Curator, Anne Umland: We’ve chosen to conclude the show with these two self-portraits that Brancusi created because of the way that they collapse together the three primary protagonists of this exhibition: Brancusi himself, the artist; the art that he made, and then the Impasse Ronsin studio itself.
Conservator, Lee Anne Daffner: This is a classic double exposure where Brancusi took two separate negatives, which are transparent. He stacks them, and he makes a print. One negative is of Brancusi sitting in his studio, and we see that he has the shutter release, so he’s definitely taking the picture of himself. We see some sculptures in the background. And then, a second negative is of the chestnut trunk, which had sprouted.
Assistant Curator, Mia Matthias: That is what he referred to as his “miraculous stump.” At some moment, long after he had thought it to be dead, it bloomed. So Brancusi is creating a literally and figuratively layered narrative, where the studio and the sculptor and the possibilities of life and renewal all become one.
Anne Umland: He has superimposed this image of growth over his own body and then over the studio, creating this image of the studio as a place of creation and imagination akin to nature itself.