Brancusi/The Kiss by Sidney Geist (review)

Books 255 introductory essaysby J. E. Bowlt and by D. V. Sarabianov. Had it been possible to include a fewmajor works of SocialistRealists of the early and mid-I930s, the significance of the two postrevolutionary decades might have been even more apparent. Even without this, the exhibition succeeds in making a very important point: until the dominant current of representational art in Russia from 1700 to the 1950s is fully analyzed and understood, it will be quite impossibleto appreciate correctly the place of rival tendencies in the overall development. Brancusi/The Kiss. Sidney Geist. Harper & Row, New York. 1978. I 1 1 pp.. illus. Paper €3.95. Reviewed by Eugen Ciuca* In the first chapter of this book, entitled Theme, the author analyzes in much detail Brancusi’s first version of ‘The Kiss’ (1907), as regards both the sculpture’s artistic qualities and its method of execution. He says: ‘for, sucely, one of the revelations of“The Kiss” was the necessityofdirect carvingasa way both of working and thinking’ (p. 9). His short discussion of direct carving is, perhaps, useful for students, but they should be warned that he iswrong when hecalls it ‘primitivisticcarving’on the basis of the sculptures made by painters such asGauguin and Derain. Brancusi’s direct carving is not similar to that of these painters. He recognizes Brancusi’s artistic talent, when he says: “‘The Kiss”. ..is a work of sheer art’ (p. 12). Rut he concludes his first chapter with doubts about Brancusi’soriginality by using terms suchas ‘verylike’@. 16). ‘surprisinglysimilar’(p. 18).‘influenced by’ (p. 19) and ‘directly indebted’ (p. 37)’. On page 40 he says: ‘The factors that seem most directly to have contributed to the creation of Brancusi’s “The Kiss” are three: Derain’s exhibition; Matisse’s paintings; and the meetings with Morice.’ From this I would be led to conclude that Brancusi was not very talented asa sculptor of originality. The second chapter, entitled Variations, is devoted to a didactic analysis of the visual characteristics of the variations of ‘The Kiss’ that Brancusi made between 1908 and 1945, the last entitled ‘Boundary Marker’. Geist makes assertions about these works that I find highly tendentious. For example, he writes: ‘Brancusi’sinvention isonly a slightvariation ofa type of pilaster or decorative panel which exists since the Renaissance’ (p. 57). ‘Essentially, Brancusi has altered the Renaissance design by introducing the deep verticalchannel’ (p. 58). But Geist does not understand that Brancusi was interested in figurative fine art, not in decorative art. The third chapter, entitled In Time, consists of a general commentary and of conclusions drawn by Geist from the analyses presented in the first two chapters. It left me, as a sculptor, convinced that he understood very little about Brancusi‘s variations of ‘The Kiss’. Raoul Hausmann: Je ne suis pas un photographe. (In French) Michel Giroud,ed. Editionsdu Chene, Paris, 1975. 16Opp..illus. Reviewed by David Haberstich** This book, a tribute to Raoul Hausmann, unequestionably one of the pre-eminent Dada luminaries, is also a provocative document about the role of photographic imagery in visual art. The paradoxical sub-title is explained early in the Averrissemenr; as if one had not already guessed, the reason Hausmann did not consider himself a photographer was that he never sought to reproduce that which he saw but preferred to ‘enlarge and transform vision’ through photographic techniques. One might have quibbled with him (and doubtlessly certain photographer/ artists did) that it is, indeed, within the purview of any sensitive photographer to ‘enlarge and transform vision’, not simply to record or to duplicate reality. Initially, to be sure, he in his Dada ‘salad’days was not a photographer at all, because he employed the photographs of others in his photomontages. Photographs and photographic reproductions were raw material, like the *21 Shore Lane, Bay Shore, NY 11706, U.S.A. **Div.of Photographic History, National Museum of History and Technology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560, U S A . typography he also used. He was particularly attracted by photographs as reproduced in newspapers and magazines, wherein the medium of ink on paper had transformed them not only visually but also in terms of their socio-historical function; they servedasconvenient referencesto...