Narrator 1: The American poet and journalist Jeanne Robert Foster developed a close friendship with Constantin Brancusi during the 1920s. She wrote about her visits to his studio several times. Here is a selection of excerpts from her writings:
Narrator 2: The most interesting men in Paris today are not its writers but its artists. A Romanian by birth, who has lived twenty-five years in Paris. He is modest in speaking of his work, but one feels that he has attained serene confidence in the beauty and the significance of his own creations. He is singularly handsome, a man of great personal distinction, broad-shouldered with a noble head covered with curling black hair; his black beard, streaked with white. The lightness of his movements, the dancing light in his eyes, give one the impression of an elderly faun.
The path to his atelier on Impasse Ronsin leads through a graveled garden-court planted with shrubs and trees. After the clatter of the Paris streets, that approach prepares one for the spaciousness of his workshop. As the soft light of the Paris afternoon faded into the grey of twilight, one imagined his studio to be part of a cool, lofty white temple, the workroom of one of the gods upon lofty Olympus.
Like many Frenchmen... Brancusi is an incomparable cook. A dinner cooked and served by him is an event. If two or three intimate friends have the rare pleasure of dining with him, he will cook the dinner over a fireplace of his own construction built into a corner of his studio. [...] He is a connoisseur of wines and of strange fiery spirits that, as one visitor said, would take paint from the door.
He will grind the after-dinner coffee at the table in a Turkish coffee mill of brass. He will astonish by flashes of wit and knowledge. He will talk of his work, of its materials, of the old wood that he loves and of the beauty of marble and stone; of his travels–that in Rome he preferred its architecture to its art; he will talk gently of women and lovingly of his friends.
Narrator 1: This audio was generated with automated voices.
Excerpted from: Jeanne Robert Foster, “New Sculptures by Brancusi,” Vanity Fair (1922): 68, 124.