Writer, Maria Tatar: I’m Maria Tatar, Professor Emerita of Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University.
What I immediately relate to in Brancusi’s sculptures is that they give us a simple expression of complex thought. And the field that I study does that all the time. We have these simple stories that raise all kinds of complicated questions about the human condition.
Like all of us, Brancusi grew up with folktales, with fairy tales. And there’s a wonderful Romanian folktale called Pasărea Maiastră, the master bird or the magic bird. And it’s a story of a bird with radiantly beautiful plumage, but this bird is a little greedy and steals golden apples from a king’s garden. The king’s son captures the bird, and he brings beauty and justice back into the kingdom. So the story of the maiastră is really about renewal, rejuvenation.
Brancusi wrote about this sculpture, “I wanted to show the Maiastră as raising its head, but without putting any implications of pride, haughtiness, or defiance into this gesture.” And it’s important that the bird is grounded in a way. It sits atop a solid block that separates it from the caryatids that are holding it up. Caryatids were incorporated into Greek architecture as load-bearing pillars. They give it even more of a sense of solidity. It’s going to stand there as a guardian.