AFTER BRANCUSI

Proceedings of the International Conference

organized in the frame of the project
”The Saint of Montparnasse’ from Document to Myth.
A Century of Constantin Brancusi Scholarship.

1
Edited by Irina Cărăbaș & Olivia Nițiș
On the cover:
Paul Neagu, Brancusi’s ‘Torso of a Young Man’, 1972, Neagu Family Collection.

Special thanks to: Anton Neagu and Ileana Pintilie

This publication was supported by an exploratory research project from

National Romanian Authority for Scientific Research, project number PN-II-ID-PCE-2011-3-0200

www.arhiva-brezianu.ro

Descrierea CIP a Bibliotecii Naționale a României

AFTER BRANCUSI. Proceedings of the international conference
After Brancusi : Proceedings of the International Conference
organized in the frame of the project ’The Saint Montparnasse´ from
document to myth. A century of Constantin Brancusi scholarship’ /
ed.: Irina Cărăbaș, Olivia Nițiș ; pref.: Ioana Vlasiu ; graphic design:
Ciprian Ciuclea. - București: Editura UNARTE, 2014
ISBN 978-606-720-022-5

I. Cărăbaș, Irina (ed.)

II. Nițiș, Olivia (ed.)
III. Vlasiu, Ioana (pref.)
IV. Ciuclea, Ciprian (graf.)

730(063)
 CONTENTS

4 Irina Cãrãbaş & Olivia Nițiş

Introduction
92 Cristian-Robert Velescu
Brancusi: Deux Exemples de L'exégèse
de la Première Heure. Benjamin
7 Ioana Vlasiu
‘Barbu Brezianu’ Brancusi Studies
Fondane et Vasile Georgescu Paleolog

Center: A Project of ‘George Oprescu’

Institute of Art History
123 Ruxanda Beldiman
The Sculpture Department at the Fine
Art Academy in Bucharest during
11 Virginia Barbu
In the Eyes of Others: Barbu Brezianu
Constantin Brancusi's Studies.
1898-1902
and Brancusi’s Reception in the1970s
130 Corina Teacã
20 Alexandra Parigoris
Debating Brancusi in 1940s Romania
Interpreting Brancusi: Romanian
Sculpture between 1960-1989
and the Invention of Brancusi
136 Ileana Pintilie
3 39 Ioana Vlasiu
Public Art and Political Context in
The Paradigm of the Studio – A Place
to Live and Work. Paul Neagu's Studio
Romania during the Authoritarian Reign in London
of Carol II (1938-1940)
142 Magda Radu
46 Cristian Nae
Divergent Modernisms: Abstraction,
The Critique of Visuality: a Contextuali-
zation of Paul Neagu's Early Works
Temporality and Cultural Politics in the
Interpretation of Brancusi’s Pedestals
150 Magda Predescu
L'architecture et l'Art Monumental sur
62 Irina Cãrãbaş
Commemoration without Shores.
le Littoral Roumain dans la Période
Communiste. L'expériment Costinești
Celebrating Constantin Brancusi in (1970-1971)
post-Stalinist Romania
171 Olivia Nițiş
75 Adriana Şotropa
Une Esthétique de la Suggestion:
The Rhetoric of Space: from the
Endless Column of Brancusi to the
Réception Critique de L'œuvre de Inverted Plinth of Rachel Whiteread
Début de Brancusi

86 Doina Lemny
«Chez Rodin, je traîne toujours mon
désespoir ...» Lettre à des Amis de
Craiova
Commemoration without shores.1 Celebrating
Brancusi in Post-Stalinist Romania

by Irina Cãrãbaş

Irina Cărăbaș is assistant professor at the Department of Art

Welcome to
History and Theory, National University of Arts in Bucharest. Brancusi´s Native
She is the author of several studies concerning the Romanian
avant-garde, constructivism, avant-garde journals and Socialist Land
Realism, published in periodicals and collective volumes. In the mid-1960s, at the
peak of a long and uncom-
pleted process of de-Stalinization, the Romanian cultural scene was finally able to
retrieve its modernist tradition shaped before World War II. The desire to regain a
supposedly discontinued history created a fertile soil for cultural myths, and thus
a certain number of modernist artists and writers rose to the status of absolute
models of an old and, at the same time, contemporary culture. Within this context,
Constantin Brancusi was converted into such a prominent figure, one able to
rebuild the gap between the past and the present. This conversion took place on
a controversial background provided by the fact that the reception of his sculpture
had been rather equivocal in his native land, not only during the Socialist Realism,
which had just ended, but in the interwar period as well. Almost immediately
after the sculptor’s death in Paris, myriads of press articles began to be published,
the research into his career expanded, and the contemporary artists (especially 62
sculptors) proclaimed him their mentor. The political regime encouraged and
even helped the process of his ‘sanctification’, absorbing Brancusi’s figure into its
own cultural policies. It took a relatively long time and multiple undertakings for
these cultural transformations to be fully settled, but their success was nonethe-
less complete, to such a degree that their ghost still haunts, once in a while, the
cultural attitudes and the political campaigns.
A short paper could not possibly encompass all the events, political
decisions, and publications that contributed to weaving and preserving Brancusi’s
myth from the end of the 1950s and until the fall of communism in Romania. The
aim of this paper is to shed light on its performing and popular facets. It shall ex-
plore the commemoration events devoted to Brancusi in Romania over a decade,
spanning from 1967 (ten years after Brancusi’s death and the first international
conference devoted to him, held in Bucharest) to 1976 (the centenary of his birth).
Through its different expressions, the act of commemoration has reinforced the
institution of a local cult of the sculptor. Furthermore, by their very nature, such
events have crisscrossed between different channels of reception and appropria-
tion that have brought together politics, art and art history.
The outset of this lasting connection between art and politics in the
case of Brancusi dates back to the moment of his death, in 1957. It was in the
heyday of the Cold War, and therefore, certain elements of its setting came to
define and polarize the funeral speeches made on the occasion. In Paris, the
main funeral speech was made by Jean Cassou, at that time the director of the
Museum of Modern Art. Although he did not fail to mention Brancusi’s Romanian
origin as ‘impossible to uproot’ (‘indéracinablement roumaine’), he asserted that
the most significant contexts for his works had been Cubism (indéracinable-
 ment français?) and the avant-garde in general.2 What would have furthermore
characterized his artistic persona was the image of Vulcan in his workshop, an
indirect reference to the donation of his studio to the Museum of Modern Art,
that Brancusi had stated in his will. In Romania, the Artists’ Union, the institu-
tion which had centralized the entire artistic production since its Soviet-model
foundation in 1950, featured a quite opposite perspective in the official statement
on Brancusi’s death: ‘Being profoundly committed to his native country and to the
people within which he has risen, Constantin Brancusi felt until his last sigh that
he was a man of our soil and an advocate of Romanian folk art and imagination
which he has frequently employed as the source of inspiration in his works. […]
Even though he was claimed by the artistic school of Paris, Constantin Brancusi
always considered himself Romanian and therefore, his international reputation
reverberates upon his country and illustrates the creative power of the Romanian
people.’3 Moreover, in spite of the fact that the release mentioned only those
works existing in Romania (mainly early works, except for the ensemble in Târgu
Jiu), its claims extended not only over his persona, but over his whole work as
well: thus, ‘he [Brancusi] both continued the tradition of our folk artisans and
renewed the means of modern sculpture.’4
It is not known where or who pronounced this latter speech, or who
exactly its readers were at the moment of its release, but the news reached
the entire country through the pages of the Romanian Communist Party’s
mouthpiece, Scânteia, which announced the death of the Romanian sculptor in
Paris a few days later.5 The ‘Romanian’ obituary was the first endeavor of the
official cultural authorities to appropriate the sculptor6 and also to set the tone
63 for a discourse with nationalistic connotations concerning Brancusi, that would
gradually pervade certain territories in the cultural field.7 By their very nature,
commemorations have delineated a territory of this sort since the 19th century,
when they were used as significant means in nation- building and in bringing
heroes or events to the foreground of a new historical narrative. Also, their role
in the constitution of a modern public sphere has been substantial: ‘When suc-
cessful, state celebrations lent an air of stability, strength, and permanence with
their carefully-scripted rituals, designed for international as well as for domestic
consumption.’8 The encounter of communist ideology and nationalism in Romania
has increasingly amassed an overload of commemorative practices and events.
Within this frame, the presence of art was overtly required: it had to contribute
to representing historical events or it could, in special circumstances, supply a
‘character’ for the national Pantheon. While Brancusi’s star shone high among
artists and no artist received more grandiose celebrations, he was otherwise
subsumed to the general flow of commemorations. For this reason, focusing on
him alone (on his commemoration) bears the risk of placing under the same label
of ‘national-communism’ every single event/publication about Brancusi issued in
Romania between 1967 – 1976 and onwards, which was not always the case. It
is, however, true that the cult of the artist as it was established in the aftermath
of the Socialist Realism was brought about at the intersection of more fields such
as art, art history and politics. They have all contributed to its establishment and
benefited from it. Undoubtedly, all these areas cannot be viewed through the
same lens, as they aimed for different targets and involved different agencies,
but nor can they be separated.
Back in Time
Reviewing Brancusi’s pre-1945 reception in modern Romania, almost
nothing could have predicted that he would become the embodiment of ‘Romanian’
tradition and even less that his successful career in the West would be precisely
what would increase his glory in his native country.
After leaving Bucharest for Paris in 1904, Brancusi kept sending works
back home for several years, to be included in various exhibitions organized by
the group Tinerimea artistică [The Artistic Youth]. A decisive point was reached
in 1910, when The Wisdom of the Earth was severely criticized. Notwithstand-
ing the previous favorable reception of his works – considered quite promising
a couple of years before – his latest pieces were then considered to ‘block the
development of art.’9 The Wisdom was ‘a joke, a prank’ which could not possibly
belong to Romanian art. Another critic elaborated at length on its primitivism,
seen as essentially alien: ‘This kind of exotic product [Wisdom of the Earth] has
no meaning in our country. Full of their unreasonable mystery, it could influence
the disconcerted spectator longing for new, but dubious, sensations. Also, it could
encourage the younger artists to give up completing their works.’10 In spite of also
getting some praise, after this scandal, Brancusi gradually faded away from the
Romanian art scene, especially since one of his Birds [Măiastra] was later labeled
as an ‘aesthetic epilepsy’ and compared to ‘a pot with a snake maw.’11
If it weren’t for the avant-garde, Brancusi’s reputation would have re-
mained quite small. By the mid-1920s, the avant-garde group in Bucharest appro-
priated Brancusi as a ‘patron-saint’ and used his name, along with that of Tristan
Tzara, for propping both its local and international legitimacy. His path from an 64
insignificant village to international glory epitomized the vocation of all avant-garde
artists, and opened a way to surpassing national boundaries. A fragment from an
article by M. H. Maxy, animator of more avant-garde groups during the interwar
period, encloses as in a nutshell their dreams of binding together national and
international networks: ‘For us, the new art is led by maestro Constantin Brancusi,
the most exquisite and profound personality from Luchian onwards, who, from
afar, in the metropolis of Paris, indulges in confronting the pygmies by working
with us for both our exhibition and the Contimporanul journal.’12 The avant-garde
group, formed around Contimporanul journal, included Brancusi’s works in its
international exhibition in 1924, visited him in Paris and made him the subject of
special issues of their publications.13 Furthermore, two of his students were close
collaborators of more avant-garde journals in Bucharest, throughout the 1920s and
‘30s. Their conception of sculpture drew on Brancusi’s use of combined materials,
his treatment of surfaces, and sometimes even his subject matter. Milița Petrașcu,
the more active of the two, believed in direct carving, despite the fact that she
practiced it only occasionally: ‘La taille directe introduces surrealism in sculpture,’
she wrote. ‘You have to align your unconscious with the meaning of materials, you
have to devote yourself completely to an old wooden beam, thus you apprehend
the specific form of these materials […] and only afterwards you summon up
logic shaped by artistic tradition and thereby you start slowly to build with strong
self-control.’14 Direct carving, a concept taken over from Brancusi that was to be
considered one of the most modern constituents of his work, did not mean to her
a technique, but an ethics of sculpture.
By the end of the 1920s, the admiration for Brancusi had also reached
more traditionally-oriented groups from different reasons than those asserted by
 the avant-garde. Some art critics and philosophers (particularly Lucian Blaga) saw a
transcendent beauty in the perfectly polished, gold-like, surfaces of his sculptures
similar to that of Byzantine art, which they considered a major source for the tradi-
tion of Romanian art. Petru Comarnescu traced them back to the Thracian idols.
Both were attempting to single out a national specificity that would bridge all tem-
poral strata of Romanian art, from Thracian to Byzantine and to Modern, including
folk culture in this chain, whose temporality was less decided than the others.
Whereas, on the conceptual level, Brancusi could have now counted among the
traditionalists, his way of conceiving the sculptural object, with very few excep-
tions, found no echo among the artists. This was due to both a sort of mistrust
regarding abstraction and to their strong commitment toward the New Classicism.
This detour might better explain Brancusi’s position on the local cultural
scene at the time when he was rediscovered and/or reinvented in the 1960s. By
that time, his pre-war reception seemed to have survived more than a decade of
Socialist Realism. In spite of being currently considered a period of interdiction in
Romanian culture, Socialist Realism had not entirely dismantled the preceding hi-
erarchies of art. Brancusi’s case was somehow twisted, as he was not mentioned
verbally by the official discourse but, at the same time, two of his works (Portrait
of Nicolae Dărăscu from 1906 and a Study – probably a Child Head) were included
in the first display of the National Gallery, opened for the public in 1950.15 A kind of
twisted position can be further detected in the post-Stalinist period: when being
openly reinserted into the art history narrative in Romania, Brancusi shared, on the
one hand, the fate of the avant-garde, and, on the other hand, he was rediscov-
ered not as an avant-garde artist but as an upholder of tradition.
65
Commemoration Between Art and Politics
As the communist regime gained stability and shaped a national identity
in Romania, commemorations were multiplied, regardless of whether they
celebrated historical figures and events, or cultural heroes of all ranks. Moreover,
they assumed a somewhat canonical form, especially by the end of the 1970s
and during the 1980s. Although less taken into account than monuments, due to
their transitory nature, feasts, centenaries and festivals contributed all the same
to reconfiguring the past and to giving a new time discipline to the present.16 They
assisted to the establishment of an ever growing historical canon, and performed
that canon on due dates. Looking at cultural commemorations during the post-
Stalinist decades could bring new ways of understanding the cultural policy of the
regime, as well as the link between communism and nationalism. Furthermore,
it makes visible how the relationship between art and power involved not only
contemporary production and artists, but also revisions of local art history. The
performing character of the celebration shaped a certain mode of engaging with
national history, lending it a ceremonial or cult-like outlook, whose remains still
linger with us today.
The process of re-accommodation of Brancusi’s figure into the narrative
of Romanian art after Socialist Realism was a classical story of the ‘thaw’ period.
On the one hand, for the communist regime, this was clearly a strategy of proving
its openness, as well as a way of re-channeling previous sentiments and beliefs
for its own benefit.17 For the art world, on the other hand, the rediscovery of Bran-
cusi came along with a gradual recovery of the modernist canon of the interwar
period. Throughout the 1960s, it was the turn of Socialist Realism to be left aside
and forgotten. As Stalinism and the Socialist Realism associated with it were
felt as a disruption to Romania’s cultural history, by now, there were attempts to
bring scattered parts together into a narrative of continuity and tradition. Needless
to say, retrieving interwar modernism entailed many reassessments, including
some figures that were actually reinvented. Brancusi, once more, is a very good
example for this situation. His widespread reputation from the 1960s on, was, as
described in the previous chapter, a new phenomenon with no correspondence
at all before the war. Invented traditions, as Eric Hobsbawn argued, are more
frequently brought about within contexts of rapid change, the patterns of which
no longer match the previous models or traditions.18 Both the unsteadiness of the
“thaw” period and, later on, the nationalistic overtones of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s
regime needed such new traditions, in order to foster a sense of continuity and
stability. An archive material broadcast by Romanian Television in 1966 showing
Ceaușescu, who had recently come to power, during a ‘working visit’ to the Olte-
nia region, can be taken as an early symptom of Brancusi’s official absorption by
the propaganda discourse. The visit, which covered everything from industry and
agriculture to culture, ended with the speech of the new General Secretary of the
Romanian Communist Party at the foot of the Endless Column. It is worth noting
that, under the label of ‘culture’, the propaganda documentary featured, next to
the ensemble of Târgu Jiu, medieval churches (the Tismana monastery), as well as
folk dances and outfits.19
Being in quest for its own tradition and legitimacy, the cultural field met
and sometimes fed similar ambitions of the political regime. The international con-
ference Constantin Brancusi, held in Bucharest in 1967 (13-15 October) provides a
good example for the way in which various fields and intentions were intertwined. 66
Planned to take place exactly 10 years after the artist’s death, the conference and
all its collateral events were carried out with pomp and gravity. This first event set
a series of ‘necessary’ ingredients for a Brancusi commemoration that would be
partly or completely replicated on future occasions.
The organization of the first academic conference on Brancusi was
undoubtedly a feather in the cap of the communist regime, which thus could have
provided evidence of its liberalism. Numerous institutions, among which the State
Committee for Culture and Art, (equivalent to the ministry of culture) and the Art-
ists’ Union, contributed not only to the schedule of the conference, but also to a
huge exhibition on Romanian contemporary art. Their partner, the International
Association of Art Critics [AICA], was led and represented in Bucharest by
Jacques Lassaigne, who was acquainted with the local culture and who had good
connections in Romania from before the war.20 Among other guests, one could
have counted Giulio Carlo Argan, Carola Giedeon-Welcker, Sidney Geist, Marielle
Tabart, Werner Hoffmann, Palma Bucarelli, Toni Spiteris, William S. Lieberman, as
well as academics and artists from East European countries, Juliusz Starzinski,
Bohdan Urbanowicz, Lida Wachtowa. The Romanian contribution came, as one
might expect, from a wide range of professional categories, from academics, jour-
nalists – including the editor-in-chief of Scânteia – to art critics, younger or already
established art historians and artists. Each category had a predefined role to play:
either to represent the political power, to confer prestige to the event, or to be a
witness of the living Brancusi. This latter assignment was fulfilled particularly by
artists who had come to meet him (Mac Constantinescu, Ion Vlasiu, Octav Doic-
escu), or to know him closer, like his disciples Irina Codreanu and Milița Petrașcu.21
A special category was that of art historians, who had written on Brancusi during
 the interwar period and were now able to revise or restate their contributions
(among whom George Oprescu or Petru Comarnescu). Younger art historians, in
their middle or early career, were also included in the program. Like the interna-
tional speakers, the local ones were not necessary Brancusi scholars, but prestig-
ious professionals working either in research and academic institutions or muse-
ums. One exception was Barbu Brezianu, who had begun to be acknow-ledged as
a Brancusi specialist and was already preparing his future book Opera lui Brâncuși
în Romania [The Work of Brancusi in Romania, 1974], later republished and trans-
lated as Brâncuși în România [Brancusi in Romania, 1976]. His paper dealt with the
encounter of different forms of craftsmanship mastered by Brancusi. Although the
conference had no pre-designed thematic panels, recurrent ideas connected most
contributions into several categories as following: 1. At least half of the speakers
referred to Brancusi’s work as a process of purifying sculptural forms; 2. Bran-
cusi as an artist-philosopher (Juliusz Starzinski, Dan Hăulică, Mircea Deac, Dan
Grigorescu, Adrian Petrigenaru); 3. Brancusi’s exceptionality, classicism or genius
(Nicolae Argintescu Amza, Valeriu Râpeanu [editor-in-chief of Scânteia]); 4. the
encounter between East and West in his work, which was either positioned at the
intersection of the two (Carola Giedeon-Welcker), or ascribed to the Oriental, even
anti-Western spirit (Ion Frunzetti, Nurullah Berk); 5. the theme of the national and
universal character of Brancusi’s work, which revived interwar dilemmas about
the center and the periphery. Various Romanian participants explored the possible
local sources of Brancusi’s sculpture, among which folk art and mythology held
an essential place (Ion Frunzetti, Petru Comarnescu). Furthermore, Brancusi was
seen as a spokesman for very specific sentiments, mental frames and life patterns
67 pertaining to an a-temporal Romanian society (Dan Hăulică).
At a glance, in most of the published texts by Romanian contributors,
the interwar doctrine of unified Romanian art, which, irrespective of period, form,
genre, was believed to be connected through a ‘specific’ and, finally, indiscernible
spirit, seem to have surfaced again. It was exactly these views that served at best
the politics of the state, which was keen to reinforce nationalist sentiments. The
daily press conveyed a very strong message of this kind and provided an actual
space for juxtapositions between politics, art, and art history. The 1967 conference
has been the sole event in Romania involving art history scholarship featured at
length by important newspapers and, moreover, published on the front page of
the party’s mouthpiece. For several days, news, interviews with the participants
and articles, which in most cases reiterated, summarized or adapted contribu-
tions to the conference, shared company within the pages of many publications
with the Semi-centenary of the October Revolution, the visit of Indira Gandhi to
Bucharest, the Vietnam war, and the promise of pay rises. An example of how
the same ideas can be differently articulated for the official and respectively, the
scientific context is the comparison between Ion Frunzetti’s contributions to Scân-
teia and to the conference.23 Both argued that the sources of Brancusi’s sculpture
were to be found in Romanian folk art, but while the scholarly paper emphasized
similarities in terms of method and mindsets, the newspaper article overstated
anti-Western contents intertwining the traditionalist and right-oriented ideology of
the interwar period with the Cold War discourse: ‘Finding himself in the Western
world, which was marked, in the advent of World War I, by a moral, intellectual
and artistic crisis, Brancusi not only did not draw solutions to the specific quest of
his art from French culture, which due to its confusion could not possibly surmise
such solutions, but he reversed roles and made these solutions available for that
very culture.’24 Whereas his academic paper, much tempered in such overtones,
acknowledged the French cultural milieu as a formative incentive for Brancusi:
‘...we can ascertain that, after the artist internalized and then overstepped both the
economy of the Romanian artistic thought and that, much richer, of French culture,
he began to teach and confer gifts on others, paying thus his own debts.’25 The fact
that the event could not have taken place without the consent and support of the
state weakened once more the borderline between art and the official agenda.
Taking another glance (and maybe this should have been the first one)
at the proceedings and their context, the conference remains a significant turning
point for Brancusi scholarship. As Jacques Lassaigne asserted in his introductory
speech to the conference, the purpose of the gathering was to know ‘Brancusi
dans l’unité de son œuvre et de sa vie.’26 On the one hand, never before had so
many perspectives from different geographical regions (including both sides of
the Iron Curtain) come together in one scholarly event and, on the other hand, the
activities and reception of Brancusi in Romania, which had been hardly known in
the West, became more widely available to international scholars. The moment
turned out to be equally significant for the local environment of art history: the
conference was the perfect opportunity to refer in depth to the historical avant-
garde, whose historiography was being recouped after Socialist Realism (many
contributions made either by Romanian or by international scholars discussed
the sculptor within the context of the avant-garde) and, furthermore, it channeled
many scholarly interests towards Brancusi. Moreover, the exaltation of Brancusi
was not unconditionally shared by all the participants. While the risk of overlooking
the context in which Brancusi had worked most of his life [i.e. Paris] by overstat-
ing his inspiration from Romanian folk, which was being brought to the fore by 68
Werner Hoffmann, could be read as a subtle dispute between the Eastern and
Western narrative of modern art,27 Lida Wachtowa’s caution drew on a different
direction. Firstly, she remarked that the obsession with biographic detail had di-
verted scholars from engaging in the interpretation of the actual works, thus lend-
ing a legendary aura to the sculptor’s biography. And secondly, she sagaciously
predicted that such events could easily become cultural fashion.28
As already mentioned, a large exhibition of Romanian contemporary art
was meant to function both as a sort of setting for the conference and as local
claim to Brancusi’s artistic descent. This was conspicuous especially in the case
of sculpture for which Brancusi was gradually becoming an almost absolute model
and artists were taking any comparison to his work as supreme appreciation. Out
of nine venues, three were exclusively dedicated to sculpture, while other works
found a place in mixed exhibitions, next to painting and graphics. One might ask
whether the three special venues did not attempt to piece together a genealogy
of contemporary Romanian sculpture which went back directly to Brancusi. One
of the venues featured Milița Petrașcu, whose retrospective exhibition underlay
not only her recuperation as an avant-garde artist and a disciple of Brancusi, but
also a political rehabilitation, since she had been chased and investigated by the
Securitate [the secret police] in the late 1950s, in the advent of the last show-trial
in Romania.29 A second open air exhibition displayed sculptures by George Apostu,
ranked by art critics as the spiritual heir of Brancusi, due to the archaic outlook of
his works, his approach to direct carving and his preference for the materiality of
wood. Exactly these three qualities were in the process of being turned into a for-
mula, ready to certify the tradition of local sculpture as it could be applied alterna-
tively to folk art, Brancusi or to contemporary sculpture. Four emerging sculptors
 (Gheorghe Iliescu-Călinești, Spiru Săbiescu, Peter Jacobi, Valer Chende) occupied
a room in one of the main venues. Their works in wood or stone related very dif-
ferently to the work of Brancusi and did so through strategies pertaining to modern
sculpture in general. However, connecting in any form with Brancusi’s figure meant
for them a mode to move away from the strong realism that still dominated the art
schools and to work with materials like wood and stone which had been marginal-
ized by Socialist Realist sculpture. Seriality and direct carving replaced modeling
and casting. Moreover, Brancusi embodied their longing for the West, for a culture
to which they had scarce and fragmentary access, in spite of the relative openness
of the regime, and also their high regard, inherited from the interwar period, for
the cultural metropolis of Paris. It was perhaps only by coincidence that four of the
above sculptors were later to flee Romania for the Western world.
The monument made by Ion Irimescu and inaugurated on the same oc-
casion conveyed a strong connection between contemporary Romanian sculpture,
Brancusi and his commemoration. Inspired by a famous photo of the sculptor in
his studio, the monument represented Brancusi as a solemn and ascetic crafts-
man standing under an indented gate. The unveiling ceremony not only bestowed
pomp on the entire commemoration, but also extended it over its temporal limits.

1967-1976: A Festive Decade

Within the span of a decade, the practice of commemoration, as well
as the cult of the artist, received strong impetuses from different and sometimes
non-converging actors. Following the official appropriation of Brancusi and his
69
reshaping as a great Romanian artist through all media channels in 1967, his
national belonging has been continually asserted on various levels. Until 1976, the
centenary of Brancusi’s birth, new commemorations, exhibitions, frequent repro-
ductions of his works in newspapers of all kind, documentaries, radio and tele-
vision programs, and publications contributed to his popular aura. The ensemble in
Târgu Jiu and particularly the Endless Column, which came to testify the sculp-
tor’s spiritual connection with his native country, became a real site of memory.
This overlapped the monument’s initial patriotic intention and therefore the rites
of commemoration for war heroes and those for Brancusi, the ancestor and
the hero of modern art, merged into a single act. What Reinhart Kosseleck has
argued about the functioning of war memorials and their political use can be also
extended over the second signification the ensemble in Târgu Jiu subsequently
acquired: ‘It is not only the death of soldiers itself that serves political purposes,
but its remembrance is also put to political service. The war memorial is intended
to fulfill this task. It shifts the memory of the death of soldiers into an inner-worldly
functional context that aims only at the future of the survivors.’30
While the Endless Column was transformed into a site of memory
through ceaseless reference and adaptation to different media and contexts, other
sites were simply created from scratch: it was the case of Brancusi memorial
house, opened to the public in 1971 in his native village of Hobița. The museum
was created by ‘re-enactment’: Brancusi had never lived in the house which
sheltered it, and it was, in fact, bought by the local authorities from a villager. The
ethnographical appearance of the memorial museum made a point of the artist’s
rural origin and that of a local tradition that could connect the archaic peasant
culture to modern art, without any gaps, mediations or external factors.
 The print media of the decade can also be taken as evidence of the per-
vasive aura assigned to Brancusi. Without it, the Brancusi commemorations would
have been the sheer privilege of small groups of art historians, artists and party
officials. The role of the press entailed more than the simple dissemination of
information. As proved during the centenary of 1976, the print media acted as an
agent of the commemorative celebration itself. Many periodicals dedicated one or
even several special issues to Brancusi in which, along with articles, they featured
poetry praising his persona or his work, and many of his well-known maxims.31
In a way, everyone could share Brancusi and there was no need to have some
knowledge of art history in order to publish opinions about him or his work. Poetry,
theatre plays, music compositions were called to take part into the live commem-
oration, being frequently inserted into conference programs or in follow-up events.
Officially established between the February 19, 1975 and the same day
of 1976, the Brancusi Year paved the way for the resplendent celebrations of the
centenary that took place throughout 1976. Many episodes from 1967, sometimes
with the same actors, were again included in the commemoration program: an
international conference, exhibitions and more monuments. Although some of
the speakers at the conference, entitled Brancusi and the Art of the 20th Cen-
tury, had already participated in 1967, the program had a more interdisciplinary
outlook and introduced new subjects and new researchers. For instance, Mihai
Nadin discussed Brancusi’s work from a semiotic perspective, Max Bill considered
the relation to concrete art, while the ‘folkloric interpretation’ was explored by
an ethnologist. The link to the living person of Brancusi was being represented
by his disciple and legatee Natalia Dumitrescu.32 This was undoubtedly the most
prestigious academic event of the year, but other conferences were also organ- 70
ized in different places and institutions, even if their profile had no connection to
the career or the persona of the sculptor. However, places like Târgu Jiu, Hobița,
Craiova and Bucharest, where Brancusi had lived during his stay in Romania, held
more commemorative power than others, and consequently attracted most of the
events. In Târgu Jiu, the local Party Committee prepared for the Brancusi Year a
grandiose plan to revitalize several tourist amenities and attractions in the region.33
On a ‘popular’ level, students and school children were engaged in extracurricular
activities such as art or music contests.
Onto the list of reiterated commemorative gestures was also the
concern for public monuments: a new portrait of the sculptor by the same Ion
Irimescu was commissioned and erected in Târgu Jiu, while, at the same time,
much effort was concentrated on renovating the surroundings of the sculptural
ensemble from the same town.
A full list of the commemorative events, ceremonies, and publications
from this crucial decade would be certainly impossible. Nonetheless, the most
daring proposals for organizing such events were those never fulfilled. Immedi-
ately after the 1967 conference the Artists’ Union sent to the State Committee
for Culture and Art a mega-project which included, in a lavish program, an art
biennial and then triennial, international sculpture contests and conferences, public
art commissions and retrospective exhibition for major modernist artists. The
proposal was three times renewed because it could not receive all the needed
approvals and got lost on its way to the Central Committee of the Romanian Com-
munist Party until 1970, when it was finally discussed and postponed.34 It seems
that the higher levels of political power were not keen to support cultural projects
that involved large budgets and consistent exchanges with the Western world.
 Until 1976, only smaller events commemorating Brancusi took place and their
organization was left to different cultural institutions or to local authorities.
The most extravagant of the unfulfilled projects did not belong to an institution,
but to an individual, and dated back to 1965. It was the most inclusive of all, as
it covered everything from academic or great art events to local administration,
planned ahead for several years. Its initiator, Tretie Paleolog (the son of Brancusi’s
friend and biographer V. G. Paleolog), dreamt of having a replica of Brancusi’s
studio in the National Museum of Art in Bucharest and to integrally repatriate
Brancusi by bringing his remains from Paris and reburying them under the Table of
Silence.35 Needless to say, none of his proposals came true, but such dreams of
repatriation, especially of Brancusi’s remains, resurfaced much later in post-social-
ist times without any knowledge about Tretie’s previous ambition.
Brancusi proved to be suitable for the regime’s international agenda,
which could thus give the impression of being open towards the Western world.
Although controlled and limited, the exchanges between professionals from both
sides of the Iron Curtain took various forms, from conferences (e.g. Petru Comar-
nescu, Zurich, 1966; Radu Bogdan, Duisburg and Bonn, 1976) to exhibitions (Hom-
mage à Brancusi de la sculpture roumaine contemporaine, Musée Galliera, Paris,
1976) and publications (varying from pure propaganda to academic translations).
Coordinated on different levels by party committees, local and cultural
offices or institutions, the cluster of commemorative events consolidated Bran-
cusi’s position in the national Pantheon of great ancestors and, at the same time,
that of the regime which appropriated the charisma of the figures of the past.36
Consequently, official celebrations, and, needless to say, not only those dedicated
71 to Brancusi, were major means of ‘exercising cognitive control by providing the
official version of the political structure with symbolic representations.’37 However,
it must be stressed that reading this kind of event, be it from 1967 or 1976, ex-
clusively as controlled nationalistic rituals can be misleading. Even centralized and
politicized, the commemorations of Brancusi were the work of various intentions
and agencies, some of which dealt with local identities and power, others with
academic reputation, while some with opportunistic legitimacy. Furthermore, the
participation in the centenary events itself (and it is not only the case of Brancusi
commemorations) does have the power to contaminate with nationalistic meaning
intentions that were not necessarily born from a nationalistic drive.38 By 1976,
commemorative acts, as well as the general overtones in the discourse about
Brancusi came to meet the hypernormalized language of late socialism. As de-
fined by Aleksei Yurcheak, its self-citational, pre-formatted and predictable content
was activated through performing enunciation, which was the only way of keeping
the poetical discourse alive and with it, the socialist regime itself.39 Likewise, the
commemorations of Brancusi began to count exclusively as performing gestures,
without producing any new contents or knowledge.
But, irrespective of these intricate relationships, the power of commem-
oration consisted in infusing collective memory with the image of an idealized art-
ist whose name became a floating signifier, able to adapt not only to the context
that created it but even to outlive it.
ILLUSTRATIONS

72

Contimporanul, 52, 1925 Colocviul Brâncuși. 13-15 octombrie 1967,

Bucharest, 1968. Cover.

Views from the exhibition dedicated From left to right: V. G. Paleolog, Jaqueline Hoffman, Etienne
to Brancusi, National Museum of Hajdu, Marielle Tabart, Constantin Antonovici in Târgu Jiu, 1967.
Art, Bucharest, 1976. Arta 6/1976 © Barbu Brezianu Archive. Institute of Art History Bucharest.
 Notes

1
The title of this paper was not so much inspired by Roger Garaudy’s book from the 1960s
(D’un réalisme sans rivages: Picasso, Saint-John Perse, Kafka, Paris, 1963), as it was
suggested by a more recent publication, Socialist Realism without Shores, Thomas
Lahusen and Evgheni Dobreko (eds.), Durham N. C., 1997.

2
Jean Cassou, “Discours prononcé devant le cercueil de Brancusi dans l’église roumaine de la
rue Jean-de-Beauvais, le 19 mars 1957” [typewritten text], Archive Barbu Brezianu, Institute of
Art History, Bucharest, file 56.

3
“Constantin Brîncuși” [typewritten text], Archive Barbu Brezianu, Institute of Art History,
Bucharest, file 56.

4
Ibidem.

5
Anonymous, “Funeraliile lui Constantin Brîncuși”, Scînteia, no. 3861, 22 Mars 1957.

6
About the same time, the regime was tackling the possibility of ‘charming’ important cultural
figures exiled in Paris, such as Mircea Eliade and Emil Cioran. See Stelian Tănase, Anatomia
mistificării. 1944-1989, Bucharest, 2009, p. 66-67.

7
It must be stated that such a discourse was not fashioned to convey only the political use
of Brancusi’s figure, but was already present in certain articles about Romanian contemporary art.
See for instance Petru Comarnescu, “Landscapes in the Inter-Regional exhibition 1958”, in Arts
in the Rumanian People’s Republic, Gh. Șaru (ed.), Bucharest, 1958, p. 43: ‘Making full use of the
most complex means of contemporary painting and taking their inspiration from Romanian folk
art, so simple in its stylization but so full of authenticity and charm, Romanian artists are varying
and deepening their vision all the time, often achieving personal expressions and styles that
73 display the realistic vocation of Romanian painting in a wide and dynamic sense.’

8
Patrice M. Dabrowski, Commemorations and the Shaping of Modern Poland, Bloomington and
Indianapolis, 2004, p. 3.

9
E. Luciu, “A noua expoziție a Tinerimei artistice”, Revista democrației române, 2 May 1910.

10
Alexandru Tzigara-Samurcaș, “Expoziția Tinerimii artistice”, Convorbiri literare, April 1910.
See also Petre Oprea and Barbu Brezianu, “Participările lui Brâncuși la expozițiile din țară
în perioada 1903-1914”, Arta plastică, no. 12, 1964; Amelia Pavel, “Câteva mărturii despre
Brâncuși în critica românească a epocii”, in Colocviul Brâncuși. 13-15 octombrie 1967,
Bucharest, 1968, p. 200-204.

11
Adrian Maniu, “A XII-a expoziție de pictură și sculptură a societății Tinerimea artistică”, Noua
revistă română, 7-14 April 1913.

12
M. H. Maxy, “Cubismul și constructivismul (urmare)”, Foia tinerimii, 15 Mars 1925.

13
On further connections between Brancusi and the avant-garde in Romania see Irina
Cărăbaș, “Literary Representations of Brancusi’s Studio”, Revue Roumaine d’Histoire de l’Art,
2012, p. 119-127.

14
Milița Petrașcu, “Procedee noui”, Contimporanul 62, 1925.

15
Muzeul de artă al RPR. Galeria Națională, Bucharest, s.a. [TAQ 1954], p. 45.

16
Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies. Reburial and Postsocialist Change, New York, p. 39.

17
Ibid., p. 29: ‘words can be put into their mouth…it is easier to rewrite history with dead people
than with other kind of objects that are speechless.’

Eric Hobsbawn, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions”, in The Invention of Tradition, E. Hobsbawn,

18

Terence Ranger (eds.), Cambridge / New York, p.4.

19
The material can be watched on
http://euscreen.eu/play.jsp?id=EUS_A624BC585BCF4386A52A9C999F45AFD6, last retrieved 21
September 2014.

20
It is most probable that he facilitated the invitation of Romanian art historians to AICA conferences
starting with 1966. During the 1968 AICA conference held in Bordeaux, Lassaigne made a review
of the Brancusi conference in Bucharest and Petru Comarnescu announced the intention of
organizing a conference in collaboration with AICA every three years, which would actually happen
though not as regularly as initially projected. I thank Magda Predescu for sharing with me her
research work concerning the Romanian participation to AICA conferences between 1966 and 1978
which she conducted in Archives de la critique d’art in Rennes in 2011.

21
See the proceedings of the conference published as Colocviul Brâncuși. 13-15 octombrie 1967,
Bucharest, 1968.

22
Barbu Brezianu, “Artizanul”, in Colocviul Brâncuși..., p. 94-101.

23
Ion Frunzetti, “Viziunea folclorică a omologiei folclorice la Brâncuși”, in Colocviul Brâncuși...,
p. 83-93 and “Brâncuși în arta universală”, Scînteia, 14 October 1967.

24
Idem, “Brâncuși în arta universală”, Scînteia...

25
Idem, Viziunea folclorică…, p. 83.

26
Jacques Lassaigne, [Articol despre Brâncuși], mss 2650, Valeriu Râpeanu Records, Central
University Library, Bucharest. The text of the manuscript is, excepting for some small
differences, the text published in the proceedings and republished by more periodicals.

27
Werner Hofmann, “Discuții”, in Colocviul Brâncuși..., p. 152-155.
74
28
Lida Wachtova, “Brâncuâși în Cehoslovacia”, in Colocviul Brâncuși..., p. 165-168.

29
Stelian Tănase, op. cit., p. 150, 174.

30
Reinhart Koselleck, “War Memorials: Identity Formations of the Survivors”, in The Collective
Memory Reader, Jeffrey K. Olick, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, Daniel Levy (eds.), Oxford, 2011, p. 367.

Two files (31 and 147) containing over 150 press articles on Brancusi published only in 1976 from
31

the archive of Barbu Brezianu are a very good indicative of the frenzy of commemoration.

32
One article mentioned her being one of the main figures behind the scene of the 1976
conference. See C.P., „Ultima legatară testamentară a lui Brâncuși. In memoriam Natalița
Dumitresco”, România liberă, 23 July 1997.

33
Dan Cismaru, “Brâncuși omagiat de comuniști la centenarul nașterii sale”, www.verticalonline.ro,
published 8 May 2012, last retrieved 21 September 2014.

“Colocviul Brâncuși 1967-1971”, UAP [Artists’ Union] Records, File 12/1967, SANIC [Central
34

Office of National Historical Archives], Bucharest.

35
Tretie Paleolog, ”Valorificarea moștenirii culturale a lui Brâncuși”, UAP Records, File 26/1958,
SANIC, Bucharest.

Clifford Geertz, “Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power”, in Rites
36

of Power. Symbolism, Ritual, and Politics since the Middle Ages, Sean Wilentz (ed.), Philadephia,
1985, p.15; See also K. Verdery, op. cit., p. 41.

37
Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember, Cambridge – New York, p. 50.

38
Lynette P. Spillman, Nation and Commemoration. Creating National Identities in the United
States and Australia, Cambridge – New York, 1997, p.33.

39
Aleksei Yurceak, Everythig Was for Ever Until it Was no More. The Last Soviet Generation,
Princeton, 2006, p. 46-55.