Brancusi's Gate and the Kiss of Life

Brancusi's 1938 Gate of the Kiss, initially designed during or shortly after World War I, revolutionized the design of war memorials. Its human scale, overall simplicity, and symbolic imagery are designed to put an end to the tradition of triumphal arches and, by extension, wars and their destructiveness. In 1938, as war clouds began to darken the European continent, Constantin Brancusi constructed a remarkable three-part memorial to the World War I defenders of the Romanian city of Tirgu Jiu. In the face of the destructiveness of World War I as well as the impending cataclysm, the central element of the ensemble, Gate of the Kiss (see Illus. 1), which had its origin at least fifteen years earlier, is a powerful statement of Brancusi's optimism and faith in mankind. In both design and meaning, the Gate of the Kiss is the antithesis, as well as the continuation, of a two-thousand-year tradition of war monuments. Study for a Gate (Illus. 2), a sheet with drawings and signature on each side, is the earliest known design for the Gate of the Kiss, the work that Sidney Geist has called "the culminating endeavor of Brancusi's career" (Kiss 76). Because of the logic and rationality of Brancusi's vision, it comes as a shock when Geist, in discussing the Study, states, "The lintel is supported by a strange capital whose imagery resists interpretation" (61). In light of the energy with which he convincingly argues the cerebral development of Brancusi's oeuvre, it is Geist's remark that seems strange. He offers no explanation for the capital's "strangeness," provides no interpretation of its imagery, and makes no comment on the contradiction of a "strange capital" in the context of Brancusi's rational vision. Accordingly, viewers are challenged, by default as it were, to search for a plausible, logical interpretation of the Study and its strange imagery. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Each half of the Study's capital bears a profound resemblance to the human embryo: each has the overall curled-up shape of the fetal position and each has three components that may be taken to represent the head, midsection, and leg. A human embryo has a disproportionately large head, but by scaling down the head and simultaneously enlarging the stylized eye, Brancusi retains the feeling of the embryo in an artistically balanced figure. The human eye develops earliest and is the most noticeable feature of an embryonic head. By drawing a prominent eye as the sole detail of the head Brancusi gives added emphasis to the eye. For him, the eye has great symbolic importance, as can be seen in the emphasized, abstract eyes of the Kiss couples of the pier in Illustration 1, or the Kiss couple that forms the column below the capital in Illustration 2. (The term Kiss couple refers to any of Brancusi's representations of two individuals embracing. Examples of Kiss couples are given in Illustrations 5, 6, and 7.) The diamond-shaped midsection represents the umbilical cord of the abstract embryo. It consists of an outward-facing point and an inward-facing point, for an umbilical cord extends outward to an embryo's world and inward to itself. In a human embryo the cord appears somewhat lower than Brancusi has shown it, but his sense of form gives the capital a balance and symmetry that would be absent in a more realistic rendering. In the lowest section, representing the embryo's legs, Brancusi again draws one of the most prominent features of an embryo. In the lintel of the Study Brancusi struggles with the representation of legs and feet; he solves this problem by omitting both from the capital, thereby preserving its abstract and symbolic treatment. The Study should be interpreted from the ground up. The Kiss couple forming the column/base may be taken to be the "original" couple. From this symbolic primal couple issue their offspring, the embryo pair forming the capital. …