Matthew Gale, Carving out a Reputation  Brancusi has a reputation as a skillful peasant camping in the milieu of Montparnasse modernism. Purity and innocence are habitually used to describe both the artist and his work. However, it is clear that this can be traced back to the complex myth that Brancusi constructed for himself. Matthew Gale, curator of Tate Modern's exhibition Brancusi: The Essence of Things, considers some of the questions of validity that accumulated around Brancusi's work, as it generated controversies around the world, and how the sculptor came to embody ideas of authenticity. Further ReadingConstantin Brancusi: The Essence of Things, Tate 2004, especially Alexandra Parigoris, 'The Road to Damascus'Alex Potts, The Sculptural Imagination: Figurative, Modernist, Minimalist, Yale 2000, especially 'Sculpture as Object: Brancusi'.