Curator, Anne Umland: My name is Anne Umland. I’m a guest curator.
Conservator, Lynda Zycherman: And I’m Lynda Zycherman, a Conservator of Sculpture and Objects.
Anne Umland: Mademoiselle Pogany was a young Hungarian painter.
Lynda Zycherman: Brancusi had Pogany model for him in person in the studio, and he made clay sculptures of her head and her hands. But she moved back to Hungary.
Anne Umland: So by the time this sculpture was created, he was working from memory.
Lynda Zycherman: You make a bronze or a brass or any cast metal by creating a mold of the object, and a specialist was often called in—a mouleur, a mold-maker—and they would make the molds that went to the foundry. And then the foundry will make the cast.
It is known that Brancusi took the same shape, and he did different things to it. For example, some of the Poganys have hair, like this one, which he patinated himself. Patination means to intentionally change the color of a metal by corroding it with compounds, acids, and heat. So it’s not a surface coating.
Anne Umland: If you look at photographs of Margit Pogany, there is a resemblance, but Brancusi pares away specifics. This process of abstraction is another way of thinking about the way that he’s working.