THE NEWBORN, VERSION I
CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI, 1920
You found it! The smallest thing in the room. The little gold egg, lying on its side. Most people walk right past it. Don't. Get your face down to its level. First read: science fiction. Escape pod or droid egg. This thing was made in 1920 and it looks like it hasn't been invented yet. Movie spaceships have been chasing this finish ever since. And be honest, if the guards weren't around, you'd pocket it. Now look close. One slice off the front, a flat plane tilted up, a little curl left at the bottom. The curl is a chin. The plane is a mouth, wide open. The spaceship is a baby. A head, days old, mid-scream. You know this shape if you've ever held one. The whole head goes mouth. And Brancusi worked for this. He spent over a decade on children's heads, which sounds alarming until you see where it was going. Started realistic, a sleeping child, mantel material. Then version after version, each one losing something. Hair, gone. Neck, gone. The ears, the nose. Heads with no faces, getting simpler every year. By 1915 he's down to this: an egg with a cry coming out of it. Marble first, then this bronze, polished like a mirror. Which means lean in, and your own face slides across the scream. He had a line he liked. When we are no longer children, we are already dead. Maybe that's why he kept the scream and threw out the rest.