaphysical character. To Brancusi, a sculpture was an idea.
Despite his groundbreaking work as a modern artist, Brancusi’s sculptures were initially poorly received in the early 20th century. In the United States, his Bird in Space piece (see below) was taxed as an imported industrial object. Today, it is proudly displayed in the Guggenheim, as various countries bid for his works. Romania as well has struggled to acquire art produced by Brancusi since it also initially rejected his work.
It is no surprise that Brancusi, along with his work, modernist in nature and products of cosmopolitanism and liberalism, was rejected by the counter-liberal ideology that exploded within the Romanian national consciousness during the interwar period. This rejection continued even after the transition to communism under Soviet occupation in the post-war era. His exile was ultimately solidified by the refusal of his art donation that would be in his studio and collection at the time of his death. In 1952, having maintained a connection to his Romanian and peasant roots for almost 80 years, visible in both the way he lived and his artistic works, Brancusi became a French citizen so that he could instead donate his works to Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris. This was, in part, due to the communists’ vicious exile and refusal to grant him his citizenship upon his return to Romania. Romania, nonetheless, acquired much of his original work after the 1989 Revolution, through public and private means, and put it on display on its Museum of National Art. His most renowned piece in the gallery is the Wisdom of Earth.
The enigmatic gaze of Brancusi’s Wisdom of the Earth stares deeply into the Soul of both itself and the viewer. At first sight, it seems as if the artist saw his sculpture within the original limestone block that he carved– a calling to his own soul. Its simplicity and earthiness reveals Brancusi’s embrace of the stoic life. It reflects his worldview– an ascetic idealism which connects the essential with the ephemeral. Artwork is subject to decay, but the ideas that inspire them last forever. Brancusi gave life to his ideals through carving them out of our Mother Earth: wood and stone. The contrasting values of ephemeral and the eternal are reflected in Brancusi’s Wisdom of the Earth along with the political response that followed. A resurgence of Brancusi at the turn of the 20th century after a strong political rejection of his work demonstrates the timelessness of Brancusi… and art itself.
The Wisdom of the Earth is highly self reflective and inwardly focused. Instead of emphasizing a deity, the sculpture idealizes the simplicity and bareness of Earth. The image of the bare woman as representing Earth predates Christianity; it is a reference to the dignity and humility of our primitive, neolithic past. It portrays the humanism and peasant oriented narrative pervasive throughout the Romanian national dialogue in the mid-19th century as not only defining the nation, but Earth herself. Fundamentally, the sculpture reveals the timelessness of our agrarian societies: peasants reaping the Wisdom of Earth after sowing the seed of life. The sculpture sits akin the fetal position, seeming innocent in its pose, protecting herself. Her archaic simplicity expresses the Earth’s wisdom in its essential form. Covering and protecting her naked womb with her entire body, the sculpture embraces the birth of humanity and the becoming of a human being. Her arms are cradled in a way to support the suckling baby. By using the imagery of the female as a nurturer, the Wisdom of Earth portrays the Earth as the giver of life, alluding to the human as interconnected with the environment that sustains all living beings. By calling this “wisdom,” the sculpture veers away from the essentialistic narrative of nationalism and instead asserts a universalistic understanding of the Earth containing an eternal wisdom despite her ever-changing nature. It serves as the pinnacle of early Brancusi in Romania’s national discourse today.
Brancusi’s sculptures are just as timeless as the thoughts he sought to convey. They speak to souls around the world, carrying Romania and her pride out of its communist past. His modern display of his work is the rebirth of his own Renaissance. And Wisdom of Earth, having navigated through a difficult capitalist bureaucracy, poses proudly in the National Art Museum of Romania as of 2016, over a century after its creation (1907). As a deeply European project, it transcends the contentious political history that mars Europe’s past– an eternal return to the peace, simplicity, and warmth of Mother Earth.
