Danaïde, Featuring Nicole Kidman

Nicole Kidman visited Christie’s headquarters at Rockefeller Center in New York earlier this month. The reason for her visit? An encounter with Constantin Brancusi’s Danaïde, the sculptor’s golden portrait of his muse from 1913.

In the new short video, set to David Bowie’s Golden Years, Kidman, herself a lover and supporter of the arts, approaches the work in Christie’s Rockefeller Center galleries. The turning world around her stops, and, feeling the beauty and history emanating from the golden sculpture, she is transported to a dream state, where she experiences joy, excitement, passion, curiosity and appreciation. Kidman embodies what engaging with art can feel like for anyone.

Brancusi’s seminal work is part of MASTERPIECES: The Private Collection of S.I. Newhouse, on view to the public from 9 May to 18 May as part of Christie’s 20th and 21st Century Art Week exhibition.

The story of Danaïde stretches back to antiquity, from Greek mythology, to Ovid, to Auguste Rodin. Brancusi (who had previously apprenticed under sculptor Rodin) depicts a beautiful young Hungarian artist — Margit Pogany — the artist’s muse. Its gentle features, inviting smile, and enigmatic gaze are as hypnotic now as when it first emerged. Danaïde’s pure and essential form is considered to be the birth of modern sculpture.

Kidman — herself a statuesque icon, circles the Danaïde, enraptured by its timeless beauty. Its artistic alchemy is at once compelling and transformative. Initially inspired by the 1930s Man Ray film of Lee Miller interacting with Brancusi’s work, this contemporary interpretation could only have featured Ms. Kidman who has a passion for art and a deep curiosity for creativity and the impact of that on humanity.

‘Look at my sculptures until you manage to see them,’ Brancusi once said. The endless orb transfixes the gaze, the circular forms unending as they take the viewer on a journey around the sculpture. A beauty that is at once recognisable yet timeless, both from the present and epochs past.