This Endless Column is the earliest extant version of a motif to which Brâncuși would return over the course of his career. In previous years Brâncuși had used a doubled pyramid as a base for his sculptures, but he eventually realized that this abstract block could be multiplied into a pillar form, a fully realized work in its own right. Carved from oak, this succession of pyramids has a rhythmic, undulating geometry that suggests the possibility of infinite expansion.
Gallery label from 2019
This sculpture is the earliest extant Endless Column. In preceding years Brâncuși had used a single or double pyramid as a base for his sculpture, but he eventually came to see this abstract construction as a fully realized work in its own right. Carved from oak, this succession of pyramids forms a rhythmic and undulating geometry that suggests the possibility of infinite expansion. Like other favorite motifs, this was one that Brâncuși would return to over the course of his career. In the mid-1920s, he carved an Endless Column for his friend the photographer Edward Steichen that rose more than twenty-three feet. And in 1937 Brâncuși erected a steel Endless Column in Tîrgu-Jiu, Romania, that soared more than ninety-eight feet into the air. That Endless Column, his last, was part of a larger sculptural ensemble that included The Gate of the Kiss and Table of Silence, which formed the artist’s only foray into public sculpture.
Gallery label from Constantin Brâncuși Sculpture, 2018
Brâncuși made several versions of his Endless Column, this one being the first he fully developed. It consists of a single symmetrical element, a pair of truncated pyramids stuck together at their base, then repeated to produce a continuous rhythmic line. In replicating the same abstract shape, Brâncuși emphasized its potential for vertical expansion—it was, he later said, a “column for infinity.” In Brâncuși’s work generally the pedestal that traditionally supported sculpture, usually a secondary element, took on a new prominence, often equal to that of the artwork itself: he first used the geometric motif seen here in bases for his sculptures, but gradually realized its value as an independent form. He later repeated the Endless Column on larger scales and in different materials, making it serve as an architectural element and a monument. This version is carved directly in oak, with gouges and cuts in the wood readily apparent, so that it straightforwardly declares its own materials and process of making. Its simplicity, directness, and modularity helped to define the foundational principles of modern abstract sculpture.
Gallery label from Inventing Abstraction, 1910–1925, December 23, 2012–April 15, 2013.
