Bird in Space

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Brancusi bird sculptures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C..

"Bird in Space" is a series of sculptures by Constantin Brancusi, a Romanian sculptor. The original work was created in 1923.

In the "Bird in Space" works Brancusi concentrated not on the physical attributes of the bird but on its movement. The bird's wings and feathers are eliminated, the swell of the body is elongated, and the head and beak are reduced to a slanted oval plane. ^[1]

Seven of the sculptures in the series are made of marble, while the other nine were cast in bronze. The first and best known of the series is housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, while a bronze-cast one resides in that city's Museum of Modern Art. Three copies of the sculpture are housed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

"Bird in Space" was the cause of a court battle due to the piece being taxed by U.S. Customs. The argument was in regards to Brancusi stating that the sculpture was 'art' and not taxable materials. Time magazine reported the event thus;

"Rumanian Sculptor Constantin Brancusi had to pay $4,000 to bring his Bird in Flight into the U. S. Works of art are duty free. But Sculptor Brancusi's bird had neither head, feet nor feathers. It was four and a half feet of bronze which swooped up from its base like a slender jet of flame. Customs Inspector Kracke said it was not art; merely "a manufacture of metal . . . held dutiable at 40% ad valorem." The press bantered, jibed. Indignant modernists wrote abstruse, defensive paragraphs. Sculptor Brancusi complained to the Customs Court.

"Last week Sculptor Brancusi won his case. In its decision the Customs Court dogmatically defined art: "It is a work of art by reason of its symmetrical shape, artistic outlines and beauty of finish." Even the most wretched of logicians knows enough not to repeat the same term in both subject and definition ("art" —"artistic outline"). But Sculptor Brancusi had his money refunded." ^[2]