Duchamp, Brancusi, Tzara (image source)
“For years I had wanted to buy a Brancusi bronze, but had not been able to afford one. Now the moment seemed to have arrived for this great aquisition. I spent months becoming more and more involved with Brancusi before this sale was actually consummated. I had known him for sixteen years, but I never dreamed I was to get into such complications with him. It was very difficult to talk prices to Brancusi, and if you ever had the courage to do so, you had to expect him to ask you some monstrous sum. I was aware of this and hoped my excessive friendship with him would make things easier. But in spite of all this we ended up in a terrible row, when he asked four thousand dollars for the “Bird in Space”.
Brancusi’s studio was in a cul de sac. It was a huge workshop filled with his enormous sculputes, and looked like a cemetery except that the sculptures were much too big to be on graves. Next to this big room was a little room where he actually worked. The walls were covered with every concievable instrument necessary for his work. In the center was a furnace in which he heated instruments and melted bronze. In this furnace he cooked his delicious meals, burning them on purpuse only to pretend that it had been an error. He ate at a counter and served lovely drinks made very carefully. Between this little room and the big room, which was so cold it was quite unusable in winter, there was a little recess, where Brancusi played Oriental music on a phonograph he had made himself. Upstairs was his bedroom, a very modest affair. The whole place was covered in white dust from the sculptures.
Brancusi was a marvelous little man with a beard and piercing dark eyes. He was half astute peasant and half real god. He made you very happy to be with him. It was a privilege to know him; unfortunately he got too possessive, and wanted all of my time. He called me Pegitza.
Brancusi told me he liked going on long trips. He had been to India with the Maharajah of Indore in whose garden he had placed three “Birds in Space”. One was white marble, one black, and the third one bronze. He also liked to go to very elegant hotels in France and arrive dressed like a peasant, and then order the most expensive things possible. Formely he had taken beautiful young girls traveling with him. He now wanted to take me, but I would not go. He had been back to Romania, his own country, where the gouvernment had asked him to build public monuments. He was very proud of this. Most fo his life had been austere and devoted entirely to his work. He had sacrificed everything to this, and had given up women for the most part to the point of anguish. In his old age he felt it very much and was very lonely. Brancusi used to dress up and take me out to dinner when he did not cook for me. He had a persecution complex and always thought people were spying on him. He loved me very much, but I never could get anything out of him. (I wanted to give Giorgio Joyce a portrait in crayon which he had done of his father, James Joyce, but I could not make him do so.) Laurence suggested jokingly that I should marry Brancusi in order to inherit all his sculptures. I investigated the possibilities, but soon suspected that he had other ideas, and did not desire to have me as a heir. He would have preferred to sell me everything and then hide all the money in his wooden shoes.
After the row, I vanished from Brancusi’s life for several months, during which time I bought for one thousand dollars a much earlier work of his, “Maiastra”, from Paul Poiret’s sister. It was the very first bird he did in 1912. It was a beautiful bird with an enourmous stomach, but I still hankered after the “Bird in Space”. So Nellie (whom he called Nellitska) went to see Brancusi and tried to patch up the row. I finally went back to see Brancusi and began all over again to discuss the sale. This time we fixed the price in fracs, and by buying them in New York I saved a thousand dollars on the exchange. Brancusi felt cheated but he accepted the money.
One day I was having lunch with him in his studio wordkshop and he was telling me about his adventures in the last war. He said he would never leave Paris this time. In the last war he had gone away and as a result he had broken his leg. Of course he did not wish to leave his studio and all his enormous sculptures. They could not possibly be removed. At this point of our conversation a terrific bombardment of the outer boulevards of Paris took place. He knew at once that it was the real thing, but I did not believe it, as we had had so many false air-raid warnings. We were only a few blocks from the Porte de Vaugirard, where some bombs were falling, and the noise was infernal. He had mde me move from under the glass roof into the other room, but I paid no attention at all and kept going back to fetch wine and food from our lunch table. Afterward we emerged into Paris, where the news was confirmed. All the factories of the outer boulevards had been bombed, and a lot of school children killed.
Brancusi polished all his scultures by hand. I think that it is the main reason they are so beautiful. This “Bird in Space” was to give him several weeks’ work. By the time he had finished, the Germans were near Paris, and I went ot fetch it in my little car to have it packed and shipped away. Tears were streaming down Brancusi’s face, and I was genuinely touched. I never knew why he was so upset, but assumed it was because I was parting with his favourite bird.”
(Peggy Gugenheim – “Out of this century”)
. Attached to her character is a considerable number of mirrors, which seem to follow her everywhere she goes.
