Brancusi is with Rodin, his opposite, the most important sculptor of the 20th century. Born in Romania he will meet Modigliani in Paris where he settles in 1904 and where he will also become a close friend of Marcel Duchamp. The core of his work is made of heads, women or muses, birds and animals, sensuous egg-shaped and slender artefacts: his art was a quest for the "deep meaning of things". France, which he first scandalized, honored him later on while Romania celebrated his genious by asking him to build the huge Tirgu-Jiu ensemble out of which stems the legendaru "Endless Pillar". All of his life, Brancusi, lonely father figure, polished, refined, repeated, dispaced and constantly photographed sculptures and pedestals wich he will donate to the French State. Brancusi's studio was entirely rebuilt in front of the Beaubourg Eontemporu Art Museum in Paris and can be visit.

The Studio

on Impasse Ronsin

I Youth

A Dual Culture: Eastern and Popular

An "Initiate" in Search of Adventure

Photographic Mise en Scene

Wood: the Great Discovery

First Major Work: The Prayer

Sheer Emotional Power: The Kiss

II Maturation

Intense Experimentation

Modigliani and "Negro" Art

Sleeping Muse and the Ovoid Faces

Maiatra, the Fabulous Bird

Life in Montparnasse,

Mademoiselle Pogan

III First Successes

The Forst Solo Exhibition and the Beginnings of a Reputation

The First Step: an Ambiguous Return to Africa

The First Endless Column

Return to the Ovoid: The Newborn

The Princesse X Sca nda I

IV Soaring

Birds and a Bestiary

Ouchamp, Friendship and Love Affairs

Paul Morand: Brancusi, "A Sculptor of the People"

Big Cocks

Brancusi v.s. Unites States Trial

Nancy Cunard, a "Sophisticated Young Woman"

Three Birds Move into Indore

V Apotheosis

Tirgu-Jiu

A New Bird and Variants on The Kiss

Peggy Guggenheim Remembers

Ionesco's The Ehoirs in Brancusi's Studio

A Place of Magic Lost

Notes

Bibliography