Brancusi vs. United States: When Art Went on Trial

In 1926, customs officers looked at a gleaming bronze sculpture and declared it an industrial machine part, slapping it with a heavy commercial tax. By refusing to see a bird in that polished metal, they put the very definition of art on trial.This episode traces the journey of Constantin Brancusi, the patriarch of modern sculpture, from herding sheep in the Carpathian Mountains to the center of the Parisian avant-garde. We explore how a peasant boy who mastered anatomy then deliberately unlearned reality forced a superpower's legal system to recognize abstract thought as tangible art.How he hand-built a working violin from scrap wood, altering his entire trajectoryWhy he quit Rodin's studio after two months: 'nothing can grow under big trees'The scandal of Princess X and the landmark Brancusi v. United States customs trialHis monastic Romanian studio where Picasso and Duchamp dined on peasant foodThe Targu Jiu war memorial with its mesmerizing Endless Column, and his $107.6 million auction record