Maiastra

Constantin Brancusi, 1910-12

Alright, so a guy leaves Bucharest for Paris on foot. We’re talking about fifteen hundred miles. Walking, sleeping outside the whole thing. Stops in Munich to cut stone for a while. Near the end, he catches a train. Nobody can agree how long it took. Let’s just call it a year. The story goes he gets off the train on the fourteenth of July, which is Bastille Day. He liked to say France met him with a brass band and a military salute. His name is Constantin Brancusi. Peasant kid from the Carpathians. Been carving wood since he was little. He’ll become one of the most important sculptors of the century. But right now he just smells like the road. Three years later, he lands the job. Assistant to Rodin. Ya know, just the most famous sculptor alive. Then he quits after a few weeks. “Nothing grows under the shadow of big trees,” he says. Alright, so what does this guy make, now that he’s out from under the tree? The Măiastră. A bird with golden feathers from Romanian bedtime stories. Apparently its song does things. Which things sorta depends on who’s telling it. Anyway, look at her now. White marble, about two feet of it. Chest puffed out, neck stretched up, beak open. She’s about to let the whole room have it. Bird number one. He’ll keep making birds. About thirty of ’em. One ends up in federal court. That’s a whole different story. Anyway, now look under her. Not the block. Under the block. Two little stone people. Rough, barely carved, holding a rock on their heads. That was its own sculpture. He showed it in 1908. A couple years later, it’s holding up the bird. A sculpture holding up a sculpture. It starts here, and he does it the rest of his life.

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