Professor Butter Beard and Constantin Brâncuși’s “Newborn”
“A good friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.” – Bernard Meltzer
“You’re good egg, Mr. McClellan.” I can still hear my elementary school music teacher, Mr. Wolfe, saying that, out loud, in front of all the 4th grade band students who immediately began to snicker at a vibrating volume, reverberating inside my 10-year-old ginger head. All I had done was respond to his request to play an A flat scale in a practically perfect fashion on my brand-new shimmering brass trumpet. Since that very moment, that term, “a good egg” has forever caused a tad of a twitch in my soul.
Honestly, I do love a good egg (cooked). Scrambled with asparagus. Poached (yes, swimming in hollandaise). Fried in a little left-over bacon fat. Or, folded into an omelet with pickled red peppers and goat cheese. Even Nels looks forward to her puppy version. I think she fully understands that every egg-wash created for my baking will end up perfectly microwaved into an impromptu snack of deliciousness in her bowl.
But ever since first studying modern art as a sophomore at Pace, “a good egg” now also summons forth a new vision: a gleaming ovoid form seemingly floating in space, as perceived by Constantin Brâncuși.
Constantin Brâncuși first exhibited his sculpture in New York at the 1913 Armory Show, alongside work by Marcel Duchamp, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and other vanguard artists. The presentation of international modern art was met with substantial fanfare, and his sculptures were later singled out by Vanity Fair magazine as “disturbing, so disturbing indeed that they completely altered the attitude of a great many New Yorkers towards a whole branch of art.”
Born in 1876 in rural Romania, Brâncuși came to art through an immersion into modern craftmanship. In his youth, he learned direct carving techniques, eventually becoming a skilled woodworker. In 1904 he moved to Paris, where, like most of his peers, he made sculpture by modeling clay and casting it in bronze. He quickly abandoned this technique, choosing instead to carve his sculptures from stone and wood. According to MOMA’s curators, “With a vocabulary of simplified shapes, he created visually reductive works that evoke rather than resemble the subjects named in their titles, pushing form to the threshold of abstraction.”
While in Paris, Brâncuși studied at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts and then briefly assisted the sculptor Auguste Rodin in his studio. This powerful, yet fleeting, influence encouraged the young artist to embrace simplified forms and, with it, an antipathy to realism. With limestone, travertine, brass and marble, Brâncuși made works that conveyed their references through minimal means; an ovoid with a stylized ridge, for instance, could signal a newborn’s head.
Louis Slobodkin, in his book “Sculpture, Principles and Practice,” attempts to interpret Brâncuși’s shimmering bronze egg: “This Newborn [figure] may be explained thus to anyone who resists it: Here is the egg or the embryo beginning to break up and stir. It stops being a perfect egg shape and stirs into life. It flattens out at one side and seems to open up like a baby crying to be fed.”
My art-historian guru, Ernst Gombrich, offers another tantalizing tidbit of insightfulness: “We remember that Michelangelo’s idea of sculpture was to bring out the form that seems to slumber in the marble block, and to give life and movement to figures while yet preserving the simple outline of the stone. Brâncuși must have decided to approach the problem from the other end. He wanted to find out how much the sculptor could retain from the original stone while still transforming it into the suggestion of an egg.”
Ultimately though, my favorite quote is from the artist himself. When asked why he was drawn to the “abstract” he reportedly responded: “Only imbeciles label my work as abstract; that which they call abstract is the most realist, because what is real is not the exterior form but the idea, the essence of things.”
The essence of things. As the crisp dawn brightened the sky on this first weekend of Spring, I sipped my steaming mug-a-joe, turned on the oven, and inspired by Brâncuși approach, created this “essence of things” egg custard tart. I did tweak my original recipe by replacing the white sugar with dark brown, adding another subtle layer of deeply grounded flavor. Nutmeg and vanilla paste add further “abstract” notes, but it is the egg who remains center stage.
A perfect diva.
A “good egg.”
Professor Butter Beard’s Brown Sugar Egg Custard Tart
1 recipe Prof BB’s rich pie pastry
1/2 cup sliced almonds, toasted and salted (if desired)
Custard:
1/3 cup whole milk
1 2/3 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
¼ tsp fine sea salt
¼ tsp freshy grated nutmeg
1 tsp vanilla paste
6 large egg yolks
1) Blind bake the pastry in a shallow pie plate and set aside to cool. Toast the almonds with ½ tsp of fine sea salt and set aside to cool.
2) Preheat your oven to 275 degrees.
3) In a heavy medium-size saucepan, heat the milk and cream with the sugar and salt. Whisk until simmering and the sugar has dissolved (bringing it to roughly 170 degrees).
4) In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks until combined. Carefully pour 1/3 of the hot cream over the egg yolks, whisking gently the entire time to temper the eggs. Whisk the remaining hot cream and then strain the mixture into a large glass measuring cup. Whisk the nutmeg and vanilla paste into the mixture.
5) Pour the custard into the shell and gently place it on the center rack of the oven. Bake until the custard is mainly set around the outside. There should be a 2” wobble in the center. It will continue cooking once you remove it from the oven. Start checking for the wobble after 30-35 minutes (but it could take up to 40 minutes to achieve).
6) Let cool completely to room temperature before serving. If desired, garnish the edges with the toasted almonds (and serve with fresh blueberries).
