Endless Column by Constantin Brâncuși

Thinking Through Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)’s “The Origin of the Work of Art”

Brâncuși’s Endless Column is not representational—it is ontological ascension. For Heidegger, this would be sculpture as pure world-disclosure: not a “thing,” but a vector of upward opening, where Being extends itself into infinite potentiality.

Each rhomboid form repeats, yet does not replicate; it rises and recedes into sky. There is no beginning, no summit. The earth—cast iron, solid and grounded—anchors it, but cannot contain it. The world—aspiration, transcendence, becoming—lifts upward, endlessly. This is Being as vertical opening, a Lichtung that pierces heaven.

The column is not an object—it is a trajectory, a gesture toward unending disclosure. Heidegger might say: in Brâncuși’s form, the truth of Being as elevation without goal is set into work. It is not monumental—it is elemental, showing that in the pure repetition of form, something other than form emerges: presence without closure.