Curator, Anne Umland: These four photos show an Endless Column in various states of completion.
Conservator, Lynda Zycherman: Endless Column is a classic example of traditional wood carving. The log he’s working on is extremely heavy. It’s hundreds of pounds. With sculpture like this, you start out with a single piece, and you take away until the final shape is revealed.
There’s the use of a frame saw, and he’s making initial rough cuts. Then he uses the axe to chip away at the remainder to get that diamond shape. The chisel marks are the refinement at the end, but he was so skilled, he could rough out the whole shape with the frame saw and an axe by just whacking away at it.
This is a huge amount of physical effort. And oak, in particular, is very, very hard.
Anne Umland: Direct carving is a technique that artists had been using for centuries. Brancusi turned to direct carving to find a more immediate form of expression that registers the marks of the tool and the hand. There’s nothing in between the artist and the material. There are no assistants, there are no intermediate stages. What you get a sense of here is Brancusi as an artist at work who has no hesitation about getting his hands dirty.