Assistant Curator, Mia Matthias: My name is Mia Matthias, and I am an Assistant Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture.
Brancusi said, “When you see a fish, you don’t think of its scales, do you? You think of its speed; its floating, flashing body seen through the water. …I want just the flash of its spirit.” And I think Brancusi was able to capture this so beautifully in Fish, in part because there are ball bearings embedded in the cylinder holding the marble form, and Brancusi could push it so that it would rotate in a circle.
However, in addition to that, Brancusi chose a material, this veined blue-gray marble, that itself seems as if it’s evoking the rushing, watery quality that he was so interested in.
Conservator, Lynda Zycherman: We know that he goes to stone yards. There’s dozens of business cards from stone yards that he goes to. And he goes around, and he looks. And it could be that he saw that and then he thought to himself, “Hmm, doesn’t that look like rippling water?” It wouldn’t suit every sculpture. It just suits the Fish.
Mia Matthias: He created this relatively thin plane out of this very heavy material. And as you move around it, this wide span of blue-gray marble almost disappears. And then as one continues around the sculpture, it expands once again. So the potential for movement also lives in how one views the work. Brancusi created a dynamic experience, and that is one way in which he captures the fleeting experience of seeing a fish in water.