Assistant Curator, Mia Matthias: Brancusi, who at times fashioned himself as this traditional sculptor, was also very modern and very interested in technical innovations. Using this gramophone player motor, Brancusi gave the sculpture, Leda, the potential for independent movement. We have this wonderful film that shows Brancusi training the movie camera on Leda, and as Leda is very slowly spinning, you see the reflections of the studio in its surface.
Video Producer, Sarah Cowan: The fact that he used a gramophone motor in order to set Leda up spinning is a sign of his ingenuity. He’s interested in how to take something apart or use it in a way that it’s not supposed to be used, and I actually think he does that with film.
A film like the one of Leda… It’s like an experimental film. It’s so avant-garde the way he shoots that. He is doing this repetitive action, and it feels like him trying to tell people how to look at his work. Light glints on this object that’s moving, and it actually then contains the whole world around it, or it kind of dissolves and loses its boundaries.
Mia Matthias: Deconstructing this relatively new technology and then embedding it in his sculpture, that’s Brancusi as innovator. And because Leda is inspired by a classical myth, we see somehow Brancusi manages to merge the traditions that preceded him with cutting-edge technology in one single work.