Montparnasse Cemetery — Attraction in Paris

Constantin Brâncuși (Romanian: konstanˈtin brɨŋˈkuʃʲ; February 19, 1876 – March 16, 1957) was a Romanian sculptor, painter and photographer who made his career in France. Considered a pioneer of modernism, one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th-century, Brâncuși is called the patriarch of modern sculpture. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1905 to 1907. His art emphasizes clean geometrical lines that balance forms inherent in his materials with the symbolic allusions of representational art. Brâncuși sought inspiration in non-European cultures as a source of primitive exoticism, as did Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, André Derain and others. However, other influences emerge from Romanian folk art traceable through Byzantine and Dionysian traditions.[1]

Constantin Brâncuși, Portrait of Mademoiselle Pogany [1], 1912, White marble; limestone block, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia. Exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show. Brâncuși grew up in the village of Hobiţa, Gorj, near Târgu Jiu, close to Romania's Carpathian Mountains, an area known for its rich tradition of folk crafts, particularly woodcarving. Geometric patterns of the region are seen in his later works.

His parents Nicolae and Maria Brâncuși were poor peasants who earned a meager living through back-breaking labor; from the age of seven, Constantin herded the family's flock of sheep. He showed talent for carving objects out of wood, and often ran away from home to escape the bullying of his father and older brothers.

At the age of nine, Brâncuși left the village to work in the nearest large town. At 11 he went into the service of a grocer in Slatina; and then he became a domestic in a public house in Craiova where he remained for several years. When he was 18, Brâncuși created a violin by hand with materials he found around his workplace. Impressed by Brâncuși's talent for carving, an industrialist entered him in the Craiova School of Arts and Crafts (școala de arte și meserii), where he pursued his love for woodworking, graduating with honors in 1898.[2]

He then enrolled in the Bucharest School of Fine Arts, where he received academic training in sculpture. He worked hard, and quickly distinguished himself as talented. One of his earliest surviving works, under the guidance of his anatomy teacher, Dimitrie Gerota, is a masterfully rendered écorché (statue of a man with skin removed to reveal the muscles underneath) which was exhibited at the Romanian Athenaeum in 1903.[3] Though just an anatomical study, it foreshadowed the sculptor's later efforts to reveal essence rather than merely copy...

Now there are about 35,000 tombs in the cemetery for 300,000 people, with 1,000 more buried each year on the flat grid of the cemetery. There’s Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir buried together in a relatively simple tomb, while you’d think that Serge Gainsbourg had died yesterday from the cascade of flowers drowning his grave. There’s a large mosaic cat that Niki de Saint Phalle made for one of her friends, and gasoline lamp innovator Charles Pigeon sits up in his deathbed to read by the illumination of his invention. The first ace pilot of WWI, Adolphe Pégoud, stands proud above a screaming eagle. The monument for Dr. Jacques Lisfranc de St. Martin is lined with skulls and bones and shows him instructing a lecture hall while examining a severed foot. There are also tombs in the shape of an ibis, a fish, and one startling sculpture where a weeping man hides his face from a woman who reaches to him in farewell...

Close to Creperie de Quimper (where we had lunch) we entered the main gate along Blvd. Edgar Quinet despite google maps' advice to use that along Ave. Emille Richard. Apparently, the cimetière has a small (petit cimetière) and big (grand cimetière) sections which can both be accessed through the latter (I should have trusted google maps...) Laminated maps highlighting graves of notable people can be requested at the admin office and using them would be fun and challenging. We were about to give up on finding Maupassant's until an old man offered to help ." it's at the petit cimetière (we were at the grand cimetière). The one with 2 columns among simple graves". On a chilly afternoon with overcast skies, even the silhouettes of beautifully carved tombstones could be eerie. But being upclose with notable writers, builders and thinkers can be a sacred and contemplative...