Torso of a Young Man

Torso of a Young Man is a sculpture created by Constantin Brâncuși between 1917 and 1922. It depicts the male torso as a cylinder mounted on vestigial cylindrical legs, cut off at mid-thigh.^[1] Sidney Geist has pointed out that the sculpture, without genitalia, is itself a phallus with testes.^[2] There are several versions. Torso of a Young Man I was carved from a fork in a maple branch wood mounted on a limestone block. It is now in the Brodsky Gallery of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. A similar sculpture, dated 1923 and carved in walnut, is in the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.^[3] Brancusi also cast the torso in highly polished bronze. The two examples of this version are held in the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden^[4]

References

1. Krauss, Rosalind E. (1981). Passages in Modern Sculpture. pp. 85; 100; 279. MIT Press. ISBN 0262610337
2. Geist, Sidney (1967). Brancusi. New York: Grossman, p. 59.
3. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Torso of a Young Man (I) (with image). Retrieved 13 February 2016
4. Cleveland Museum of Art. Male Torso, 1917 (with image). Retrieved 13 February 2016