Brancusi's Female Portraits

A number of Brancusi’s sculptures were inspired by female models. Starting with realistic drawings, he gradually transformed these forms into refined objects: he elongated the faces, played with the transparency of the marble, and reduced the features until only simple lines remained, removing any element that might be associated with a body (a neck, a bust). In early 1910 he drew a series of Women with a Chignon, probably portraits of Marie Bonaparte, which resembled the first versions in stone (PH 407 and others) that would become Princess X. In his portraits, Brancusi rejected any physical similarity to the people depicted, endeavoring instead to show what he called “reality”—that is, “the essence of things” or of a personality. Thus, for Brancusi, his Portrait of Mrs. Eugene Meyer Jr. is what a portrait of her would really look like, not a posed, realistic portrait like the one Charles Despiau made of her in the same period. For the portraits of Mlle Pogany, he did some preliminary realistic tests in clay, which he destroyed in favor of an initial version in marble, dated 1912, which critics compared to “a hard-boiled egg on a sugar lump,” with a “beak” of a nose. Margit Pogany painted a self-portrait showing herself in the same pose, with her hand on her cheek, shadows round her eyes, and her hair pulled back. In 1931 she sent a photograph to Brancusi, who, most likely inspired by the painting, produced a third, more elongated and angular version the same year.

Text: Valérie Loth