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04/19/2006: "David Smith" by Walter King
I was going to write a follow up to my last blog but decided that since it was more timely I’d write about David Smith. While I was in New York over spring break back at the end of March I managed to make it into the city to see the David Smith sculpture exhibition at the Guggenheim. (It is important to note that this is not Tony Smith who was working a little later and definitively in a more formal and minimalist style. I like Tony Smith‘s minimal work much more than David Smith‘s late minimalism.) I’ve never been terribly interested in sculpture much at all except as it might influence my drawing by understanding more fully the relationship between 3 dimensions and the 2 dimensional surfaces one marks upon. I often do studies from sculptures at museums when I travel.I almost didn’t make the effort to see Smith’s show because I’m not a fan of his later works of which I was more familiar. The later works are slick, minimal, sterile aluminum compositions of rectilinear forms critically balanced, with decoratively ground surfaces that have influenced many a mall artist. Smith’s show was interesting in a variety of ways that I didn‘t expect. . First in that he is playing with symbolic imagery in a way that connects for me in my own work. It is important to remember that the New York School of abstraction of which Pollack, de Kooning, Rothko and Motherwell were contemporaries were each influenced by a combination of cubism (Picasso and Braque) fauvism (mostly Matisse) and surrealism (Matta, Max Ernst primarily). Most of us often forget the surrealist influences. I felt I could connect with Smith’s sculptural ideas. That they might allow me to begin doing some sculpture after seeing the show connected to ideas I‘ve been goofing on for several years now.
Secondly I was intrigued to learn that Smith also did stenciled drawings much like the process I first began using a number of years back. Since this exhibition is up for approximately another month there is some chance a few of you might find it possible to visit the Guggenheim if you live in or find yourself visiting New York during the next few weeks. I’ll follow up on that previous blog, hopefully in my next blog.
The Guggenheim has that spiral ramp that swirls up to the upper portion of the gallery with side galleries coming off at various levels. The major works were arranged with wedges keeping them level along the spiral ramp while the works on paper (and several other smaller exhibitions by other artists like Kandinsky-- one of Smith’s inspirations) were displayed in the side galleries.The earlier work was certainly very symbolic and surrealist in inspiration. Lots of smaller forms suggesting human and animal bodies balanced on thin rods of steel, or built into small stage spaces which seemed to float in air. These symbolic forms began to become more and more vague and abstract as one walked up the ramp. Within a hundred feet above the ground level the representations became completely abstract yet there was still the suggestion of
human form which continued quite up to the later more minimal works near the very top of the gallery. The premise of that morphology held true once it registered. The connection to surrealism and symbolic human and animal forms seems important if only that it shows Smith’s ability to create representational forms. We often do not consider an artist valid if he can’t prove that ability. Smith certainly does and in a media and scale (quite small really) that proves challenging.But more importantly the lineage of an entire generation of artists in this country who felt the need to begin with figuration, then to explore, reflect and finally challenge and begin to move beyond the influence of cubism seems to me to be at the very heart of what they accomplished in the beginning of the 20th century. An iconoclastic controversy cannot begin without iconoclastic imagery. And I have come to understand what began in Europe at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries coming to roost in the States a little later in the 20th century was in fact an iconoclastic controversy-- an odd and salient revision of what art is and what it should be about after centuries of constancy. I’ve spoken of this before either in the blogs or on the forum. We are still sorting this revision --not revisionism about this historical time but of imagery--in the actual visual formulae and traditions handed down for centuries. It is still something we are arguing about even on this forum. Smith was one of a dozen artists who are credited with challenging those formulae and traditions. However, with a few exceptions I’m not sure that many of the New York School painters or sculptors ever really
My sketch of Wagon II owned by the Tatemoved beyond cubism. For that matter few of the next couple of generations of artists really got very far beyond cubism, fauvism or surrealism. The ism’s front loaded at the beginning of the century are still with us where ever you turn.
Born in Decatur Indiana (1918) Smith studied at Ohio University in Athens, Notre Dame in Indiana and the Art Students League in New York City where he studied with John Sloan the painter from the famous Ash Can School. Between 1928 and 1929 Smith discovers the work of Kandinsky, Mondrian, the Russian Constructivists and through the artist John Graham is introduced to the iron sculptures of Julio Gonzalez and Picasso which influenced him deeply.
Marian Willard offers Smith his first solo exhibition at her East River Gallery. Willard continues to represent Smith for next eighteen years. This bit of information alone defines some of the distinctions between the gallery world of then and today.
I always find it interesting to learn how famous artists paid their way at various stages in their career. Smith worked at a Studebaker factory early on. Even after he was picked up by the East River Gallery Smith continued to work at other jobs than scultpure. He was commissioned to make bases for Frank Crowninshield’s African sculpture collection. Crowninshield was the editor of Vanity Fair Magazine. Maybe he did this job just to make a connection to an important publisher. He also worked at the American Locomotive Company in Schenectady, New York welding tanks during the war. It is important to know that his wife, Dorothy Dehner, had a fairly large inheritance so I’m not sure why he felt it necessary to also work. Maybe he just wanted to stay connected to the real world, maybe he just needed spending money. He wasn’t making any sculpture during this period due to the lack of scrap iron because of the war. But he made numerous drawings. Smith and Dorothy Dehner separated in 1950 and divorced in 1952.
Awarded Guggenheim Foundation fellowship two years in a row, 1950-51 and continues to produce drawings, which become more calligraphic and flowing due to his interest in Asian art.
By 1958 smith began making his 'spray' paintings by placing scraps of metal and other materials on a sheet of paper then spraying over the objects creating a kind of positive negative design with a positive background and a negative white space for the objects. Intriguingly enough these white spaces simply become positive on a darker background. An of course I would find this interesting since I’ve been doing stenciled drawings for nearly 5 or 6 years…more if you include the peg board dots as stencils. I’d never seen Smith’s stenciled drawings before this show.Smith died in a truck accident near Bennington Vermont in the same year he was appointed by President Johnson to the National Council on the Arts in 1965. Smith’s work has been featured in prominent Museum exhibitions from 1979 through the Guggenheim show that is up now including the Whitney, Detroit Institute of Art and the Hirshorn in Washington D.C.. The International Exhibitions Foundation of Washington D.C. organized and circulated ’The Drawings of David Smith in 1985. In 1991 Salander O’Reilly Galleries, New York exhibited 'David Smith: Works on Paper, 1953-1961'.
And of course this current Guggenheim exhibition of Smith’s work runs through May 14th. If you hadn’t considered going it is well worth the effort. And remember the Guggenheim is open on Mondays.
I’ve included one drawing of my own done since seeing Smith’s retrospective. It is one of a dozen or more began shortly after returning from NY last month. It uses figures I’ve created as stencils and used in several works previously. While inspired by Smith’s earlier sculptures and his stenciled drawings you’ll still find some of my own explorations such as the expanded use and re-use of a single figure I a variety of positions to create the whole image. Mine are not negatives but positives of the figure, although I’ve done the reverse as well in several works over the years by printing with the stencil when it becomes caked with wet paint or by using the drop from the stencil to spray around.
