Brancusi's Bird in Space
1923 · Work
Brancusi carves the first Bird in Space in marble in 1923; the polished bronzes that follow refine the same curve with no wings, no feathers and no feet — flight itself, with the bird left out. When a bronze entered America in 1926, customs taxed it as a manufactured metal object, refusing to call it art; the case Brancusi won in 1928 established in law what his studio had established in fact: sculpture no longer had to look like anything.
On these timelines: Painting & Sculpture, Arts and Thoughts, Master, France
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