SECTION 1 - via - School of Visual Arts

27. Romanian scholar Mircea Eliade notes that the tree of life, or cosmic tree, is one of those
Christianized “mythico-symbolic complexes abundantly diffused through the world.” See
28. Micea Eliade. A History of Religious Ideas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).
29. James Brown, personal communication, Baia Mare, May 1998.
30. Brown, ibid.
31. Isamu Noguchi, “Recollections on Brâncu_i,” in Balas, ibid. p. viii.
32. Casandra Culcer, University of Bucharest, e-mail, November 20, 1998:”. . . the column
(simple without ornaments for men, or adorned for women, or sometimes having the
soulbird on top . . . the funerary bird would appear . . . with closed wings standing quiet,
as a receptacle for the ready-to-leave soul, or with open wings, a celestial image of the
soul-bird flying.”
33. Silvia Margineanu, personal communication, Bucharest, Spring 1996.
34. Museum of Modern Art, New York, Illustration in Shanes, ibid., p. 22.
35. Romulus Vulcanescu, Romanian Mythology, pp. 200-204.
36. Brezianu, ibid. p. 160: Catalogue of the exhibition at the Brummer Gallery, New York
City, 1933-1934.
37. Claudia Ploscu, “Interview with Sorana Georgescu Gorjan,” Adevarul Literar si Artistic,
nr. 560, March 20, 2001 (tr. G. Tillman)
38. Culcer, ibid.
39. In 1935 Brâncu_i met in Paris with a Romanian engineer, Stefan Georgescu Gorjan, to
discuss how the column could be built. Gorjan inventively, and pragmatically, suggested
individual units of the column be strung like beads upon a supporting inner shaft. He
became the supervising contractor onsite, working closely with Brâncu_i throughout as
reported in an interview by Claudia Poloscu with the daughter of Gorjan. See: Claudia
Poloscu, “The Endless Column is set up on the site of an old cattle market—interview
with Mrs. Sorana Georgescu Gorjan, the daughter of the Column engineer,” Adevarul,
March 10, 2001 (tr. G. Tillman)
40. Ibid.
41. Sixteen modules were cast of iron, and arranged with two half modules top and bottom
and in between 15 complete modules for a total projected height of 28.8m (but, by some
calculations, actually a bit more, 29.33m). Grigorescu, Ibid., p. 89. “ . . . 16.2 which is the
value of the golden number multiplied by ten.”
42. Micea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1982), pp. 170-179.
43. August 15-November 15, 2937, as cited in “The Endless Column to be Rebuilt,” Ziua,
September 14, 2000 (tr. G. Tillman). Its restoration, however, in the post-Ceau_escu
period took years and was not completed until 2001; the restoration of the rest of the
architectonic program and its elements—including the park and its sculpture, the Avenue
of Heroes, the Church of the Heroes—is ongoing.
44. Quoted by Dorothy Dudley, “Brâncu_i,” Dial 82, February 1927, cited in Shanes, ibid., p.
107.
45. Balas, ibid, p. 40: “The Forces of nature were placated and governed by the
interprentation of omens and carefully prescribed ritual. The presiding figure at such
rites was generally an old woman, who was as significant a personage in a given village as
the local priest and probably more so.”
46. “A unique exhibition in Slobozia: a history of civilization told through ceremonial
breads,” Romania Libera, July 11, 2000 (tr. G. Tillman and C. Culcer).
16