Word: brancusi
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Rumanian Sculptor Constantin Brancusi had to pay $4,000 to bring his Bird in Flight into the U. S. (TIME, March 7, 1927). Works of art are duty free. But Sculptor Brancusi's bird had neither head, feet nor feathers. It was four and a half feet of bronze which swooped up from its base like a slender jet of flame. Customs Inspector Kracke said it was not art; merely "a manufacture of metal . . . held dutiable at 40% ad valorem." The press bantered, jibed. Indignant modernists wrote abstruse, defensive paragraphs. Sculptor Brancusi complained to the Customs Court...
Last week Sculptor Brancusi won his case. In its decision the Customs Court dogmatically defined art: "It is a work of art by reason of its symmetrical shape, artistic outlines and beauty of finish." Even the most wretched of logicians knows enough not to repeat the same term in both subject and definition ("art" -"artistic outline"). But Sculptor Brancusi had his money refunded...
...Brancusi is a galoot; he saves tickets to take him nowhere; a galoot with his baggage ready and no time table; ah yes, Brancusi is a galoot; he understands birds and skulls so well, he knows the hang of the hair of the coils and plaits on a woman's head, he knows them so far back he knows where they came from and where they are going; he is fathoming down for the secrets of the first and the oldest makers of shapes...
...Brancusi, keeping hardwood planks around your doorsteps in the sun waiting for the hardwood to be harder for your hard hands to handle, you, Brancusi, .with your chisels and hammers, birds going to cones, skulls going to eggs...
...Brancusi, you will not put a want ad in the papers telling God it will be to His advantage to come around to see you; ... if God is saving a corner for any battling bag of bones, there will be one for you, Brancusi...