The Miracle
Animals were a common subject for Brancusi, though, excepting humans, he focused exclusively on those that fly or swim. The Miracle (Seal [I]) is a typical artwork that reflects the natural and encountered his poet. He is known for his “simplified, stylized, curved works which expressed, or at least suggested, ideals or non-concrete concepts.”(1)
POET The Miracle (Seal [1])
Like a slug erect and slimeless.
Like a supple android thigh
pointing toward the sun.
Like slick bodies in the harbor
that bark and fart,
launching themselves
on the beams beneath the pier.
Gastropodic, robotic,
mammalian but not miraculous, hardly sacred.
I could say that God receded but
when I was eight
the mothers of the neighborhood
prayed for a miracle for the grandfather in Nevada
with Leukemia.
Listen: it came to pass. The grandfather
got up and walked around and flew out
for Easter dinner that year. Later, I lost
the long-haired man in the sky. I lost the devil
with his peeling skin. But I held the grandfather
in Nevada, the whispering
mothers willing him to rise. A marble shape
is not miracle but mineral plus mind
plus labor. Yet it arcs up
just so
like a man stretching after a long sleep
like a seal throwing herself
onto the safe plane
where she can rest.
- Description
-
Constantin Brancusi revisited subjects and forms frequently throughout his career, executing variations of earlier sculptures with subtly reimagined contours and in new mediums and scales. Both The Miracle (Seal [I]) (Le miracle, ca. 1930–32) and Flying Turtle (Tortue volante, 1940–45) were the first of their kind and relatively late additions to the artist’s repertoire of motifs; in fact, Flying Turtle was the last sculpture Brancusi executed that did not have a direct formal precedent. The two works do, however, show a continuity with many of the sculptor’s overarching concerns.
Animals were a common subject for Brancusi, though excepting humans, he focused exclusively on those that fly or swim. The shapes of such animals were suited to the compact volumes that the sculptor favored, as well as his desire to depict speed and movement. In The Miracle (Seal [I]) and Flying Turtle, the simplified forms suggest not only the creatures’ namesakes but also their fluid means of locomotion. By balancing both sculptures delicately on their respective limestone bases and giving each a pronounced upward thrust, Brancusi captured the seeming weightlessness of bodies suspended in water or air. The effect is striking given the significant mass of these two marble works.
For Brancusi, animals also held symbolic weight and transcendent possibilities. In the case of The Miracle (Seal [I]), the breaching form may allude to emotional regeneration, as inspired by the sight of an acquaintance of the artist experiencing catharsis while swimming. Such transformational potential is taken a step further in Flying Turtle. By imaginatively endowing the subject with flight, Brancusi created an emblem of the lowliest creature’s ability to transcend its station. - Type
- Abstract Surrealist
- Subject
- Sculpture
- Date Created
- cast c.1930–32
- Extent
- 64 1/4" x 58 3/4" (163.2 x149.2 cm)
- Coverage
- The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
- Rights
- © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
- Rights Holder
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
- Identifier
- Bio_Sculpt001_CB_TheMiracle
- Source
- Guggenheim Official Website
- Item sets
- The Biomorphism
- Media
