Bird in Space / Brancusi / Armory Show

Please allow 7 working days to process before shipping In 1926, the disparate relationship between an artwork and its textural description led to one of the most significant clashes of art and law in history: the case of Brancusi v. United States. Constantin Brancusi was born in Romania, but from 1904 he lived and worked as a sculptor in Paris. He was preoccupied by the theme of the bird, culminating in the sculpture Bird in Space, of which he made 15 versions in marble and bronze and a number of plaster casts. Brancusi sought to convey the essential nature of a bird, elegantly soaring upward in flight, without the need for traditional representational forms. In 1926, Brancusi sent a sculpture of Bird in Space from Paris to New York City for an exhibition of his work at the Brummer Gallery, curated by his great friend and advocate Marcel Duchamp. Although the law permitted artworks, including sculpture, to enter the U.S. free from import taxes, when Bird arrived, officials refused