r truck Timothy McVeigh used in the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. With a truck made out of a Nabisco Shredded Wheat cereal box and a column assembled from FedEx cardboard, the piece has, in spite of its charged content, a toylike quality. Sachs asserts that fantasy and games play key roles in his work, and that it is precisely this youthful aspect of U.S. culture that is kindred to Brancusi's antibourgeois, folksy philosophy. Unlike his refined Parisian contemporaries, Brancusi was regarded as an exotic outsider whose work pointed not so much to the European tradition as to the new culture of U.S. skyscrapers, railroads, and jazz.In a sign of homage, Sachs has even scribbled on the entrance door of his studio Brancusi's name in white and underlined it with an arrow to replicate the unassuming mark found outside of Brancusi's atelier in Impasse Ronsin. Before Brancusi's studio was reconstructed by the architect Renzo Piano and opened once again to the public in 1997, Sachs suggested that it should be re-created with the most advanced technology available and be made as virtual as possible in order to maintain its tenor even in the absence of the artist's performative acts. Although Disneyesque in spirit, Sachs's version might in the end have pleased his predecessor more than one thinks. If Brancusi's perennial experimentation with mobile groups and with the concept of social environment functioned as a source of inspiration for the contemporary situation, then one function of art today is to keep his legacy going. When I say, keep it going, I mean by continuously reframing it in relation to the changed conditions of the world and in ways congenial to art's reflexive strategies, ranging from playful allusion to demystificatory critique.In conclusion, I was very happy to learn about the strong influences that Constantine Brancusi has had on modern sculptors and their work. I feel that as a result of doing this re...
