Sculptor Constantin Brancusi's Atelier in Paris at the Pompidou

Mademoiselle Pogany III by Constantin Brancusi 1933 Centre Georges Pompidou

The atelier of Constantin Brancusi shows the culmination of the sculptor's work at the forefront of the French avant-guarde, reports Jeanne-Marie Cilento from Paris.

"There are idiots who define my work as abstract; yet what they call abstract is what is most realistic. What is real is not the appearance, but the idea, the essence of things." ~ Constantin Brancusi

Hidden away in the narrow streets crowding around Rue Rambuteau in Paris is the atelier of Modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi. Italian architect Renzo Piano designed and recreated the sculptor’s studio as it was left in 1957 in a new building tucked in behind the soaring staircases of the Pompidou.

Filled with Brancusi’s most evocative sculptures such as Bird in Space, A Muse and Infinite Columns, the studio is a way of experiencing the artist’s best work. He spent his last years grouping, regrouping and photographing his large works to achieve the ideal spatial arrangement. The Atelier Brancusi is the high-point of the artist’s work and an atmospheric way of viewing his famous sculptures exactly in the context he planned them to be seen. One of the great pioneers of modernism, he is considered the originator of modern, abstract sculpture.

Today Brancusi’s work commands millions - the Yves Saint Laurent/Pierre Bergé sale in 2009 of Madame LR sold for a record 29.185 million euros - yet the sculptor started life as a poor Romanian peasant. While his parents labored in the fields near the Carpathian mountains, Constantin herded sheep and by nine years old was working in the local town at a public house. It is a remarkable leap from this rural, agricultural background to becoming a world-reknowned artist - in his own lifetime. But Brancusi’s natural aptitude for wood-carving stood him in great stead.

As an eighteen year old lover of music and especially Romanian folk songs he created his own violin. It was so well done that a local businessman recognized his latent talent and enrolled him at the Craiova School of Arts and Crafts. He studied wood-working and graduated with honours in 1898. He then went on to receive his academic training in sculpture at the Bucharest School of Fine Arts.

In 1904 he travelled to Paris and arrived amid the French capital's foment of new ideas, becoming part of the Parisian avant guarde of the 1910s and 1920s. The sculptor worked with Auguste Rodin for several months but decided that although he admired his work "nothing can grow under big trees". Brancusi was part of a group of artists and intellectuals that included Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Guillaume Apollinaire, Henri Rousseau and Fernand Leger.

Although Brancusi remained based in Paris for the rest of his life, he still liked to dress simply like a Romanian peasant and his house and studio were filled with the rough-hewn furniture in wood and stone that was familiar from his childhood and that we see today in his atelier. Brancusi's philosophy valued "differentiating the essential from the ephemeral" and Plato and Lao-Tzu were great influences. An idealist and ascetic later in life, visitors to his studio noted its tranquil, spiritual atmosphere.

The Atelier Brancusi has been moved from it’s original location in Impasse Ronsin in the 15th arrondissment but the studio still provides a calm respite from the Parisian hurly-burly outside. The four small studios and workshops are full of Brancusi's carefully arranged series of sculptures and all of his tools that he left to the Musee National D'Art Moderne in 1956. 

For more information visit: www.centrepompidou.fr. 

Click photographs for full-screen slideshow

One of Brancusi's four interconnected studios with his sculptures carefully placed in groups, including Leda and Colonnes sans Fin

Leda ~ polished bronze on a base of black stone and stainless steel ~ 1926

Yves Saint Laurent's Portrait of Madame LR that sold for 29.85 million euros

Constantin Brancusi in his studio in 1934

The studio recreated (above) from the original (below) with Brancusi's series of large works ~ Colonnes sans fin and Grands Coqs. He didn't want to move these as he believed he had found the best arrangement for them to seen as the culmination of his life's work.

Photograph taken in Brancusi's Paris studio in 1929 including the sculptures Léda, Colonnes sans fin I à III and Chimère.

Sculptures organised by Brancusi around the great stone fireplace from his original atelier.

Brancusi's workshop and studio as he left it in 1957 with the famous Bird in Flight in the foreground.

Tools cover the work benches and walls near the forge in Brancusi's studio. The sculptor carved directly into his material whether it was wood, marble or plaster to try and reach the form within. He made or modified many of his own tools and used grindstones and sanders to give a highly polished sheen to his marble and bronze sculptures. 

One of Brancusi's studies for Muse.

Sculptures from left to right are Mlle Pogany and studies for a Muse and Danaide.

The Kiss sculpted in stone in 1923

www.centrepompidou.fr

Paris Exhibitions: Two New Exciting Shows of Modern and Pop Art

A portrait by iconic French artist C215, the moniker of Christian Guémy, at the Beyond Street Art exhibition in Paris

Photographer Andreas Romagnoli travelled to Paris to capture the contemporary art exhibited at two major new gallery shows. Artists from all over the world are represented including emerging talent and France's iconic C215 and England's Banksy, reports Jeanne-Marie Cilento.

STREET Art, also called 'outsider' art was born in London. In France it was labelled art brut by French artist Jean Dubuffet. It is an art created 'outside' traditional galleries, often by self-taught artists and sculptors. But it's hard to stay an outsider once you've been discovered by the art market. One of the Paris exhibitions is called Beyond Street Art at the Musée de la Poste. It shows seventy works from eleven different international artists including the French Space Invaders, L’Atlas, Miss.Tic and Ludo and Shepard Fairey and Swoon from the USA.

The artists use a variety of media and techniques and the exhibition includes films illustrating their way of working. The show's exhibits offer an overview of the diversity of methods from stencils, spray paint, mosaic and charcoal to paper cut-outs, resin, engraving, acrylic paint, watercolour and gouache. The art works are also created on an eclectic range of objects and materials including canvas, metal and linoleum and mailboxes, signs and posters.

The evolution of the French street art movement is illustrated at the start of the show, including pictures of work by pioneers such as Ernest Pignon-Ernest and Gerard Zlotykamien from the 1960s. This is followed by the 1980s generation of artists, including Blek Le Rat, Jef Aerosol and Jérôme Mesnager.

Beyond Street Art has a definite focus and shows the different themes and worlds explored by each artist.  Organised by the Musée de la Poste, this exhibition invites visitors to return to the starting point of urban art in France and the United States through the shows extensive photographs and video clips.

New artists and contemporary pop art greats are on display at the Hey! Modern Art & Pop Culture Part II exhibition at the Halle St. Pierre, a former market near Montmartre. In 2011, the founders of the alternative modern art and pop culture magazine HEY! opened their first show dedicated to outsider artists.

This second exhibition showcases sixty artists work that explore the boundaries of modern art and pop-surrealism, often showing a macabre side to contemporary creativity. Works include the Alien sculptures of HR Giger, the finely-woven macrame heads by Jim Skull and Kate Clark's animal-humans (see photographs below). One of twenty five American artists, Brooklyn sculptor Kate Clark exhibits her busts of creatures that appear to be young bucks with human eyes. She is interested in showing the different 'animalities' within us. However, Clark is not 'outside' the art establishment but was trained at Cornell and the Cranbrook Academy. 

The Beyond Street Art and Hey! exhibitions demonstrate an anarchic side to the French capital's art world. A new cultural zeitgeist willing to show different forms of artistic expression that often run counter to the contemporary art market.

Beyond Street Art: Musée de La Poste, 34 Boulevard de Vaugirard, 75015 Paris. Open from 10am-6pm, closed Sundays. It runs until March 30th 2013. Hey! Modern Art & Pop Culture Part II:  Halle Saint-Pierre, 2 Rue Ronsard 75018 Paris. Open from 10am-6pm until August 23rd 2013.

Click on photographs for full-screen slide-show

 Stencil on steel by Miss Tic.

Model Kate Moss represented as an Andy Warhol print of Marilyn Monroe

Mosaic tile head by Space Invaders

The French Miss. Tic's work has captured the attention of top fashion designers

The mystical abstract work of French artist L'Atlas

C215's large portraits exhibited at Beyond Street Art.

Entrance into the darkened first level of the surreal Hey! Pop Art Exhibition

Designer Brodie Neill's Hand-Made Limited Edition Reverb Chairs

Australian designer Brodie Neill's sculptural Reverb chair is made as a limited edition piece for the Patrick Brillet Gallery in London, writes Jeanne-Marie Cilento.

INSPIRED by the reverberation of sound, the chair flows outward before returning back to itself. The dynamic, conical design is hand-made in London from gleaming nickel-plated aluminium. "The highly reflective surface of the Reverb's design emphasises the tapering of the chair and the transition from the curvaceous seat to the elliptical vortex of the back," explains the designer. 

Neill also created another version called the Reverb Wire chair.  This light-weight, transparent chair is made by Italy's Marzorati Ronchetti in mirror-polished stainless steel. Created in a limited edition of twenty, the designs were first shown at the Salone del Mobile in Milan last year. 

The shape of the Reverb Wire chair is an interpretation of the original version but with a wire-frame. "The mesh amplifies the vortex and the flowing contour lines and maps out the conical shape of the chair's expanding geometry," says the designer. Complex but at the same time beautifully simple. 

Brodie Neill launched his original solo collection of organic, high-tech furniture and lighting at Salone Satellite in Milan in 2005. This exhibition of dynamic prototypes led to his disovery by Gregorio Spini, co-founder of Italian design house Kundalini. The company went on to produce the Morphie light, fluid E-turn seat and the luminous Clover lights. 

Based at his own studio in London's fashionable East End designer hub, Neill has created a series of celebrated designs such as the curvaceous @ Chair, the Scuba sofa for Domodinamica and Jet table for Swarovski. The sculptural, artistic aspect to Neill's work has been further developed by the limited edition designs he has produced with the Patrick Brillet Gallery including the sinuous new cast-glass Glacier bench.

Click on photographs for full-screen slideshow

Photo Essay: Surviving the Grey in Kiev ~ by Andreas Romagnoli

A scene from late 19th Century Kiev? No, today's citizens rugged up against the city's snowy winter. 

Braving freezing temperatures, Italian photographer Andreas Romagnoli captured Kiev under a veil of snow. Travelling across the city amid the gloomy splendour of it's Metro, he photographs the vast underground arcaded halls, decorated as imposing railway palaces, icy streets and the mysterious House of the Chimaeras, writes Jeanne-Marie Cilento.

ONE of the oldest cities in Eastern Europe, Kiev has kept many early 20th Century landmark buildings including the bizarre Gorodetsky House. Popularly known as the House of the Chimaeras, it is a remarkable Art Nouveau building covered in surreal sculptures of winged birds, frogs and wild boars. 

The building derives its name from the ornate decorations depicting exotic animals and hunting scenes. It doesn't refer to the chimaera of mythology, but to an architectural style known as chimaera decoration in which animal figures are applied as decorative elements to a building. 

Called the Antoni Gaudi of Kiev, architect Vladislav Gorodetsky designed the building and Italian sculptor Emilio Sala created all of the animals, mythical creatures and plants that appear to colonise it’s façades. Before designing the House of the Chimaeras, Gorodetsky had already established himself as a prominent Kiev architect, constructing many city buildings, from the St. Nicholas Roman Catholic Cathedral to the Karaim Kenesa and today’s National Art Museum of Ukraine. 

Emilio Sala created both the internal and external sculptural decorations, including mermaids, dolphins, sinking ships and hunting trophies. Although concrete was still in its infancy, Gorodetsky used it to construct the building and insisted Sala use it to create the sculptures.

The architect originally designed the building to house a large apartment for himself with the other floors to be leased as expensive flats. But Gorodetsky's finances ran out in 1913 and he was forced to sell the building. 

Reflecting Kiev’s troubled early 20^th Century, the building was sold several times before housing military offices for the Bolsheviks, communal housing and then a polyclinic for the Communist Party. By 2003 it was in need of a complete restoration. This was finished in 2005 and the House of the Chimeras now hosts diplomatic functions for the President of the Ukraine who has offices across the street.   

Click on photographs for full-screen slideshow

The remarkable House of the Chimaeras designed by the Gaudi of Kiev, architect Vladislav Gorodetsky

A detail of one of the mythical winged creatures on a pillar at the front of the building. 

Italian Emilio Sala's sculptures of mermaids, water lilies, frogs and wild boars that writhe along the building's parapet.  

The imposing entrance to Kiev's Kreshchatyk Metro.

Escalators take commuters deep into the vast underground halls of the city's Metro. 

Designed as an Eastern European palace, Kiev's Zoloti Verota Metro is decorated with elaborate tiles and wrought-iron lamps.

Bare, wintry trees seem frozen in the twilight of a snowy evening in Kiev.

Snow falls on to the trees in Kiev's parks at the heart of the city. 

A dilapidated apartment building has retained it's early Bauhaus design.

One of Kiev's main city thoroughfares looking grey and cold under the February snow.

Like ancient jade coins, the Metro tokens for Kiev's trains.

A piece of modern sculpture in lustrous Venetian mosaics brightens a snowy park. 

The House of the Chimaeras fell into complete disrepair after it's long history as apartments, Bolshevik offices, a Communist Party polyclinic and communal housing. It has since been completely restored between 2003-2005 and now hosts the President of the Ukraine's official functions. 

Sculptor Emilio Sala's creatures and curling plants cling to the building's roof and facades.

A wrought iron fence is silhouetted against plants covered in a fresh downfall of snow.