Narrator 1: In 1927, the Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi met Brancusi for the first time. After this initial encounter, Noguchi went on to serve as an apprentice for the artist, spending seven months in Brancusi’s studio. Decades later, Noguchi wrote about his encounters in a 1976 issue of Craft Horizons magazine. Here are some of the reflections Noguchi shared:
Narrator 2: I was privileged to observe Brancusi in mid-career, at the height of his powers, most generous to me, and always with his eyes smiling.
The studio was big, with high ceiling, large skylight and windows. A small adjoining room was where he slept. His attire was all white, his beard already white, and white dust covered the studio with its blocks of marble. There was a white stove in which he cooked his famous steaks; and there were two white dogs to which he fed milk in a washbasin.
Brancusi tried his best to din into me the need of tedious and exacting work. He was insistent on the right way to handle each tool for the job and material, and on the respect to be accorded to each. “Concentrate and stop looking out the window!” he would shout. Or, “Whatever you do, it is not for fun or for study. You must treat it as the best thing you will ever do.”
Brancusi came [to Paris] to learn, a student of the academy. But he brought with him something more than learning: the memory of childhood, of things observed, not taught, of closeness to the earth, of wet stones and grass, of stone buildings and wood churches, hand-hewn logs and tools, stone markers, walls, and gravestones. Brancusi carried this memory all the way from Rumania by foot.
Narrator 1: This audio was generated with automated voices.
Excerpted from: Isamu Noguchi, “Noguchi on Brancusi,” Craft Horizons 36, no. 4 (1978): 26–29.