MAIASTRA
CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI, 1910-12
So...a young man leaves Bucharest on foot, headed for Paris. Fifteen hundred miles. It takes him more than a year. He sleeps in barns, picks up work along the way, keeps walking. He's a peasant's kid from the Carpathians, trained as a woodcarver, and he's decided the center of the art world is worth walking to. He makes it. And he climbs the whole mountain: within a few years he's an assistant in Rodin's studio. Rodin. The most famous sculptor alive. The job people would kill for. He quits in about a month. Nothing grows under the shadow of big trees, he says. The walker's name is Constantin Brancusi. So there he is. Free, in Paris, in nobody's shadow. And the first thing that grows is a bird from home. The Pasărea Măiastră, the magic bird of the Romanian stories he grew up on. Queen of birds. Golden feathers, and a song that could tell the future, read the secrets in your heart, give you back your youth. Look at her. White marble, chest out, neck stretched, beak open. Mid-song. And look at what she's standing on. That rough block in the middle of the tower, two little figures carrying a stone on their heads. That was a whole separate sculpture once. He retired it into a pedestal. Two small people, carrying the magic bird. He knew something about carrying things a long way. This is bird number one. Walk the room and you can watch what he does with it for the next twenty years. The gold flame over there, Bird in Space, is this same bird with everything boiled away but the rise. The famous one. The one that went to court. It all starts here. Beak open. Still singing.