Fish
Constantin Brancusi, 1930
Six feet of grey marble balanced on a white pedestal. Brancusi called it Fish. Okay. But look at the stone. Those white streaks run the length of it, like water rushing past. He didn't paint those on. They were in the marble. He cut straight into the stone himself. The usual way back then was a clay model, and hired carvers to copy it. He called his way "the true road to sculpture." Brancusi told another sculptor, Malvina Hoffman, that when you see a fish, you don't think about its scales. You see it flash through the water. He said he wanted "just the flash of its spirit." He made seven fish. This was the last one, and the biggest. From the side, you get all six feet of it. From the narrow end, almost nothing. One step to the side and it changes again. That's a good trick for a slab of rock. But there's another one. That little support under the marble? It's a pivot. While he talked to Hoffman, he gave it a push. The fish used to spin.
More from Frank
- The False Mirror — René Magritte, 1929
- Barcelona Chair — Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1929
- Composition No. II, with Red and Blue — Piet Mondrian, 1929
- The Persistence of Memory — Salvador Dalí, 1931
- Agrarian Leader Zapata — Diego Rivera, 1931
- Girl Before a Mirror — Pablo Picasso, 1932