How has the work of Constantin Brancusi shaped our perception of modern sculpture? How do social constructions of difference – of class, gender, race, and nationalism – manifest in his work? How has a critical heritage dedicated to understanding Brancusi’s pursuit of sculptural ‘essences’ warped and limited scholarly understanding of his oeuvre and its early twentieth-century context? How have notions of alterity, repetition, assimilation, and sequence been explored in responses to his work? What critical frameworks can help us understand Brancusi’s social and imaginative tactics, such as his control of the photographic representation of his work, his self-presentation as Romanian peasant, and his preoccupation with folklore? How can we build on the scholarship of Anna Chave, Alex Potts, John Warne Munroe, and Yaëlle Biro to better situate the full range of signification in Brancusi’s work within current movements of cultural history, critical theory, anthropology and philosophy? How can artists practicing today draw from or react against Brancusi’s example? What is Brancusi’s continuing relevance to those looking to innovate in sculptural techniques and processes, including working in direct carving, print making, casting. installation, with hand tools, in studios, and domestic spaces?
These are some of the questions that this Early Career Research symposium will seek to answer through a programme of academic papers and creative responses. The day will culminate with an Artists’ Talk reflecting on Brancusi’s influence today: Lucy Skaer in conversation with Hannah Hughes, chaired by Dr. Rosalind McKever.
The symposium is part of the Henry Moore Foundation’s research season which will re-examine Brancusi’s work and his reception in Britain, and coincides with the largest exhibition of Brancusi’s work ever organised, due to be held at the Centre Pompidou in 2024. This event also marks a collaboration between the Henry Moore Foundation and The Courtauld which are celebrating Moore with the exhibition Henry Moore: Shadows on the Wall to be staged at The Courtauld Gallery in summer 2024.
Speakers
Dr Stefano Agresti (Pescara, 1994) is Research Assistant at the Fondazione Ettore Spalletti and collaborator at the chair of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Università di Roma “La Sapienza”. In 2023 he received his doctorate in Modern and Contemporary Art History at the Università di Roma “La Sapienza” with a study project on the dialectics between artists and gallerists in Italy between 1968 and 1979 (supervisor: Prof. Claudio Zambianchi). His research focuses on the work of Ettore Spalletti and the Italian and German art scenes between the 1950s and the 1980s.
Dr Valentina Bartalesi (1994) is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Archivio del Moderno (Balerna, Switzerland). Her main research interests concern the history of art historiography; the role of haptic perception in art criticism, historiography, and artistic practices of the XX° and XX° century; the influence exercised by prehistoric art in modernist narratives between Europe and the Anglo-American côté. She has published several contributions in academic journals and participated in national and international conferences and workshops (including Iulm University, Milan; Università Statale, Milan; University of Washington, Seattle; Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague; KNIR, Rome).
Dr Lana Locke is an artist and Early Career Researcher, practising in sculpture, installation, painting, drawing, video and performance. She has had solo exhibitions at LUNGLEY Gallery (2019, 2020 and 2023), Liddicoat & Goldhill project space (2018), DOLPH Projects, (2016) and Schwartz Gallery (2014). She has exhibited in group exhibitions at White Conduit Projects (2024), Matt’s Gallery (2023), Hales Gallery (2022), National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, Taiwan (2021), OOF Gallery (2021), Kingston Museum (2019), MOCA Taipei, Taiwan (2018), the Nunnery Gallery (2018) and Block 336 (2015). She is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Camberwell College of Arts.
Ella McCartney is a visual artist and lecturer at Goldsmiths College, University of London. In 2017 she was the Leverhulme Trust artist in residence in the Department of Linguistics and Communication at Birkbeck. Recent exhibitions include The Women’s Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, (2024), Shaping Objects, Alma Space, UK (2023), Space, XVIIX Programme (2021), Movement as Dialogue, The University of Hong Kong (2019), Forms of Address, Laure Genillard Gallery, London (2019) 참여작가, CICA Museum, Gimpo (2018), Translating across Sensory and Linguistic Borders: Intersemiotic Journeys between Media, (2019) Ed. Dr Madeleine Campbell and Dr Ricarda Vidal, London: Palgrave and McMillian
Chiara Pazzaglia is a PhD candidate in Art History at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and at the Université Paris Nanterre. Her thesis focuses on public monuments by Italian sculptors in Europe after 1945 from a transnational perspective. She graduated in Art History (BA 2019, MA 2021) at the University of Pisa and obtained a second-level Master’s Degree at the Scuola Normale Superiore (2022). In 2023 she was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. Her main research interests concern Fascist art and 19th-20th century European sculpture, with a focus on public art.
Chase Pendleton was born in southwest Wyoming and is a writer with a degree in art history from the University of California, Berkeley. Her specialties include queer history, transgender studies, feminism, and modern art. Her most recent publication in Volume 14 of the Journal of Black Mountain College Studies focused on the queer history of performance art and the productive relationship between the American composer John Cage and the choreographer Merce Cunningham. Chase now lives in Philadelphia where she continues to write about history, art, and culture
Michał Sobański is currently a student in the preparatory class at the Institut national du patrimoine and the École du Louvre in Paris. He studied History of Art, Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art at the University of Vienna and the Sor-bonne as a scholarship holder of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research and the Government of the French Republic. His research is focused on gender-related questions, psychoanalysis as well as art theory in the 20th and 21st century.
This event is organised by the Henry Moore Foundation.
Programme
The symposium begins at 11am at The Courtauld Institute of Art, in Vernon Square.
11.00: Welcome and Introduction to the day
Dr Caroline Levitt, The Courtauld, and Dr Jonathan Vernon, independent art-historian
11.15 – 1.00: Panel 1 – Brancusi and Post-War Sculpture
Chaired by Dr Sean Ketteringham, Henry Moore Institute
Chiara Pazzaglia, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa/Université Paris Nanterre, ‘Târgu Jiu: a Prototype for the Post-War Modernist Monument?’
Valentina Bartelesi, Archivio del Moderno, Balerna, Switzerland, ‘‘Decentralization’, ‘Disjunctiveness’, and the ‘Unseen’: The Reception of Brâncuşi’s Sculpture in North American Art Criticism Between the 1960s and 1970s’
2.00 – 3.00: Panel 2 – Brancusi and Materiality
Chaired by Dr Lisa Newby, Henry Moore Foundation
Stefano Agresti, Fondazione Ettore Spalletti/Università di Roma ‘La Sapienza, ”Sculpture is Nothing but Water’: The Sculptural Object as Transitional and Receptive Body in Constantin Brâncuşi and Ettore Spalletti’s Works’.
Ella McCartney, Artist/Goldsmiths University, ‘Encountering Sculpture as Image’
3.30 – 5.00: Panel 3 – Brancusi, Essence and Difference
Chaired by Dr Jonathan Vernon
Lana Locke, Artist/Camberwell College of Arts, ‘Responding to Brâncuşi: Bodily Abstractions and Challenging Verticality’
Chase Pendleton, Independent, ‘Constantin Brâncuşi After Transgender Studies’
Michał Sobański, Sorbonne Université Paris, ‘Brâncuşi’s Dream of a Flight. The Impossibilities of an Inhibited Form’
5.30 – 6.30: Artists in Conversation
Introduced by Laura Bruni, Henry Moore Foundation.
Hannah Hughes and Lucy Skaer
Chaired by Dr Rosalind McKever (Victoria & Albert Museum)
6.30: Wine Reception
