Persons [ ] Flash of Spirits | Sculptures by Constantin Brancusi, 1876-1957
“Architecture is inhabited sculpture.”
“Theories are patterns without value. What counts is action.”
“Work like a slave; command like a king; create like a god.”
“To see far is one thing, going there is another.”
“Simplicity is complexity resolved.”
“Simplicity is not an objective in art, but one achieves simplicity despite one’s self by entering into the real sense of things.”
“They are imbeciles who call my work abstract. That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.”
“When you see a fish you don’t think of its scales, do you? You think of its speed, its floating, flashing body seen through the water. Well, I’ve tried to express just that. If I made fins and eyes and scales, I would arrest its movement, give a pattern or shape of reality. I want just the flash of its spirits.”
“Things are not difficult to make; what is difficult is putting ourselves in the state of mind to make them.”
“When we are no longer children we are already dead.”
“What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things… it is impossible
for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface.”
“Don’t look for obscure formulas or mystery in my work. It is pure joy that I offer you.
Look at my sculptures until you see them. Those closest to God have seen them.”
“There hasn’t been any art yet. Art is just beginning.”
Constantin Brancusi, 1876-1957
