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Constantin Brâncuși’s “Other”: Primitivism, the Porte du Baiser and the Functions of the Émigré Artist’s Studio
Ionescu, Ana
Ionescu, Ana
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Abstract
This thesis will analyze how Constantin Brâncuși’s Primitivizing sculpture is perceived in the context of his own “Otherness” in Parisian circles between the 1920s and 1940s. Brâncuși is both “Othering” and “Other” in this milieu: appropriating both from non-Western cultures and from a posited ethnographic past of his native Romania. Through form, technique and subject matter, Brâncuși both adheres to and transforms early twentieth-century Primitivism. While scholars have extensively researched Brâncuși’s sculpture, including his use of Sub-Saharan sources and references, no secondary source considers this in relation to his public persona as a “Primitive” or “Other” himself in the context of the Parisian avant-garde of the interwar period. Extant debates about his use of Romanian folk art or African art have not, for one, considered the artist’s social role and concerted public persona in this. Nor do Romanian, Anglo-American and Francophone scholars agree on how to parse out Africanizing and folk sources. Thus, after reframing Brâncuși’s “Primitive” sculpture and persona by comparing and contrasting what remain national(ist) agendas in art history, I will focus on one of Brâncuși’s capital works in particular, his Porte du Baiser of 1937-1938. The monumental ensemble of Târgu Jiu, which includes the Porte du Baiser, is a particularly interesting case study to examine the nexus of issues at the heart of this thesis. Commissioned by a State-approved but independent association in 1937, Romania exhibited it at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris, where it garnered both national and international acclaim. Aspects of its commission, display and reception are the result not only of the sculpture itself, however, but also of the carefully crafted “image” that Brâncuși primarily promoted through studio visits, as sites of publicizing his process and his artistic persona. Brâncuși’s studio functioned as a hybrid living, working, socializing, exhibiting, and teaching space and, I will argue, as a self-portrait, which negotiates his Romanian heritage and his Africanizing Primitivism. In order to analyze carefully these strategies both material and immaterial, archival sources from the Kandinsky Archives, the Brummer Gallery Archives, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest and the World’s Fair of 1937 will be examined through the lens of a decidedly “decolonizing” art-historical perspective.
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Thesis (B.A. in Art History)--John Cabot University, Fall 2024.
Date
2024
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Keywords
Modern sculpture, Primitivism in art, Art and society
Citation
Ionescu, Ana. "Constantin Brâncuși’s “Other”: Primitivism, the Porte du Baiser and the Functions of the Émigré Artist’s Studio". BA Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy. 2024.