Curatorial Assistant, Samantha Small: Around 1906, Brancusi began investigating the theme of childhood, starting with portrait-like heads of children. But by the 1920s, with his Newborn series, you can see that he has sheared away all of that detail.
For some people, this shape evokes that of a newborn baby, the head lying back on the pillow, mouth open and screaming, tongue protruding. For others, it looks like the head of a bird with the beak sticking out. For an early critic of Brancusi’s, this evoked a cell, or even an egg.
Conservator, Lynda Zycherman: This is his great innovation, I think, is to reduce known shapes, human shapes or animal shapes that most people would recognize, to an abstraction. And the materials are extremely unusual. In the early 20th century, I don’t know that there was any polished metal sculpture.
This is a brass. Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc; usually between 70 and 80% copper, and 15 to 20% zinc. The Newborn is different. The Newborn is 86% copper and only 6% zinc. So it’s a very high copper content. And what does that do to the metal? It changes the color to a more pinkish alloy. I think it’s more obvious when you put two things side by side. I believe that is a deliberate choice. MoMA has six metal sculptures. This is the only one that falls into this category. But this is a newborn. Of course it’s pink.
Narrator: To hear about the other sculpture on this display, enter 6-0-7-1 into the search bar at the top of your screen.