Sticks and stones

Contrary to what many may think, humour is never far from the modernist sensibility, and Brancusi definitely puts a smile on your face. The marble head of an infant, for instance, becomes one demanding, down-turned mouth, while the oak-carved Little French Girl, with its elongated neck and torso and joined wooden beads for legs, manages to look like a cross between an African carving and Popeye's Olive Oyl.

Brancusi's rough-hewn carvings, particularly in wood, and the smooth ovoids of his marble sculptures provide a marriage of two opposing but complementary Modernist strands: hot primitivism and the coolness of austere abstraction, which he often combined in one work. Beginning Of The World, for example, is a smooth marble egg which lies on a flat, reflective steel plate, which itself sits on a long cruciform-shaped limestone base. And it really is a flamboyant arrangement, to say the least.

But perhaps part of my difficulty with it lies in the fact that it's also raised off the ground on yet another base, for which Brancusi definitely isn't responsible: a big circular Tate plinth, which almost all the large sculptures sit on. Protecting the work from jostling viewers and also emphasising their intheroundness, they are nonetheless an unattractive distraction.

Tate interventions aside, this is an excellent show. With only 35 works arranged thematically, it's not a thorough-going retrospective, but it's the first major Brancusi exhibition in the UK, so it's an extremely welcome one.

Until May 23, Tate Modern, Bankside SE1, daily 10am to 6pm (Fri and Sat to 10pm), £8, £6 concs. Tel: 020 7887 8008. Tube: Southwark/Blackfriars