Bird in Space

Bird in Space is a series of sculptures by the Romanian artist Constantin Brancusi, begun with a marble version in 1923 and continued in various marble and bronze versions through 1940, ultimately comprising seven marble figures and nine bronze casts, each around 287.7 centimetres tall. Rather than showing a bird's physical features, Brancusi reduced the form to a single elongated, polished body with no wings or feathers, aiming to capture the sensation of flight itself. A bronze cast became the subject of a landmark 1928 United States legal case, after customs officials taxed it as a manufactured metal object rather than duty-free art; the court ultimately ruled in the sculptor's favor, in the first American decision to recognize that a non-representational, abstract sculpture could be art.