Constantin Brancusi, A. C. Danto Art Column

Danto, Arthur C. "Constantin Brancusi." Art column, The Nation 262.3 (22 Jan. 1996): 30-34.

ACD opens with "a defining anecdote of Modernist art, almost too mythically perfect to be true": Fernand Léger (or so Léger says), Marcel Duchamp, and Constantin Brancusi went to "a Salon of Aviation in Paris in 1912," and Duchamp walked around in silence. "Suddenly he turned to Brancusi: 'Painting has come to an end. Who can do anything better than this propeller. Can you?" (30; sic on period after "propeller"). ACD goes on to argue that "If Duchamp saw in the propeller the embodiment of scientific truth in pitched blades, Léger saw it as an emblem of the aesthetics of the machine." In 1924 Léger "stated that 'the manufactured object ... clean and precise, beautiful in itself ... is the most terrible competition the artist has ever been subjected to.' For him the machine was the paradigm of what painting should be" (31; unspaced dots represent ellipses in original).