David Smith: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Interviews 9780520356108, 9780520291881

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The publisher also gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Literati Circle of the University of California Press Foundation, whose members are: Helzel Family Foundation / Deborah and David Kirshman Judith and Kim Maxwell Stephen Miller Thomas J. White

D AV I D S M I T H COLLECTED WRITINGS, LECTURE S, AND INTERVIE WS

THE DOCUMENTS OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY ART JACK FL AM, GENER AL EDITOR ROBERT MOTHERWELL , FOUNDING EDITOR Volumes available from University of California Press: Art as Art: The Selected Writings of Ad Reinhardt, edited by Barbara Rose Memoirs of a Dada Drummer by Richard Huelsenbeck, edited by Hans J. Kleinschmidt Matisse on Art, Revised Edition, edited by Jack Flam German Expressionism: Documents from the End of the Wilhelmine Empire to the Rise of National Socialism, edited by Rose-Carol Washton Long Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, edited by Jack Flam Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary by Hugo Ball, edited by John Elderfield Pop Art: A Critical History, edited by Steven Henry Madoff The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell, edited by Stephanie Terenzio Conversations with Cézanne, edited by Michael Doran Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, edited by Alan Wilkinson Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art: A Documentary History, edited by Jack Flam with Miriam Deutch The Cubist Painters, Guillaume Apollinaire, translated, with commentary, by Peter Read The Writings of Robert Motherwell, edited by Dore Ashton with Joan Banach Russian and Soviet Views of Modern Western Art, 1890s to Mid-1930s, edited by Ilia Dorontchenkov, translated by Charles Rougle, consulting editor Nina Gurianova Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations, edited by Clark Coolidge, with an introduction by Dore Ashton David Smith: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Interviews, edited by Susan J. Cooke

David Smith Collected Writings, Lectures, and Interviews ED I T ED BY S U S A N J. C O O K E

UNIVERSIT Y OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2018 by the Estate of David Smith Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Smith, David, 1906–1965, author. | Cooke, Susan J., editor. Title: David Smith : collected writings, lectures, and interviews / edited by Susan J. Cooke. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2018] | Series: The documents of twentiethcentury art | Identifiers: LCCN 2017036814 (print) | ISBN 9780520291874 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780520291881 (pbk : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Smith, David, 1906–1965—Written works. | Smith, David, 1906–1965—Interviews. Classification: LCC N6537.S616 (ebook) | LCC N6537.S616 A35 2018 (print) | DDC 709.2—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017036814 Printed in China 27

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With love for KF, NWCF, and JGMF, each an inspiring wordsmith of uncommon talent

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi A Note on the Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 THIRTIES AND FORTIES

Media: The Materials of the Artist, by Max Doerner, 1935 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Current Exhibitions: Abstract Painting in America, 1935 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 In America You Feel, 1935–36 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 An Expression of Emotion That Cannot Be Put into Words, 1935–36 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 The Concept Is Primary, 1938–39 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 The Architect Should Be Able to Judge, 1939–40 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Modern Sculpture and Society, 1939–40 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Abstract Art in America, 1940 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Medals for Dishonor, Responses to Questions from Elizabeth McCausland, 1940 . . . . . . .37 Sculpture: Art Forms in Architecture—New Techniques Affect Both, 1940 . . . . . . . . . . 42 Medals for Dishonor, 1940 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 The Recurrences of Totemism, c. 1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 The Visual Arts, 1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 I Have Erected a Solid, c. 1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 A River Mts, c. 1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 The Sculpture Produces an Environment, c. 1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 To Keep from Becoming Enslaved, c. 1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 The Technique, Brushstrokes, Chisel Marks, c. 1946 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Landscape Fish Clouds, 1946–47 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 The Question—What Is Your Hope, c. 1947 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 One of the Early Impressions, c. 1947 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Lecture, Skidmore College, 1947 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 The Landscape; Spectres Are; Sculpture Is, 1947 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Design for Progress—Cockfight, 1947 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 The Sculptor’s Relationship to the Museum, Dealer, and Public, 1947 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 The Golden Eagle—A Recital; Robinhood’s Barn, 1948 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Foreword, Dorothy Dehner: Drawings, Paintings, 1948 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

FIFTIES

Report for Interim Week, 1950 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Statement, Herald Tribune Forum, 1950 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Sculpture Hopes to Be, 1950 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Notes on Books, 1950 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 The Question—What Are Your Influences, 1950 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Autobiographical Notes, 1950 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 What I Believe about the Teaching of Sculpture, 1950 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 The Flight Paths of Birds Moths Insects, 1950–51 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Notes—Watch a Torn Sheet, c. 1951 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 What Happens to Barnyard Grass, 1951 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Foreword—(Apology of a Juryman), 1951 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Notes on Seven Sculptures, 1951 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Progress Report and Application for Renewal of Guggenheim Fellowship, 1951 . . . . . . 119 And So This Being the Happiest—Is Disappointing, 1951 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Notes for Elaine de Kooning, 1951 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 The Joint Is Foul with Smoke, 1951 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Sketchbook Notes: The Red of Rust; The Metaphor of a Symbol; The Position for Vision; Reading, 1951–52 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Sketchbook Notes: Music; The Cloud; Space; And in the Best of Squares, 1951–52 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Lecture, Williams College, 1951 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Problems of the Contemporary Sculptor, 1952 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 The Language Is Image, 1952 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 The New Sculpture, 1952 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Atmosphere of Early ’30s, 1952 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 A Head Is a Drawing, c. 1952 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 The Modern Sculptor and His Materials, 1952 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 I Have Seen Some Critics, 1952 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 Lecture, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, 1952 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 Lecture, Fourth Annual Woodstock Art Conference, 1952 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Relative to Tanktotem I (Pouring), 1952 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 How Far Away from Imitation of Reality, 1952 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Statement, WNYC Radio, 1952 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 Who Is the Artist?, 1952 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Notes on Details—Technical, c. 1952–53 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

Do We Dare to Do Bad Works, 1952–53 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Sometimes a Drawing Gets Too Complete, 1953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 Lecture, Portland Art Museum, 1953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Books: African Classics for the Modern, 1953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 Sketchbook Notes: From the Textures; The Part to the Whole; There Is Something Rather Noble About Junk, 1953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Notes While Driving, 1953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 The Artist and Art in America, 1953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 I Sat Near My Window, 1953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Thoughts on Sculpture, 1953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 Symposium: Art and Religion, 1953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 How Little I Know, 1953–54 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 The Artist’s Image, 1954 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 Notes from a Sketchbook Titled “Nature,” 1954 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Second Thoughts on Sculpture, 1954 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 The Artist, the Critic, and the Scholar, 1954 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Tradition, 1954 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 Lecture, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, 1954 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218 Contribution by the Aesthetician, 1954–55 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 Define Technique, c. 1955 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 Editions, Duplication, c. 1955 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 It Has Got to Make Big, 1955 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 Notes—Improvised Upon, 1955 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242 To Make a Mark, 1955 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 The Artist in Society, 1955 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Drawing, 1955 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 And Drawings before the Etching or the Print, 1955 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 Sketch—Oil Painting—The Influence—The Historian, c. 1956 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 González: First Master of the Torch, 1956 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 Lecture, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, 1956 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 Sketchbook Notes: He May Be Intuitive Enough to Make It; Nothing Put Down with Force and Conviction Is Meaningless, 1957 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 Sculpture and Architecture, 1957 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290 Selden Rodman, Conversation with David Smith, 1957 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 False Statements; Editor’s Letters, 1957 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 Contemporary Sculpture and Architecture, 1957 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299

Letters: American Art at the Met, 1958 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303 Is Today’s Artist With or Against the Past?, 1958 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304 Culture and the Ideal of Perfection, 1959 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306 Lecture, Ohio State University, 1959 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 SIXTIES

Notes on My Work, 1960 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313 Interview by David Sylvester, 1960 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 Thoughts Travel and Come Unexpectedly, 1960 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 Memories to Myself, 1960 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330 A Protest Against Vandalism; Letters; Rescue Operation, 1960 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338 What Is the Triumph, 1961 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340 Letter to the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Institute, 1961 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 Collective Concept, 1961 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 Interview by Katharine Kuh, 1962 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343 Sculpture Today, 1962 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348 Sketchbook Notes: The Great Decision; To Think—To Dream; I Do Not Care for the Home Environment, 1962 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350 Sketchbook Notes: The Found Object; Isn’t It Good, 1962 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352 Letter to David Sylvester, 1962 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353 Report on Voltri, 1962–63 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356 A Bin Full of Balls, c. 1963 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365 Sketchbook Notes: CUBE III; Drawings Are a Change; Once in a Lifetime You Meet an Ironworks; You Rule Your Own World, 1962–63 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366 Jim and Minnie Ball, c. 1963 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 I Like to Eat, c. 1964 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371 Interview by Thomas B. Hess, 1964 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373 The Subject Is Me, c. 1964 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 Interview by Marian Horosko, 1964 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 Interview by Frank O’Hara, 1964 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422 Some Late Words from David Smith, 1964 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428 Chronology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 List of Illustration Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my deep appreciation to Candida and Rebecca Smith for their support and encouragement; without their dedicated and farsighted guardianship of their father’s legacy and archives and their generous impulse in making his writings available to a broad public, this volume would not exist. I am especially grateful to Peter Stevens, executive director of the Estate of David Smith, for proposing that I undertake this project and for sharing with me over many years, in conversations casual and intense, his profound knowledge and understanding of Smith’s achievements. The peer reviewers for University of California Press, Sarah Hamill and an anonymous reader, provided detailed and constructive comments on the manuscript that have made it a better book. Finally, I would like to thank in particular Documents of Twentieth-Century Art general editor Jack Flam for his patience and guidance during the long gestation of this volume and for the exemplary models his own edited collections of the writings of Henri Matisse and Robert Smithson provided.

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A NOTE ON THE TE X TS

David Smith: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Interviews is the first comprehensive collection of the artist’s written and oral statements. It comprises his published essays and poems, formal interviews, autograph and transcribed texts of nearly all his public lectures, an extensive selection of the imaginative reflections and notes he recorded in sketchbooks and on loose pages, and a handful of letters he wrote or signed as public statements. The larger body of the artist’s correspondence has been excluded, although it is occasionally referred to in the notes to individual texts. While Smith’s letters constitute an invaluable resource for anyone interested in his biography and the exigencies and development of his professional career, they offer relatively few extended examples of his interest in using literary language for creative introspection and exposition of his artistic ambitions and principles, which is the focus of the present volume. In selecting the texts for this anthology, I have expanded upon, while being deeply indebted to, two earlier collections of Smith’s writings: David Smith by David Smith, edited by Cleve Gray (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), and David Smith, edited by Garnett McCoy (Praeger, 1973). Both Gray and McCoy made astute, albeit selective, use of the papers, correspondence, sketchbooks, and photographs found in Smith’s home and workshop in Bolton Landing, New York, after his death in May 1965. These materials were assembled by McCoy, an archivist and longtime Journal editor of the Archives of American Art (AAA), at the request of the artist’s executors and AAA trustee Howard Lipman and subsequently placed on deposit at the AAA (Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, DC), where they were microfilmed and have long been available to researchers. In 2002, the original collections that constituted the AAA David Smith Papers were returned to the Estate of David Smith, New York City. The estate’s archives are open to scholars by appointment and have continued to grow through gifts of documents and photographs from the artist’s family, associates, and admirers; unless otherwise noted in the editor’s notes to the texts, the archives are the source of the documents and photographs published here. Gray and McCoy adopted strikingly different, though complementary, approaches to anthologizing Smith’s writings. Gray emphasized short excerpts extracted from longer statements, which were grouped thematically and juxtaposed with the artist’s evocative photographs of his sculptures to create an impressionistic portrait of the man and the settings in which he lived and worked. McCoy chose to publish a smaller number of complete texts grouped into three categories, each organized chronologically: formal writings, speeches, and notes; interviews; and letters to friends and art world associates. He also reprinted three essays by art critics about Smith’s work, published during his lifetime.

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The present edition, in contrast, assembles a significantly greater number and variety of written and oral statements by the artist, including many previously unpublished texts, and it presents them, with a few exceptions, in their entirety and in chronological order, rather than by genre or subject matter, so that readers may more easily trace the evolution and persistence of the themes that preoccupied Smith and the ways they recur in a variety of expressive and literary modes. Most of the titles given to the texts in this volume are Smith’s own or those under which they were first published. In the case of texts to which Smith gave no title, I have taken the title from the first line of the text (and repeated it in the body of the text) or added a descriptive title. Most of Smith’s published essays and formal lectures originated in fragmentary notes that he expanded, revised, and polished in successive handwritten and typed drafts. Lecture texts and other statements not initially conceived for publication are presented here in their latest manuscript or typed incarnations, occasionally with earlier edits or additions missed by his typists reinserted. When comparing the published versions of his poems and essays with their draft versions, one occasionally finds that typos and errors crept into the former, sometimes inserted by his editors or printers, sometimes by Smith himself. These have been corrected without comment unless the alteration is significant. (After editing his texts, Smith did not always carefully correct or proofread them, and it was not uncommon for successive typescripts to be prepared by different typists.) A majority of Smith’s formal statements were conceived as texts to be delivered as speeches; other of his oral presentations exist only as audio recordings or transcriptions made by his interviewers or auditors of his lectures and the question and answer periods that sometimes followed. In editing the extant written and recorded versions of Smith’s speeches and interviews, I have corrected errors in grammar and syntax and lightly regularized punctuation to the extent that doing so does not falsify Smith’s distinctive voice, or when not to have intervened would have risked leaving the reader confused or mystified. Spelling errors in Smith’s texts have been amended and the capitalization of proper nouns rendered consistent within individual texts. Occasionally, variant forms of words and spelling and conventions of capitalization common in the mid-twentieth century but less common now have been retained. I have applied both a lighter and a heavier editorial hand to those writings by Smith that exist only in manuscript form in his sketchbooks or that were recorded on loose, often fragmentary sheets of paper. A few examples of Smith autograph pages are reproduced in this volume to illustrate their graphic complexity and, in some cases, the empathetic relationship between a text and its accompanying drawing. It was not uncommon for Smith to combine on a single manuscript page multiple texts arrayed in different directions and inscribed with varying degrees of spontaneity and urgency in multicolored inks, pencils, or crayons. His idiosyncratic orthography—“bot” (bought), “thot” (thought), his habitual practice of welding together the parts of the infinitive “to be” (tobe), frequent use of dashes instead of

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periods, and his tendency to omit capital letters from the first words of sentences— is a rhetorically expressive vehicle of his texts’ meanings and therefore has been left largely unaltered. Where line breaks and spacing between words or phrases are clearly deliberate, they also have been retained. But the typeset pages of a book are less welcoming to the kinds of suggestive ambiguity invited by the unmarginated field of a sketchbook or notebook leaf; unavoidably, editorial decisions about where to break or continue a phrase, or how to resolve the meaning of absent or overabundant punctuation, are subjective and interpretive. Some of these judgments, and others that have shaped this selection and presentation of Smith’s writings, differ from choices made by my predecessors. Nonetheless, I share with them the conviction that readers, and subsequent editors, who encounter Smith’s writings here and those still unpublished in his archives will find their own means (as he advised viewers of his sculptures) to “travel by perception the path which I travelled in creating [them].”1

Notes Sculptures by Smith cited in this book are identifi ed by their numbered entries in Rosalind E. Krauss’s catalogue raisonné, The Sculpture of David Smith (Garland Publishing, 1977); for example, (K13). Smith’s sketchbooks, from which many of his texts are taken, are referred to by their estate inventory numbers. The estate is currently completing a revised and updated catalogue raisonné of Smith’s sculptures; when published, it will include an index that correlates the Krauss and the new catalogue raisonné numbers. 1. “Problems of the Contemporary Sculptor,” p. 140.

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INTRODUCTION S U S A N J. C O O K E

In a short unpublished text written around 1947, David Smith recalled a beguiling vision he saw in a neighbor’s yard as a child in Indiana: “the most wonderful object . . . a glass jar tree . . . made from a square post with projecting handles running up each side of the square, quart mason jars were stuck on the handles for sun drying. This was earlier than art and exerts a basic form relationship quite often, without my conscious effort.”1 Smith was then in his early forties, with fifteen years of increasingly original work behind him, and recently freed from the necessity to take temporary employment as an industrial welder during the Second World War that had constrained his ability to realize the ambitious sculptural projects he envisioned. Fifteen years later, he would write again about the glass jar tree, in a fragmentary note and in a longer “story” addressed to his young daughters, Rebecca and Candida. At the height of his powers, and with new works in progress, he could look back with satisfaction on an astonishingly varied and unique body of work that had brought him acclaim as America’s greatest postwar sculptor. Nonetheless, the form relationship he had recognized in Jim and Minnie Ball’s yard, so long ago, was still very often in his work, he remarked: ”the jar tree . . . has been in my mind every year of my life.”2 Like other images that figure in Smith’s writings and his art that wed the organic and the invented—a “mud pie lion” praised by his grandmother, the “cloud ends” of a steel plate extruded by a rolling mill, the black spots on the bark of a white birch that write “a musical score”3—the assembled elements of the jar tree constituted a visually arresting and emotionally resonant totem. As a child, Smith felt its force as an intense shock of self-realization: an intuitive understanding that in his own enthralled response to the glass jar tree was manifested a transformative agency, the power of the artist to impose his I (eye) upon the world by transmuting familiar, even banal materials into art. Much later, he verbalized this epiphany in one of the defining principles of his aesthetic practice: the drive to forge a “complex of associations into new unities.”4 Smith’s fundamental preoccupation as a writer was the formation and evolution of his identity as a visual artist. “I am bound by a personal outlook. . . . One is a product of his influences, associations, childhood preferences,” he told his friend and fellow artist Edgar Levy.5 Despite Smith’s resentment of the “word ‘world’ (Joyce, etc., excepted),”6—which he directed at the aesthetic traditions and dogmas promulgated by art critics and historians—he felt a responsibility to defend modern art’s social value and the artist’s complete freedom to define the form and content of his own work. Modern art was an inherently subjective enterprise, he declared to an

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audience at the University of Michigan, in 1952: “I, and all the artists I know, express on a very personal basis. . . . My own convictions, my ego and therapy are more important than any collective value or collective cause.”7 It was not that Smith rejected the personal or social value of all commentaries on art—he read the writings of psychologists and anthropologists for insights about the nature of the creative impulse and its role in different societies, turned to scholars such as John Rewald and John Pope-Hennessy to better understand the art of the past, and enjoyed reading artists’ statements about their own work, as his well-thumbed and annotated copy of Artists on Art attests.8 He also enjoyed “chewing the fat” with his fellow artists and participated in the discussions that took place during the final three-day session of Studio 35, in April 1950, though based on the transcript of that event he apparently spoke very little.9 Like many of his abstract expressionist peers, Smith was wary of intellectualizing the actual making of art: “If there is a key to understanding [the art object], it is simply that sensory power called perception, possessed by everyone, used constantly but in varying degrees.”10 Critics, he cautioned, “may analyze to the full extent of word power. . . but still they do not explain perceptual response or the creative irrational. This must come direct, through vision.”11 Nonetheless, he was willing to educate sympathetic journalists and interviewers about his own practice as an artist (knowing they would often repeat verbatim his explanations to a wider audience), by answering queries about his materials and work processes and, more occasionally, offering interpretations of the symbolic meanings latent in his abstracted forms. Smith had as little interest in summarizing his aesthetic program into an overarching theory as he did in limiting his sculptural ambitions to a single medium or style. He used his public statements to advocate that artists should employ modern methods and industrial materials as a way to promote progressive political ideals and new kinds of social communion; he used his private writings to investigate his sensual and psychological responses to those materials and to the natural world. When speaking to students and fellow artists, at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and other educational institutions, he often employed a form of Socratic dialogue, posing to his listeners the questions he still asked himself: “Do you think the artist has any obligation to anyone but himself? . . . Do you recognize any points of attainment? Do they change? Is there a final goal? . . . Why do you hesitate?”12 And he challenged young artists to expand their understanding of their own potential and that of the visual arts by studying music, literature, and psychology, and by looking closely at objects made by cultures other than their own, as he himself did. Smith also composed, over the course of his career, a large body of experiential and introspective writings. In handwritten and sometimes illustrated texts, inscribed in sketchbooks or jotted down on loose sheets of paper, he observed the constructed and natural environments in and around his workshops. These apperceptive writ-

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ings, in which he analyzed his own emotional and sensory responses, fed the physical and conceptual work stream from which his art flowed. They memorialized past experiences and voiced future ambitions; they also allowed him to acknowledge the doubts and fears that sometimes belied the belligerent confidence he projected in his public pronouncements. Smith’s goals as a writer were different from his ambitions as an artist; he did not aspire to literary greatness, whereas the goals he set himself as a visual artist were boundless. “I sing one song of mostly personal views and my own work procedure,” he told one of his editors.13 Nevertheless, he instructed Marian Willard to publish the texts he wrote for a 1947 exhibition at her gallery “in whole. No excerpts or changes.”14 And he was keen to ward off editorial interventions that might threaten his right to “write unorthodox.”15 In his essay “The Language Is Image,” Smith insisted that the process by which he created his art was a “train of thought [that] has no words.”16 In contrast, writing served to consolidate memories and immediate perceptions and record an interior dialogue that preceded and followed the physical activity of drawing, painting, and sculpting. Taken together, Smith’s sketchbook texts, published essays, lectures, and interviews are an essential companion to his sculptural and pictorial achievements. They demonstrate the same self-aware determination to explore new forms of imaginative expression that fueled his drive to make art and, through their recurring metaphors and evolving imagery, attain a comparable integrity and cumulative power. Smith’s earliest public statements focused on concerns immediate to his development and prospects as a professional artist. His byline first appeared under a review of Max Doerner’s The Materials of the Artist printed in the January 1935 issue of Art Front, the official magazine of the leftist Artists Union.17 The following month, Smith published a critique of an exhibition of American abstract art at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Parnassus, an early publication of the College Art Association.18 He praised Doerner’s chemical analyses of modern and traditional pigments, paints, and binders, his detailed instructions for their use, and his willingness to expose fallacious claims made by commercial manufacturers. But the greatest value of Doerner’s book, in Smith’s opinion, was its power to place the means of production back in the artist’s hands, by teaching him to “understand his needs, and the great variety of materials and methods open to him by making his own materials.”19 A self-trained sculptor, Smith avidly collected the technical data he found in books and government-sponsored industrial pamphlets, to which he also contributed reports.20 By studying the melting points, base components, and ductility of different metals he learned to recognize and exploit their capacities for his own aesthetic ends. He also urged modern artists to liberate the potential of their vision from the conceptual constraints imposed by conventional realism. The Whitney exhibition, he argued, favored too many works by American “abstract” artists who refused to embrace the promise of European modernist abstraction. The

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museum’s survey thus undermined American art’s potential to lead the “modern advancement from Cubism.”21 Neither of Smith’s first two articles was typical of the kinds of writing he would later pursue; he published only one other review, a rather cursory appraisal of two books on African folktales and sculpture, in 1953.22 Nonetheless, his bylines in Art Front and Parnassus are witness to his lifelong conviction that even though artists obey a private calling, they practice a profession worthy of public and institutional support. The social function of sculpture was another recurring theme in Smith’s earliest texts. In an unpublished essay from 1939–40, he envisioned sculptors and architects working together to create an art that would be a beacon for enjoyment by a populace “humanely housed, fully employed . . . with burdenless free time for which to devote to culture & recreation.” Sculpture placed outside major cities, where it could “take on structural proportions . . . tower over buildings” would function for group use and “reintegrate itself itself into the new civic wholes.”23 An essay he submitted in the same period to an unrealized anthology of essays commissioned from Federal Art Project artists and supervisors extolled the sculptural grandeur of the great dams built by the Tennessee Valley Authority. Federal agencies were right to be mindful of aesthetics as well as functionality, he emphasized.24 In his sketchbook notes from these years, Smith composed the technical vocabulary he had acquired from his scientific readings into an ardent rhapsody to steel, a material whose malleability he had come to know intimately when he worked in his early twenties as a welder and riveter at a Studebaker factory in South Bend, Indiana: Steel is not confined to interiors. It can rust and still stand. Steel can be made to not rust. It can be stainless—painted—lacquered waxed processed—and electroplated with molybdenum. It can be cast. Steel has mural possibilities which have never been used. It has high tensile strength. . . . It can be drawn, cupped, spun and forged. It can be cut and patterned. . . . chiseled, ground, filed and polished. . . . It can be joined with nonferrous metals by welding, brazing, and soldering. Metals fall naturally to my use and useful to my concept.25

Smith’s optimistic projections of the artist’s leading role in constructing the world of tomorrow achieved their fullest (and, as it turned out, valedictory) expression in his essay “Sculpture: Art Forms in Architecture,” published in 1940 in Architectural Record.26 To illustrate the article, he selected photographs of WPAsponsored architectural sculpture and designs created for the 1939 New York World’s Fair and included one of himself, welding a sculpture.27 His text catalogued an abundance of industrial and traditional materials that could be animated by paint, patinas, reflective surface treatments, artificial lighting, or motorized turntables and used to make sculptures that functioned equally well in interior and exterior settings. “The concept is primary, the material secondary: but there is a

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constant interaction between the two,”28 he remarked; and the artist who possessed a larger arsenal of materials attained a greater freedom of conception. But Smith’s faith that a shared perception of beauty could strengthen the bond between the abstract artist and his audience had been eroded by the increasingly divisive antagonism to abstract art espoused by antidemocratic governments in Europe and the nationalistic Logan Sanity in Art movement in America. Earlier in 1940, in a speech at the Labor Stage theater, in New York City, he had condemned such crusades, attributing them to “lesser men and especially critics . . . afraid of their feelings” who rejected foreign “isms” even when they were based on universal canons of beauty.29 From the antiwar Medals for Dishonor Smith exhibited at Willard Gallery in New York City, in November 1940, and the captions he wrote for the catalogue plates issued an even more vehement denunciation of an impending world war that he believed was fueled as much by political corruption and economic greed at home as by fascist threats from abroad.30 The surrealistic imagery of his texts and the fifteen cast-metal bas-reliefs that made up the Medals series derived from contemporary newspaper and magazine photographs, and illustrations he recalled from his family’s Bible. Topical headlines—“Cooperation of the Clergy,” “Death by Bacteria”— telegraphed present-tense narratives: “Angel Gabriel blows the tuba, wearing Coughlin’s glasses. . . . The foetus is balanced on the harp column—rats for cultures—germs pour from flasks.” These linked trains of associations (to use one of Smith’s favorite figures of speech) carried a heavy freight of sexual and religious violence discharged by disturbing metaphors: “the rape of the mind by machines of death”; “the field of broken umbrella blossoms.”31 Smith’s language bore the stamp of the surrealist “word revolution” he later recalled having encountered in the 1930s in avant-garde literary magazines such as This Quarter and the radical stream-ofconsciousness verbalizing of internal thoughts he encountered in excerpts from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (then titled Work in Progress) he read in Transition.32 By the later 1940s, mythological and paleontological references largely supplanted references to contemporary events in Smith’s poetic writings. His interest in natural history and ancient Middle Eastern cultures simultaneously offered escape from the oppressive reality of his immediate surroundings and entry to a mythic world, where he could externalize his anguish over the wars raging abroad and his sense of personal embattlement as he struggled to make art while working as an armaments welder at the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) in Schenectady, New York. The highly wrought allusions and oratorical syntax of much of Smith’s writing and sculptures during these years also reflected his admiration for the psychologically disruptive imagery of Alberto Giacometti and André Masson, and an acquaintance with French symbolist poetry.33 Smith published three related poems in the catalogue to his one-man show at Willard Gallery, in April 1947: “The Landscape,” “Spectres Are,” and “Sculpture Is.”34 Each invokes a world rended by its historical overseers—now the gods and kings of Egypt and Assyria and admonitory figures from his childhood, rather than contemporary

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political personages. An omniscient “I” interweaves events from the author’s own history and the epic of Gilgamesh, “the found book of nude marble women / hidden by a schoolteaching methodist / mother . . . Gilgamesh wrestling the lion / Eabani tossing the bull.” In the final lines of “Sculpture Is,” the narrator speaks in the language of the Marxist literature Smith read in the 1930s: “dialectic of survival / everything I sought / everything I seek / what I will die not finding.” Similar themes of unresolved struggle animated many of the sculptures Smith completed in 1946 and exhibited the following year, such as Puritan Landscape, Spectre of Mother, Race for Survival (Spectre of Profit), and Abandoned Foundation (Landscape).35 Smith published only two other poems during his lifetime, “The Golden Eagle—A Recital” and “Robinhood’s Barn.” Both were commissioned for a special section on contemporary sculpture printed in the June 1948 issue of the literary magazine Tiger’s Eye. The poems signaled a shift in mood from the violent imagery and apocalyptic tenor of his earlier poetic texts. The protagonist of “The Golden Eagle” is still an Egyptian deity, but one who now (as a surrogate for the artist) asserts his power to create rather than destroy: “Marvel! Where was it ever before said such a thing was done / Have I not filled thy temples with my spoils / Have I not made thee many and great buildings of stone / from far lands. . . . / Who can say an age has passed, and I have not /  left my mark.” The death-ridden world of the “The Landscape” has become potent and fecund in “Robinhood’s Barn”: “Little nodes from big nodes spring / And make great the progeny thereof. . . . / Behold the staff which blossoms / I am Tem the tree / The might of my strength is in my hand.”36 The image Smith provided to accompany his poems was a photograph of his own newly completed Insect, a creature still armored in steel and silver but whose appendages wield blossoms and plantlike tentacles instead of weapons.37 The end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s marked a significant change of direction in Smith’s development as an artist, manifested by the greater abstractness, scale, and linear expansiveness of his latest sculptures and a newly hopeful lyricism in much of his writing. After quitting his job at ALCO, in 1944, Smith returned to Bolton Landing, a small village in upstate New York, where he and his first wife, the artist Dorothy Dehner, had purchased property in 1929 and in May 1940 established full-time residence. Bolton Landing’s rural landscape, surrounded by the Adirondack Mountains, and Smith’s newly won freedom to devote himself exclusively to making art quickened a rich vein of organic imagery that by the early 1950s pulsed through his sketchbook writings. “Writing itself is a style of drawing,” Smith later commented.38 In multidirectional lines that flow down, across, and around a single page of one of his sketchbooks, he conjured a visual image of “The flight paths of birds moths insects / of a paper scrap in a high wind” and “wild rice grass / rising in promise — listen,” finding in them “interest by form transference  / identity with my own twists and breaks.”39 Flocks of abstract alphabet forms

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appeared in his contemporaneous sculptures, perched on the branches of The Letter, 17 h’s, and Twenty-Four Greek Y’s, from 1950, and arrayed like insignia across the chest of the personage titled Letter to Australia (Australian Letter), 1953.40 The first three of these works were exhibited at Willard Gallery in early 1951; the exhibition brochure reproduced a facsimile of a handwritten text by Smith illustrated by a spreading tree bedecked with I-shaped verticals, a homologue to the prophecy revealed by the long-remembered glass jar tree.41 In other short sketchbook notes from the early 1950s, some embellished by drawings, Smith’s personification of the sun-seeking growth of barnyard grass, clouds with legs that “float out into the tails of a nightshirt,”42 and the wind’s artistry as it traces designs in the snow is profoundly empathetic, inspiring him to invent a new verbal unity — circuling — in order to capture the air’s circulating, encircling, and curling movements.43 “Neologisms” also appeared in many of the ink and gouache drawings Smith made in the early 1950s in the form of invented pictographic and calligraphic scripts whose linguistic syntax he deliberately left undeciphered. Memory as inspiration’s muse was Smith’s theme in “The Question: What Are Your Influences” (1950), an extended meditation on the nature of past, present, and future in the artist’s work. Aesthetic directives, he wrote, came from “the structure of August-hatched moths that come off the mountains / the color of moths that blind in my arc”; from his teachers, Richard Lahey and John Sloan; from “the pieces finished outside the shop / the piece underway—the piece finished conceptually”; from “the ship ventilators that hung from the rafters” in his first workshop at 1 Atlantic Avenue, in Brooklyn; and from “unit relationships” he learned as a boy running barefoot on locomotives “sidling through Indiana.”44 The serpentine lines of Smith’s handwritten text descended to sound the depths of remembrance. Like the scattered parts of sculptures in progress, events and images from his past awaited his directives to surface and coalesce as new aesthetic unities. Directives also came from the new stockpile of tools and materials he was able to purchase courtesy of the stipends that accompanied the two yearlong Guggenheim Fellowships he received, in 1950 and 1951. In notes he sent to Elaine de Kooning in 1951, he proudly itemized the aesthetic capital stored in his new sculpture and drawing studios at Bolton Landing: One clean, one dirty, one warm, one cold. The house studio contains drawing tables, etching press, cabinets for work records, photos and drawing paper stock. . . . Stocks of bolts, nuts, taps, dies, paints, solvents, acids, protective coatings, oils, grinding wheels, polishing discs, dry pigments, waxes, chemicals, spare machine parts, are kept stocked on steel shelving, more or less patterned after a factory stockroom. Sheets of stainless steel, bronze, copper, aluminum . . . are stacked outside the shop. . . . Lengths of strips, shapes and bar stock are racked in the basement of the house or interlaced in the joists of the roof. 45

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By naming his tools and materials Smith verbally touched each implement and with a rhetorical flourish ushered his reader into the ordinarily solitary world in which he worked. But the time and freedom Smith craved to make that art also exacted an emotional cost, one that he permitted himself to calculate only in his most private writings, such as the singularly revealing manuscript he wrote in early 1951, after he and Dehner had separated: “And So This Being the Happiest—Is Disappointing.”46 In unsparing language, he assessed his failings as a man and his fears that he would not succeed in realizing the great works he envisioned: in what do I lack balance—ability to live with another person . . . or am I unable to give what it takes . . . why do I measure my life by works . . . the way it stands much is lacking—and a certain body time tells that it can’t be had, if it didn’t come by now and so much work yet to be done . . . I’ve slipped up on time . . . the warpage is in me.

For Smith, moments of intense self-doubt were resolved by challenging himself to make new work: “That judged failure, still fluid, held most promise for growth.”47 The 1950s were years of tremendous professional productivity and artistic and personal growth. He received and accepted numerous opportunities to lecture, took several temporary teaching positions, participated actively in various artists’ associations, and published a number of influential essays. He also married a second time, to Jean Freas, and became a father. Many of the themes Smith expounded in his lectures were ones that had preoccupied him since the 1930s: the artist’s right to total freedom to determine his own vision; the importance of government, museum, and private support for contemporary art; the need for contemporary artists to make an art of their own time and project beyond their aesthetic heritage. Smith regularly acknowledged his own debt to Picasso and Matisse and especially to the radical inventiveness of their sculptures—as well as to predecessors such as Eugène Delacroix, Paul Cézanne, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Constantin Brancusi, and Julio González, the only artist about whom he wrote at length. 48 He also traced the lines of his filial kinship to Paleolithic and Renaissance art and the traditions of Asian ink drawing. “Today the art your contemporaries present,” he reassured his audience at the University of Michigan, “is still the continuity of first man in transformation,”49 and thus not alien to the understanding of contemporary viewers. In contrast, Smith no longer believed that a productive alliance between contemporary artists and architects was possible in the postwar era. Designers now filled the role formerly assigned to sculptors and painters, Smith told an audience at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1957; architects and their patrons had abandoned the Bauhaus ideal of uniting the visual arts on an equal footing in environments that functioned to advance social ideals.50 In an essay earlier that year, he complained even more bitterly that architects had become subservient to engineers and businessmen “ruled by cubic-foot cost; the marble and bronze that were once

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sculpture now form walls and the fixtures of the restrooms.” Sculptors, he pointed out with some satisfaction, though they lacked a “collectivized” client, at least were free to be their own masters.51 The most important new theme to emerge in Smith’s lectures and essays of the 1950s was that of the modern artist’s “identity.” So frequently does the word recur in Smith’s writings—thirty-one times in his essay “The Artist and Art in America” alone52—that it is all the more striking how rarely he coupled it to “I” or “my.” Instead, Smith spoke of the artist’s identity, the contemporary sculptor’s identity, our identity, or, when addressing aspiring artists, your identity. Smith defined identity as an inner confidence and certitude strengthened by constant struggle and a “defensive belligerence” to all externally imposed rules.53 It originated in the artist’s visual-perceptual responses to his immediate world and expressed itself through “eidetic” images: archetypal form relationships extracted from the particulars of observed reality by man’s “cerebral eye.”54 Eidetic images, because they represented abstracted concepts, resonated differently with each beholder’s set of associations. In conjunction with the artist’s individual experiences and his drive “to fulfill a very personal need,”55 such images composed a unique personal lexicon for each artist’s work. Identity was not predetermined, he asserted, but was found, constructed, and, most importantly, maintained by a continuous process of making art. Smith clearly intended his listeners and readers to understand that he concurred with his statements about identity. Nonetheless, by speaking in the third person, he was able simultaneously to act as a public spokesman for modern art and to protect his own identity from being too tightly circumscribed, even by his own words. Whether this was a completely conscious strategy on Smith’s part is unknowable. He tended to labor over his public talks, self-consciously polishing away some of their spontaneity in order to achieve a more conventionally formal and impersonal tone. But his reticence to speak more directly about his own conceptual processes also mirrored his profound conviction that an artist’s identity “is internal, secret and slow-growing,” and must be developed “defensively.”56 When Smith did refer explicitly to “my identity,” he defined it not as a set of fixed attributes but as an ongoing work stream of “past works, the three or four in process, and the work yet to come. In a sense it is never finished.”57 Even his justly famous explanation of the genesis of Hudson River Landscape, 1951, was more evasive than expository. He cautioned his readers that his words “identified only part of the related clues”: The sculpture . . . came in part from drawings made on a train between Albany and Poughkeepsie. A synthesis of drawings from ten trips over a seventy-five mile stretch; yet later when I shook a quart bottle of India ink it flew over my hand, it looked like my landscape, I placed my hand on paper—from the image left I traveled with the landscape to other landscapes and their objects—with additions, deductions, directives which flashed past too fast to tabulate but elements of which are in the sculpture.58

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Among the clues Smith did provide in his statement on Hudson River Landscape was the fundamental importance of drawing as a medium for registering the nuances of perceptual experience. Drawing was a language of self-discovery available to all— and “like the written line . . . is a quickly recognized key to personality,” he told his students at Sophie Newcomb College. It was a language he practiced nearly every day, usually in the evenings after his day’s work in the sculpture shop was completed. But before personality can emerge, the mark-maker must learn to draw in proportion to his or her own size: he “dominates the line” rather than letting the image “dominate him and the line.” As each stroke “demands another in complement,” he explained, each stroke becomes freer “because confidence is built by effort.”59 Drawing preceded language and as the artist’s first language should remain unconstrained by the inhibiting expectations and media hierarchies instilled by traditional art training. Speaking at the Annual Conference of the National Committee on Art Education, in 1960, Smith seized the opportunity to air his long-harbored grievances against his own college art professors, who had failed to encourage him to develop his identity and forced him to “use a little brush, a little pencil, to work on a little area, which put me into a position of knitting—not exactly my forte.”60 During the last five years of his life, Smith’s public statements most often took the form of published interviews rather than written lectures or essays. Even texts he wrote for publication, such as “Notes on My Work” (1960) and “Sculpture Today” (1962) adopted a more conversational form of address.61 When conducted by longstanding friends and art world associates, interviews provided Smith with a congenial, and less time-consuming, format for extemporaneous discussion. Though these conversations often rehearsed familiar topics, they were also guided by the particular interests of each interlocutor and therefore varied in the details they provided about Smith’s childhood, his early years in New York City, his work habits and interests in music and literature, his political ideals, and the art he was working on at the time of each interview. Smith spoke with particular enthusiasm about his recent and current work, especially the challenge of incorporating vivid color into sculpture and his preference for “rough, raw. . . . gutty and acid” hues.62 He explained why he named two recent series Albany and Menand (they were the towns that manufactured the steel he used in the sculptures) and why he had added wheels to some of his larger works (it made them easier to move). Unsurprisingly, he parried questions about his aesthetic philosophy and refuted a suggestion that his use of certain materials and symbolic forms conveyed a “secret language.” The “secret language,” he replied to Thomas Hess, “is very simple. I am building the biggest, the best goddamned sculptures I can make within the present limits that I have conceptually and financially.”63 What emerges most forcefully in these interviews is Smith’s determination to continue working and growing as an artist and his deep connection to the natural world that surrounded his home in Bolton Landing. In the long, wide-ranging inter-

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view recorded by Hess in the summer of 1964, Smith described the thrill he felt watching an aerial battle between a hawk and an eagle that was trying to rob its nest and a near-death encounter between a squirrel and another hawk. Such daily struggles to survive and prevail mirrored his desire constantly to challenge himself. Rather than rework a concept that had already been fully explored, he admitted to Hess, “the minute I see a rule or a direction or a method or an introduction to success in some direction, I’m quick to leave it. . . . ”64 The constantly changing landscape around his home provided an inexhaustible stream of fresh sensations, as did the sculptures he congregated on his property in varied groupings, their silhouettes, colors, and surfaces animated by the changing seasons, light, and weather, and by the artist’s own changing perspective as he moved among them. Ironically, it was not a fruitful failure but one of the great feats of Smith’s career— the supremely productive month he spent in Voltri, Italy, in 1962—that inspired him to write his most ambitious autobiographical narrative. Smith had been invited in early May 1962 to create one or two sculptures for an outdoor exhibition being organized by the Italian curator Giovanni Carandente for the Festival of Two Worlds scheduled to be held in Spoleto the following month. Working with the aid of a trained crew of Italian steelworkers, in a decommissioned Italsider steel factory placed at his disposal by the festival’s sponsors, Smith produced over the course of four weeks a prodigious twenty-six welded-steel sculptures. Before he returned to Bolton Landing, in late June, he arranged to have shipped to him nearly two tons of steel and discarded factory tools, materials that he subsequently used to make an additional twenty-five sculptures he called the Voltri-Bolton series (1962–63). For the rest of his life, Smith looked back on his time in Voltri as the single most concentrated, prolific, and perhaps happiest period of his career. Smith’s “Report on Voltri”65 probably began as a text to accompany an exhibition of the Voltri series that he hoped to present in Europe in late 1962 or early 1963, although he had already begun to report some of the elements of his account in letters he wrote to friends before his return to New York City. Neither the European exhibition nor a proposed book to be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, with a five-thousand-word text by Smith on his work in Italy, materialized.66 At the time of his death, Smith’s unfinished Voltri text consisted of multiple handwritten, edited, typed, and retyped pages, only some of whose sections had been given a final form and order. What is clear, however, is that Smith self-consciously fashioned his story as a quest, not unlike those he had read as a child and alluded to in his postwar poetry. His narrative follows the traditional form—a hero embarks on a journey marked by unexpected opportunities and challenges that ends in unprecedented achievement and renown—with one significant difference: the hero of Smith’s tale departs from home without yet knowing what he seeks. Smith’s text begins when he awakens to unfamiliar sounds and a powerful sense of displacement:

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Morning I. On opening the day—I had no recall—I did not know where I would go or do. In Bolton I have a pre-state before rising—where I see my workshops—the scene complete—the pieces I’m working with—moving—the parts arranging themselves— running off to horizons. . . . In Genoa the bells across the street threw me out at 5 ½—there, effort at review had no history, the key was lost—recall of parts was not complete.67

When he arrives at his new workplace, he is challenged to prove his worthiness to lead his assembled assistants: “Request for swept floor not met—I swept the floor— Request for moving heavy objects not moved exact place—I moved to positions.” After respect is earned and authority established, the hero is invited to share meals of homemade delicacies and wine that forge a sense of fellowship with his new comrades (divided equally, he noted, between communists and socialists). Wandering through the vast and derelict spaces of the Italsider factory early one Sunday, he feels himself transported back to the Sundays he spent working at his shop in the Brooklyn Terminal Iron Works in the 1930s and even farther back to “the awe and the scared air—like one returning survivor after holocaust—and as I had felt, very young in Decatur, when I went thru the window in my first abandoned factory.” Smith’s quest ends when past and present are joined in another awakening: the return to vivid life of the steel “beauties”—the specialty tongs and calipers, misshapen sheets of steel, angle irons, and scrap metal lying discarded in the factory— he reincarnated in his triumphant Voltri sculptures. “Voltri I came desperately,” Smith wrote, “the first piece to unify . . . it began to move—then other works until two three four were in progress,” with more to follow—a legion to fill an ancient Roman amphitheater. Only one dream remained unfulfilled, thwarted by lack of time and train tunnels too low to allow his most ambitious structure to pass from Voltri to Spoleto. Smith had imagined a flatcar that would serve as a base for a sculpture “with vertical sheets and planes, uprights with holes, horizontals supported. . . . In a year I could have made a train.” Like the memories and materials he transported to Bolton Landing, that dream would live on in future achievements, including a series of monumental Wagons he created in 1964.68 Smith’s work on his report may have been abandoned, or interrupted by his sudden death, or he may simply have set it aside. He wrote often that a conception needed to find its realization within a limited time, before repetition and self-criticism staunched the flow of invention. It is equally plausible that he never stopped working on his text, returning to his sheaf of drafts for the same reason he returned to his drawings—because they called up “incomplete memories—the immediacy of feeling flashes back when I go thru the drawers.”69 In a similar fashion, the open-ended dashes he substituted for conjunctions and periods in his Voltri text and in others, typeset as well as handwritten, were more than an orthographic idiosyncrasy; they inserted resonant spaces between the linked phrases of a still provisional train of thought. Visually, these linear junctures between elements in his narrative echo

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the varied welds Smith used to join the assembled forms of his sculptures. Each seam between metal elements, each dash between syntactical parts of his text were visible reminders that the artist had constructed a new whole from deliberately selected and disparate parts, one that could have assumed a multitude of other forms. In the text addressed to his daughters, written in the early 1960s, in which he retold the story of the wondrous object he had seen long ago in the garden of Jim and Minnie Ball, Smith explained that he now knew why Jim “waded in spring mud” with his trousers rolled up: his feet hurt, and his joints ached, like Smith’s did now. “Jim Ball must have lifted a lot, as I have,” he surmised. “I think of Jim and Minnie . . . my work has the glass jar tree in it very often.”70 Smith created more than two hundred sculptures in the last five years of his life, completing and starting more than a dozen series of monumental and smallerscale works: Albanies, Voltris, Zigs, Circles, Voltri-Boltons, Primo Pianos, Wagons, Cubis, Menands, Bronze Planes. In 1965, he created two planar, stainless steel sculptures, Untitled (Candida) and Becca, that seem to herald yet another new direction in his work.71 As a child, Smith had no language to express the message of the glass jar tree and, as yet, no understanding of how profoundly it would inform his identity. But even as a child, he was fascinated by the power of an object that stood as a significant presence in the world even though it was largely transparent and had little mass. Later Smith erected his own enduring totems, sculptural embodiments of the glass jar tree’s mysterious power and heirs to its affirmation of the transformative force of the artist’s subjective vision.72 “The sculpture-work is a statement of my identity,” he had declared as early as 1952.73 Through his art, Smith internalized the world around him and externalized the deepest parts of himself. His writings enable us to see, refracted through the prism of his artful language, the rich complexity and radiance of both the artist and the man.

Notes 1.  “One of the Early Impressions,” p. 64. 2.  “Jim and Minnie Ball,” p. 369. 3.  “The Landscape; Spectres Are; Sculpture Is,” p. 68; “Report on Voltri,” p. 356; and “Notes— Watch a Torn Sheet,” p. 114. 4.  “Lecture, Portland Art Museum,” p. 183. 5.  Letter to Edgar Levy, September 1, 1945. 6.  “The Language Is Image,” p. 145. 7.  “The Modern Sculptor and His Materials,” p. 156. 8.  Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves, eds., Artists on Art: From the XIV to the XX Century (New York: Pantheon Books, 1945). 9.  Published in Robert Motherwell and Ad Reinhardt, eds., Modern Artists in America, First Series (New York: Wittenborn, Schultz, 1952).

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10.  “Problems of the Contemporary Sculptor,” p. 140. 11.  “Problems of the Contemporary Sculptor,” p. 140. 12.  “Lecture, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture,” p. 162. 13.  Letter to Henry Hope; see “Thoughts on Sculpture,” editor’s note, p. 196. 14.  See “The Landscape; Spectres Are; Sculpture Is,” editor’s note, p. 68. 15.  Statement to John Entenza; see “The Language Is Image,” editor’s note, p.145. 16.  “The Language Is Image,” p. 145. 17.  “Media,” p. 19. 18.  “Current Exhibitions,” p. 21. In my preface to Écrits et discours: David Smith (Paris: École national supérieur des beaux-arts, 2007), I mistakenly described this exhibition review as Smith’s first published writing. 19.  “Media,” p. 19. 20.  In his capacity as a technical supervisor in the WPA’s Mural Division during the early 1930s, Smith wrote agency reports on the use of oil painting and casein for mural painting, a number of which are preserved in the estate’s archives. 21.  “Current Exhibitions,” p. 21. 22.  “Books,” p. 187. 23.  “The Architect Should Be Able to Judge,” p. 27. 24.  “Modern Sculpture and Society,” p. 29. 25.  “The Concept is Primary,” p. 25. 26.  “Sculpture,” p. 42. 27.  Bathers, 1940 (K134). 28.  “Sculpture,” p. 42. 29.  “Abstract Art in America,” p. 33. 30.  “Medals for Dishonor,” p. 46. 31.  “Medals for Dishonor”: “Angel Gabriel,” p. 48; “the rape,” p. 46; “the field,” p. 47. 32.  “Interview by Thomas B. Hess,” p. 373. 33.  Smith owned an English translation, published in 1947, of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, a book greatly admired by his friend the artist Robert Motherwell; Motherwell edited and reprinted two of Smith’s 1947 Willard Gallery texts in the first issue of his journal possibilities (Winter 1947–48). 34.  “The Landscape; Spectres Are; Sculpture Is,” p. 68. 35.  K208, K210, K209, and K198. 36.  “The Golden Eagle—A Recital; Robinhood’s Barn,” p. 78. 37.  Insect, 1948 (K218). 38.  “Drawing,” p. 254. 39.  “The Flight Paths of Birds Moths Insects,” p. 113. 40.  K232, K236, K241, and K259. 41.  See figure 10; the illustration originated as an ink and watercolor drawing inscribed bottom left, “The Hero’s eye,” and bottom right “The Column’s I’s.” 42.  See “Sketchbook Notes: Music; The Cloud; Space; And in the Best of Squares,” p. 135. 43.  “How Little I Know,” p. 202. 44.  “The Question—What Are Your Influences,” p. 96. 45.  “Notes for Elaine de Kooning,” p. 127. 46.  “And So This Being the Happiest—Is Disappointing,” p. 125. 47.  “The Artist’s Image,” p. 203. 48.  “González,” p. 259. 49.  “The Modern Sculptor and His Materials,” p. 156. 50.  “Contemporary Sculpture and Architecture,” p. 299. 51.  “Sculpture and Architecture,” p. 290. 52.  “The Artist and Art in America,” p. 192.

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53.  “The Artist and Art in America,” p. 192. 54.  “The Language Is Image,” p. 145. Smith’s concept of the “eidetic” was indebted to his reading of Franz Boas’s Primitive Art (see note 2, “Lecture, Skidmore College,” p. 65) 55.  “The Modern Sculptor and His Materials,” p. 156. 56.  “The Artist and Art in America,” p. 192. 57.  “Who Is the Artist?” p. 175. 58.  “The Language Is Image,” p. 145. 59.  “Drawing,” p. 254. 60.  “Memories to Myself,” p. 330. 61.  “Notes on My Work,” and “Sculpture Today,” pp. 313 and 348. 62.  “Interview by Frank O’Hara,” p. 422. 63.  “Interview by Thomas B. Hess,” p. 373. 64.  “Interview by Thomas B. Hess,” p. 373. 65.  “Report on Voltri,” p. 356. 66.  Smith referred to his report on Voltri as his “journal book,” (letter to Giovanni Carandente, March 19, 1963). The book that was finally published by the University of Pennsylvania, in 1964, was a stand-alone publication on the Voltri and Voltri-Bolton series; it included an essay by Carandente and reproduced a facsimile of a revised version of a letter Smith had sent the critic David Sylvester in 1962 (“Letter to David Sylvester”). The University’s Institute of Contemporary Art presented a separate exhibition of Voltri-Bolton sculptures and drawings by Smith, accompanied by a catalogue with a text by Clement Greenberg. 67.  “Report on Voltri,” p. 356. 68.  “Report”: “Request for swept floor,” p. 358; “the awe and scared air,” p. 359; “Voltri I,” p. 361; “with vertical sheets and planes,” p. 364. 69.  “Sketchbook Notes: CUBE III,” p. 366. 70. “Jim and Minnie Ball,” p. 370. 71. K648 and K646. 72.  The formal structure of the glass jar tree is visible in the elements projecting from the central post of Pillar of Sunday, 1945 (K184), and Untitled, 1957 (K441), the depending forms of Painted Landscape (The Love Letter), 1950 (K233), and even in the cylindrical uprights projecting from the extended arms of Cubi XXV, 1965 (K673). For a discussion of the psychosexual content of Smith’s exploration of the totem theme, see Rosalind E. Krauss, Terminal Iron Works: The Sculpture of David Smith (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 1979): 56, 79–80, 90–91, 93, 96, 102, 104, 120, 123, 128, 139fn, 178, and her essay “1945: David Smith Makes Pillar of Sunday,” in Hal Foster, et al., Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2004): 332–36. 73.  “Who Is the Artist?” p. 175.

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THIRTIES AND FORTIES

M E D I A : T H E M AT E R I A L S O F T H E A R T I S T , B Y M A X D O E R N E R 19 3 5

This invaluable book for the artist relates to the chemistry of pigments and media. It is compiled from Doerner’s lectures at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, and was first published in German in 1921. The translation has been made by Eugen Neuhaus in collaboration with Doerner, and incorporates the revisions which Doerner will include in his fifth German edition next year. The book takes up in detail the technics of grounds, pigments, binding media, for all phases of the craft. The section on pigments deals with their nature and composition, including the very important division of coal tar colors. These colors are now being marketed and mislabeled not as substitutes but as true colors; the “hands off” policy is generally recommended. Since Doerner takes issue throughout this book with manufacturers who make exorbitant claims for cure-alls—who market untested and questionable colors—it would be well for American painters to read and realize the numerous misapprehensions under which they paint. It is hoped that American painters will demand from manufacturers what German economic unions have for years demanded from their manufacturers. They have insisted that manufacturers state the contents of tubes, furnish an exact analysis of the contents so that the artist may know the amount of cutting and extending materials, and omit arbitrary color designations. We might sometimes hope for a little cooperation in these demands from the Bureau of Standards, but this bureau seems to have been established more for the assistance of big business than for the benefit of the consumer. To point out the difference in our materials, one manufacturer gives an analysis of tube contents, whereas another (one of our largest paint dealers) peps up his pigment color with dye and does not label it to that effect. For the artist’s own protection, he must demand labeling with the analysis, not only from the standpoint of permanency and chemical stability, but from the point of getting true valuation.

A review of Max Doerner, The Materials of the Artist, trans. Eugen Neuhaus (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1934), Art Front 1, no. 2 (January 1935): 6. During the 1930s, Smith was employed by various government-sponsored artist work relief programs including, from March 1934 until July 1935, as a supervisor for murals in the Technical Division of the Civil Works Administration’s Public Works of Art Project and later the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. His archive of technical manuals and the scientific notes he took from his readings that he accumulated during these years document his assiduous study of the materials, techniques, and scientific principles involved in painting, printmaking, and metal sculpting. The success of his efforts earned him the recognition, of New York Times art critic Edward Alden Jewell, who quoted him as an expert on wall painting, in “Acres of Wall Space: A Few of the Projects Fostered by the PWAP — Work Carried Out Under the TERA” (July 15, 1934).

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Doerner, with Toch, Laurie and other paint scientists, has recommended this, but it will take the artists’ profession to put it through. Doerner, throughout his book, analyzes fallacies such as Buttner’s cure-alls, Blockx’ wet primed canvas, and various so-called secret painting media. This should enable the artist to understand his needs, and the great variety of materials and methods open to him by making his own materials. The book discusses all phases and techniques of painting, fallacies, and helpful methods as practiced by old masters. Among many of our present painters whose paint knowledge comes from advertisers’ pamphlets, there has arisen a belief in secret processes and secret pigments supposedly used by the old masters. Doerner has very clearly analyzed the traditional processes. The tempera technique of Florentine painters, the mixed technique of the German and the Van Eycks, the resin oil over tempera technique of Titian and the Venetian school, Rubens’ methods of resin oil painting, and the Rembrandt technique. His sources and the references of this book are such that the reader, if interested, can make further research. Many of the practices of these earlier painters could be utilized by modern artists to the enrichment and permanence of their products.

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C U R R E N T E X H I B I T I O N S: A B S T R A C T PA I N T I N G I N A M E R I C A 19 3 5

The latest offering of the Whitney Museum of American Art is designated as “Abstract Painting in America.” The survey of this movement in American art represents 125 paintings covering the time between the Armory Show of 1913 to the present day. The show is interesting only to the extent of showing this influence on native painters. It represents the American application of the abstract concept in a dilute solution. Though it has been taken in very small doses, it nevertheless represents the only important influence on American painting since the awakening to impressionism. The term abstract may hold a different meaning for each individual, as Stuart Davis explains in the catalogue foreword, but to arrive at an arbitrary designation we will consider the term as generally accepted in its early use. From its application to cubism and post-cubism the meaning has grown with later painting developed from these periods, namely where the painting conception was abstract as opposed to concrete. Among the early practicioners represented are Weber, Walkowitz, Dove, Hartley and Maurer. The earliest paintings are dated 1913 and 1914 following somewhat in the concept of the Paris School established a few years earlier. Through these 125 paintings we follow many uninteresting tangents of American perceptions, down to a small number of painters whose present day painting conception may be truthfully termed abstract in the sense that it represents a periodic and modern advancement from cubism. In this group are Graham, Davis, Gorky, Knaths, Schary and others. The majority of paintings show that the painters have fallen under the influence reticently, withholding themselves from it for ten or twenty years after its inception abroad. The American painters who have actually added something to the abstract tradition can easily be counted on one hand. There were no American painters in on the ground floor of cubism. Max Weber was probably the first of our painters to follow the trend, but he has not continued with a periodic advancement as have Picasso or Braque and other formulators of

A review of Abstract Painting in America, presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, Parnassus 7 (March 1935): 20–22. In late 1934 and early 1935, Smith was part of a loosely affiliated group of artists, including Stuart Davis, John Graham, Arshile Gorky, Misha Reznikoff, and Edgar Levy, who championed abstraction and socialized at Romany Marie’s Greenwich Village café. Smith was originally invited to exhibit a painting titled Figure Composition in the Whitney exhibition, but he ultimately declined, apparently in protest when Reznikoff and Levy were not included. See Bruce Weber, Toward a New American Cubism (New York: Berry-Hill Galleries, 2006): 56–57.

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cubism. With the exception of a few, the American painters who entered the field of cubism or its later developments have fallen far behind, failing to keep pace with the rapid advancement of the foreign painters who are carrying the banners of abstraction in the present day. In this light might be mentioned Picasso, Miró, Mondrian, Léger, Klee, etc. Abstract painting has never permitted a very full expression for the romance and sentiment upon which the American school is founded. The abstract attempts exhibited by Pach (1916–1917) and Zorach (1918–1919) are sufficient reason why these painters should have seen fit to abandon it. There is very little abstract painting represented and very little evidence that American painters went far enough to understand it. Its best application by the American school has been a partial application to the ordinarily conceived realism. A few of these paintings are closely related to sur-realism as represented by Roszak, Schary and Bouché. For want of a more specific designation we may term a certain group of paintings as decorative abstractions, this will include O’Keeffe, Kantor, Demuth, Billings and Dove. There are borderline cases, where the concept lies midway between the abstract and concrete, but very ably painted by Dasburg, Matulka, Cramer, Dickinson, etc. To the truly abstract painters, it will firmly prove their rightful position. For the rest who were only nipped by the vogue, it will more firmly prove that abstraction was a passing interlude, a laboratory experiment, something they would not have missed experiencing, but only a rung in the ladder of a rugged American concept toward romantic nationalism. Among those not represented in the show were Calder and Xceron, both of whom have made definite original contributions to abstract painting.

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I N A M E R I C A YO U F E E L 19 3 5 – 3 6

In America you feel the gigantic cogs grinding faster and louder towards their own destruction—and where few recognize the noise—in France the din is higher pitches—from smaller wheels and still smaller cogs in motion by themselves—the wheels of Greece are dead—the pillars of ancient culture and slavery show attempts of replacement and succeeding downfall—the wounded and halt group for a footing on ground that stinks of decay.

1. Dorothy Dehner and David Smith (right), before embarking for Europe, October 1935.

Handwritten, 1935–36, Sketchbook 1: 60. From October 1935 until they arrived back in New York City on July 9, 1936, Smith and his first wife, Dorothy Dehner, traveled in Europe, with extended stays in Paris, Brussels, Greece, Crete, Leningrad, Moscow, and London.

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A N E X P R E S S I O N O F E M O T I O N T H AT C A N N O T BE PUT INTO WORDS 19 3 5 – 3 6

an expression of emotion that cannot be put into words—it is complete in itself it cannot be literally translated— abstract as opposed to concrete representing an organization of realism in other than literal degree At the time when industry really wants to back modern architecture in the form of packaged housing they will be able to put forth packaged units—good or bad with the same scattering that they put forth low-priced automobiles. They may even add quickwearing parts which will cause part of the packaged house to be returned to the factory in exchange for a reconditioned new unit and they probably will add purposeful structural weak points to cause the purchaser to trade the house in periodically for a new model, such as is now done with motorcars. The repair of sealed units in radios makes them impractical to replace after a few years. If the factory decides to make the packaged house complete with paintings & etchings a few artists may make a few pennies in royalties from the reproductions. There is no natural American heritage in art. Art of all schools has had a traditional basis in foreign art. Art is as international as science, music, etc. There is no true American art. America has contributed tendencies & developments.

Handwritten, 1935–36, Sketchbook 5: 1, 3–4.

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THE CONCEPT IS PRIMARY 19 3 8 – 3 9

The concept is primary. The medium secondary. The medium is used as the only one possessing the required physical characteristics. The medium is relatively unexploited tho direct work with metal has been used thru the ages. Each work produced is a stimulus to the possibilities of the medium, gives a better picture of the metal’s future potentialities and its adoptation to sculptural use. Modern science has produced a hundred types of steel possessing different characteristics. Steel is not confined to interiors. It can rust and still stand. Steel can be made to not rust. It can be stainless—painted—lacquered waxed processed—and electroplated with molybdenum. It can be cast. Steel has mural possibilities which have never been used. It has high tensile strength, pinions can support masses, soft steel can bend cold, both with and across its grain, yet have a tensile strength of 30,000 lbs to the square inch. It can be drawn, cupped, spun and forged. It can be cut and patterned with fair precision by acetylene gas and oxygen and welded both electrically and by the acetylene oxygen process. It can be chiseled, ground, filed and polished. It can be welded, the seams ground down leaving no evidence. The welds can possess greater strength than the parent metal. It can be joined with nonferrous metals by welding, brazing, and soldering. Metals fall naturally to my use and useful to my concept. Between periods of trying to get an art education in three Midwestern colleges I worked as a telephone lineman, stringing cable, laying cable, potting lead for joints, etc. I used to dig holes in the ground of figures and pour my own lead casts. I still like to, but in molds. After four months in department 346 at the Studebaker plant, alternating on a lathe, spot welder and milling machine, I was transferred to 348 on Frame Assembly. This was worked on a group plan, payment made to eighty men in proportion to the completed frames which were riveted & assembled on an oval conveyor track. It was necessary for each man to be able to handle at least six operations. Riveting, drilling stamping, etc., all fell into my duties—but my interest was the $45 to $50 per week which would enable me to study in New York. In a year I did, off and on for five years, painting. Five years ago, while working on constructions of various materials—aluminum, stone, brass, etc., I realized the inadequacy of their strength was apparent, when trying to make them conform. As a result I returned to steel.

Handwritten, 1938–39, Sketchbook 4: 11–21. In September 1938, Smith was invited to give a lecture the following February on sculpture techniques at the progressive, not-for-profit American Artists School, in New York City. This may be his draft of that talk, which was subsequently canceled by the school due to a scheduling conflict.

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The medium has been used by González and Gargallo and others. Both men have used it in an abstracted manner from a personalized point of view. The mental process and the metal both take shape in an abstract point of view. The objects I had worked with in the factory were abstract. They were always functional pieces, having relationships, but were not objects of realism—gears, cross-members, brackets, the triangle in a circle, spare tire carrier, etc., were all abstracted parts. The work with abstract mechanical parts did not consciously exert its influence on an abstract concept developed from realism. It resulted in the concept recalling the use of the material. Painting, as a broad term including sculpture and drawing, as well as reflecting the age in which it exists, is progressive. It is like a science, in that its methods, theories and concepts are progressive. Painting is not only influenced by society. It is also an influence. Abstract concepts have shown influence in all countries esthetically and commercially. The esthetic concept has been created wholly and apart from its adoptation to commercial use. It has been adopted to propaganda & educational use especially by the Soviet and Spanish governments. As a concept, both in its relation to psychology and social science it progresses primarily in its pure form of painting. The abstract concept has been relegated to oblivion along with modern architecture, modern plumbing, and democracy in Nazi Germany. The concept has had milk bottles thrown at it by professional writers and professional esthetes. Such expressions generally resulted in the assailant using it as a medium to express his abilities in his own trade, with the logical propositions disregarded. The great majority of abstract artists are anti-fascist and socially conscientious. Abstract, being a broad and undefined term includes surrealists also. Orozco, who was an abstract painter, now uses it by the abstract relationship of forms within an organization of concrete objects. Picasso as a creator of it, utilizes it concretely, as well. It is not presented to the exclusion of any other concept but is defended as the greatest creative influence of our time and a step in the inevitable progress of painting & with an active place in a progressive social structure.

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THE ARCHITECT SHOULD BE ABLE TO JUDGE 19 3 9 – 4 0

The architect should be able to judge the artist who could best cooperate aesthetically with the building function. Before we can ever witness the artist’s relation to society—we must have a society all of which is humanely housed, fully employed, fully provided for materially and physically, with burdenless free time for which to devote to culture & recreation. Sculpture related to Architecture—sculpture created for its relationship to the individual’s life—the appeal to his intellect—his associations—his imagination. Sculpture in the function of the city—urban—rural. Sculpture integral with building by use of its materials—recognized by sculptors. Groundwork propaganda for art & architecture has been laid by the WPA & both fairs.1 Sculpture Viewed from Distant Points. Outside of New York City and a few larger cities sculpture can take on structural proportions. It can tower above buildings. It can have a view from distance, from moving vehicles on ground and transport by air. There have been thru history historic objectives—and several on the West Coast recently constructed. The vision of mountains, forests, air beacons at night, viewed by the onlooker moving or static, arouses an aesthetic stimuli. Two geometric forms such as cone and sphere are likewise appreciated (minor principals such as the marvel of construction method and landmarks may be included [or] not). Requires modern sculpture.

Art to social services—schools—hospitals—libraries—government Artist’s relation to dwelling—

Two handwritten texts, 1939–40, Sketchbook 7: 3–5 and 7; 15.

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Whether the art is directly on or related to the dwellings of 90% of urban structures or whether it takes a form in the parks or landscaping will require new conceptions and possibly mediums. Will art add to the psychological harmony of family life—in that the home is a biological institution devoted to reproduction, nutrition & nurture. Art will function for group use—to re-integrate itself into the new civic wholes. Note 1.  The 1939–40 Golden Gate International Exposition, in San Francisco, and the 1939–40 New York World’s Fair.

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MODERN SCULPTURE AND SOCIET Y 19 3 9 – 4 0

Culture and science are international. The beginning of American culture was foreign, so were her people, her religion, her science and customs. Europe’s culture was foreign. The basis of both cultures came from the East twenty centuries or more ago. Culture is not a discovery, an authoritative claim or a premeditated act. It is cumulative, built on the past, contributed to by creative forces indigenous to the people, the age. It progresses with free men. It degenerates with dictation. You have read daily, instances where frenzied medieval sorcery is government sponsored, by book burning, etc. You have seen physicist, psychologist, writer, artist come to our shores as a refugee. These acts represent a people without freedom in politics, art, science or music. Here along with suppression of rights, comes dictation for the Arts. The esthetic direction of a culture changed by the dictates of a paperhanger, the fire-kaiser who turns back the clock on everything not lending to the advance of warmaking and destruction of people.1 On the lower base of an axis triangle we see art awards given to painters of people who listen by radio to fortissimo boasts of a warmongering reactionary. Standing on the fagots of suppression and mass murder we see another dictator trying to force a totalitarian culture. The point of the axis triangle nearest our back represents a country with a feudal culture, whose art has never been free. Without a modern culture, without a freedom to suppress, the need is only to suppress the cries of families whose sons have been killed serving as invaders, or daughters enmeshed in the gears of war production machines. Art is born of freedom and liberty, and dies of constraint. Fascism contributes race ignominies, suppresses knowledge, erects monuments to destruction, gives laurels to force. America has outright fascists. It has tendencies. Anti-cultural movements, even in art, advocate sanity in art and are sponsored by the yellowest and most fascist of presses.2 Certain political and cultural reactionaries who do not openly uphold fascism, possess its tendencies. Culture is international, but so is fascist degeneracy.

Typescript, for a proposed WPA Federal Art Project–sponsored anthology of essays by FAP artists and supervisors, originally planned by FAP national director Holger Cahill for publication in 1937. The manuscript of the assembled essays was completed in 1940 (Smith’s text seems to have been solicited in 1939), but by then interest in publishing it had waned. The anthology was finally published as Art for the Millions: Essays from the 1930s by Artists and Administrators of the WPA Federal Art Project, Francis V. O’Connor, ed. (New York: New York Graphic Society, 1973), with a shortened version of Smith’s paper. Smith’s first title for his essay was “The Function of Sculpture in a Democratic Society.”

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The present function of sculpture in our democratic society relies primarily on its relation to architecture. Not because it is a lesser art, but by the nature of its function and sponsorship. Its purpose here is usually to lend esthetic identity to the building’s function, either with the mechanics carried on inside or to project or complement the atmosphere created by its exterior. Sculpture not dependent on architecture proper but relegated to a setting as in a park or for a memorial, still serves in architectural function. The secondary use may be designated as free-creative. Here the sculpture is conceived independently, for purely esthetic or fetish reasons. Creative sculpture has always had a definite relationship to the architecture of its period. It has reflected the complexity or simplicity of the forms of its architectural era, and, conversely, architecture has derived a definite influence from sculpture. In the parallel of Phidias, Michelangelo, Lubetkin3 represents sculptor and architect both, to varying degrees. The parallel of materials also exists, although we base no esthetic end in the material itself. This material parallel is evident in early mud building, through stone and bronze periods, to modern times and the use of alloys, aluminum, and stainless steel. Tools, too, have left the same imprint on sculpture and architecture through ages to the modern use of metal fabrication in both fields. Both architecture and sculpture have reflected the existing social growth, decadence, science, and cultural pursuits of their time. The first architecture of man was represented by a cave, in which incised sculptured adornment was included. Throughout man’s great periods, architectural concepts have changed, by its needs, esthetic dictates and scientific advances. Sculpture concepts have changed also. Modern sculpture, abstract sculpture, is plastically based as is the plastics of modern architecture. An effort to unite form and form associations into a statement psychologically decisive, intellectually elevating, and physically unified. The purpose being, to create esthetic enjoyment. Instead of a literary message, the mind reacts to a sequence of related forms; the visual result is derived from actuality, by abstract association. The composition of lines, space, textures forming the structure of a modern building appeals to the eye by an esthetic principle which most people can accept without knowing the creator’s theories relating to composition, or the experiences on which his associations have been formed. From a similar analogy can we base the result in sculpture. Like any progressive attitude in art or science, of men of good will, serious and unbiased consideration to sculpture will further the appreciation of it. A typical bourgeois attitude is to oppose modern sculpture on anti-intellectual grounds. The bourgeoisie have appropriated the anti-intellectual eye to view not only art, but other socialculture forces as well. Even their notion of realism is limited to a few basic emotional reactions of sentiment and heroics. They accept only the most superficial attitudes of realism. They are interested in one aspect of pictorial representation and that in its most elementary form. While it is true a democratic viewpoint is accorded all people, this bourgeois view is not one which will elevate or stimulate a growing culture.

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Abstract sculpture expresses itself in optical esthetic language. Engineering expresses itself in mathematical language; both languages are subject to evolution and cultural change. Both art and science are basic forces in that coordination called architecture. Mathematics are creative. Even mathematics, like sculpture, changes with time and social concepts. Modern building cannot disregard sculpture any more than it can mechanics. The view of sculpture evaluation known as abstract is progressive and definitely one of this age. Definitely related to modern building and designing, and evident in virtually every present-day object. It is the art of today, and an important contemporary force. The Neolithic, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Medievalist architects had utilized the arts of their time. Vital modern architects will find it necessary to maintain this same cultural concept. Commercial disregard of culture has usually obliged the architect to build on the theory of sparsity and short life. For this reason sculpture included in specifications has often been eliminated. There is no need for government building, whether Federal, State or municipal, to build on the theory of sparsity or short term existence. To use the nation’s talent to maintain its culture creates a fiscal asset, as great or greater than the building itself. The one government agency to be most highly commended for its use of modern painting and sculpture in relation to its architecture is the WPA. Although dependent on its juries of selection, insufficient appropriations, and whatever committees sponsor the building, it has been able to deliver modern building design with the unity of modern sculpture and painting. Especially noted among its commendable national works are some of its modern housing projects, airports, hospitals, World’s Fair building, and WNYC broadcasting station, etc. Ofttimes the desire for sculpture cannot be fulfilled due to lack of appropriations and layoffs. It is encouraging that the Treasury Department can build new post offices, and can allot a small percentage of costs toward adornment. This represents a somewhat recent development. It is discouraging to see these buildings based on architecture of the past and adorned by art concepts of the past. In due time advances may be made that will permit recognition of modern architecture and sculpture, which have existed outside their world, and have been advancing for the last twenty years. Although the TVA has utilized modern architecture, it has not included sculpture. It would be fitting for TVA to use sculpture in relation to its architecture, which is based on similar concepts. The need would be for sculpture that will uphold the monumental dignity of Norris dam, sculpture esthetically as functional as the mechanics at Wheeler, Pickwick and Guntersville.4 Sculpture with esthetic elements related to space and contemporary time as are their gantry cranes and gauge houses. Sculpture to complement the monolithic majesty of their structures and adjuncts. A sculptured literary message would be out of function. It is true that reactionaries object to modern sculpture and modern architecture. Yet these reactionaries do not always object on esthetic concepts alone. But on the very basic reason of government power generation and conservation, housing, educational

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and civic building. Progress in art, progress in society, one accompanies the other, and both are decried by Babbitt reactionaries.5 The government needs to unify its art direction by creating a ministry of fine arts, to sponsor democracy in Art, to enhance its buildings, to preserve its culture, and maintain its artists. The artists are willing to give to the fullest extent of their abilities, for a living wage. Let them work. It is high time the government takes concerted action for the welfare of its cultural workers, but, let it not be alarmed by the cry of that moribund minority who contribute nothing to society and reap golden harvests far greater than they can possibly use. Notes 1.  Cardinal George Mundelein, in a speech to Roman Catholic priests in Chicago in May 1937, decried the rising influence of Hitler, describing him as an inept “Austrian paper-hanger.” 2.  Smith refers to Josephine Hancock Logan’s attacks on modern art, espoused in her book, Sanity in Art (Chicago: A. Kroch, 1937). 3.  Modernist architect Berthold Lubetkin. 4.  U.S. government–sponsored reservoir dams built from 1935 to 1939 by the Tennessee Valley Authority Corporation, established by Congress in 1933. 5.  A reference to the literary critic Irving Babbitt, associated with the New Humanism movement, often characterized at the time as championing conservative and antimodernist principles.

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ABSTR ACT ART IN AMERICA 194 0

The term abstract was first used in reference to cubism. That term in America now designates a broad field in painting and sculpture which has made the most significant contribution to contemporary art aesthetics. We may accept the term “Abstract” to include cubism and the later concepts which are based on, or related to it. This art language opposes realism per se, the photographic state of nature and conscious literalism. The fact that the abstract concept is so little understood has no eventual bearing and does not affect its validity. No responsibility can be assumed for uninformed critics who are unable to evaluate its worth and its importance to contemporary social life. The pragmatists and didacticians are too apt in self-defense to set up a hierarchy for standards to conform to their limitations. Their standards, usually based on Italian Renaissance or the new satin nationalism, are an attempt to recreate the past, or advocate regionalism through rose-colored glasses. Pragmatists peddle this patent medicine to uninformed minds and even achieve the position of “best seller.” The reference is often made that abstract art is not understood by the great American cross-section. That is quite true. It is likewise true that the great cross-section does not understand non-abstract art. Their perceptive faculties have been accustomed to exclude contemporary art that is not represented by magazine covers, or the bronze soldier, the tower erected to honor the war dead. Possibly there exists an indiscriminate respect for old masters, not because of any understanding but due to the influence of conservatism and its tendency to romanticize and revere the past. Imagination and new ideas cause disturbance to the complacent cross-section which is accustomed to an art representing the simplest elements of sex, confirmation of a happy experience, or a situation with a moral. Economic conditions for millions of people preclude any interest outside of bare existence when uncertainty of life and constant poverty are dominant. Even the professional “Art lover” is usually a generation or more behind the creative artist. The great cross-section believes that art is something that existed long ago. That art exists today based on modern concepts, only comes to them second or third-handed

“Abstract Art in America,” lecture presented on February 15, 1940, at the Labor Stage theater, New York City. Organized by the art critic Elizabeth McCausland, the talk was one of a series of five “lectures and discussions on all phases of contemporary art” sponsored by the United American Artists, Local 60 of the United Office and Professional Workers of America, C.I.O. Stuart Davis and Irene Rice Pereira joined Smith on the panel. Excerpts from Smith’s paper were published under the title “Abstract Art” in the UAA organ The New York Artist 1 (April 1940).

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through the design of their ice boxes, advertising or bric-a-brac. They do not perceive the original creative force yet the source though unrecognized, and non-profit making to the creators, is an important contribution to society. Certain critics purporting to advance social ideology and the democratic principle, have taken issue with the abstract concept labeling it either unsocial or possibly social in some future society. This position represents an anti-intellectualist view and is reactionary. On common grounds as objectors, we have syndicates of the reactionary press and the so-called Logan Sanity in Art movement.1 Super-nationalists and the “blood in mind” fascists object to Abstract Art on the ground that it is a foreign “ism.” Abstract Art is a symbolic treatment of life just as is higher mathematics or music. It is ultra-intellectualist. Appreciation or understanding of any phase of art, past or present, may be a matter of degree and inclination. Even the Italian Renaissance exhibition was sold with super press agentry.2 A guide was required to explain it to one of our leading Hollywood actresses. Whereas a great physicist, on visiting the Picasso show at the same museum, explained in refusing special guide service that it was not necessary, since he was well acquainted with most of the Picasso paintings. There is no moral to be drawn; degrees of preference are personal and as such are respected. But condemnation of modern art is too often given over to generalities, which are due to a lack of interest and understanding. The impressionists were radicals, and were given their name in opprobrium by a critic. Cézanne and Van Gogh were demons to the critics and cross-section of their time, but today where art is known, they are the classic past. In 1905 a group of painters, among whom were Matisse, Braque, Derain, exhibited paintings based on the belief that it should be primarily an expression of pure aesthetic experience, and that enjoyment of line, form and color was a sufficient end in itself. These painters were labeled “Wild Beasts,” yet, a quarter of a century later when they have been accepted as part of our tradition and heritage, trifling educators still condemn their work and sing the glories of the Renaissance hierarchy. Art is a paradox that has no laws to bind it. Laws set can always be violated. That confuses the pragmatic mind. There may exist conventionalized terminologies and common designations for periods, but no rules bind, either to the material substances from which it is made, or the mental process of its concept. It is created by man’s imagination in relation to his time. When art exists, it becomes tradition. When it is created, it represents a unity that did not exist before. It is the irrational creative which stands out most distinctively in art, and opposes rationalizing efforts. It is from this view that Dutch-Flemish art was superior to Italian Renaissance, that the first Parthenon was superior to the second, that African sculpture in its time was superior to the academies of the continent. We may sense the force, and attempt to describe it, but we will not necessarily understand it. Certain canons of beauty or imagination, (which work on the same fundamental principle), are absolute, having common denominators in our associations, but we are ignorant of the laws which determine the number and variety of the more complex combinations. A

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given form may have relationships with several natural objects but two forms may raise the relationship to higher powers, too complex to tabulate, yet the power to tabulate is not necessary in appreciating the beauty of the two forms in relationship, since men of common pursuit in life have the same subconscious registry of those objects. The perception of beauty can thus establish a community between the perceiving and creating mind. We meet on grounds of equality in the unconscious mind. With the exception of the literal message, the communication agrees with the method of the realist concept, although there is a difference in degree. When we create, we create what we feel. Lesser men and especially critics are afraid of their feelings. They have confusion, they seek solace in words. They are not open to the artist concept—they require conformity to their own. I may attempt an explanation of cubism by stating that it was an effort to express the reactions of the sensibility to extend objects in the abstract language of form, but that will not account for a full understanding nor has any verbal account been able to express all that exists in the concept of cubist painting and sculpture. The tradition of our art is international, as are American people, customs and science. There is no true American art and there is no true American mind. Our art tradition is that of the western world which originally had its tradition in the east. Art cannot be divorced from time, place or science. It has never been dependent on but [is] related to science in the creative sense. The inverse is likewise true. Parallel to “impressionism” were the Helmholtz and Chevreul theory of light “vibrism”— Daguerre, the painter and physicist, and [his] machine for reproducing natural images—Darwin, the evolutionist, and his theory of natural selection—and the economist and philosopher Marx. Paralleling our own more immediate tradition have been Einstein, with Relativity Space-Time theory, and Freud, who has been the greatest single influence on the theoretical side of art, providing an analytical system for establishing the reality of the unconscious, that region of the mind from which the artist derives his inspiration and proclaims the super-reality which permits use of all manifest experience. Since the introduction of the camera image, and the recent element of color and movement, depiction of the natural image is no longer an art unless created by that machine, the camera, most capable of producing it. The literal message from the painter, has seen its day. The all inclusive term “Abstract” includes sur-realism and tangent schools. It is the language of our time. Within this expression the artist is essentially the instrument, his work stands above him, therefore the interpretation should not be expected of him. Relatively, a great abstract work is like a dream. It presents beauty, or its associate, imagination. It does not interpret itself. The dream, like the painting, is the product of both the conscious and unconscious factors of the mind. I make no particular evaluation of sculpture from painting, since both have common purposes, the only difference being the material use of a dimension—in place of an indicated one.

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The abstract artist admits no mystic process nor do any union members who paint abstractly live in ivory towers. The problems of the abstract artist in a democratic society are common with those of all men of good will. He rejects participation in the present imperialist war, and acknowledges his position with organized labor—to keep America out of war, for art and peace can only exist together. Notes 1.  Josephine Hancock Logan, Sanity in Art (Chicago: A. Kroch, 1937). Logan was the wife of Frank G. Logan, a longtime benefactor of the Art Institute of Chicago. Mrs. Logan’s book and the art movement she promoted rejected modernist art in favor of more traditional and representational imagery based on “soundness, rationalism, and . . . internal logic.” Smith’s reference to “satin nationalism” may allude to Mrs. Logan and other wealthy art collectors. In 1956, the Art Institute commissioned Smith to redesign the Mr. and Mrs. Frank G. Logan medal and prize to be awarded to a painting or sculpture by an American; Smith’s abstract two-sided bronze medal updated the more conventional design in use since 1917 (K395). 2.  Smith refers to Italian Masters, an exhibition of Renaissance art loaned by the Italian government for presentation at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, from January to April. Italian Masters was presented in conjunction with a separate exhibition, Modern Masters, which comprised works from the museum’s own collection. Total attendance for Italian Masters was greater than that for any previous MoMA exhibition.

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MEDAL S FOR DISHONOR, RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS F R O M E L I Z A B E T H M C C AU S L A N D 194 0

mccausland (no. 1): What first gave you the idea of making the medals? (The form would seem rather far away from your abstract and monumental ideas, although related in spirit of course to your drawings.) smith: I am usually impelled by more than one force and when it takes form it is a result of a coordination.   A. When I was in Greece I was interested in seals—I studied them—Sumerian, Crete, Tyrins—Athenian—seals, coins, cylinders, taken by the strong form attained by minute gradations (attainable only when made in reverse).   B. I wanted a sculptural medium with the fluency and subtlety of drawing—this new form for me takes the place in my work that etching—engraving—did before, which was my relaxation in the evening after working at the shop on big sculpture. It was also a pleasing reaction to the bold forms I made in the daytime.   C. To begin with I had to learn to draw or sculpt in reverse—to be true, experience in engraving and wood cutting did help—but instead of being outside working in on the object, reverse cutting required a conception such that I was inside working out. Ofttime I envisioned myself inside the object space cutting outwards to the furthermost edges to define it—first you cut out farthest away and gradually recede with objects until you are out on top of the surface.   Die-making is of the same concept—factory dies are cut in steel before being tempered for die stamping. I have had a working acquaintance with dies—in stamping auto parts such as fenders—oil pans, etc.—just the acquaintance with these reverse forms which make the positive object was some help, I imagine. Actually, that tool which looks much like a dentist’s drill (only more powerful) is in the trade a die maker’s tool.   I made the medals with the literary object symbolism because I was approaching a new field and I had to learn to draw or sculpt all over again—naturally realism is a better gauge—for learning—“abstraction” is realism, yes, but more highly refined and dependent upon object associations not translatable in word pictures.

Smith provided handwritten replies, dated September 22, 1940, to eight written questions he received from the art critic Elizabeth McCausland about his Medals for Dishonor series, 1938–40 (Elizabeth McCausland Papers, Archives of American Art, digital ID: 16578). She paraphrased his explanations at length in her article for the Springfield Sunday Union and Republican (Massachusetts), November 10, 1940, published to coincide with the first exhibition of the medals series, at Willard Gallery, New York City, the same month.

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mccausland (no. 2): Had you any previous experience in making medals? Or did you have to start from the ground up, in a craft sense? If so, how did you achieve the necessary skill? By trial and error, by formal study, or what? smith: I had no experience at this work. I had only my respect for the ancient use and certain experiences of seeing mechanical objects take form when stamped from dies (which were carved in reverse). Neither of these ways answered my needs—but a direction for the aesthetic approach from ancient seals and a suggested possibility of what I could attain by modern means. I made my results by trial and error, utilizing formulae from the paint, dental and steel trades. I spent a year of nights on acquiring my ability to carve and experimenting with materials (I don’t mean that this is admirable but I only state it because I had no friends who were doing this kind of work—nor had I run across any reference texts). I utilized both dental and die makers’ burs as well as engraving tools and some I made myself. mccausland (no. 3): How does the medal fit into the uses of art in contemporary society? smith: The medal fits into society according to its message and its aesthetic contribution. As an object it is in material use the same as a painting or an etching. Its function is aesthetic. Its price in case the demand is only for one (and the medal is cast) can accompany the cost of a painting. If the demand is great it can be made by die stamping and cost the same as an etching or less. It is ideal for mass consumption if it has mass demand. It could be die stamped more perfectly and in more metals than it could be cast in. It could be stamped out as easily as a hub cap or a pie pan. mccausland (no. 4): Please explain the steps in order. As I understand these, they are: making the first plaque in plaster—is this cast, molded as a blank, or what?; working on this first die with various tools—what are they?; making a cast from this—you use an extra hard dental plaster, if I remember correctly; doing further work on this; then having the master die or mold cast in brass—is this material right?; from the master die casting the medal in whatever material you choose. For the final medal you might explain why some designs require one composition of bronze, others another, and still a third silver. smith: I use a softer plaster for the reverse carving—so that when I pour harder plaster into the reverse, to obtain the positive, the stronger positive will break away any unseen undercuts in the reverse—putting my faith in the preservation of the positive print rather than the negative.1   As a separator between the reverse and the pouring of the plaster (to be the positive print) I use dibutyl phthalate—being more sensitive and producing less chemical disintegration to plaster to be lacquered or shellacked than the common separator “green soap.” After the positive is made—corrections can take place—then the first bronze is cast from the positive plaster—which is the master bronze—this is the master because it is chased, engraved and corrected to conform to the transfor-

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mation to metal. Thereafter, the master bronze is the pattern from which the first and each successive castings are made.   Your reference in [no.] 4 is OK but I believe you should call it master model and not “die,” as dies are struck or die-stamped to produce—and not cast. This and all my medals are cast so far.   For the final bronzes, silver, etc., oxidations, colorings and the like are merely an aesthetic preference for the most descriptive metal to function with the subject— purely the artist’s preference. mccausland (no. 5): Related is the problem of the difficulty of finding artisans (I use this word only in haste) competent to do a good job of casting. (I don’t want to run down the trade of casters, but the point is interesting and could be brought in briefly; for the decline of craftsmanship without a compensating rise in mass production quality is certainly a feature of our culture with serious consequences for the artist. Also for every one.) smith: Commercial foundries are geared for production—volume—they use standard commercial bronze pigs (billets), either 90 [percent] copper, 10 tin, or 85 copper, 5 tin, 5 zinc, 5 lead. They pour from big ladles and put too many impressions to be poured in one core box. I prefer a small jewelry caster who mixes his tin, lead and zinc into molten copper just before pouring—and who makes one pot of bronze for one medal which has only one impression in the core box. Commercial foundries could do it as well—but much depends upon the thoroughness of tamping the sand in the core box and tenderness of dusting and preparing the mould before pouring. I like a jewelry caster for this—one who is accustomed to fine work and one who bakes the sand mould so that the metal is poured while the mould is hot.   Higher perfection is attained by die stamping or electro-deposition—but there is a quality and individuality that is personally appealing about a cast medal. When I cast a medal the finishing—buffing, chasing, oxidizing are all my processes—I have to do it because I can’t afford it otherwise, and I like to control metal—to know its limitations and its possibilities. mccausland (no. 6): Esthetic factors of form, idiom, etc. How did you turn to an almost hieratic use of symbol and real object? What about the use of the modern Greek words as parts of the design? How about the plastic re-education required of you in turning from sculpture in the round to the relief? Anything you can think of in this connection. smith: My concept of form here is the same as in the abstract work—it is only in the manner of degree. Here there is identity which requires a subject—the symbols range from sublime to ridiculous—certain symbolism is based on Greek mythology—other symbolism is from medieval down to common everyday cartooning and comic strip, thriller movies, etc. Much of my use of material is based on medieval concepts—the anatomy, for instance. No anatomy is correct. I studied the anatomy in the first medical books published. It was anatomy with imagination

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because it wasn’t thoroughly understood—it was imagined. My anatomy is made with the idea that anything can be made to do what is wished—to heighten the terror—or to accent—still, it retains an anatomical connotation. Figures retain identity without being 7 heads high—all I mean by anatomy is bones and meat— maybe my hieratic use of subject and symbol reflects my feeling for the absurdity of war and killing people. Thus much of my object use has medieval connotations— which period most impressed me from history as the bloodiest and most plagued period, which has been repeating itself so often lately. I started these medals in 1936. In 1937, I made a few bronzes not shown. I experimented by making my own iron negatives and pouring block tin for my impressions but I decided that [the] casting itself was involving me in too much labor and could best be done by the caster. The medals here are [from] 1938–39–40—I find it hard to explain it paralleling my abstract work of the same time but it was over too long a period of time not to be logical. Also I’m developing this technique for big, more abstract plaques—which may have architectural use—but mainly I wanted a free sculptural medium that could be done at night.   Greek inscriptions—all medals have high falutin’ falsifications in Latin, Greek, etc. Mine are coffee pot Greek—slang—modern slang Greek—my slight acquaintance of the language while I was there with my Greek conversational guide—my love for the people who spoke it—my joke on classic Greek scholars who expect the classic language—but can’t read this—only I and coffee pot Greeks can get it— besides, the inscriptions are unimportant and unnecessary for the onlooker (besides some are dirty).2 mccausland (no. 7): Subject matter. (I’ll get the list of titles from Willard.) I mean how you went about translating realities of present day life into plastic symbols. Is this the language of Esop? Kind of study and research you had to do for the work. smith: Things that bothered me—absurdities—symbols to represent them. This is the language of movie thrillers, overstatement, fantasy, comics, classics, mythology, tradition, my disgust for war and exploiters. This is my expression of social life— these things worry me as the sexual (and mine are not free either) plagues and beasts worried Hieronymus Bosch—and the other Flanders boys who depicted the temptations of the saints. I saw the war coming—these are my expressions, part in fear and part in mimicry. mccausland (no. 8): What masters of the medal-maker’s art (if any) influenced you? To what tradition (again if any) would you say you looked back? Or is it to creating a tradition for the future that you look? smith: The Greeks and Egyptians—Sumerian cylinder seals—Greek coins—Attic gems, etc.—nothing between that and modern factory die-stamping after I had worked on the series 3 years (of nights). I went to the numismatic museum and Metropolitan.3 I found that I wasn’t producing any new ideas—symbolism is the language of medals—and mainly the Netherlands and the north at the great Dutch

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period, with the fantasy boys like Bruegel elder, Bosch, etc.—medalists of their periods.   Elizabeth—I offer these as of the past—1938–39–40—I can see no future—I’m in the draft sooner or later as are all men—good men, artists too, are dying every day. I’m not sure of a future let alone a living—this is between us—   But—reverse engraving or carving has opened a plastic field to me—a fuller realization of what form means when I can direct it both ways—turn it inside out.   Besides, it has opened a sculptural field with the fluency of drawing—   Marian has key—sort of overlay—identifying symbols—complete with all photos.4 Any more? Let me know. [P.S.] There exists a series of war medals some in derision as the one endorsed for R. G. H. and some for bravery, etc., and some for just generals and things—of the medieval I like the Nuremberg series but I don’t know where any good collections are except Met and numismatic museum. R. G. H. should find a good story there.5 Notes 1.  Smith included as part of his answer a diagram to illustrate the steps in his process: “trace drawing or layout in reverse” on a plaster blank; “carve reverse”; “cast into reverse—producing positive.” 2.  “Coffee pot” was a common term at the time for small stands and cafés that served food and coffee; in Brooklyn, where Smith lived and had his workshop, many of them were owned by Greek immigrants. 3.  The American Numismatic Society, then located at 155th Street and Broadway, New York City, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. 4.  Smith provided his dealer, Marian Willard, with a set of annotated drawings traced from photographs of medals. 5.  McCausland had urged art critic Ruth Green Harris to propose a feature story on the Medals for Dishonor series to the New York Times (letter from McCausland to Smith, September 19, 1940). No article by Harris was published, but art critic Howard Devree noted the opening of the Willard Gallery exhibition in the Times on November 10, 1940, with the comment: “The Medals need a sociohistorical interpreter rather than, primarily, an art critic. . . . ”

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S C U L P T U R E : A R T F O R M S I N A R C H I T E C T U R E— NE W TECHNIQUE S AFFECT BOTH 194 0

Sculpture has always been dependent upon architecture for its setting—not because it is a “lesser art,” but by the very nature of its function and sponsorship. Its purpose has been to lend esthetic identity to the building’s function, either with the mechanics of the interior, or to project or complement the atmosphere created by the exterior. Sculpture not dependent on buildings proper, but relegated to a setting in the landscape, still maintains this relationship. Therefore, for esthetic unity, the architect’s building must establish the function of a specific sculpture. Too often the architect misses such unity by making (or allowing) the sculpture to function as a mere billboard. Bromidic quotations, realistic sex imagery, and acts of pretentious idealism too often serve as standard specifications for sculpture, wherein an esthetic conflict between building and sculpture is naturally introduced. The modern building, by its composition of line, space, and texture, appeals to the eye by definite esthetic principles; and the sculpture cannot represent a concept alien to the esthetics of such architecture. As in architecture proper, so in sculpture, the concept is primary, the material secondary: but there is a constant interaction between the two. The secondary or material parallels have existed through the mud, stone, and bronze ages to the present-day period of alloys. And the tools of all ages have left common marks on both. The esthetic standards now operative in current sculpture are much the same as those of past periods—namely, that there must be perfect unity between the idea, the substance, and the dimension; that the sculpture be conceived in perfect equilibrium to the related areas. But the thing that differentiates modern sculpture from all its predecessors is the means of achieving these esthetic standards. Never before have the sculptors had so rich and varied a selection of materials, tools, and techniques with which to work. It is the purpose of this paper to summarize these new means. One of the most important developments in method is the application of welding to metal sculptures; here, by using stock forms, a composite structure may be fabri-

“Sculpture: Art Forms in Architecture—New Techniques Affect Both,” Architectural Record 88 (October 1940): 77–80. Manuscript notes by Smith suggest that he chose the illustrations that accompanied his text. They included a photograph of Smith’s welded steel sculpture Vertical Structure (Vertical Construction), 1939 (K128), and a photograph of him welding Bathers, 1940 (K134); sculptures by Alexander Calder, Pablo Gargallo, and Jacques Lipchitz; works by designers Robert Foster and by Walter Dorwin Teague created for the 1939 New York World’s Fair; WPA-commissioned architectural sculptures by Robert Cronbach, Waylande Gregory, and Sten Jacobson; and the classical Greek painted marble statue known as the Chian Kore.

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cated with qualities as inherently different from carved or cast pieces as steel framing is from masonry construction. To fabricate a finished piece of sculpture requires a concept in unity with the method, a recognition of the change in forces, a knowledge of the limitations and a respect for the virtues of material and method. This concept already exists in industry and, to a lesser extent, in architecture. Fabricated sculpture is, in a certain sense, “industrialized” in that it uses both industrial methods and materials and makes possible the rapid multiplication of a given piece. As yet uncommon, it seems destined to become relatively important. Aluminum and its alloys greatly favor sculptural use, by economy of weight, ease of fabrication, and variety of surface treatments. Its stability and low cost have been attested in architecture and industry. Oxide finishes by anodic treatment are suitable to sculpture not too massive, or to fitted sections. The hard anodic coatings which can only be formed on aluminum are considered to be the most durable, have high corrosion resistance and high dielectric strength. They also produce the best surfaces for dyeing or mineral impigmentation. Cast aluminum possesses especial economy for the electro-deposition of a variety of metallic plates. It can be plated for exterior use with deposits over .001 inch. A dozen or more types of alloy castings are easily worked by hand. In sheet or casts, aluminum responds to fabrication by standard methods. Stainless steel is ideally suited for sculpture in architecture, but its maximum function will be achieved when fabricated from sheets and forms. (This parallels its most important use in architecture and industry.) As a casting metal, its defects are all too evident. In gravity casting it pours thick and slow, making both a bulky and expensive job for sculptural purposes. Other stainless metals of the copper-nickel-alloy type possess similar visual appearance, and function best when fabricated. Bronze casting will probably always serve a useful purpose in sculpture, although the stock bronze in the majority of foundries has become limited to the commercial billet, giving all metal casts much the same color. Statuary bronzes in color range from red to pale yellow, made by the French process, have fallen from general use, but for art purposes deserve to be rediscovered. Likewise the oxidation from these bronzes of varying formulas offers greater tonal gradations. Bronze-sheet alloys for fabricating are obtainable in various color ranges from red (98.10% copper, 1.90% tin) through yellow, red grey, bluish red, white, to bluish white (25% copper, 75% tin). Similarly, brass alloys of copper and zinc come in wide natural-color ranges. These copper-bearing alloys form oxide finishes from black through red, green, blue to brown by accelerated chemical action and can be fixed by special metal lacquers. To maintain a constant appearance and for protection from stain to surrounding areas, bronze sculpture should always be protected by lacquer coats. Steel can be cast, forged, and fabricated to exploit its natural characteristics to denote resistance and tension. It responds to a host of treatments which have possibili-

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ties for sculpture. Esthetic applications wholly untenable by traditional materials are possible. Sculpture can be built of fabricated steel rods. Lines can indicate form by outline, can confine areas, can maintain their own sculptural import, yet lose nothing by permitting a view of a building or the landscape through the open areas which may represent the inside of the sculptural form. To view a building through the branches of a tree destroys neither the esthetic value of the tree nor the building; they both bear the added interest of associated objects. Contemporary sculpture has made timid use of color, although it has been an important factor in the best periods of the past. It is obvious that there exists a logic of color in relationship to sculptural form just as there exists a logic in the scale of sculpture. Yet for centuries, bronzes have been dead dark, and marble, dead white. The public has acknowledged its preference for color in articles of every-day use from hacksaw blades to automobiles. Ironically, the trend behind this change in “industrial design” is accountable to the fine arts, especially to cubism and the later schools which regarded texture, material, and color as esthetic forces. Sculpture can be rustproofed by chemical immersion, or sprayed with a chemical solution, to produce an insoluble black phosphate, and painted with stable oxide enamels. The form could be brightly painted in winter and softly colored in summer, or repainted in any specified color each decade, or as often as the enamel medium showed weathering. Steel sculpture sprayed with molten zinc or cadmium which are both electronegative, thereby affording corrosion resistance by galvanic control, could then be sprayed with harder metals like chromium, monel, silver, stainless alloys, cobalt, etc. By the molten-spray method mixed metals can be applied, used as accents or as separate color areas. A steel sculpture sprayed with zinc and accented with copper would exhibit, after buffing, a silver-and-pink-colored granulated surface. This could be held by lacquer or permitted to take on a natural green and white-grey oxide patina. Useful as a finish to bronze and other metals are the chemically and mechanically stable colors produced by light refraction from a semitransparent electro-deposit. A cuprous oxide deposit in violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red has been produced by cathodic deposits from alkaline solutions of copper lactate. The color of the deposit is a function of thickness, or plating time. As the thickness of the deposit increases, complete color cycles take place, each cycle building different shades. Heavy deposits from .001 to .005 in. can produce a metallic copper of extremely fine grain, with colors in rich browns of a pigmentary nature. This plate can be buffed and polished, and has a high corrosion resistance. Ceramic processes have for millenniums been used in architecture and are still important. The most important recent development is the “glass on steel” process of vitreous enamels on ingot iron sheets having a common coefficient of expansion. The firing of fabricated sculpture and fitted sections are both possible. So far one sees the result of

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this process only on gasoline stations, hamburger stands, and stew pans, but the colors and freedom in application are as flexible and varied as those in the artist’s oil palette. Advanced methods of glass casting and shaping take precedence over most synthetic plastics in practically all architectural sculpture, especially in consideration of relative life economy. Materials with high specific gravity and low tensile strength are still useful in modern architecture. There are times when the exploitation of mass, density, texture, and color common to marble, granite, and stone are esthetically useful. Oftentimes their contrast with materials possessing opposite qualities is very interesting. In this same field may be included the plastic counterparts representing various types of concrete. Concrete art forms have largely been but an imitation of the clay model, with their aggregates used to imitate granite and stone. This unimaginative concept of pouring concrete to rigid sculptural form fails to reveal the true nature of the material. As yet it has not suggested new form or new freedom. But concrete is a new material to the sculptor; and (it is well to remember) it suffered quite as badly in the architects’ hands until it was freed by Freyssinet and Maillart. Although sculpture has by definition always exploited natural light, use of artificial lighting as a basic element of design has never been practical until recent times. It still remains a development requiring new mechanics and concepts. The use of varying intensities, types of light, and controlled beams offers amazing potentialities. Objects projected, objects moving in controlled light, or moving light on static objects have possibilities yet to be investigated sculpturally. Not only can light be used in new relationship to material form, but it can be developed as an independent form. Projected light naturally functions best in a darkened field. It has a limited use, but an important and distinctive one. Physical movement in sculpture also offers possibilities, especially when it is used as a basic element of design as Calder, Brancusi, and Man Ray, among others, have done. “The Miracle” of Brancusi, when shown at the Museum of Modern Art, was rotated by a quiet low-gear operation, turning the sculpture with a smoothness and precision impossible to obtain if the onlooker had been forced to reverse the viewing process and walk around the sculpture.1 An amusing (and effective) example of physical motion in sculpture is to be seen in Walter Dorwin Teague’s “Cycle of Production” at the Ford exhibit at the New York [World’s] Fair. Here highly stylized figures go through a cycle of highly stylized motions illustrating the various steps in motorcar manufacture. Note 1.  Art in Our Time, the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, May–September 1939. The exhibition, timed to coincide with the New York World’s Fair, celebrated the museum’s tenth anniversary and included Brancusi’s marble sculpture The Miracle, 1936 (now titled The Seal), Collection Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, which sits on a round base that can be turned by a motor.

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MEDAL S FOR DISHONOR 194 0

1. Propaganda for War

The rape of the mind by machines of death—the Hand of God points to atrocities. Atop the curly bull the red cross nurse blows the clarinet. The horse is dead in this bullfight arena—the bull is docile, can be ridden. The speakers part the mind and offer red apples while Radio parts the ether with shrieks and emotional bombings. The corny trumpet leaves behind sour footnotes, the walking speaker spews ballast. Behind the nurse hang wires heavy laden with atrocity stories—burned nuns—dog eats child—death sells hoover apples—torn bodies and spilt milk. The web is spun, the stage is set—not for the fish story of Jonah but for the present fish story—Propaganda. The female auxiliary—the chorus girl—helps by what she is most able. 2. The Fourth Estate

The Free Press—whose presses run with oil and sex—whose presses are gummed by patent medicine—whose censors, the Power Trust, wield scissors of every known kind—whose hand has wrapped five columns from the citadel of justice around the index finger—which has tied with ragged knots the brunhildean key to sex and fish.

Medals for Dishonor by David Smith, exhibition catalogue, plate texts by the artist, essays by the novelists William Blake and Christina Stead (New York: Willard Gallery, 1940). Smith’s third one-person exhibition, in November 1940, presented fourteen cast-bronze and one castsilver bas-relief plaques. It was his first show to be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue. In a letter to Blake urging him to contribute to the publication, Smith described the Medals as “depicting the horrors of war, its causes, those who inspire and lead it, its resulting destruction” (August 16, 1940). Although Dorothy Dehner later claimed that Smith largely dictated his extended captions—“out poured stream of consciousness poetry” (Art Journal 37 [Winter 1977–78]: 148)—in fact he revised and refined his initial manuscript notes and references to classical mythology, medieval religious iconography, contemporary political events, and popular culture through at least four typed drafts. Smith also prepared a press release for the show and kept a close eye on the design, layout, and printing of the catalogue, hoping it would bring “mutual prestige” to him and to his dealer, Marian Willard (letter to Willard, [October 1940). The exhibition and its publication received extensive and largely favorable press coverage but generated no sales.

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The formulae stories roll—the well oiled banners fly with herring bones and tipped scales—fish and windy gloved hands under the flags in a wrong way breeze—inverted pawn balls—the oil can and the daisy. Liberty is strung. 3. Munition Makers

Patched skeletons take up their old duties—the shell-bearer, the spearman, the shepherd, the cripple. The banner of death dollars flies from the stub of a mediaeval soldier’s arm. An ancient coin is held aloft—the “pen is mightier than the sword” but the soldier still clings to the tommygun. The antediluvian land tortoise comes forward with low-hanging buttocks. From the imprint of past ages emerge shellholes and ancient coins marked by the gain of the merchants of death. 4. Diplomats: Fascist and Fascist Tending

Amidst the field of broken umbrella blossoms stands the balancing act by the muscleman and his accomplice. The trained seal does the ball act. For the parade the torchlight is represented by two faces under the same high hat. A veiled rat with pawn ball tail is atop the pork barrel wherein the porkers kiss. There is danger that the muscleman may have his achillean heel nipped by the gila. The deadliest guns are not in the field but in the chancelleries! 5. Private Law and Order Leagues

Black Legion—Klan—Bund—fordstream of Americanism. From the pulpit the noose hangs—their christ was not a jew. Hoods are on the horizon. The tree has roots and bore fruit for vultures. The sacred cow with pumphandle tail rides high on the moon. Liberty and classic foo1: Women are caught in the act in the house of girdles, or tethered in bushes with a sack over the head, or peep from behind the flag still carrying the nation hatchet—the hounds lick and smell. The superamerican rises from the pit of mediaevalism and by the grace of modern industrialism is aiming directly at you.

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6. War Exempt Sons of the Rich

The shape suggests a large coin comprised of smaller coins: The monkey fan dances on war drum with carnival lights.   The polo boy does his bit—tilts at the birdhouse windmill—the lady of the sun cools air and land for him—the dog follows.   The café lady pours herself into her own cocktail glasses to be auctioned for thirst quenchers—we do much for charity—we have our milk funds, fall out of bed, catch greased pigs.

The entertainers must be fed from rubber bottles. On the backs of worker and soldier rest the joys of exempt sons—the cherries swing ’round the clock, bluebirds fly away with the topper—the dial is tuned, the needle points, the sign is one way—the beribboned knife cuts pieces—the family fortune increases. The Greek on this medal is slang for soft cookies. 7. Cooperation of the Clergy

War fatalism of all the clergy—deniers of Christ’s hebrew ancestry—acceptors of religious dominance over fascist conquest.2 Angel Gabriel blows the tuba, wearing Coughlin’s glasses—while various sects in unison man the anti-aircraft into the heavens—not to kill mankind but to shoot merely ducks—to incite the lame in mind. The chalice cups and the rights of sacrament—to drink the blood and partake of the body. Tentacles hold down the cloth and keep the book open. 8. Death by Gas

The spectre sprays heavy gas—the mother has fallen—flaming and eaten lungs fly to space where planets are masked. Two bare chickens escape in the same apparatus. The death venus on wheels holds aloft the foetus who, from environment, will be born masked. The immune goddess in the boat hangs to the handle of a tattered umbrella.3 She wears a chastity mask and blows her balloon. The peach pits were saved in the last war.

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2. Bombing Civilian Populations, 1939.

9. Bombing Civilian Populations

The Stuka storks fly high and drop eggs. The statue has been blown apart revealing a 13th-century concept of a Caesarean. The baby is on the bomb—the bomb is in the high-chair—the earth is torn and cracked—the buildings are shattered. 10. Sinking Hospital and Civilian Refugee Ships

The cruiser has scored—the spirits of the sunken hold aloft the fish from the sea— Venuses whose hair is seaweed float upward to meet the newcomers. The hospital ship founders—the drowned family gathers in a lifeboat. Schools of fish have little to learn from mankind. Man is tentacled by the sea-terror. 11. Death by Bacteria

Gloved hands hold test tubes emitting froth of bacteria disseminated from the music harp symbolizing death music. The foetus is balanced on the harp column—rats for

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cultures—germs pour from flasks—music bars provide places for notes and rat dung to rest. From a flask the culture eats the earth in furrows—the dead lie in seas marked by common crosses. The coffin plows on toward the skeleton of past histories and the moulds of excavated wonders. 12. Reaction in Medicine

Complete and replete in sections of science—the surgeon performs an operation on the body instrument—the music is in shreds—Faith sabotaged—old ways discarded. Science on the lookout—Death climbs a wall. Beyond the amphitheatre wall lie the contorted bodies of those in need. 13. Elements Which Cause Prostitution

The land is cushioned—the bowl has the sponge—the fern has futility—the anchor of hearts is ashore—the vulture disembowels. Salvarsan4 needles to the shamefully stricken—the wine is spilled—both eagles fly to the rescue. Shamefully she stands knee deep in classic water—her body eaten and pitted with holes. The preventative balloon trails sandbags. The body stands dissected by extant mediaeval concepts. 14. Food Trust

The destroyers of natural resources—who burn coffee and corn—dump potatoes in rivers—burn cotton—put kerosene on oranges—to keep prices high—to profiteer while those who once produced—starve. The floating sections of sanitation—broken female dresser and pawn spectre. Boiled roots are foul with gas—the girl is covered with plague of snakes—the boy is naught but bone. The plow lies fallow—the horse unseeded—the cross on the tabernacle is tied with bowknots. It is infected with vermin—vermin.

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15. Scientific Body Disposal

The song of sewage—dust to dust returneth and life to food returneth—mass bombing and mass murder. Those who are meant not to be can be used—as fertilizer, as food for propaganda—transposed through modern industrial channels like pulpwood. Science, chemistry and production line can dispose of masses of cadavers, turning them to good use—through the channels back to the cornucopia which again bears wheat. The circle repeats—the table again bears food. Notes 1.  The nonsense syllable “foo,” also inscribed in the medal itself (in Greek letters), refers to the antics of the then popular syndicated comic strip character Smokey Stover. 2.  Printed in the exhibition catalogue as “deveighers”—the result of a typist’s misreading and misspelling (repeated by the catalogue typesetter) of Smith’s own misspelling, “denighers” (read deniers), in his handwritten draft. 3.  Printed in the catalogue as “umbrella . . .”—the result of the typesetter’s misinterpretation of Smith’s typist’s accidental duplication of the period at the end of the sentence. 4.  Salvarsan, the first effective treatment for syphilis, was the name under which arsphenamine, an arsenic-based, injectable synthetic drug, was commercially released in 1910.

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THE RECURRENCE S OF TOTEMISM c . 194 5

The recurrences of totemism. The subjects and directions dictated by totems and the sense of guilt, the subsequent totem religions, the substitutions and transferences— moral precepts—which form the basis of modern aesthetics & direct the choice of subject & method, the dividing lines in aesthetic taste in relation to other life influences and preferences, therefore the individual’s aesthetics, his social and political correlations. I am interested in what part of aesthetics represented by the artist’s product is controlled by totem recurrences—and what is represented by environment and social conditions. I speculate on whether and how much better I would be had schooling been ideal and whether I would not be more learned if I had not had to be a waiter when I went to Ohio University—had I continued at Notre Dame instead of working that year in an automobile factory riveting frame assemblys at Studebaker—drive a taxi and do crap commercial art while going to the Art Students League—and what would have been my output for the two years that went into locomotive welding to enable me to— and after two years making sculpture on those wages what type wage earning will I do to enable me to make sculpture again. By choice I identify myself with workingmen and still belong to Local 2054 United Steelworkers of America. I belong by craft—yet my subject of aesthetics introduces a breach. I suppose that it is because I believe in a future workingman society and in that society I hope to find a place. In this society I find little place for identifying myself economically.

Handwritten, c. 1945, Sketchbook 15: 15–17.

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T H E V I S UA L A R T S 194 5

It has been customary to erect a monument to our country’s heroes after each war. These monuments are usually non-utilitarian, the intent being a pure and simple token of respect and commemoration. If our present feelings are to be expressed by a monument the first question will be—where will we put it. That applies not only to Glens Falls but to almost every community in this area. Starting now we should plan not only this monument but a town planning board to consider this and future monuments. Even if this war is the last war, succeeding generations will have their own heroes. There will always be great scientists, musicians, and artists rising from America and from the America of our own small communities. There will be great humanitarians and explorers and adventurers to come as great as those who have gone before. Your children’s children will have their heroes and the same noble purpose and desire to erect an expression of gratitude. Before you talk about subject matter or aesthetics the space question will arise. Every desirable place may be filled. Maybe you will wind up with a secondary plot, one not in keeping with your original intention. Possibly it will not be congruent with the aesthetics and the importance of your monument. If that is the case kindly remember that this is not the last memorial in the community. Planning is important for the future generations. Cities and communities started around boat landing factories, a few stores at the crossroads and usually spread helter skelter. Sometime somebody must start planning to get the best out of the community. You cannot change all that has taken a century to build but you can plan within a given structure. You can plan a monument layout within the park system and public places which will maintain unity and provide space for future needs. Another type of monument which deserves serious consideration is the utilitarian memorial. In this category mention has been made of a civic center, a peace and what

“The Visual Arts,” Glens Falls Post-Star (New York), August 1945. Joseph J. Dodge, the author of the “Visual Arts” column, explained in a headnote to Smith’s essay that he had invited “the nationally known sculptor of Bolton Landing to contribute a few paragraphs on a subject of his choosing.” Three years earlier, Smith had tried without success to interest the U.S. Office of Education in his proposal for a defense school emblem and to persuade the War Production Board to commission him to design medallions for “meritorious war workers.” In 1943, commissioned by China Defense Supplies, an American corporation established by the Nationalist Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek to funnel aid to China, Smith developed a series of drawings for a medal intended to honor American contributions to China’s antifascist resistance to attacks by Japan. That project, too, was left unrealized when changing political circumstances in China caused CDS to permanently suspend the commission in 1944, before a final design for the medal was approved.

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causes war wing to the library, a veteran center, a free medical clinic, etc. Most of these expressions cover “public good” and are aimed to provide useful services not only for the veteran but for his children as well. This type of memorial aims at a continuing service of mercy or enlightenment in memory of the men who fought to keep their community free. Of course the two conceptions can be combined and have been in some communities, even after World War I. Whatever is decided upon, it must have the full support of the townspeople and the approval of the veterans themselves. As yet there are not enough returned veterans and priorities still cover materials but it is time to start on ideas, so that well thought out proposals can be considered when the time comes. The subject matter of a memorial offers a large field for debate, which in our democratic society is quite a natural process. Considering the non-utilitarian memorial aesthetically the first question is the subject matter which by tradition must be of a symbolic nature. The story of all men’s battles cannot be realistically portrayed in bronze or stone. There must be a symbol or group of symbols which are common to all. Thus the symbol provides the key to recognition and the story unfolds by symbol association in the viewer’s mind. Even a utilitarian monument in the form of a public building should carry along the names of those who served along with decoration or symbolic art which forms the introduction to the building and relates to the building’s function. The utilitarian advocates point out that knowledge and enlightenment are the qualities most needed to combat the causes of war and to maintain peace and that a utilitarian memorial is therefore the most fitting, one which is not static but which will continue to serve with a purpose besides that of decoration. War has presented such changes that no longer can one bronze infantryman on a marble [pedestal] depict the total service. I refer to this because it was the type so often used throughout the United States as a First World War memorial. The bronze infantryman came under the category of a catalog monument because they were sold that way and had such a large distribution. Not every community can commission an individual monument but small funds might be better applied when tied in with a needed public institution such as I have mentioned under the utilitarian monument. In any event this subject demands sincere and thoughtful consideration, the best and the most respectful the community can muster. The time is now. Do not wait for the catalog salesman to think for you with a stock symbol of respect. Your community has its individuality and its own roots and should have its own way of expressing its homage.

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I H AV E E R E C T E D A S O L I D c . 194 5

I have erected a solid within whose walls and by which walls are made from the desires and fears interrelated—by bias and logic the structure within which I live, die, and weigh all else to be destroyed and rebuilt by time change and progeny But the attempt to make well built^build high—has been the force in construction

Handwritten and illustrated, c. 1945, Sketchbook 23: 165.

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3. Sketchbook page, c. 1945.

A RIVER MTS c . 194 5

trying to stop time like the melancholy sadness of flowers pressed in a book—trying to hold the life—youth

Handwritten and illustrated, c. 1945, Sketchbook 20: 24.

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THE SCULPTURE PRODUCES AN ENVIRONMENT c . 194 5

The sculpture produces an environment in which the beholder can take part, usually on about three levels—to like, to pretend to like, to truly like—any of the three reactions being considered good. Even the pretender is audience—his pretension is a degree of interest and this degree if the pretension is maintained will eventually trap him into some understanding by absorption. (cortical? process of trained response) If a person possesses the potential to ride a bicycle—he also possesses the potential to experience art.

Handwritten, c. 1945, on three sheets of notepad paper inserted in Sketchbook 22.

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T O K E E P F R O M B E C O M I N G E N S L AV E D c . 194 5

to keep from becoming enslaved by small minds with mercenary need by the greedy whose dwelling in caves feels safe by corralling the many in pens—for affirmation, for servitude for control that their thinking their invention their vision won’t go beyond that level which they have set down as given status quo

Handwritten, c. 1945, Sketchbook 23: 138.

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THE TECHNIQUE, BRUSHSTROKE S, CHISEL MARK S c . 194 6

The technique, brushstrokes, chisel marks, patinas, surface reflections, colors so prized by the audience have taken several thousands of years to build up to the basis of aesthetics. They have been established in architecture even before their art use. What new materials I approach, what new types of finish surfaces, etc., are architecturally established even if they aren’t in art. But I try to keep them natural & casual and not forced with consideration to the technical permanence and the resulting natural qualities scientifically established for the materials. If my edges, colors forms textures are different I hope they are as related to the means of art making as brushwork is to oil paste pigments on a canvas or as natural as copper carbonate blue is to bronze sculpture in an alkaline atmosphere or as green is in an acid atmosphere. There is a lot to be done by science & psychology in human reaction and the establishment of aesthetics. There are a lot of beautiful copper reactions by electro-chemical deposit which to the average mind are now considered garish. True they have been used very garishly commercially and the precedent has been set—but what is taboo in one generation is not in the next and aesthetic bases do change and it is to be hoped that the minds of people improve. In contrast I think it is quite evident that dull minds react to colors, etc., which involve very mild stimuli reactions, lulling soothing & soft. Subject matter is a corroborative instance. Subject matter which recalls pleasant experiences, sex, mother, pastoral eating, etc., is on the average more receptive to standard minds than subjects that have an intellectual thought basis. I only cite this because I think there will be great changes in both concept and work procedure which will require greater intellectual interest, application & understanding by the public to the artist’s approach. These are just two points. One can work for the entertainment of the standard appreciation or the artist can work to the fullest extent of his own abilities.

Handwritten, c. 1946, on two sides of a single sheet of Terminal Iron Works, Bolton Landing, New York, letterhead.

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L ANDSCAPE FISH CLOUDS 194 6 – 47

landscape fish clouds perspective construction of mt & horizon abandoned objects of Capital culture mesozoic colors

4. Sketchbook page, 1946–47.

Handwritten and illustrated, late 1946–early 1947, Sketchbook 2: 19.

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T H E Q U E S T I O N —W H AT I S YO U R H O P E c . 1947

I would like to make sculpture that would rise from water and tower in the air— that carried conviction and vision that had not existed before that rose from a natural pool of clear water to sandy shores with rocks and plants that men could view as natural without reverence or awe but to whom such things were natural because they were statements of peaceful pursuit—and joined in the phenomenon of life Emerging from unpolluted water at which men could bathe and animals drink—that harboured fish and clams and all things natural to it I don’t want to repeat the accepted fact, moralize or praise the past or sell a product I want sculpture to show the wonder of man, that flowing water, rocks, clouds, vegetation, have for the man in peace who glories in existence this sculpture will not be the mystical abode of power of wealth of religion Its existence will be its statement It will not be a scorned ornament on a money changer’s temple or a house of fear It will not be a tower of elevators and plumbing with every room rented, deductions, taxes, allowing for depreciation amortization yielding a percentage in dividends It will say that in peace we have time that a man has vision, has been fed, has worked it will not incite greed or war That hands and minds and tools and material made a symbol to the elevation of vision It will not be a pyramid to hide a royal corpse from pillage It has no roof to be supported by burdened maidens

Typescript, c. 1947, from an earlier handwritten draft in Sketchbook 28: 34–39.

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It has no bells to beat the heads of sinners or clap the traps of hypocrites, no benediction falls from its lights, no fears from its shadow this vision cannot be of a single mind—a single concept, it is a small tooth in the gear of man, it was the wish incision in a cave, the devotion of a stone hewer at Memphis the hope of a Congo hunter It may be a sculpture to hold in the hand that will not seek to outdo by bulky grandeur which to each man, one at a time, offers a marvel of close communion, a symbol which answers to the holder’s vision, correlates the forms of woman and nature, stimulates the recall sense of pleasurable emotion, that momentarily rewards for the battle of being

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O N E O F T H E E A R LY I M P R E S S I O N S c . 1947

One of the early impressions which seemed the most wonderful object was a glass jar tree in Indiana. This tree was made from a square post with projecting handles running up each side of the square, quart mason jars were stuck on the handles for sun drying. This was earlier than art and exerts a basic form relationship quite often, without my conscious effort. Cuniform, Assyrian gods and goddesses which I studied and which were the only illustrations in the back of the Bible, I did not know were sculpture for this was all before I could read. The illustrations were black & white line cuts.

Handwritten, c. 1947, on one page. The glass jar tree figures in two other texts Smith wrote about his childhood in Decatur, Indiana (see “Jim and Minnie Ball,” p. 369).

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LECTURE, SKIDMORE COLLEGE 1947

Art is a paradox that has no laws to bind it. That is why it is the greatest pursuit. The lack of law would only tend to confuse a pragmatic mind. True, there may exist conventionalized terminologies and designations for periods but no rules bind either to the material substances from which it is made or the mental process of its concept. It is created by man’s imagination in relation to his time. When it is created, it represents a unity that did not exist before. It is the irrational creative which stands out most distinctively in art and opposes rationalizing efforts. This conscious dream organization was called “productive madness” by Plato. This specific state of ego control in which unconscious material is freely accessible and, in Freud’s words, rises to the pre-conscious level. The artist’s position to his work is further analyzed by Ernst Kris, who says that his work means more to the artist than the product of their labor means to other men. The relationship of the artist to his work is complex and subject to many variations. In the typical case the work becomes part of and is even more important than the self. Kris further states that in psychoanalytic terms we speak of a shift of narcissistic Kathexis from the person of the artist to his work.1 We may sense this irrational creative force and attempt to describe it, but we will not necessarily understand it, nor is understanding dependent on the pragmatic word picture. Art is its own language and as alien to words as the music language. According to Plato certain canons of beauty or imagination (both work on the same fundamental principle) are absolute, having common denominators in our associations, but we are ignorant of the laws which determine the variety of the more complex combinations. A given form may have relationships with several other objects, but double the number of objects in this unity and the relationships may be too complex to tabulate. Yet, the power to tabulate is not necessary in appreciating the beauty of this form unity, since men of common pursuit in life have the same sub-conscious registry of these objects. The perception of beauty can thus establish a community between the

Lecture given on February 17, 1947, at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, in conjunction with the exhibition Sculpture and Drawings by David Smith, presented by the college in February 1947. For his first formal lecture in seven years (no text has been found for the “lecture-demonstration” he gave at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute School of Art, Utica, New York, the previous month), Smith reused large portions of his 1940 lecture “Abstract Art in America” (see p. 33).

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perceiving and the creative mind. We meet on grounds of equality in the unconscious mind. Thus, this quality called beauty or imagination is the art language. With the exception of the literal message (the picture story) this communication or language agrees with the realist art concept, although there is a difference in degree. When we create, we create what we feel. Lesser men and especially the critics are afraid of their feelings. They are confused, they seek solace in words and words which reflect within their own limitations. They are not open to the artist concept—they seek conformity to their own. If I should attempt an explanation of cubism (now our own classic tradition) by stating that it was an effort to express the reactions of the sensibility to extreme objects in the abstract language of form—that will not account for a full understanding, nor will all the verbal accounts to this day be able to express all that exists in the concept of cubist painting and sculpture. The explanation of the cubist concept is the art itself. The tradition of American art is international as are its people, its customs, its science. There is no true American art, and there is no true American mind. Our major tradition is that of the western world, which originally had its tradition in the East. Related in all historic process is the tradition of primitive man. Art cannot be divorced from its time, place or science. It has never been dependent on, but has always been related to science. The same tools that have marked the progress of man have marked the art of man. The history of art is the history of man. In the creative sense art has been related to science, but the inverse is likewise true. Parallel to “impressionism,” was the Helmholtz and Chevreul theory of light vibrism. Daguerre, both the painter and physicist, invented the machine for producing natural images (the camera), thereby putting an end [to] hand-painted nature imitations. Art ideologies have been influenced by Darwin, the evolutionist, and his theory of natural selection, and Marx, the economist and philosopher. Paralleling our own immediate tradition have been Einstein, with the relativity space-time theory, and Freud, who has been the greatest single influence on the theoretical side of art—providing an analytical system for establishing the reality of the unconscious, that region of the mind from which the artist derives his inspiration and proclaims the super-reality which permits use of all manifest experience. Abstract art is a symbolic treatment of life, much like higher mathematics or music. Like any other art form it does not reach a homogenous audience. Art appreciation always has strata of understanding, some come close, some stay on the fringe and some pretend. Franz Boas, in the study of primitive tribes, confirms this attitude in primitive minds. They possess the same keenness of aesthetic appreciation. They accept goodness and beauty as being akin. Their enjoyment of beauty is much the same as ours, intense among a few and slight among the mass. In primitive people the readiness to accept beauty, goodness, imagination is probably greater than in our present civilization.2 Conventionalized restraint, mass conformity, false standards are propagandized by monopoly means for the sale of goods. The press, radio and movies, which are the

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chief means of cultural control in our civilization, are not operated as mediums of higher learning or the advancement of culture; their monopoly control uses these mediums for financial gain. Any culture or knowledge that seeps through is a very secondary quality. I mention this as it represents an artist’s greatest obstacle, the great mass of potential patrons whose reflexes are conditioned by false standards and static or reactionary aesthetics. The lowest common denominator is sought culturally, to sell the greatest production of goods. Possibly the present function of art is one of revolt. A revolt in aesthetic terms against the banalities of monopoly-controlled cultural standards. As truth and beauty are synonymous in the primitive mind, as beauty and imagination were akin in Plato’s statement, the modern artist’s aim is still much the same, though time, space, and historic position have changed. I am trying to point out the artist’s true position. Some of you will pursue art as a career. I wish to encourage that. Your career position is more encouraging than ever before. Always remember that you are the artist, the creator—it is your own ego that is being satisfied. It is rewarding if others understand your aim, but it is never your duty to explain it. Honest rationalizing of just one work might take years—a complete psychoanalysis of the artist’s life, an historical analysis of all art (viz., the history of man), his physical condition, his knowledge of techniques and influences directed by his materials, all his fears, his visions. Assuredly no man’s conscious mind retains it all. The result might be a twenty-volume case history of just this one picture—and it is doubtful whether this case history would help in understanding the art. The picture was made for visual reception. So, you the artist—if you are an inspired mind, if you feel that you can express something that has not been expressed before, if you are willing to lay yourself open to opprobrium and tough sledding in a wealthy country with a narrow culture—be the artist—have the courage of conviction—for you will never be happy being anything else. Notes 1.  Smith is paraphrasing from Ernst Kris’s essay “Approaches to Art,” a typed copy of which he owned; the essay was published in Sandor Lorand, ed., Psychoanalysis Today (New York: International University Press, 1944). 2.  Smith is quoting from Boas’s Primitive Art (Oslo: H. Aschehoug, 1927), a copy of which he owned.

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T H E L A N D S C A P E; S P E C T R E S A R E; S C U L P T U R E I S 1947

The Landscape

I have never looked at a landscape without seeing other landscapes I have never seen a landscape without visions of things I desire and despise lower landscapes have crusts of heat-raw epidermis and the choke of vines the separate lines of salt errors—monadnocks of fungus the balance of stone—with gestures to grow the lost posts of manmaid boundaries—in molten shade a landscape is a still life of Chaldean history it has faces I do not know its mountains are always sobbing females it is bags of melons and prickle pears

“The Landscape,” “Spectres Are,” and “Sculpture Is,” in David Smith: Sculpture 1946–1947, exhibition catalogue (New York: Willard Gallery, 1947). The three texts are reprinted here with minor corrections to spelling and punctuation errors that appeared in the Willard catalogue. These texts restore the line breaks of the typescript pages Smith sent to his dealer on February 23, 1947. In an accompanying letter he explained: “I’ve been working on your request— what my work signifies, its meaning, controls, etc. For whatever it’s worth, here it is. It is the words, notes, and thoughts which I’ve taken out of my work books and grouped under their related headings. If it’s used it must be used in whole. No excerpts or changes. It’s not explanatory to the photos and not all the sculptures. But there are parts that are related or explain as fully as my use of words can.” Smith also specified how the texts should be printed: “The statements are not necessarily related and are separated by paragraph space. They are not fancy, nor poetry but as I said, verbal working controls—and impression direction. If possible I’d rather see them in ordinary book type. I’ve lost affinity for Futura type types. Don’t forget to put 1947 and Copyright in” (Marian Willard Papers, Archives of American Art, reel 986). Robert Motherwell published his edited versions of “The Landscape” (retitled “I Have Never Looked at a Landscape”) and “Sculpture Is” in his new art review possibilities 1: An Occasional Review, Problems of Contemporary Art, no. 4 (New York: Wittenborn, Schultz, Winter 1947–48): 25.

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its woods are sawed to boards its black hills bristle with maiden fern its stones are Assyrian fragments it flows the bogside beauty of the river Liffey it is colored by Indiana gas green it is steeped in veritable indian yellow it is the place I’ve traveled to and never found it is somehow veiled to vision by pious bastards and the lord of Varu the nobleman from Gascogne in the distance it seems threatened by the destruction of gold Spectres Are

The race for survival—the capital dog Banners of Royalty with Caesarian cannon Race of stegosaurs with Queen Ann collars The chain leg of events, a thecodont’s pongee heart Saving select bound peanut bodies for the capital conception of natural selection Feed by gruel spoon to stainless held chompers Rolling bobbins trailing rotten yarns The mothers love—the asses jaw Rattling swords—judas pens Fascist mothers with voluminous vitelline vesicles Dead birds—limp curls—rascist mudball lungfish The burning bush and the chicken dinner Sculpture Is

MY year a.d. 4

God and father, moving forms, ice cream flower odors, fears

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5

praise from a grandmother for a mud pie lion



6

the spectre human headed bird, the soul of ani revisiting the body



7

the found book of nude marble women hidden by a schoolteaching methodist mother





Diana of the Ephesians





Egyptian embalmers and the sepulchral barge





women who utter cries beat their breasts tear their hair





the cuniform of Nebuchadnezzer





the fight between the monster Tiamat personification of chaos darkness disorder evil and Marduk god of light





Assyrian cuniform where water is the parent of all things—where universal darkness reigns—where gods had been forgotten





The goddess Sephet, Hapi and Neith The bright face of Shamash illuminated by the sun and the moon





Gilgamish wrestling the lion





Eabani tossing the bull





Isthar of Nineveh standing on a gryphon





the carrying of mud bricks by yoke and cord





the bald headed harpist in Thebian tomb plucking the strings of the goddess body





the dialectic of survival





everything I sought





everything I seek





what I will die not finding

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D E S I G N F O R P R O G R E S S — C O C K FI G HT 1947

In free creative design, usually only one creation exists. Industrially speaking this corresponds to the development project or the design model. Since this design, viz., sculpture, has only a visual purpose wholly based on a matter of aesthetics, there is little technical data involved in the paper or project. The use of arc welding to develop aesthetics is strictly twentieth century. My project to the best of my knowledge is the first all arc-welded sculpture to be acquired by an American museum of art. I submit it not as a project of aesthetics made for the competition but one which was made a year before the competition, using arc purely because it functioned as the best method in arriving at the desired aesthetic ends. I might say that to use arc welding for aesthetics, technical processes and knowledge must be so well absorbed that its control is subconscious or, in other words, the action must proceed on an involuntary basis. The technical procedures must flow so freely that they in no way interfere with the mind’s vision or art concept. My arc welding, as well as all other metal working processes, proceeds automatically. I expect perfection and precision from my materials—my mind is involved in the creation of form. Arc welding is a free and natural medium to me. It is the most desirable method of joining metal—here in sculpture—just as it was when I welded M7 tank destroyers and locomotives at the American Locomotive Works. My materials on this project are the same as I used on locomotives—no. 5 and no. 7 Lincoln rod and a Lincoln generator. While arc welding builds the machinery which rolls our present day industrial culture, these machines will be discarded from wear or obsolescence to be remelted for new developments. But future generations will always be able to see arc-welded signed and dated sculpture still retained in museum collections. History has been able to

Typescript of an application submitted May 26, 1947, to the annual Design-for-Progress Award program sponsored by the James F. Lincoln Arc Welding Foundation, Cleveland. The Lincoln Foundation presented more than 452 awards in 1947, totaling $200,000, to encourage the study and use of arc welding. Smith acknowledged in his application that although his paper did not fit into any category currently designated in the award program, “[the] biggest field for arc welding in Fine Art will have its outlet in architecture.” Smith cited his 1940 article for Architectural Record (“Sculpture: Art Forms in Architecture,” p. 42) and his experience working with the architect Wallace Harrison “ . . . on a World’s Fair project” (possibly a forged steel sculpture for one of Harrison’s buildings). Smith also noted Harrison’s role as director of planning for the future United Nations Headquarters, in New York City, and remarked, “I have good reason to assume that there will be arc welding sculpture used in the UN architecture.” Two days after submitting his proposal, Smith learned that it had been rejected because his project had already been completed.

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show the progressive development of past cultures by the art which represented that age. My project represents an aesthetic contribution in the collection of the City Art Museum of St. Louis purchased on art merit. The fact that this sculpture Cockfight is all arc-welded steel is the preference of the artist.1 This preference was dictated by the fact that arc welding fabrication was the most functional way of arriving at a given aesthetic end. The aesthetic standards governing the modern concept of sculpture are much the same as those of past periods: namely that there must be a perfect unity between the idea and the substance. This project is not an historic departure, for art throughout the ages has been made from the same materials and borne the same tool marks as industry and architecture. This truth is evident from man’s history through mud, stone, bronze ages, all the way to our present alloy age. But never before has sculpture had so rich and varied a selection of materials, tools, and techniques to work with. The need to survive has always been the primary motive in man. The tools for survival were naturally the first development. But the natural art instinct in man was manifest in the design and decoration of those tools. In this industrial age it is only natural that art utilizes the advance of industry. Historically it has, and herewith I present art by arc welding. The arc welding fabrication of sculpture has caused certain changes in aesthetic concepts just as it has in industrial design. The aim is no longer to imitate a casting. The art concept must be in unity with the method—a recognition of the change of forces, knowledge of the material and respect for the virtues of the method and a creative vision towards the yet unlimited possibilities which the new method has opened. I first used arc welding as a conceptual means in sculpture in 1937. As far as I know that was its first use by an artist in the fabrication of his own creative output. In the past ten years my sculpture has been acquired by the Whitney wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City,2 the Detroit Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, the City Art Museum of St. Louis, as well as by numerous art galleries and private collections. My work in this media has been exhibited in practically every museum in the United States. I have had fourteen one-man shows in galleries and museums. For ten years the Willard Gallery, 32 East 57th Street, has been my agent and dealer. Under the sponsorship of Mr. John W. Higgins an exhibition of my work consisting of thirty-seven pieces will be shown at the John Woodman Higgins Armory (Worcester Presteel Company), Worcester, Mass.3 This arc-welded steel sculpture called Cockfight is not to be considered a novelty project. The museums who buy my work and the critics who compliment it are not particularly interested in the technical process; their interest is purely that of aesthetic appreciation. Being called a modernist, an abstractionist, and admitting to an advanced conception in aesthetics, I was forced to find a technical process which functioned with the advanced art concept. I herewith submit the use of arc welding in fine art.

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Notes 1.  Cockfight (K173), signed and dated 1945, collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum (formerly the City Art Museum of Saint Louis). 2.  Cockfight-Variation (K174), also signed and dated 1945, was purchased by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, in 1946. The Whitney Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, had announced plans in 1943 to consolidate the Whitney’s collection within a new wing of the Metropolitan, plans that were abandoned in 1948. 3.  June–October 1947.

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T H E S C U L P T O R ’ S R E L AT I O N S H I P T O T H E M U S E U M , DE ALER, AND PUBLIC 1947

There are economic factors which benefit all of us, just as in any equity organization or brotherhood. The artist’s product varies according to his own individual ability. His concept and his concept-battle is pretty much an individual affair. The economic battle is much the same for all creative artists. While an artist’s work may mean more to him than the product of their labor may mean to other men, and the product may always remain his child, he seeks response from some, at least, to confirm his belief in his own work. The quest is not for total public approval, but exhibiting is necessary to reach the responsive part of the public. Exhibiting with museums and societies offers little economic salvation. In most societies and in some museums an exhibition fee is levied, which when added to the expense of packing, shipping, and insuring makes the artist pay dearly to show his child. The salvation appears to be the business contact known as the dealer. But there are not enough dealers to represent the large amount of exhibiting artists. The number of dealers is proportioned to the number of people who buy art, and not to the number of artists who need dealers. Some dealers act as patrons, often carrying non-salable artists in whom they have faith. But because they derive no income from sales, there is a limit to the length of time and the number of non-selling artists a dealer can carry. Some actually encourage the artist to new heights in his own direction. Some encourage him to meet a fancied

“The Sculptor’s Relationship to the Museum, Dealer, and Public,” in John D. Morse, ed., The First Woodstock Conference (New York: Woodstock Art Association and Artists Equity Association, [1948]), published as the proceedings of “The Artist and His World,” held at the Art Students League of New York, Woodstock, New York, August 29–30, 1947. Smith spoke on August 29. Others whose talks were published included theater director and critic Harold Clurman; the artists Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Mitchell Siporin; Hudson D. Walker, director of Artist’s Equity; art collector Milton Lowenthal; Juliana R. Force, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Heywood Hale Broun, staff writer for P.M.; and New York Times art critic Harold Devree. Smith approved his printed statement and the text of his responses during the public discussion period, as revised by him and edited by Morse, but cautioned that “when you edit, refine, temper the invectives, eliminate the caustics and inaccuracies, you remove something from the artist’s personality, which in a speech is mostly what he has—since he is neither a writer nor an historian” (letter to Hudson D. Walker, January 3, 1948). Extemporaneous comments made by Smith at the conference were quoted in Peg Hard, “Art Conference Talks Promote Better Understanding for Art,” Kingston Daily Freeman (New York), September 4, 1947, and in “Woodstock’s Big Art Conference Week End Attracts Hundreds,” Ulster County News (New York), September 9, 1947.

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public demand, or provide contacts for converting so-called fine art to advertising. Due to the odds, artists usually solicit dealers. Artists can submit work to museums, but they cannot successfully solicit sales from collectors or museums. Most dealers work on a 33 1/3 per cent plan. This means that after the dealer advertises, publishes the catalogue, mails the announcements, pays gallery help, rent, and utilities for three weeks or more, the exhibit sales must come near $3,000 to even the score. It usually costs the artist one-third or more of his sales price to produce the work. Herein sculpture differs materially in that the cost of production nears fifty per cent of the selling price. Then, too, few dealers have space or preference for it. The artist’s labor or wage is from 16 2/3 to 33 1/3 per cent of the sales price. This is not a standard used in determining art prices, but an average based on questions to both painters and sculptors. The wage per hour for art work is usually below that of organized labor. There are exceptions that exceed these figures, but these are a fair average. Even the much sought-for security of university teaching pays less than skilled union labor. Pursuant to the low wage basis of art is the museum’s archaic policy of deducting ten to fifteen per cent of the sales price of a work of art it acquires. This divine right is usually backed by some logical reason relating to the budget or what the museum does for the artist. No artist lives on sales to museums. The museum has just as much need for the artist as the artist has for the museum. This cut-rate policy can be eliminated by concerted action on the part of all artists. Museums usually buy through dealers, so add up the dealer’s one-third, the one-third or more cost of production, the museum’s ten to fifteen per cent deduction, and you have a possible 1 2/3 minimum to 23 1/3 maximum per cent margin for your labor and creation. Private collectors usually acquire work before museums. They account for the earliest and greatest number of acquisitions in the contemporary field—probably not because of greater appreciation or astuteness, but because one mind decides. Museums usually have well-informed and appreciative curators, but purchases must be approved by or solicited from the museum trustees. Whatever economic hope we have lies with state sponsorship or the private collector, especially the younger collector, who is usually of the professional class. Certain economic assistance can be gained from sculptural and mural commissions, but it is doubtful whether any great art or revolutionary concepts will be developed in their execution. Such work approaches commercial categories—pre-limits having been set by minds of less vision than that of the artist. I don’t believe in competitions unless remuneration is made for submission of entries. Exhibition prize money harks back to royal condescension. Prize money should be equally divided among the artists represented. I don’t believe in exhibiting in any museum that charges exhibition and handling fees. I don’t believe in artists’ donations to museums. I don’t believe the artist has any professional duty to the public; the reverse is the case. It is the artist who possesses the concept. It is the public’s duty to understand.

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The artist’s duty to his dealer is in ratio to the dealer’s duty to him. There are lots of inequalities to be adjusted, but on a trade-union, national basis. I believe the artist must be a socially conscious being; his obligations to society are met by his basic antithesis to vegetative life. Art is always an expression of revolt and struggle. Progressive man—progressive art—is identified with struggle intellectually and anthropologically. That is our history as artists. That is man’s history as a primate. The terms “active beauty” and “imagination” are interchangeable; they are part of the creative concept, a basis for fine art, a state disturbing to the philistine mind constantly at rest. The artist’s creative vision cannot go so far beyond the rest of the world that he is not understandable. He is limited by his time. He is dependent on the past, but he is a contributing factor to the character of his time. His effort is to contribute a unity that has not existed before. The creative artist’s access to pre-conscious thought processes coming to consciousness through his work poses a problem that is addressed to an expert audience. The receptor must to some degree be able to put himself in the artist’s place. This participation can be unconscious and free and pleasurable. If the participation is conscious during this transposition, the participant becomes a critic, in the fine sense. The public usually shows no desire to participate. There can be no understanding without interest. Ernst Kris states that no art has a homogeneous audience. The audience is always stratified in degrees of understanding: those who come close, those who remain on the fringe, and those who pretend. Boas declares, in summing up the art of primitive people, “I believe we may safely say that in the narrow field that is characteristic of each people, the enjoyment of beauty is quite the same as among ourselves, intense among the few, slight among the mass.”1 Fine art is unrelated to our finance-capital, soap opera, Hollywood culture. The instincts of aggression and self-destruction are more dominant than beauty and imagination. The creative artist’s life has always been a battle. That is progress and the continuing state of evolution. question: Don’t you feel that one reason that state sponsorship of art failed was that not enough people understood? Some awfully good work was done under the WPA art program, but there simply weren’t enough people who understood the thing. smith: There are never enough who understand, but to expect all people to understand all phases of art is impossible. Artists come from all backgrounds and types of families, have different reactions to life, and no two create in the same way, and all of it has to be represented. The government has to take a strong stand on art, the same as it does with educational phases of agriculture, science, etc. There should be a state project to encourage production of art of all kinds, and the best of its kind. The public can be helped to understand it through an aggressive program of popularization . . . .

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question ( juliana force): The New York state art program has been presented in Albany for two successive years. It has been snowed under by other legislation, but it will come into being. Don’t you know anything about the State Art Bill? It’s up to you to get it passed. I’m surprised that artists don’t know more about the bill! I am talking now about the New York state bill and not the WPA. Don’t you know its terms, history, or provisions? smith: I’d rather be judged on my work than on my memory, but I must confess that I had forgotten about our own New York bill when I was advocating a state project. My “state” was spelled with a small “s”, meaning state as the nation. My reference to state referred to nation-wide needs. Possibly some one acquainted with the New York bill can explain it. (The bill was later explained by Hudson Walker—Ed. [John D. Morse]) Note 1.  See “Lecture, Skidmore College,” p. 65, n. 2.

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T H E G O L D E N E A G L E— A R E C I TA L ; R O B I N H O O D ’ S B A R N 194 8

the golden eagle—a recital

(To be spoken only by one who is politically white yellow blue or black, who hath not touched women and who hath not eaten flesh of animal or fish) Marvel! Where was it ever before said such a thing was done Have I not filled thy temples with my spoils Have I not made thee many and great buildings of stone from far lands Are not the towers guarded by flying phallus cannon the rapists of maidens the suckers of blood the crushers of bones throughout the ages Have I not made these towers—with iron from Mesabi and Lebanon With molten glass from the heat of man’s brow the earth around With granite from Sinai With blood from the greatest gutters With obelisks from Abou Have I not lighted these wonders with tungsten from China Sacrificed virgins to bells Coolies to ore Have I not launched boats upon the sea to bring the finest of oils And into the air birds for bulbs—fragrant in bloom Have I not confounded all who resisted my designs And chastisest the foreigners, and bow their backs forever

“The golden eagle—a recital” and “robinhood’s barn,” The Tiger’s Eye 1 (June 15, 1948): 81–82. Invited in April 1948 by Ruth and John Stephan, editors of the short-lived literary magazine Tiger’s Eye, to contribute to a special illustrated section of the June issue titled “The Ides of Art: 14 Sculptors Write,” Smith composed two poems, for which he received two cents per word and Ruth’s assurances that his writing would be printed “with NO CHANGES.” Smith was also represented by his photograph of his steel sculpture The Insect, 1948 (K218). The other artists who contributed to the section were Hans Arp, Alexander Calder, Mary Callery, Herbert Ferber, Alberto Giacometti, Peter Grippe, David Hare, Jacques Lipchitz, Richard Lippold, Seymour Lipton, Isamu Noguchi, Helen Phillips, and Ossip Zadkine.

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Do I not return peaceably to the towers of stone protected by bird cannon Leaving in the four corners of the earth, the heavens and the underworld the terror of my aims And is not there a constipate dependent upon my oil. Who can say an age has passed, and I have not left my mark

robinhood’s barn

Little nodes, from big nodes spring And make great the progeny thereof Pater’s love and the transfixed gate Sold shad that should be for free Rise and shine come out of the wall By a nose approach the temple by going forth Men are vermin slithering on Sekhet’s belly Behold the staff which blossoms I am Tem the tree The might of my strength is in my hand Lonesome and blue here I stand I am the dog–headed ape in a golden palm With a golden hind, parting the curtains Looking for the tunnel to Memphis.

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5. Insect, 1948.

F O R E W O R D, D O R OTH Y D E H N E R: D R AW I N G S , PA I NTI N G S 194 8

When I first met Dorothy Dehner she had been a successful dancer, she had been to Europe and studied art for a year, and though younger, she was the most sophisticated student I had met at the Art Students League where we both were studying. Throughout our rough times and the good times, she has painted seriously, and has been my most encouraging critic. I have always intended that her career be as important as mine, whether it was in our student days when I drove a taxi or when we lived in St. Thomas, Brooklyn, Athens or Bolton Landing. In her work there are qualities of the dance, delicacies, refinements and harmonies which I greatly admire because they are so far from my own world. Certainly her painting shows the distinction of her personality and direction. And in this particular family Dorothy Dehner is the one and only prize winner in national competition. P.S. She is a fine truck driver and the best cook in the world.

Foreword to Dorothy Dehner: Drawings, Paintings, exhibition brochure (Saratoga Springs, NY: Skidmore College, December 1948). Dehner’s drawing Playground for Princes, shown in the Fifth Annual Audubon Artists Exhibition, in New York City, was awarded the Annual $100 Black-and-White Prize in 1946. Dehner (1901–94) and Smith were married from 1927 to 1952. They met in the fall of 1926, soon after his arrival in New York City from Washington, DC. At Dehner’s urging, Smith enrolled at the Art Students League, where she was studying drawing with Kimon Nicolaides. After the couple divorced, Dehner had a career as a sculptor as well as a painter, draftsman, and printmaker.

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FIFTIES

REPORT FOR INTERIM WEEK 19 5 0

Interim week should be used for museum and gallery exhibits. Revisit the Klee show at the Modern Museum.1 Include the showing of recent acquisitions on the main floor where Roszak’s Spectre of Kitty Hawk is shown. This very fine work represents some nine months of devotion, and was just recently acquired by the museum through the Pierre Matisse Gallery. Do not neglect the Modern’s movie theatre in the basement. The movie schedule including February 12 is titled “Social and Theatrical Dancing,” covering 1909 to The Red Shoes of 1948, Irene Castle, Valentino, Pavlova, Disney, Astaire, etc. Starting February 13–19, “First Films,” beginning in 1895. The Museum and the movies are open until 7 pm. The Whitney Museum, 10 West 8th Street, is showing the cross section of American painting. It is important that you know the trends and directions of the contemporary field. Included in this showing is an excellent painting by Kurt Roesch of our faculty. Of course, you should visit the Metropolitan.2 Among the galleries showing contemporary art in the 57th Street district, are Egan showing George McNeil, Sidney Janis showing both Arps, Rosenberg showing Weber, Knaths, Rattner, and some handsome big drawings by Braque and Picasso, Buchholz with Marini, Willard showing Mullican, Pierre Matisse showing Dubuffet, and Carré with a number of very handsome figure pieces by Picasso. The rest of the exhibitions are listed on the calendar in the studio, or check the listings and addresses in the New Yorker. The Titan is being shown at the Little Carnegie on 57th Street. This movie concerns the history surrounding the life of Michelangelo and is listed for you as an assignment.3 Get a student discount if you can. The intent of the assignment of last week (to be turned in the week after Interim) was to test your courage, imagination or poetic vision. The subject [assigned] to each student was different, and does not demand a photographic interpretation of reality. No matter how visionary, fanciful, or abstract a work you do, it is impossible to create that which is not a subject, or a result of images within your mind. The subject may be a result of overlapping images, associations or selections, but it is impossible to draw or produce a work that does not exist within your experience. This, then, is reality. Ideas in art change. The forward concepts represent revolt. That which already exists in art is art history. Your duty in the study of Art is to know its history, its existing

Typescript dated February 13, 1950, distributed by Smith to students in the Drawing and Sculpture Division, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, where he taught part-time from fall 1948 through spring 1950.

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concepts. Your contribution will represent a projection of your own concept, based on what is history for you. In this, progress represents revolt against the given state. Impressionism was a revolt against 19th-century realism, Cubism revolted against Impressionism, etc. Certain relevant analogies can be made in other creative fields, viz., Joyce and Stein, in literature, and Stravinsky and Schoenberg, in music, paralleling the Cubist period in painting. These concepts were always beyond the time of public acceptance. An extreme example can be da Vinci’s [Treatise] on Painting, under Expression and Character, Para. 169, How to Paint Women: “Women are to be represented in modest and reserved attitudes, with their knees rather close, their arms near each other or folded about the body, their heads looking downward, and leaning a little on one side.” This seems necessary for Leonardo, but you could no more possess this point of view than you could paint like Leonardo. Your concept relates to your time, as his did to the 15th–16th centuries. The subject of art does not need to be people, landscape or fruit. We use these for study and the control of form, and often to force your vision in totally opposite planes. Art is a means of communication not necessarily related to objects; it can represent a celebration, emotions of joy or sorrow, love or hate. It is not confined to people or fruit or even form, as such; it can be in the language of color alone, liquid or gaseous. Yet it can never depart from reality. Reality can mean memory. Memory can represent selections or common denominators from records in the mind. Your subject for art depends upon your own convictions and recall. Every human’s heritage, preferences, hates, time, place, etc., are different, causing different art convictions and expressions. Every human has some art convictions and possesses some aesthetic organization, but the artist is the one who consciously makes the record and acknowledges his intent. This I say to encourage individuality and to show why everyone in our group draws differently. For this I am very pleased, as well as with the progress each student has made. I do not demand that you be an artist, but that you pursue the study as one. For what I have said I offer you the right of debate. I cannot prove it or defend it on other than the basis of art. It is what I would have said if we had held an interim discussion. I was pleased with the Motherwell discussion Wednesday afternoon. Whether conclusive theories were arrived at was not the point. The questions and opinions were active and the session lasted twice as long as I had expected, so we can call it a success. Yet Motherwell and I both want to remind you that art is made by doing and not talking. I’ll be in the studio Friday for conference or discussion. Notes 1.  The Museum of Modern Art, New York City. 2.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. 3.  On March 27, 1957, Smith gave a fifteen-minute talk, “Sculpture in Michelangelo’s Time and Today,” at the Brooklyn Museum, New York City, as part of a special showing of The Titan for the museum’s members. No lecture text, recording, or transcript has been located.

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S TAT E M E N T, H E R A LD TR I B U N E F O R U M 19 5 0

I believe that my time is the most important in the world. That the art of my time is the most important art. That the art before my time has no immediate contribution to my aesthetics since that art is history explaining past behavior, but not necessarily offering solutions to my problems. Art is not divorced from life. It is dialectic. It is ever changing and in revolt to the past. It has existed from the minds of free men for less than a century. Prior to this the direction of art was dictated by minds other than the artist’s for exploitation and commercial use. That the freedom of man’s mind to celebrate his own feeling by a work of art parallels his social revolt from bondage. I believe that art is yet to be born and that freedom and equality are yet to be born. If you ask why I make sculpture, I must answer that it is my way of life, my balance and my justification for being. If you ask for whom do I make art I will say that it is for all who approach it without prejudice. My world, the objects I see are the same for all men of good will. The race for survival I share with all men who work for existence. If you ask of my art, what it is, I will say that it represents my best efforts and the sum total of my experience. If I divide my work of the past three years it classifies into poetry and perfidy— relating to elements I love and elements I hate.

Typescript of a statement read on March 14, 1950, at a public service seminar sponsored by the New York Herald Tribune and the New York City Board of Education. Smith was joined on the panel by the sculptors William Zorach and Richard Lippold. Organized by Herald Tribune art critic Emily Genauer, the weekly program aimed to foster an interest in contemporary art in elementary and high school teachers. Genauer explained to Smith that she invited “distinguished artists to share the platform with me, on the theory that everybody talks about art except the artist himself. . . . ” (letter to Smith, March 3, 1950). In her published report on the event for the Herald Tribune, March 19, Genauer quoted Smith’s extemporaneous comments about his sculpture Race for Survival (Spectre of Profit), 1946 (K209): “This one is a picture of hate. I cannot tell you whether these are chained legs you see, or the chain of events. I cannot tell you whether the wheels are those of Gandhi’s spinning looms, or whether they are the broken wheels of our time. The figure is a specter, or it may be an insect, or man himself, or merely the image of fear. But names are not important in sculpture. The emotional impact is, and the poetry of structure. I happen to be an iron worker, and so I use welded steel plates in my work.”

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SCULPTURE HOPES TO BE 19 5 0

not to understand nature not to ennoble its green state or mutations But within its grandeur to erect a structure with all the origins of man and his power That man of good will has been here that the man was a peaceful animal without greed, without the exploitation of others that the man with faults attempted to raise his order that his faults were unto himself and did not involve others at war or sorrow or exploitation, that this structure stated his state from a world of true values nature was not the godhead but the environment from which the mind and hand of man arose a structure that can face the sun and hold its own against the blaze and power, the heat of its lemons and its eggs It will tame nature not by burning its ores or slaughtering its woods or sucking crops for fire from its soil But by the reason of man and dialectic order

Handwritten on two pages, signed with the artist’s initials, in Greek letters, and dated, at the beginning, January 1950, and again at the end, April 15, 1950. Page 1, verso: concept drawing and detail sketches in green pencil for Smith’s sculpture Structure of a Small Concept Possessing Big Power, 1950 (K239).

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The master of the new force The force of equal men—in equal peace It is to be made not as a moat of stamped out ideas But as concepts of solids always changing It is revolt only in the making The finished view is past history the ceaseless state of evolving The dialectic of force metaforce The fire of lone voices The song that ever sings of the horizon The force and the order of man

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6. Study for Structure of a Small Concept Possessing Big Power, 1950.

NOTES ON BOOKS 19 5 0

Most of the good books on art are published in small editions—two, three and five thousand. They are soon out of print and then ofttimes double in value. When starting an art book collection, select the important ones so that they may become a part of your life and heritage. Good books and reproductions that mean something in your life will be cherished. They add to the life pattern. Books are the best investment you can make; except in the purchase of materials for your own art. Undoubtedly collecting demands sacrifice, but the establishing of true values then demands greater astuteness in selection. The following list are books that I think you should read and, in some cases, own. I asked you to buy Masterpieces of Art (25¢) for the survey of various art criticisms and as a collector’s start.1 Another pocket book by the same editor, Wechsler, called Gods and Goddesses in Art and Legend, is a mythology digest mostly based on the Iliad, Odyssey, Hesiod’s Theogony, Ovid, the Greek dramas, etc. It is well illustrated and will serve as a directive for a fuller investigation of Greek mythology. It has just now been published and twenty-five cents rarely brings more even in art reproduction. Wittenborn and Schultz, 38 East 57th Street, will give students a discount on their own publications and on others whenever possible. They publish a special bulletin on art books at reduced prices. Ask to be put on their mailing list. We have made a special arrangement for the publications of Curt Valentin; consult Miss Langer for details. I have noted especially good buys on art books at Womrath’s Eighth Street and McDougal store, the Four Seasons Bookstore, etc.2 The Four Seasons will mail you an art book list. There are several art book clubs giving 25% or more on special books. Note the introductions in art books; they are usually precise, to the point and brilliant. Drawings, etc., of black and white originals suffer very little from reproduction. In the case of color originals reproduced either in color or black and white, you will be obliged to project memory and association with the originals you have seen. The reproductions mean much more when you can recall the true original and make the association, supplying by association what is physically lacking in the facsimile. Your power of association can become great. It is a relative use of the same power used in making art. The power of understanding art in reproduction is greater by having practiced the act of making art. The development and projection of your associative power is used in both visual reception and the actual creation of art.

Typescript, dated May 2, 1950, distributed to Smith’s students in the Drawing and Sculpture Division, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York.

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The two books listed can be purchased for $2.00, one-third the published price, at the stores mentioned, and probably others. They are quite beautiful and I consider them “finds.” Pablo Picasso by Paul Eluard, Philosophical Library, N.Y. Eluard’s prose about Picasso, poems to and relating to Picasso’s time, well illustrated. Hieronymus Bosch, introduction by Howard Daniel, Hyperion. There are series of reproduction editions at low prices, such as Masters in Art Miniatures, 59¢, which contains some forty half-tones and eight color plates on artists such as Rembrandt, Brueghel, Daumier, Degas, etc. An edition of more modern painters by Fernand Hazan of Paris, published at $2.50, is reduced to $1.45 at Womrath’s Eighth Street. These are color editions covering works by Matisse, Braque, Renoir, Goya, etc. The Hyperion Press Degas is reduced to $1.98, and the Johannes editions of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Rembrandt, published at $7.50, are $2.98.3 Paul Klee, Paintings and Water Colors, 1913–1939, Oxford University Press (Sarah Lawrence Library). Introduction by James Johnson Sweeney, with notes by Karl Nierendorf. The introduction tells much about Klee’s concept, his world, its relationship to nature and the symbol world. Karl Nierendorf, a friend, tells about Klee’s life, his interests, his objects, his persecution by the Nazis, the destruction of books about him, the ousting of his paintings from German museums. Associate the reproductions in this book with your memory of his recent retrospective show,4 and the current exhibition at Buchholz [Gallery], and the book will gain in importance to you. Paul Klee, On Modern Art, Faber and Faber, London (S. L. Library). This concise and poetic group of statements on painting by Klee was the basis of a lecture given at the Museum of Jena, 1924. The book is illustrated by Klee drawings. A short and excellent foreword is written by Herbert Read. Rarely do you find an artist’s own statement matching the beauty of his concept. Klee has written very little, but it is very important. It is a book you should own, if you can still find it. I just bought the last one Wittenborn had in stock—$2.25. The Novices of Sais, Novalis, publisher Curt Valentin, 1949. Stephen Spender’s introduction explains the similarity of Klee’s interests to [those of] Novalis (Friederich von Hardenberg, 1772–1801), [and] their mutual love for the small objects of nature. The book is illustrated by sixty Klee drawings possessing kinship to the text. Klee knew and admired Christian Morgenstern and in 1919 lived in the same house as Rilke, but Novalis died seventy-eight years before Klee was born. Klee’s work has always been poetic and in a certain way musical, which was his early direction and a secondary life interest. This $4.75 book can be obtained with a 20% discount. Guernica, Pablo Picasso, publisher Curt Valentin, 1947. (S. L. Library.) Introduction by Alfred Barr and text by Juan Larrea, a poem by Eluard and a statement by Picasso. The illustrations cover the great mural Guernica (on exhibition at the Modern Museum) in all its stages and in a way the mental processes leading up to the finished work. The text is one of the best about Picasso and the Spanish war, the best in explanation of Picasso’s concept and anti-fascist position. Out of Larrea’s analysis of this

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symbolism comes the clearest and most concise understanding of Picasso’s concept that I have read. Published at $15.00 and available at $6.50 through Seven Arts Book Club. Picasso: Forty Years of His Art, Alfred H. Barr, Jr. (S. L. Library), Museum of Modern Art, 1946. A comprehensive survey of Picasso since Picasso was the founder and leading figure of Cubism. It is important as a cubist survey. Author Barr spent several years on this compilation. It is a thorough and scholarly job. After thirteen years, Picasso’s statement concerning Spain seems a prophetic warning; its basic anti-fascist context I ask you to compare to certain present-day situations in our own country. Let me quote: “The Spanish struggle is the fight of reaction against the people, against freedom. My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of Art. How could anybody think for a moment that I could be in agreement with reaction and death. When the rebellion began, the legally elected and democratic republican government of Spain appointed me director of the Prado Museum, a post which I immediately accepted. In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica, and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death.” Picasso is certainly the greatest painter of our time, and Guernica is one of his greatest paintings. Guernica is social painting of the highest order, the heritage of the cubist concept, the fiery statement of a sincere humanist, a unity of revolt against reaction both socially and aesthetically. The Cubist Painters, Guillaume Apollinaire, and The Rise of Cubism, Kahnweiler, published by Wittenborn & Schultz. (Both S. L. Library.) Both books speak about Cubism at its origin. Apollinaire poetically, Kahnweiler historically. Both are important documents relating to Cubism by participants. The excellent introductions in both books are by Robert Motherwell who, you will recall, spoke at our forum on the contemporary concept at the beginning of interim week. Both books are priced around $2.00 and carry a student discount. Henri Matisse by Roger Fry, Portfolio. (S. L. Library.) Beautifully illustrated in color with some rarely seen drawings. You should find the Roger Fry text very illuminating not only about Matisse but about painting periods prior to Matisse. Fry’s aesthetics are most sound, his opinion and understanding the best of his time. What is Modern Painting, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Museum of Modern Art. (S. L. Library.) A simple, concise but scholarly survey of modern painting, the painters and their influences. Anatomy of My Universe, André Masson, published by Curt Valentin, 1943. Note especially the lyrical quotes as chapter heads, such as the Goethe conversation [reported by] Blaze de Bury, which starts “We talk too much, we should talk less and draw more, etc.” (This should be our studio motto—and this is the reason I write this month instead of the book lecture, so you can continue during studio periods. You can now read this in some other class on its contract time—(one for which you have slighted art perhaps). To get on with Masson—note the poetic prologue containing

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Masson’s aims and approach to the art subject. It is very contemporary and to some degree is akin to other contemporaries. Note Masson’s da Vinci quote on animate nature, much closer to your own conception than the quote I gave as an analogy in a recent paper.5 Modern Plastic Art, C. Giedeon-Welcker, published [in] Switzerland, 1937. Excellent summary of sculptural directions, problems from Degas through Cubism, Futurism, etc., to Surrealism. Aesthetic history compiled as a foreword. Another volume by the same author in progress to be published within a year. Origins of Modern Sculpture, W. R. Valentiner, 1946, Wittenborn, Co. (S. L. Library). Historic survey by the well-known scholar and authority, now director of the Los Angeles County Museum. Cause, appeal, motives, etc., of the history of sculpture. Beautifully written and illustrated, $5.00—discount available. Tradition and Experiment in Modern Sculpture, by Charles Seymour, American University Press, 1949. The contemporary form concept clearly stated, with reference to its historic theme. Text is fluid, interesting, and illustrations excellent. Approximate cost $2.00. There are untold numbers of books you should have or should read. Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, the Goldwater [and] Treves Artists on Art, etc., are books you should have for history reference. Part of the way you think or are driven may be from outside philistine pressure. The misinformed public, and even your non-artist associates hammer you with false bromides like radio commercials—the true statement of the artist from the so-called Golden Age is necessary to know (viz., Artists on Art) more for defense than for the creation of modern art. An excellent book to read and then to pass on to your family or non-artist friends is The Layman’s Guide to Modern Art by Rathbun and Hayes, Oxford University Press, 1949. It will save you a lot of explanation if you meet philistines questioning your contemporary direction. I hope to have made art a life interest for you. Whether you make it or consume it, it can be an added dimension in living and understanding, a catharsis, a truth, the vision of free men. In our discussions and study, I have made no difference between the aesthetics of painting and sculpture. The use of solid form, or the depiction of it, I leave mostly to the individual’s preference. Historically both painting and sculpture have been made by the same minds depending upon their individual need of expression. Aesthetically the sculpture painting histories are parallel. Keep your best work available; we would like our last week exhibit to be notable. Notes 1.  Herman J. Wechsler, ed., The Pocket Book of Old Masters (New York: Pocket Books, 1949). 2.  In Greenwich Village, New York City. 3.  Scholarly catalogues of the drawings of each artist, authored by Johannes Wilde, deputy director of the Courtauld Institute, published in the late 1940s. 4.  At the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, December 1949–February 1950. 5.  See “Report for Interim Week,” p. 85.

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7. Sketchbook page, 1950.

T H E Q U E S T I O N —W H AT A R E YO U R I N F L U E N C E S 19 5 0

from the history of art and the myth of woman from the half of a part-chewed chicken rib cage and out of a fried salted mackerel spine the structure of August-hatched moths that come off the mountains the color of moths that blind in my arc out of Beethoven’s E flat major, opus 31 and the statement about intent he made at the time from brush marks on a wall the personages that grain pine boards the grease spots on paper the creatures in foliage the statements of nature—the underlying structure which forms the object, its whole or its parts— related by associations not yet befouled by commerce the nature of accident made by man as they fall in unity as if directed by genes and generations From Lahey’s thrust, from Sloan’s cones and cubes from Matulka’s cubist concept and aggressive inquiry from Graham’s erratic finesse from Davis’s conversations over ale at McSorley’s or Stewart’s over coffee, his caustic disdain for the stuffed shirts in our professional world, his enthusiasm for Pine Top Smith From all my friends and contemporaries Directives too come from the way swallows dart the way trees fall the shape of rocks the color of a dry doe in brown the way bark grows on basswood sprouts the head of a turtle—the vertebrae the memory of the soup it made and the 52 ping pong balls it never laid the roll of the mountains after the day’s work

Typescript, August 1950, revised from a handwritten draft in Sketchbook 40.

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on the walk from the shop to my house the way stars track from bugs and butterflies under magnification dividing to find the common denominators the antennae, body movement to shape, the joints of the legs and feet, squared by the memory of fish and the behavior of man the ecstasy of a piano sonata and black coffee at midnight the pieces finished outside the shop the piece underway—the piece finished conceptually the odds on the wall, the patterns in the rafters, the stack of materials, the tools to form it and the work to come the memory of 1 Atlantic Avenue, the odds on the wall, the ship ventilators that hung from the rafters, the rusty rows of forging tongs the banks of hardies, the forging beds, the babbitt ladles the stacks of buffalo horn the boxes of barrier reef pearl shell the baskets of pistol handles in various stages of finish and polish the rows of every revolver frame ever made, the clatter of barge fuel pumps, the backwater roll of an incoming ferry the crunch of Levy the barge oiler walking thru the cinder yard out the gate for coffee from the way the booms sling from the ropes and pegs of tent tabernacles and side shows at county fairs in Ohio from the barefooted memory of unit relationships on locomotives sidling thru Indiana, from hopping freights, from putting the engines together and working on their parts in Schenectady From everything that happens to circles and from the cultured forms of woman and the free growth of mountain flowers From no one, individually, but selections from the cube root of all in varying context

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AU T O B I O G R A P H I C A L N O T E S 19 5 0

1906

Born—Decatur, Indiana  March 9, 1906 Grade school and high school at Decatur Moved to Paulding, Ohio, in 2nd year of high school. Went to Ohio University 1924 (studying art).1

1925 Worked in South Bend, summer of 1925 Studebaker factory—riveter on frame assembly—worked on lathe— soldering jig—spot welder. Did it strictly for money—more than I ever made in my life. Worked for Banking Agency of Studebaker finance department and was transferred to Morris Plan bank in Washington D.C. Studied poetry for one semester at George Washington University because they had no art courses. Always been interested in poetry. 1926 Fall of 1926, transferred to New York bank of Morris Plan bank (called Industrial Acceptance Corp.) Studied at Art Students League—studied with Richard Lahey—academic painter, now director of Corcoran Art School. 1927 Early summer of 1927, transferred back to South Bend office and then fired at end of summer. Drove back to New York with two friends: Jerry Strauss—Paris (connected with same co.) Blanchard—Studebaker dealer in Switzerland Went to Art Students League—studied painting with John Sloan, from Sloan got a certain amount of feeling—of knowing the artist’s position as a rebel or as one in revolt against status quo—heard about cones and cubes and Cézanne from him. Studied woodcut with Allen Lewis Married Dorothy Dehner, December 23, 1927, painter2

Typescript, c. September 1950. The text as printed here retains the formatting of the original typescript, which was apparently dictated by Smith (with periodic asides by the transcriber in parentheses) and ends abruptly.1 It may have been prepared as background information for Elaine de Kooning’s “David Smith Makes a Sculpture: Cathedral,” Art News 50 (September 1951): 38–41, 50–51 (see “Notes for Elaine de Kooning,” p. 127).

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Shifted around to study with Kimon Nicolaides—drawing—“feeling for sensitivity in a line”—drove a taxi from 4:00 a.m. till noon to earn living.

1928 Free lance art work. Then in early spring of 1928 shipped out of Philadelphia on an oil tanker for San Pedro, thru Panama. Stayed for summer—returned on oil tanker to Bayonne, N.J. Free lance art work. Got job at A. G. Spalding & Bros. sports goods house—window display, etc.4 Kept up studies at Art Students League—studied with Jan Matulka— painter (student of Hans Hoffmann) “Great Awakening of Cubism”—Matulka was the kind of a teacher that would say—“you get to make abstract art—got to hear music of Stravinsky— have you read The Red and the Black—Stendhal. Language was not fluent but he was right for me at that time. Matulka was a guy I’d rather give more credit than anyone else. 1930 Was offered a job in an advertising agency. N. W. Ayer and Sons (working some nights as art editor for a magazine called Tennis, official publisher of USLTA (U.S. Lawn Tennis Ass’n) 1932 Fall of 1932 went to Virgin Islands and painted—returned to New York in June.5 Trip was probably motivated by Romanticism of Gauguin While in Virgin Islands—painted (has color photos) In the Virgin Islands I painted very seriously and very well— large and small paintings—made sculpture, stone sculpture out of chunks of sculpture—started my first interest in fish bones and broken shells, etc. Spent some time taking photos. 1933 Spring of 1933 went up to Bolton Landing, N.Y., and continued making sculpture in wood—wire—melted lead and painted constructions—wood wire stone aluminum rod (photos, coral he had brought back). Sculpture grew out of his work with Matulka in the study of textures, math[ematics], etc.—was a very lively guy—introduced us to Kandinsky, De Stijl, cubism, etc. (Still enjoys painting to paint—paints 2[00] or 300 brush drawings a year) Fall of 1933 made up some things and took them to Barney Snyder’s garage—a garage in Bolton—and welded them together. (First iron sculptures he made.) Prompted by seeing the works of Picasso, which I have been told were created jointly with González. (See 1932 Cahiers d’Art.) Constructed sculptures. Make definite outright thanks to cubism and constructivism. Gargallo—(earliest ironworking in Spanish) González—(tradition)

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8. David Smith in his studio at Terminal Iron Works, Brooklyn, New York, c. 1937.









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When I saw the liberation made by Picasso in the work, I was told González had helped him. Since I had worked in factories and made parts of automobiles and had worked on telephone lines I saw a chance to make sculpture in a tradition I was already rooted in. In fall of 1933—went back to New York and got a job again at Spalding’s— bought a welding outfit (same one I have now)—air reduction oxyacetylene welding torch—lived in apartment at 124 State Street [Brooklyn]. Fall of 1933 knew artists, were all friends and companions—Edgar Levy, Lucile Corcos, Adolph Gottlieb, Lou Harris, Lou Shanker, and others— Gregorio Prestopino. (Started working in the back room with his new welding outfit.) Things were catching fire—landlord worried about noise and fire. One Sunday afternoon we were walking on the navy pier. Down below on the ferry terminal was a long rambly junky-looking shack called Terminal Iron Works. Wife said, “David, that’s where you ought to be for your work.” Next morning I walked in and was met by a big Irishman named Blackburn. “I’m an artist, I have a welding outfit, I’d like to work here.” “Hell! yes, move in.” With Blackburn and Buckhorn I moved in and started making sculpture

there. I learned a lot from those guys and from the machinist that worked for them named Robert Henry. Played chess with him, learned a lot about lathe work from him. Between Terminal Iron Works at 1 to 12 Atlantic Ave. and George Kernan’s Saloon at 13 Atlantic Ave., I met about everyone on the waterfront in our area. Many who were very good friends provided me with metal—a kind of a nice “fraternity” down there. Enjoyed this. Those guys were fine—never made fun of my work—took it as a matter of course. In the case of Blackburn and Buckhorn—there were times when I couldn’t pay my rent—I’d go out on a ship and work with them for a few days and we’d call the rent even. (Exhibited his first paintings at the A.C.A. Gallery, when it was located uptown and was essentially a frame shop. Showed several blueprint watercolor drawings at Ferargil Galleries same year—abstract paintings.) 1934 I showed two of my iron sculptures at Julien Levy Gallery, along with several wood sculptures (big iron head). Levy asked, “This head is not stuck together with chewing gum, is it?” These were the Depression years—life was hard—taught for a short time at a Jewish Settlement house—(paid)—worked thru a very good friend, John Graham, who collected African sculpture for Frank Crowninshield. I was mounting (made bases) and helped in cataloging. Still making sculpture at Terminal Iron Works all this time. Got on public works art project Paralleled PWAP (TERA). Supervising the technical procedures on murals.6 Encouragement I got was primarily from the faith and encouragement I got from my wife Dorothy in these formative years. 1935 A very good friend, John Xceron, had a show at Garland Gallery7. After the opening we were walking down the street for coffee. He persuaded me to give up painting and concentrate entirely on sculpture—but I didn’t do this right away. I was already preparing to go to Europe on a small inheritance from my grandmother. Fall of 1935 went to Paris (one month in Paris, did some etchings in Hayter’s studio—mixed media technique, drawing objective figures but picking up technique)—went to Greece—had a studio in Athens at 28 Joseph Monferatu. Traveled over Greece—studied at American School of Archeology. (Did two sculptures which he had cast in bronze and abandoned because of poor casting.) We came back on a boat to Naples, then to Malta (enjoyed seeing Neolithic Hypogeum there), Marseille, then to Paris again. Went to London—early May—went to Sadler’s Wells Ballet and heard [Maurice] Thorez—French Communist address (couldn’t understand it) at

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an open meeting in Hyde park. Saw sculpture [in the] British Museum from Greece, Egypt. Took a Russian steamer to Leningrad and Moscow on a 21-day tour. Saw Matisse—early Cézanne—Picasso, etc., at Museum of Western Art. (When in Paris, his friend John Graham was there buying sculpture for Crowninshield. He looked up Graham’s wife and children in Moscow. She was in charge of restoration in the Byzantine Museum.) Came back to New York in July 1936. 1936 Bolton Landing in July—worked on sculpture in 1936—made Reclining Figure in a converted wood shed at Bolton Landing—welding equipment, no electricity—taking the day’s work down to Bradley’s riding stable—doing grinding and power equipment work in his blacksmith shop.8 Late fall—back to New York and Terminal Iron Works. 1937 (Pierre Matisse) Took some photos and the Reclining Figure to Matisse Gallery. Matisse said, “It looked better before you unwrapped it.” Back to Terminal Iron. (Who were [you] associated [with] and who encouraged you in N.Y. [in] 1933, etc.) Stuart Davis—John Graham—Bill de Kooning—Misha Reznikoff—Gorky I remember very strongly the Spanish War, in 1937 (Franco, et al.). I was a member of the Artists Union then (C.I.O. group) I remember an art auction in Brooklyn Heights for the benefit of the Spanish people—a lot of things were auctioned off—brought fair prices for that time. Since my work was abstract and came at the tail end of the auction it only brought $15.00 for a small figure (no photo of this piece)—all happened too quick. I didn’t have time to protest—thought, Hell! I didn’t have $15.00 to give to [the] Loyalists in Spain, so if it goes it’s ok in this case. Bombing of Guernica didn’t surprise me too much. I thought it was pretty much Capitalist Perfidity—especially the way the blockade went. I had gone to Europe in 1935 to see it before I expected it to be bombed out of existence, having read R. Palme Dutt (English writer but Indian)—had written an analysis of Fascism (a Communist.) I was very saddened at the fall of Spain but I had also witnessed the invasion of Ethiopia by Fascism and was fully aware of the Nazi penetration of Greece when I was there. Produced quite a few works in 1937—back at Terminal Iron Works again. Working for the Treasury department—surveying post offices for murals and mural installation. Hananiah Harari, who had seen my 1937 work at Leo Lance’s while it was being photographed,9 recommended me to the East River Gallery, which was

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owned by Marian Willard, and that winter (Nov or Dec) she came to my studio (57 Poplar St., Brooklyn Heights) and agreed to give me an exhibition (1st one-man show), which took place in 1938. Practically all the sculpture in that show was iron with encaustic color. Didn’t seem to arouse very much critical opinion. Martha Davidson, in Art News, did a review.10 1938 Kept working at Terminal Iron Works. Spent summer of 1938 at Bolton Landing. Continued my work on sculpture. Summer—did a group of “lost wax” bronzes—modelling and investing myself by having bronze poured in a machine foundry in Glens Falls, N.Y. (Edward Alden Jewell made a remark about one of Smith’s sculptures, “I can see no earthly reason for its existence,” in New York Times.)11 1939 In the spring I had a show at Willard-J. B. Neumann (Willard had her gallery with J. B. Neumann). Big fabrications of steel. Made my first sculpture of steel fixed in porcelain enamel—large piece—(one of these exhibited at New York World’s Fair exhibition, 1940?).12 First piece I ever sold to a collector was out of [the Willard-Neumann] exhibition—sold to George L. K. Morris—as I recall this was the only piece sold in the exhibition.13 I remember J. B. Neumann talking to Morris about it—his enthusiasm for my work, etc. Lots of dealers come to my shows. Contrary to what some artists and the general public feel—that dealers exploit the artist—so far, I don’t think I’ve ever paid a dealer for his investment [since?] 1940. One thing I remember about the WillardNeumann show was a wonderful write up by Elizabeth McCausland (writer of Sunday art page for Springfield (Mass.) Republican.14 Clement Greenberg, in The Nation, gave me a particularly complimentary review: “If Smith continues, promises to be first American sculptor, etc.”15 Sometime after this exhibition, Maria Martins (sculptor, Maria, wife of Brazilian Ambassador), unbeknown to me at the time, was influential in getting the money which was given to The Museum of Modern Art for the purchase of the Head16 . Only thing they have in their collection. 1940 Had an exhibition at Willard Gallery, at 32 E. 57th Street, on same floor with Curt Valentin’s Buchholz Gallery. From 1936, after I came back from Europe, I was impressed by Sumerian seals—intaglio concept in general—a collection of war medals I had seen in British Museum. I decided to do a series of anti-war medallions called Medals for Dishonor. Worked at Terminal Iron works by day and lived on Congress Street (near Iron Works) in Brooklyn Heights area. For three or four years I’d been working nights on this series of medallions. I was trying to cast them at Iron Works out of block tin. I abandoned all of the first year’s work on these

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medals due to unsatisfactory [results]. Did a new series—which I had cast in bronze.17 Finally I wound up by finding a jeweler to cast them for me. I remember talking to my dealer and discussing the possibility of showing these at another gallery due to their nature. My dealer, who has always been interested in my general welfare, said, OK, go ahead. Went to A.C.A., Associated American, and other galleries. Everyone liked them but no one wanted to show them. Finally had a show of these at Willard Gallery, in late 1940. War spirit had gained momentum to such an extent that it was a poor time to show them. Almost not quite ethical. Since these were on a plane which I considered to be more classical in nature and humanitarian in content, and opposed to Fascist war ideology, I still wanted to show them. I wanted a foreword written to this catalogue and after interviewing a number of people finally settled on William Blake— English writer. Showed him the work—left some of the medallions with him. He and his wife (Christina Stead, Australian writer, The Man Who Loved Children) had been very enthusiastic about them so she as well as Blake wrote a foreword, so the catalogue has two forewords. (See catalogue for texts, etc.) I remember a very complimentary review by Milton Brown in Parnassus (1941?).18 Full page in Time—(“Mr. Smith Comes to Town”).19 On the Medallions Munition Makers—cast in silver and purchased from me by Marian Willard. Whether it’s true or not, it seems to me that I’ve sold more work to critics and other artists than I have to collectors and museums. I’ve never tabulated it, but certainly I view with affection the fact that artists and critics have bought my work, because it is true that an artist not only works for himself but he also works for some audience. I would rather have the approval of other artists and critics than monetary sales reward. Maybe this is a rationalization but since it seems that that’s about all I have, I naturally like it best. Probably relates to my belligerence against collectors, rich people, museum people, etc. Had a show (of the Medals) at Willard—enthusiastically received—never sold a one. Very few of these medals owned. I had hoped to make 10 copies of each one. Several years later, Joseph Hirshhorn (New York collector) bought three, Jan de Graaff bought one (horticulturist from Gresham, Oregon). Brooklyn pediatrician who was a friend of Edgar Levy bought one (get name)20—gave one to Christina and Bill Blake, and traded one to Eliot Elisofon (check spelling with Millman)21 on Life magazine staff, for doing photographs.

1942 In 1940 I had been successful in making the electric co. give me light service to Bolton Landing house. Thru REA forced them to bring electric service into our area and since their fee for bringing the line into the house, which was 600’ off the road—I built a studio down on the road—cut my own poles and strung my own wire. Designed and made this studio (on an industrial factory type). Was in debt for the building, new icebox, car, and a truck. Figured I better get a job—so I went down to Schenectady to employment office—hired on as a welder—got stuck with the graveyard shift. This new studio I had built, I had christened the Terminal Iron Works—partly because the change in my particular type of sculpture required a factory more than an “atelier.” Partly because I had already established credit thru the terminal iron works in Brooklyn and because I had become the Terminal Iron Works after Buckhorn had sold out the equipment and gone to work for a government agency. The last year I was in Brooklyn, until spring of 1940 when I moved up to Bolton, I was the Terminal Iron Works—Buckhorn’s father was the Terminal Bone and Pearl Works, since he had also sold his name along with his business in Lower Manhattan. Buckhorn senior had made ivory, bone, pearl objects of every nature. He was a craftsman of the old school—at present time he was making revolver handles and caviar plates out of Australian pearl shell. We got along well—made tea together on the coals of a potbellied stove— I worked at the locomotive plant—we lived in an attic on McClelland Street, in Schenectady. Went up to Bolton Landing every weekend we could. During the war, I managed to make a few pieces of iron sculpture and finish some bronze sculptures, and when I was thru work at the factory—at 8:00 a.m.—I would drive 2 or 3 days a week, 40 miles to Saratoga to the monument works of Mallery & LaBrake, where I carved marble for six hours. Drove back to Schenectady and got to bed—got up at 11:30 for mid-night shift. These were hard and dull days for Dorothy and took a lot of faith and a lot of dependence entirely for the future. About once a week I would get my sleep over in the day and we would drive to Saratoga for a night session—get a model to pose in a friend’s studio—just to keep drawing and to maintain my identity as an artist. Learned much about polishing and cutting from Papa Buckhorn. He had the front end of the shop and I had the rear, where the old forging beds were—we both worked quietly and seriously and productively. When I went to Schenectady I found it very difficult to make art when physical labor was so strenuous—many of the days were 12 hours and ofttimes we were involved with rush orders for narrow gauge steam engines for Africa and rush orders of tank destroyers for the same place.

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I had been rejected by the army [due to] sinus trouble and the only consolation of the seven days a week and the twelve-hour days was the tools and equipment that the money would buy for my own sculpture making as soon as this was over. While I was in the factory I was rated by army ordinance as a lst class armor plate welder. Also was recommended to the Chinese government as an artist to design medals for the Chinese army, and at the request of T. V. SOONG’S division, China Defense Supplies, I submitted some drawings and was chosen to do the commissions. By this time I had been transferred to the cylinder shop in the locomotive works and was on the swing shift. A number of times I had gone to Washington, D.C. in the morning for conferences and was back in the locomotive works, welding the main steam line without missing more than 2 hours of my shift. Stayed at this job until after VJ day, when the factory went on a 5-day week. I left on a layoff and didn’t go back.

1944 Immediately, I started making sculpture. Worked on my studio—finish work and finished the floor—together Dorothy and I designed a house, which we decided to build. I was able to sell enough timber off the place to pay for the house, and with our savings I bought the materials and stacked them in the field to make a block-type, functional, steel-and-cinder block house. 1945 Had worked diligently on sculpture and in summer of 1945 I was living and working alone because Dorothy had moved to New York City. 1946 Had so much work that it couldn’t show at Willard Gallery alone so my dealer (Marian Willard) arranged a joint show with Curt Valentin, of Buchholz Gallery. This was a retrospective—most of the early work in Willard Gallery and recent work in Buchholz Gallery. Dr. William Valentiner did the foreword. Good acceptance—good sales. (Who bought what?) Whitney Museum bought Cockfight-Variation, made from drawing. City Art Museum of St. Louis, Cockfight. It so happened that I had a small drawing in my book on Cockfight. One day I picked up a piece of metal that had been cut from another sculpture. Its grace and rhythm suggested my drawing. I don’t go to cockfights, but fighting roosters are raised by my friends in the hills and meets are regularly held near Saratoga. I found the metal piece suggested the tail feathers of a fighting cock, so I proceeded to make the rest of the rooster in relation to the piece of metal.

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Also the rooster with which it was fighting. When it was finished I found it in no way was related to the cubic structure which my drawing originally had. So still having an interest in the subject as I had conceived it, I went ahead and did another cockfight based on the drawing and called it #2, Cockfight-Variation. Dealer Henry Kleeman bought a sculpture—The Ancient Household Note—the year before (1945) the writer Victor Wolfson had bought a sculpture from Curt Valentin, Woman Music  In this year I made Jurassic Bird—etc. (see catalogue) 1947 Show of the work I had done in 194622 Notes 1.  When the text was first published in Cleve Gray, ed., David Smith by David Smith (London: Thames and Hudson, 1968): 24–33, it was annotated with extensive notes and comments by Dorothy Dehner. 2.  Smith also enrolled briefly at Notre Dame University, Indiana, in the fall of 1925. 3.  Dehner and Smith were married December 24, 1927. 4.  A. G. Spalding sporting goods store. 5.  Smith and Dehner traveled to the Virgin Islands in October 1931 (not 1932); they returned to the United States in late May 1932. 6.  The Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) (1934–42) was one of several federally sponsored art programs created under the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which was established in 1935 as replacement for the Temporary Emergency Relief Act (TERA), created in 1933. 7.  Jean Xceron was a Greek-born American painter who lived in Paris during the late 1920s  and early 1930s. His first one-man exhibition, at Garland Gallery, New York City, opened in March 1935. 8.  Smith was probably referring to K48 or K49. 9.  Smith made several sculptures titled Reclining Figure in the mid-1930s; Reclining Figure, 1935 (K40) and Reclining Figure, 1936 (K49), are visible hanging on the wall in a photograph of Smith’s Bolton woodshed taken c. 1936–37. 10.  “Sculptural Essays in Forged Metal by David Smith,” Art News 36, no. 18 (January 29, 1938): 15. 11.  Edward Alden Jewell, in “WPA Art Display Opens Here Today” (New York Times, March 23, 1938), actually wrote: “I cannot, however, deplore in terms too strong the ghastly ‘torso’ in iron by David Smith.” 12.  Smith exhibited Blue Construction, 1938 (K79), in the 1939 New York World’s Fair exhibition, American Art Today. 13.  Smith refers to Bi-Polar Structure, 1938 (K78), exhibited in David Smith, Neumann-Willard Gallery, March 25–April 15, 1939. 14.  “David Smith’s Abstract Sculpture in Metals,” Springfield Sunday Union and Republican (Massachusetts), March 31, 1940. 15.  “If he is able to maintain the level set in the work he has already done . . . he has a chance of becoming one of the greatest of all American artists,” in Clement Greenberg, “American Sculpture of Our Time: Group Show,” The Nation 156 (January 23, 1943): 140–41. 16.  Head, 1938 (K82); formally accessioned by the museum in 1943. From 1952 to 2016, nine more sculptures entered the museum’s collection (one as a fractional and promised gift).

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17.  Lead casts (as well as bronze casts) exist of Study for Propaganda for War, 1939 (K110), and Untitled (Preliminary Version for Study for Propaganda for War), 1939 (K111). K95–K109 were cast in bronze; K97 was also cast in silver. 18.  Milton Brown, “Three American Sculptors,” Parnassus 12, no. 8 (December 1940): 36–37. 19.  “Mr. Smith Shows His Medals,” Time 36 (November 18, 1940): 57–58. 20.  Dr. J. E. Milgram, an orthopedic surgeon, purchased Reaction in Medicine, 1940 (K106), directly from Smith. 21.  The painter Edward Millman, a friend of Smith. 22.  The sculptures Smith cites in his discussion of 1946—Cockfight-Variation, 1945 (K174), Cockfight, 1945 (K173), The Ancient Household, 1945 (K166), Woman Music, 1944 (K163), and Jurassic Bird, 1945 (K182)—were included in The Sculpture of David Smith, exhibition catalogue (New York: Buchholz Gallery [Curt Valentin] and Willard Gallery, January 1946).

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W H AT I B E L I E V E A B O U T T H E T E A C H I N G O F S C U L P T U R E 19 5 0

Summary

Historically both painting and sculpture have been made by the same minds depending upon their individual need for expression. Aesthetically their histories are parallel. The art concept can only be known by following the path of the creator who conceives it, not by the analysis of the critic or the words of art history. Art is better understood by artists who make art, because the process of making gives the understanding directly without translation in word language. Art or art appreciation is best taught by encouraging its doing, that the irrational creative is experienced by direct use, and does not depart from its own visual language. Art suffers when translated into words. There are a number of fields that are important to the artist. Anthropology, such as various studies by Boas, explains the mind of primitive man, early cultural traits, emotional associations, and points out the fundamental sameness of mental processes in creative expression. Writing as related to art would include Joyce, especially Finnegans Wake, where the language of words functions creatively much as form associated in the artist’s visual language. Psychology, as it explains the function of the creative mind. The development and projection of associative power as it functions in both visual reception and actual creation. Psychology and anthropology, as they join in explaining the myth of man. The myth of the hero—the recurring myth—as it relates, controls and reoccurs in the creative art field; as it aids in identifying the inner stream [of the] artist’s myth. I would teach art by developing fluency of form perception and depiction first. The student should be so fluent in drawing that it is his language. He should first of all know contemporary concepts, because that is his most important world, the world he

Typescript for a lecture presented on October 27, 1950, for a panel on “The Teaching of Sculpture,” Midwestern College Art Conference (with the Ohio Valley Art Conference), held at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, October 26–28. Smith’s lecture text is printed here preceded by the summary he submitted in advance of the conference. The other speakers on the panel were the moderator, art historian Justus Bier, University of Louisville; artist Hugo Weber, Institute of Design, Chicago; and the sculptors Erwin Frey, Ohio State University, David Rubins, John Herron Art Institute, Romuald Kraus, University of Louisville, Robert Laurent, Indiana University, and Marvin Martin, University of Illinois.

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lives in. His identity to the past will be better understood by knowing where he stands in the present. Art is a language of its own. It is not divorced from life. It is ever-changing, and in revolt to the past. Do not forget that it has existed in the minds of free men for less than a century. Art, like the ever-changing state of freedom, has yet to be born. Music must be included, it transmits audio relationships that are akin to the artist’s creative form directives. I could cite Schoenberg in this instance. Lecture

I make no separate provision for the cause of sculpture from painting. The preference governing actual material is personal. The concept in either art comes from the expression of emotion and thought. The difference in technical pursuit does not change the mind’s reaction to form. Accent on any aesthetic difference is the prerogative of the layman. In my own case, I don’t know whether I make some pieces as painted sculpture or paintings in form. After the fluency of drawing is attained, and the will to produce an aesthetic result, certain technical activities must be introduced. For the feeling of form develops with technical skill. The means for fulfillment must be provided strictly on the individual’s need. Imaginative form will not develop with the acquisition of skill or high technique. But, at a point in student development one piece in bronze is worth more than all books and all teachers. The filing, finishing, patining of a rough bronze to completion is a maturing point. There is probably not a college city in America where decent casting cannot be obtained if the problem is planned. I do not demand that all students be artists, but I would insist that they study that way. I would emphasize the artist’s position in society, the influences and traditions and the world in which the student must fight for survival. I would direct him to literature, music, anthropology, wherein these fields presented aesthetic stimulation to complement his own work. I would tell him the limits of his audience and that his world is no different than the world for any man of ideas, nor for that matter relatively no more different than the artist’s world for the past hundred years. But to point out the need let me quote Boas, “No people known to us, however hard their lives, may spend all their time and energies in the acquisition of food and shelter—nor do those who live under more favorable conditions, and who are free to devote to other pursuits the time not needed for securing their sustenance, occupy themselves with purely industrial work or idle away the days in indolence. Even the poorest tribes have produced work that gives them aesthetic pleasure—and those whom a bountiful nature or greater wealth of invention has granted freedom from care, devote much of their energy to the creation of works of beauty.1 There is a need for art. The artist has a social obligation, as well as his own ego satisfaction to produce to the fullest extent of his ability. It is society’s duty to make the

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effort to understand before it takes an active prejudice. At present he is confronted with a limited audience and a hostile majority, especially with all the excuses found to be anti-intellectualist amid social upheaval and perpetual war. To the majority there is no need for art on the basis that creative art is produced. We live in a hypocritical world. Our ideologies are only pretentions. We are afraid to be serious, introspective or contemplative. Everything must jump, joke, quickly change scene. Our words in the hands of advertisers have lost their meaning. There is still an innate natural sense of beauty in all people. Aesthetic pleasure is released by natural forms, the song of a bird, the flow of a landscape, the formation of clouds, the roll of water; various natural phenomena all possess aesthetic value, but it is not art nor is the imitation thereof, in diminution or enlargement, art. Television and Technicolor may even supplant this natural sense of beauty. But the artist will still state his truth. The artist re-projects the vision in his mind, he possesses it. The vision represents the sum total of his experience. It is part myth, part dream, part reality. It shows the state of inspiration which Plato termed productive madness. Every swipe of the brush, every stroke of the chisel, every segment applied in construction, is a revisualization, a finality, a simplification of reordered reality, to a symbolic level. Ernst Kris states that “productive madness” is a specific state of ego control in which unconscious material is freely accessible and in Freud’s own words “rises to a pre-conscious level.”2 The subjective experience is that of a flow of thoughts or images driving towards expression in word or shape. We may sense the irrational creative force and attempt to describe it, but we will not necessarily understand it. Certain canons of beauty or imagination, which work on the same fundamental principle, are absolute, having common denominators in our associations, but we are ignorant of the laws which determine the number and variety of the most complex combinations. For example, one form may give rise to a number of relationships. Two forms may raise the relationships to powers too complex to tabulate. Yet the tabulating power is not necessary in appreciating two forms in relationship since men of common pursuit have the same sub-conscious registry of those two objects. The perception of beauty can thus establish a community between the perceiving and the creative mind. We meet on grounds of equality in the unconscious mind. The student of art comes with a call. The underlying directive may be from various motives. He may be directed to art by the opportunities to express sublimations, gratifications, substitutions, constructions or destructions. His impulses do not differ from those of other productive men who follow the same general principle. He is like the clergyman, the prizefighter, the poet, the scholar—the odds are terrific against financial respectability, yet since the ego is greater than the promise of riches, these brothers, men with the call, will always be with us. Despite the retrogressive society, art, artists, and particularly the avant garde are increasing. Apathy has bred an extremely hardy lot in America. Greenberg states: “Painting was freed from sculpture by impressionism. Sculpture was freed from the monolith by cubism.”3 The freedom of man’s mind to celebrate his

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own feeling by a work of art parallels his social revolt from bondage. I believe the time now is the greatest time in the history of man to make art. It is the only world I know, it is the only one I can live in. Notes 1.  Boas, Primitive Art (see “Lecture, Skidmore College,” note 2, p. 65). 2.  Kris, “Approaches to Art” (see “Lecture, Skidmore College,” note 1, p. 67); Smith paraphrases a quote from Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism (New York: Knopf, 1939), a copy of which he owned. 3.  Clement Greenberg, “The New Sculpture,” Partisan Review 16, no. 6 (June 1949): 637–42.

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T H E F L I G H T PAT H S O F B I R D S M O T H S I N S E C T S 19 5 0 – 51

the flight paths of birds moths insects of a paper scrap in a high wind

the letters left behind on burnt paper what left snow behind—the depth by wind and dip of land the shade of tree—or man-made shelter who threw boards on a river-planted pile this is the truth of mounds the distance of many miles or what the eye sees at a hundred paces or the size of a hummock big enough to stand on or the pile made by ten handfulls or a fresh baked oatmeal cookie or is it who sees it or are dimensions in common yet mostly they are—thru whose eyes

the cobweb the one snow left between grass beds the water pool on ice lakes what controls the direction of wild rice grass rising in promise—listen the growth of each stem bent by weight the nature of element destruction and placement or do I find the interest by form transference identity with my own twists and breaks

Three handwritten texts, late 1950 or early 1951, Sketchbook 40: 100.

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N O T E S —WAT C H A T O R N S H E E T c . 19 51

Notes— watch a torn sheet of tissue paper, roll over and form in shifting winds a bass wood sprout the green undercoat grows so fast it breaks the brown outer layer— force—energy—of growing things white birch it writes a musical score before it dies there are no colors or forms that are bad to the artist that lies in moral ? association—

Handwritten, on a fragment of paper, c. 1951.

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W H AT H A P P E N S T O B A R N YA R D G R A S S 19 51

what happens to barnyard grass when it emerges from snow and takes on the characteristics of the shower the horse the manure falls which nourish it on a warm January 19, 1951 day hay tufts emerge from snow cover possessing all the vertical and bent structure natural and the envisioned lines of all female positions known—all the thrusts of lines all the curvature of forms

9. Sketchbook page, 1951.

Handwritten and illustrated, dated January 19, 1951, Sketchbook 33: 15.

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F O R E W O R D — ( A P O L O GY O F A J U R Y M A N) 19 51

In the celebration of a free mind, with an occasion of importance whether it is with prejudice or preference, man has produced the forms of sculpture and painting. The sculptural form has historically been dominant because it more closely in dimension approximated the original. The coloring of carved form was a supplementary factor in the identification of the object. The gradual substitution of indicated form for actual form imprisoned the painting concept until its scientific release by Helmholtz, its pictorial release by the invention of the camera, its conceptual release by impressionism. It is only a transitory state, but painting has flown to new conceptual heights leaving the sculptors grounded as visionaries. It is also evident that painting is more abstract physically (by one dimension), requiring a symbolic visual representation of form instead of its golden christian imitation of actuality. Whether it is the space-cost problem of sculpture, or the vision limitations of ancient fragment aesthetics, or the monolithic concept, sculpture is not soaring. Yet the concept of sculpture, painting, is not based on a different standard of aesthetics or impulses. The function of the creative mind is the same for either dimension. The artist exists at his own time definitely stationed in the art stream; that which has flowed up to him is history, and his possession. His position, the only one in which he can possibly exist, requires his vision to project beyond; never behind. I appreciate your confidence as a fellow worker and juryman. I can but truly judge for myself. Here, I have selected with the experience and understanding of only one prejudiced man. And what I state about sculpture, I say to myself before I express it to you.

“Foreword—(Apology of a Juryman),” Corcoran Gallery of Art Bulletin 4 (February 1951). Smith juried the sculpture selection of the Fifth Annual Area Exhibition, Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC, January 28–March 4, 1951. Smith’s handwritten text is dated January 9. It may also have served as the basis for the informal slide lecture on his work, titled “For Whom Do You Make Sculpture,” that he presented at the Corcoran Gallery on the same date. Together with eighteen abstract expressionist painters and nine modernist sculptors, Smith had signed a public letter to Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, president Roland L. Redmond in May 1950, which characterized the museum’s choice of jurors for a national painting exhibition, planned for December, as “notoriously hostile to advanced art.” Smith later wrote to art critic Emily Genauer about the controversy and summarized his own standards as a juror: “I [try] to be democratic, just to the academy— primitives, etc. I do my best to academic (and what I consider sincere honest work) concept—yet it is far from my nature—I admit to more possible errors than a man whose concept, affinity, and knowledge come naturally” (undated letter, late 1950, Emily Genauer Papers, Archives of American Art).

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NOTES ON SE VEN SCULPTURES 19 51

Song of the Landscape

celebrating the beauties the ribs of lost ships—the flow of furrows, the flow of geometric objects down rivers and roads (notes on scales) the movement thru buildings of flora in the landscape The Cathedral

the historic view of an oppression object still existing the long claws of the background coin the murals the skeletal sacraments on the dais, etc. the prostrate bodies on the steps The Fish

at Whitney see program the relationship to the Hesperornis1 the first fish who flew inversely—the form relates to man The Forest

the transposed bird heads to the trees the poetic relationship of this to catches and ratchets in machine movement but the prime object being a poetic landscape basically

Handwritten on the backs of seven photographs taken by Smith of six sculptures dating from 1950 (K237, K229, K231, K232, K235, and K236) and The Fish, 1950–51 (K230); he sent the photographs to New York Herald Tribune art critic Emily Genauer on February 22, 1951. Genauer quoted from Smith’s descriptions in her NYHT review (April 1) of his one-person exhibition at Willard Gallery, New York City, March–April 1951, which included the six sculptures completed in 1950. The Fish was shown in the Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Sculpture, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, March–May 1951.

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The Letter

the universal letter any letter Biddy Doran’s (the little hen) letter she scratched up (Finnegans Wake) which said “you sent for me.” all letters say you sent for me the letter by vision and not by word The Sacrifice

symbols of universal sacrifice—the 7 pillars of the cause for early periods of present periods of changes in period object—unjust need for in both times 17 h’s

the symbol relationship like Y’s necessary before the subtle repeats could be used in The Forest and The Letter painted steel Note 1.  Among the photographs Smith ordered from the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, was one of a fossil skeleton of Hesperornis regalis, a prehistoric flightless diving bird.

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P R O G R E S S R E P O R T A N D A P P L I C AT I O N F O R R E N E WA L OF GUGGENHEIM FELLOWSHIP 19 51

I would like another productive Guggenheim year, to complete a two-year program. I want to have this two-year project exhibited at an important museum. If this cannot be accomplished, I will try to show the collective two years at the Willard and Buchholz Galleries jointly, as I did in my ten-year retrospective showing.1 I feel that this maturity and impetus will help me start to sell work or establish a position that will lead to a teaching job. Accomplishment I

The first nine months to date have been the most fluent and productive period of my career. Completion in this time of thirteen works, all in metal, several six feet in height, one being a four-figure group,2 the others larger and with more conceptual depth than previous work, makes it almost a certainty that I will complete the eighteen or more works as planned in the twelve-month period. Completion of thirty full-page drawings in ink and color (some in the color slide exhibit). All relating to sculptural concepts for continued work. Four of these drawings are shown now at the Willard Gallery group show, four are included in an exhibition at the University of Iowa. Nine fellowship pieces will be shown at the Willard Gallery, March 27 to April 21.3 One six-foot piece called The Fish will be exhibited in the Sculpture Annual at the Whitney Museum, March 15, 1951.4 The May issue of Art News will carry an article by Elaine de Kooning, on the various stages involved on the fellowship work, The Cathedral, the method, the concept, the studio, the intent, and a general evaluation of my career.5 I sold one work, netting $333.00, from the Museum of Modern Art Exhibition for the year of 1951—none for 1952.6

Typescript, “Progress Report for Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship 1950–51” and “Application for Renewal for 1951–52,” February 27, 1951. As early as 1929, Smith expressed his intention to try every year for a Guggenheim Fellowship. His first application, probably submitted that year, requested a grant to spend a year painting in Italy and southern France and was rejected; his second application, in 1940, was also rejected. Finally, in May 1950, Smith received a one-year Guggenheim Fellowship, which was renewed the following year. Smith inscribed “G,” “G1,” or “G2” on a number of the sculptures he completed during his grant years.

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10. David Smith, printed exhibition brochure (New York: Willard Gallery, 1951).

Accomplishment II

Explanation of aesthetic intent (as it relates to the new directions shown in 21 Greek Y’s, 18 h’s, 39 birdheads, etc.).7 Before letters, consequently words existed, the artist sculptor made symbols of objects. The depictions of objects were identity memories that came purely from the artist’s mind. The pragmatists later made words and to this day turn these symbols against the artist by demanding the “what does it mean” explanation, when the formation all along was of the artist’s origin and represented a statement requiring only visual response and association. This premise I relate to research in Cuniform, the Sumero-Akkadian style of writing and other Mesopotamia Valley cultures, the origins of Chinese writing, [and] my own interpretations of Polynesian symbol writing or records. This has not been scholarly research or scientific, but romantic, an interest of relaxation from labor, but like every influence in an artist’s life—interprets into his own creative outlook. In these sculptures I have sought object identity by symbols, demanding the return to symbol origin, before these purities were befouled by the words. I have used repetition, and rearrangement, for visual acceptance only. I mean them to be accepted by the tenets of art appreciation, requiring no code or especially trained response other than the love of art. I was trained in the Cubist world concept, but before I could read had pondered over Cuniform. My first conscious interests were the illustrations in the Bible of Cuniform, which impressed me more than the word language when I later learned to read. I have always been more Assyrian than Cubist. The other works, The Forest, The Fish, The Letter, Song of the Landscape, etc., carry out my mainstream concept in celebration of the beauties, from my own point of view.8 Accomplishment III

As far as I know I am the first American to work sculpture direct in steel and like materials. My first one-man show was at the Willard East River Gallery, in New York, showing works of 1935–36–37.9 During the next ten years I had thirteen one-man shows at the Willard Gallery, and with Minnesota’s University Gallery, Skidmore College Gallery, Olivet College Gallery, Albany Institute of Art, Munson-Williams Proctor Institute, etc. During this time my work has been shown in almost every museum in the United States and included in [exhibitions in] Hawaii, Canada and Porto Rico, and in numerous traveling exhibitions.10 In small towns without museums, my work has been shown in libraries, clubs and halls, under the sponsorship of the American Association of University Women’s

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clubs, from coast to coast.11 Typical were towns such as Glens Falls, New York, Terre Haute, Indiana, Santa Fe, New Mexico. This traveling exhibition is now in its third year. (Explanatory data to the exhibiting branches of AAUW is attached as well as a transcript of Columbia’s KVSF, on discussion of my work.)12 Included in “The Ten Best Shows of 1946,” and listed in “Four to Lead 1946,” by Art News.13 Cited as the leading American sculptor by Milton Brown, in Magazine of Art, and Clement Greenberg, in The Nation and Horizon (London). (This data with photo albums.)14 Included in the permanent collections of the Whitney, the [Museum of] Modern Art, Detroit [Institute of Art], [The City Museum of] St. Louis, etc., as well as in private collections.

Accomplishment IV

Since the ten-year retrospective show at Buchholz and Willard Galleries, in 1946, a specific account of showings has not been kept. As an example, I submit my dealer’s report for 1948 showing seventeen different exhibits. Have won no prizes, scholarships or awards. Have maintained same dealer’s interest since 1937, not by sales but by dealer’s faith. My only sales for 1949 were both to other artists: Robert Gwathmey (painter) purchased Low Landscape for $200 direct; Gina Knee (painter, Mrs. Alex Brook) purchased House in Landscape through dealer, for $750.15 Dealer’s interest netted $250 for the year, my income was $700. My expenditure for sculpture for 1949 was $2178, partly met by teaching sculpture at Sarah Lawrence College ($1,900). However, this is my last year at the college, being only a substitute teacher.

Plan for Work

On the basis of completed work, I hope for continuance for 1951–1952. A. Five works (steel) related to letter symbols (Greek Y’s—18 h’s, etc.).16 B. Ten works following poetic sculptural interpretations (such as The Forest, Star Cage, etc.).17 C. Three lost wax process bronzes (purchased 225 lbs. pig bronze before priority). D. Sixty 19 × 25 inch drawings (studies for sculptural work). E. Fourteen steel-plate etchings, 12 × 14 to 15 to 16 inches in size (editions to be printed outside). All preliminary development work, aesthetic and manual, has already been done on four plates. The essential abstract forms are sawed out of steel plate, then etched, engraved, hammered, chiseled, etc.—whatever is necessary for form requirement—the individual parts then welded to a bed plate before printing.

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Reference Note

A, B, C projects require steel and bronze, much of which is in stock and as the Terminal Iron Works receives quotas from steel suppliers, this project will not be curtailed due to lack of material. Reference Note

D and E: Metalworking is hard and dirty. Sometimes I like to clean up at night, pursue lighter work. D and E projects represent lighter work, evening work, and are only to be considered as supplementary. Plan for Work

My notebooks are full of sketches for work to be done. By the number of shows and some two hundred works to date, you can see that my work is steady, only time is needed. I ask for your faith in my statement that I will produce twenty sculptures in this year. Maybe it will be eighteen, or possibly thirty, like I did in 1946. In any event it will be serious. I average twelve hours a day at work. It is my way of life. My workshop is in Bolton Landing. The tools and materials for work are available here. Both my peace with the world and my materials are located in this area. It is where I can work best. Extra Activity

I ordinarily cannot take part in relatively unpaid activity, but under the fellowship, participated in the following: Third Woodstock Art Conference, Woodstock, New York [1950]. Panel Chairman for “Exhibitions and Juries” session. Midwestern College Art Conference, Louisville, Kentucky [1950]. Delivered paper on “A Contemporary Sculptor’s Concept.” Corcoran Regional Exhibition (sculpture juror). Lecture with slides of 1950–1951 fellowship work, entitled “For Whom Do You Make Sculpture,” [1951]. Wrote forward for Corcoran catalog.18 American University, Washington, D.C. Lecture with slides of 1950–1951 fellowship work, entitled “A Sculptor’s Concept.” In this lecture slides were shown of work from 1933 to 1951.19 Miscellaneous notes

The fellowship fund was supplemented by one sale of $333.00 net, of a work entitled Billiard Player 20 to Roy Neuberger, from The Museum of Modern Art exhibition. This was the only sale during 1950 and 1951.

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Purchased Rolleiflex camera and exposure meter. Recorded in color over 100 works from 1933 to 1951. (Please refer to slides for projection accompanying application material.) Purchased a 4 × 5 inch Busch Pressman camera with tripod, for recording work and consequent 8 × 10 inch enlargements (accompanying this material). Due to my isolation it seemed necessary to purchase the camera, for shop record and for publicity. Notes 1.  The Sculpture of David Smith, Buchholz Gallery (Curt Valentin) and Willard Gallery, New York City, January 1946. In April 1952, Willard and Kleeman Galleries, New York City, cosponsored an exhibition of sculptures and drawings done during his Guggenheim Fellowships. 2.  The Forest, 1950 (K231). 3.  The sculptures, all from 1950, exhibited at Willard Gallery were Star Cage (K238), 36 Bird Heads (K240), Twenty-Four Greek Y’s (K241), Song of the Landscape (K237), Sacrifice (K235), The Cathedral (K229), The Forest (K231), 17 h’s (K236), and The Letter (K232). 4.  The Fish, 1950–51 (K230). 5.  The article did not appear until the September 1951 issue of the magazine. 6.  For the years “1951” and “1952,” read 1950 and 1951. In 1950, The Billiard Player, 1945 (K169)— exhibited in Carvers, Modelers, Welders: A Selection of Recent American Sculpture, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, August 2–September 10,1950 (the exhibition traveled nationally to spring 1953)— was purchased by Roy R. Neuberger; when Smith wrote his renewal application, he had not yet sold any works in 1951. 7.  Smith’s sketches and photographs show that he incorporated varying numbers of lettered elements in these sculptures, completed in 1950, over the course of their evolution. This may explain why he misstates here their final titles. 8.  Works from 1950–51; K231, K230, K232, and K237. 9.  David Smith: Steel Sculpture, East River Gallery, New York City, January–February 1938. 10.  Twentieth-Century Sculptures and Constructions, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, (organizer), traveled to the Honolulu Academy of Arts in 1941. Exhibitions of Smith’s work in Canada and Puerto Rico during these years have not yet been identified. 11.  The AAUW exhibition, David Smith, traveled from 1946 to 1952; it comprised mainly enlarged mounted photographs of Smith’s work and a small number of sculptures. 12.  An interview between the radio and magazine writer Beatrice Chauvenet and Alfred Morang about Smith’s work was broadcast on The Artist’s Hour, KVSF, Columbia Broadcasting System’s outlet in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on April 26, 1947. No audio recording or transcript has been located. 13.  “Vernissage,” Art News 45 (January 1947): 13, and “Four to Lead Off ’46: Expressions in Forged Steel by David Smith,” Art News (January 1–14, 1946). 14.  Magazine of Art 39 (April 1946): 138, 166; The Nation 162 (January 23, 1946): 109–10; and Horizon 16, no. 93–94 (October 1947): 20–30. 15.  K205 and K181. 16.  In addition to Twenty-Four Greek Y’s, The Letter, and 17 h’s, from 1950 (see note 3), Smith used letter forms in two more sculptures: The Banquet, 1951 (K246), and Letter to Australia (Australian Letter), 1953 (K259). 17.  See note 3. 18.  See “Foreword—(Apology of a Juryman),” p. 116. 19.  No text has been found for this lecture. Smith spoke at American University the same day he gave a talk at the Corcoran Gallery of Art; it seems likely that he used the same lecture, giving them different titles, for both events. 20.  See note 6 above.

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A N D S O T H I S B E I N G T H E H A P P I E S T— I S D I S A P P O I N T I N G 19 51

And so this being the happiest—is disappointing the heights come seldom—the steadiness is always chewing the gut—seldom without a raw spot—the times of true height are so rare some seemingly high spots being suspected later as illusion—such being those contacts with people wherein elation comes related to or in dependence with others—the worth of existence is doubtful but if stuck with it—seems no other way but to proceed—the future—the factory or the classroom both undesirable yet possible at present but in 20 years neither will be open—and my cause may be no better—can I change my pursuit—not, and have even this much all of which I should be happy with—and nothing has been as great or as wonderful as I envisioned—I have confidence in my ability to create beyond what I’ve done, and always at the time beyond what I do—in what do I lack balance—ability to live with another person—that ability to have acquaintances—and no friends—what degrees make the difference—or am I unable to give what it takes—apparently I don’t know what it is or is it illusion in middle minds—it would be nice to not be so lonesome sometimes—months pass without the acquaintance even of a mind—acquaintances are pure waste—why do I measure my life by works—the other time seems waste—can the measured life by work be illusion—yet this standard seems farthest from illusion of any measure—and the way it stands much is lacking—and a certain body time tells that it can’t be had, if it didn’t come by now and so much work yet to be done—it comes too fast to get it down in solids—too little time too little money— why can’t it stay as vision—for who else do I make it? the tensions from piling obligations—the goddamned ringing in my ears—the fucking lonesomeness—which is not only physical but mental—where did I miss in growing or is everybody else that way and lying to themselves with illusions—and that’s no help to me the hole in my gut gnaws. I can live till May, yet what impends—why do I have to shit when I know it would only be guts—if I walk 15 miles thru mountains looking for Finnegan1 I’m

Handwritten, probably in early 1951, on two sheets of paper taped into Sketchbook 40: 151, 153. Smith’s references to May may allude to the end of his first yearlong Guggenheim Fellowship (May 1950–May 1951) and his hope for its renewal. Smith and his first wife, Dorothy Dehner, separated in late 1950 and divorced in 1952. A letter she wrote to him in early 1951 may be a response to this text: “Your paper is quite beautiful, and quite scaring. It contains all the contradictions and conflicts and indications of events that have put us where we are now. . . . If you want to be alone, and if friends and acquaintances are not one of the fine things of life, then it is no wonder that even an intimate companionship like ours could not hold and sustain its value to you . . . But this paper is the closest you ever came to expressing and facing your outlook” (Dorothy Dehner Papers, Archives of American Art, reel 298).

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exhausted enough to want to rest and the mind won’t—enjoying nature is only occasional and not complete enough—but more so than artificial stimulations of jazz & bop and beer which race along without the mind and leave me feeling cheated—I hate to go to bed—to stay alive longer—I’ve slipped up on time—It all didn’t get in—the warpage is in me—I convey it to the person I live with—where do I find it to change— do I like it that way, am I glad it’s too late—some yes some no—would financial security help—or why cannot part security till May be some appeasement. Note 1.  Finnegan was Smith's dog.

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N O T E S F O R E L A I N E D E KO O N I N G 19 51

I follow no set procedure in starting a sculpture. Some works start out as chalk drawings on the cement floor, with cut steel forms working into the drawings. When it reaches the stage that the structure can become united, it is welded into position upright. Then the added dimension requires different considerations over the more or less profile form of the floor drawing assembly. Sometimes I make a lot of drawings using possibly one relationship on each drawing which will add up in the final work. Sometimes sculptures just start with no drawing at all. This was the case of The Fish, which is some six feet high and about five feet long. My drawings are made either in workbooks or on large sheets of linen rag. I stock bundles of several types, forgetting the cost so I can be free with it. The cost problem I have to forget on everything, because it is always more than I can afford—more than I get back from sales, most years more than I earn. My shop is somewhat like the Federal Government, always running with greater expenditures than income and winding up with loans. For instance, 100 troy ounces of silver solder costs over $100, phos-copper costs $4 a pound, nickel and stainless steel electrodes cost $1.65 to $2 a pound, a sheet of stainless steel 1/8-inch thick × 4 feet × 8 feet costs $83, etc. When I’m involved aesthetically I cannot consider cost, I work by the need of what each material can do. Usually the costly materials do not even show as their use has been functional. The traditions for steel do not exist that govern bronze finishes, patinas or casting limits. There are no preconceived limits established, as for marble, the aesthetics of grain and surface, or the physical limits of mass to strength. Direction by natural grain, hand rubbing, monolithic structure, or the controls of wood do not apply physically or traditionally to steel. Steel has the greatest tensile strength, the most facile working ability, as long as its nature relates to the aesthetic demand. It can join with its parent metal or other property or color materials or act as a base for metal deposition, paint, or its own natural oxide, which is only one oxygen atom less than the artistic range of iron oxides. I have two studios. One clean, one dirty, one warm, one cold. The house studio contains drawing tables, etching press, cabinets for work records, photos and drawing paper stock. The shop is a cinder block structure, transite roof and full row of north

Typescript, spring 1951. Written for Elaine de Kooning and quoted extensively in her article, “David Smith Makes a Sculpture: Cathedral,” Art News 50 (September 1951): 38–41, 50–51, in which she describes the fabrication of Smith’s painted steel sculptures The Cathedral, 1950 (K229), and The Fish, 1950–51 (K230).

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window skylights set at a thirty-degree angle. With heat in each end it is usable to zero weather. I do not resent the cost of the best material or the finest tools and equipment. Every labor-saving machine, every safety device I can afford, I consider necessary. Stocks of bolts, nuts, taps, dies, paints, solvents, acids, protective coatings, oils, grinding wheels, polishing discs, dry pigments, waxes, chemicals, spare machine parts, are kept stocked on steel shelving, more or less patterned after a factory stockroom. Sheets of stainless steel, bronze, copper, aluminum, stocked in 1/8 inch × four feet × eight feet, for fabricating, cold and hot-rolled four foot × eight foot sheets are stacked outside the shop in thicknesses from 1/8 inch to 7/8 inch. Lengths of strips, shapes and bar stock are racked in the basement of the house or interlaced in the joists of the roof. Maybe I brag a bit about my stock, but it is larger since I’ve been on a Guggenheim Fellowship than it ever has been before.1 I mention this not because it has anything to do with art, but it indicates how important it is to have material on hand, that the aesthetic vision is not limited by material need. By the amount of work I produce it must be evident that the most functional tools must be used. I’ve no aesthetic interest in tool marks, my aim in material function is the same as in locomotive building, to arrive at a given functional form in the most efficient manner. The locomotive method bows to no accepted theory in fabrication. It stands upon the merit of the finished product. The locomotive function incorporates castings, forgings, rivets, welding, brazing, bolts, screws, shrink fits, all used because of their respective efficiency in arriving at a functioning object. Each method implies its function to varying materials. I use the same method in organizing the visual aesthetic end. I make no claim for my work method over other mediums. I do not use it to the exclusion of other mediums. A certain feeling for form will develop with technical skill but imaginative form, viz., aesthetic vision, is not a guarantee for high technique. I handle my machines and materials with ease—their physical resistance and the noise they make in use do not interfere with my thinking and aesthetic flow. The change of one machine or tool to the other means no more than changing brushes to a painter or chisels to a carver. I do not accept the monolithic limit in the tradition of sculpture. Sculpture is as free as the mind, as complex as life, its statement as full as the other visual mediums combined. I identify form in relationship to man. The front view of a person is ofttimes complete in statement. Sculpture to me may be one-two-three-four sided and top view since the bottom by law is the base. Projection of indicated form, continuance of an incompleted side, I leave to the viewer, or the suggestion of a solid by lines, or the vision of the forms revolving at given or varying speeds, all such possibilities I consider and expect the viewer to contemplate. When such incompletions are evident usually there are directives which can enable the viewer to complete the concept with the given form. The art form should not be platitudinous, predigested with no intellectual or emotional demands on the consumer.

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When I make sculpture all the speeds, projections, gyrations, light changes are involved in my vision, as such things I know in movement associate with all the possibilities possible in other relationships. Possibly steel is so beautiful because of all the movement associated with it, its strength and function. Yet it is also brutal, the rapist, the murderer, and death-dealing giants are also its offspring. But in my Spectre series, I speak of these things and it seems most functional in its method of statement.2 Since 1936 I have modeled wax for single bronze castings. I have carved marble and wood but the major number of works has been steel, which is my most fluent medium and which I control from start to completed work without interruption. There is gratification from being both conceiver and executor without intrusion. A sculpture is not quickly produced, it takes time, during which time the conviction must be deep and lasting. Michelangelo spoke about noise and marble dust in our profession, but I finish the day more like a greaseball than a miller. But my concepts still would not permit me to trade it for cleaner pursuits. Distance within the work is not an illusion, it relates to the measure known as inches in most of our considerations. Inches are rather big monotonous chunks related to big flat feet. The only even-inch relationship will be found in the sculpture base, wherein the units four-six-eight-twelve, etc., are used in mechanical support. Rarely will an even inch be involved in visual space, and when it is approached it will occur plus or minus in variants of odd 1,000ths, odd 64ths, 32nds and 1/16ths. This is not planned consciously, not important, but my natural reaction to symbolic life. Unit relationships within a work usually involve the number seven or division of its parts. I wasn’t conscious of this until I looked back, but the natural selection seems influenced by art mythology. My work day begins at 10 or 11 a.m. after a leisurely breakfast and an hour of reading. The shop is 800 feet from the house. I carry my 2 p.m. lunch and return to the house at 7 for dinner. The workday ends from 1 to 2 a.m., with time out for coffee at 11:30 p.m. My shop here is called the Terminal Iron Works, since it closer defines my beginning and my method than to call it “studio.” At 11:30, when I have evening coffee and listen to WQXR on AM radio, I never fail to think of the Terminal Iron Works at 1 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, and the coffee pot nearby where I went, same time, same station. The Iron Works in Brooklyn was surrounded by all-night activity—ships loading—barges refueling—ferries tied up at the dock. It was awake twenty-four hours a day, harbor activity in front, truck transports on Furman Street behind. In contrast the mountains are quiet except for occasional animal noises. Sometimes Streever’s hounds run foxes all night and I can hear them baying as I close up shop. Rarely does a car pass at night, there is no habitation between our road and the Schroon River four miles cross-country. I enjoy the phenomenon of nature, the sounds, the Northern Lights, stars, animal calls, as I did the harbor lights, tugboat whistles, buoy clanks, the yelling of men on barges around the T.I.W. in Brooklyn. I sit up here and dream of the city as I used to dream of the mountains when I sat on the dock in Brooklyn.

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I like my solitude, black coffee and daydreams. I like the changes of nature, no two days or nights are the same. In Brooklyn what was nature was all man-made and mechanical, but I like both. I like the companionship of music. I sometimes can get WNYC but always WQXR, Montreal, Vancouver or Toronto. I use the music as company in the manual labor part of sculpture, of which there is much. The workflow of energy demanded by sculpture, wherein mental exhaustion is accompanied by physical exhaustion, provides the only balance I’ve ever found, and as far as I know is the only way of life. Of course I get rides on. When I’m working I get so wound up with work that sleep doesn’t come and I work through to three, four, five o’clock in the morning. This I did back in Brooklyn. All my life the work day has been any part of the twenty-four, on oil tankers, driving hacks, going to school, all three shifts in factories. I once worked in a bank but cannot stand the routine life, any two-thirds of the twenty four hours are wonderful as long as I can choose. After 1 a.m., certain routine work has to be done, cleaning up, repairing machines, oiling, patining, etc. I tune in WOR and listen to Nick’s, Cafe Society, Eddie Condon’s, whoever is on. After several months of good work, when I feel I deserve a reward, I go to New York, concerts at the YMHA, gallery shows, museums, eat seafood, Chinese, go to Eddie’s, Nick’s, Sixth Avenue Cafeteria, Artists Club, Cedar Tavern, run into late-up artists, bum around chewing the fat, talk shop, finish up eating breakfast on Eighth Street, and ride it as hard and as long as I can for a few days, then back to the hills. Sculpture is a problem. Both to me and to my dealer, the Willard Gallery. Aside from sales, the problem of transport and storage is immense. The intrinsic cost ofttimes is one-half its price, and never less than one-third. Only a few serious dealers handle it, some museums and a few collectors buy it. As dwelling space contracts, the size and concept of sculpture increases. I foresee no particular use, other than aesthetic in society, least of all in architecture, but demand was never the thing that made art in our period of civilization. Sometimes I work on two and possibly four pieces at one time, conceptually involved on one, conceptually in abeyance on another, waiting for relationships to complete, and on one or two others finished but for a casting to come from the foundry or grinding, finishing and a few hours of manual labor waiting to be done. Sometimes it’s only a matter of mounting, weighing, measuring, and naming, such detail work fits in the schedule when the muse has gone. I maintain my identity by regular work. There is always labor when inspiration has fled, but inspiration returns quicker when identity and the work stream are maintained. Actually, time overtakes much of my projects. I get only half of my vision into material form. The rest remains as drawings, which after a certain time growth I cannot return to because the pressing demand is the future. I have no organized procedure in creating. The Fish went through from start to finish, with a small drawing in my work book during its middle stage. The Cathedral matured from start to finish with no drawings. Usually there are drawings, anything from sketches in pocket notebooks to dozens of big sheet paintings.

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Notes 1.  See “Progress Report and Application for Renewal of Guggenheim Fellowship,” p. 119. 2.  War Spectre, 1944 (K162); False Peace Spectre, 1945 (K176); Spectre Riding the Golden Ass, 1945 (K189); Race for Survival (Spectre of Profit), 1946 (K209); Spectre of Mother, 1946 (K210); Spectre Riding a Headless Horse, 1951–52 (K280); and Spectre, 1953 (K302).

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THE JOINT IS FOUL WITH SMOKE 19 51

the joint is foul with smoke time out for a piss and a smoke I see dragons in the clouds sabre-toothed pickerels more strange than ancient gorgons more illogical than a pterodactyl distant winds and time, changes the terrors to soft shapes to pickerel’s angles or toad’s double dyes scrambled egg angels possessing ball sacks of spawn to lay in rings around the moon

Handwritten, dated April 21, 1951, Sketchbook 40: 111.

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S K E T C H B O O K N O T E S: T H E R E D O F R U S T; T H E M E TA P H O R O F A S Y M B O L ; T H E P O S I T I O N F O R V I S I O N; R E A D I N G 19 51– 5 2

The red of rust has a higher value to me than antiquity relationship. It is the metal of terra rasa, ochre, Indian red, the mars group, etc. It is the order of time—natural destruction, oxidation. It is intrinsic growth—four parts rust are two parts iron two parts oxygen. Its susceptibility to this eventual theoretic destruction is the means by which it is refined—and most easily controlled to shape (oxyacetylene cutting). It is the red of the east’s mythical west. It is the blood of man, it was pre-culture symbol of life. It is the cheapest metal. It conceptually is within the scale of my life. And most important, before I knew what art was I was an ironworker.

The metaphor of a symbol—the symbol of a symbol of a symbol—and in a chess game—how many plays ahead can you realize—

The position for vision has undergone changes. The canvas is a flat—a mile or two up—earth’s surface depth doesn’t seem important—the importance becomes pattern—the importance of nature pattern in relation to man-made pattern from boundaries made by early work—relationship of work to area—the roadways the drainage—the untillable—how big a bite can a man take can he manage more with machine—change areas lines overlaid yet from the upper view the old lines of eighty years ago still show—under soft snow the delicate lines of erosion— the force of wind and solidifying action in ice— the overlap—the dark open water—the trapped snow—arrowheads

Reading—the language of words—the first time of review external distraction or full application—understanding the reading—the first feeling of anticipation is not complete unless each word, idea, reference and the allover pattern

Four handwritten texts, late 1951–early 1952, Sketchbook 40: 169, 170, 173, and 175. The first three texts are unused portions from an early draft of Smith’s lecture, “The Modern Sculptor and His Materials” (see “The Modern Sculptor and His Materials,” p. 156).

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assimilated as one complete surge of creative force—in retrospect is thoroughly felt— following the same path the author tracked in creating index references, prologue, introduction—how many times of reading rereading—of pain & love with the technics—to complete the flow of ideas. Will an author’s work suffer any condensation—the removal of one word—

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S K E T C H B O O K N O T E S: M U S I C; T H E C L O U D; S PA C E; A N D I N T H E B E S T O F S Q UA R E S 19 51– 5 2

Music elevation for visual rhythms—emotives of my own forms—rolling moving coming until they form the image which stabilizes and is the eidetic an origin—crystallizing all the moves and the forms— not the way it was composed

The Cloud at 11:20—while taking a piss The floating body with the Chimeric head of a bird and a star for a belly button— the legs float out into the tails of a nightshirt all the fold pieces are individual entities with their own attributes unrelated to clouds but related to pebbles on a beach—gallstones in a bladder—curd in a sour mash—soft like begonia petals gently moving to be drawn to sugared taffy The eye moon floats out of the night trap the star moves to kneecap the bird head turns to pickerel the nightshirt rolls and falls the nude body of begonia scales trails milky spawn The moon has moved to the eye of a snarling tiger and I wonder how many of my Chinese friends are killed tonight in China Oct 18—1951

Space—the distance from the object—the ground level of vision The position of the artist—10,000-ft level the vertical view of landscape the new study of terrain

Four handwritten texts, October 1951–early 1952, Sketchbook 40: 187, 189, 196, and 198.

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the shape of terrain form man made and as man laid—for generations pure cultivation— the underlying form by glacial cause changes by fire & force before the plow seen in flash time under our own floating shadow not for copy but for memory the April beauty of true color before it’s struck with green no shading so delicate as the gradations of muck and loam chiaroscuro never showed greater contrast or more subtle identity the roads of man in square mile bites—the greed of a walk the sorrow of winter loneliness—and mud week (spring) laid in squares—no two alike hundreds of squares—and squared tilling tilling and then one dares to plow circles

and in the best of squares a flooding circle

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LECTURE, WILLIAMS COLLEGE 19 51

I wish to remind you of the hypocritical world that art enters—one Pulitzer Prize poet stated that “vitamins and profits alone are not worth dying for. . . . The republic was founded and preserved by men and women who frankly acknowledged themselves dependent on God.” I find poet Hillyer a dreamer.2 I find such noble concepts to be the pretense of our people with their practice nowhere near the pretense, as in the case of most stated American glories: freedom, equality, the Ten Commandments, the Bill of Rights. Belief is belied by compromise and contradiction in behavior. It is all too evident, the bastardization which materialistic enterprise has inflicted upon both culture and spiritual response by its control of communication media. Truth, as it relates to the republic and its democratically elected officials, is a qualified theorem in the eyes of the average man. The poetic use of words has been ruined by commercials. That one hour, in a hundred, on the radio when classical music is presented is cut and graded for the purpose of softening the audience preparatory to the commercial, a mollifying delivery of quarter truths. The type of classical music played is important here; it must be familiar, and, as Virgil Thomson has pointed out, one of a standard repertoire of fifty symphonies.3 A contemporary classic, such as a Schoenberg composition, is not a safe or suitable introduction to a soothing commercial. Hence the value and necessity of universally accepted symphony music to the world of sponsors, whose choice ultimately sets the limits to what is called in the trade our listening pleasure. It is no wonder that, when the artist speaks with what he calls truth, the audience, accustomed to censored digests and synthetic catharsis, views it as a foreign language. Art divorced from commercial persuasion, having little dollars-and-cents value, is regarded with suspicion. People wanting to be told something, given the last word, will not find it in art. Art is not didactic. It is not final; it is always waiting for the projection of the viewer’s perceptive powers. Even from the creator’s position, the work represents a segment of his life, based on the history of his previous works, awaiting the continuity of the works to follow. In a sense, a work of art is never finished. My concept as an artist is a revolt against the well-worn beauties in the form of a statue. Rather I would prefer my assemblages to be the savage idols of basic patterns, the veiled directives, subconscious associations, the image recall of orders more true than the object itself, resulting in vision, in aura, rather than object reality.

Lecture, on December 17, 1951, at Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts.1

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No two people see the same work of art because no two people are each other. No two people see the same apple, or pear, because a pear is not a pear except in theory— when seen, a pear is an image. It is red, green, hard, soft, juicy, rotten, falling, rolling, segmented, sweet, sour, sensuously felt. A pear is a violin, a pear is a woman’s hips. Pear and violin have strings, woman has hair. Pear and woman have seeds, violin has notes, soft violin, hard woman, sweet woman, sour notes—associations can go on indefinitely only to show that a fruit can only exist as an eidetic image because it cannot exist in reality without associations. If a painter paints a pear, the beholder’s mind can select and experience the desired action in a flash. The depth of association, hence the more complete the image in this recognition flash, is dependent upon the will of the beholder. The response to pear varies greatly, depending upon what comes through after censoring, and so it is with the response to art. Neither perception of a pear nor perception of a painting requires faculties beyond those of an average man. Perception through vision is a highly accelerated response, so fast, so complex, so free that it cannot be pinned down by the very recent limited science of word communication. To understand a work of art, it must be seen and perceived, not worded. Words can be used to place art historically, to set it in social context, to describe the movements, to relate it to other works, to state individual preferences, and to set the scene all around it. But the actual understanding of a work of art only comes through the process by which it was created—and that was by perception. In perceiving I believe all men are equal. The mind records everything the senses experience. No man has sensed anything another has not, or lacks the components and power to assemble. That which censors out an individual’s response is apparently a preference but not a lack of power. The eidetic image art of the cave man, 30,000 years ago, was reality. The directives of my work come from reality. My reality, like the pear analogy, is not one thing; it is a chain of interlocking visions, arises from environmental patterns, such as things seen under an old board, stress markings, the structures in growth, spilled paint, patched sidewalks, cracked plaster, frost, snow between hummocks, the lines in marble laid by glacial sedimentation. These are all realities to be used in vision, projected, used as common denominators, transformed in analogies, or as keys to contemporary celebrations. The creation of known forms or symbols, related or associated, into a new image not existing before does not exclude it from [our] understanding since it must come from reality and similarly from common subconscious registry. There is nothing secret, mystical or restricted, precious or holy. Art is to be seen. Notes 1.  Published with the title “Perception and Reality,” in Garnett McCoy, ed., David Smith (New York and Washington, DC: Praeger, 1973); no source for the title was given. (All three of Smith’s typed drafts for the lecture are untitled.)

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2.  Robert S. Hillyer was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1934. His articles in the June 11 and 18, 1949, issues of the Saturday Review of Literature condemning the decision to award the 1948 Bollingen Foundation Prize for Poetry to Ezra Pound for his Pisan Cantos fueled a controversy that led the Library of Congress to end its support for the prize. 3.  The composer Virgil Thomson, in his essays as longtime music critic for the New York Herald Tribune (a newspaper Smith read regularly), frequently criticized the New York Philharmonic’s overreliance on a standard and familiar repertoire—the “fifty pieces”—as a business strategy to attract audiences.

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PROBLEMS OF THE CONTEMPOR ARY SCULPTOR 19 5 2

Last month the Metropolitan Museum sponsored its first contemporary sculpture show.1 My New Year’s Eve turned out to be mostly a rehash of what went on at the Met, since I happened to have been on the jury of admissions. I heard plenty for and against the show, which was variously described as too modern and too conservative. Between midnight and breakfast I attended four artists’ parties. The discussion in each place was so enthusiastic that I forgot both the food and wine. I had been working very well up in the mountains near Lake George, but decided to leave my pea soup and home brew for smoked turkey, champagne and festivity. Instead, I chewed the fat about art and specifically sculpture the whole evening, mostly the pros and cons of sculpture, the Met show and our future. My own opinion of this show, after spending three twelve-hour days with 1100 entries, is that the chosen 101 entries now set up in the Met’s Great Hall are indeed representative of American sculpture today. For at the moment sculpture has not escaped its tradition. Brancusi excepted, the twentieth century dawned with the sun shining on the painters. Matisse and Picasso are sculptors as well as painters. But where will you find sculptors who have contributed to my aesthetic heritage like Cézanne, Kandinsky and Mondrian? Thus I concede that the vision of painters has outstripped that of sculptors temporarily. The creative world is riding fast and painting happens to be the more fluent medium. This is evident when comparing the work of both Picasso and Matisse. Another reason may be the great impetus painting took since Impressionism. No longer in bonds, the painter’s concept has leaped away from its many centuries of mooring to the sculptured chiaroscuro. In the first evidence of art, 15,000 to 30,000 b.c., the cave man made no division between painting and sculpture. Although there are no evidences of each being produced separately, the most formal and seemingly important works represented the image depicted in the most complete statement possible, the painted incised mural. The sculptured painting, the painted sculpture. Throughout the Egyptian dynasties, Chinese, Mesopotamian and other Eastern archaic periods, including early Mediterranean and Archaic Greek, a color unity existed with the sculptured form. This parallel likewise applies to the great primitive cultures of Africa and Oceania existing since Typescript, lecture on January 23, 1952, at the Detroit Institute of Arts; one of a series of “Five Evenings of Art with the Metropolitan Art Association” (November 1951 to April 1952). The other lecturers were Philip C. Johnson, architect and chair, Department of Architecture and Design, the Museum of Modern Art, New York City; art dealer Sidney Janis; Andrew Ritchie, director, Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA; and the architect, theorist, and inventor R. Buckminster Fuller.

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the Christian era but flourishing independently and out of contact with Christian influence. The separation into two media relates somewhat to the Christian era. The classic Greek and the second Parthenon made the most noticeable break towards independent sculptural form. Although painting was independently reborn along with the Christian era, its chiaroscuro modelling still shows that it paid homage to sculptural form. We have both the word of painters from the twelfth century on, as well as the visual evidence in works. The early revolt against modelled form by Impressionism, the subsequent release of modelled form by both Fauves and Cubists, now grant the painter unparalleled freedom. In fact this freedom today is accepted as tradition. Though sculpture was once the great and dominant power, under the Christian era it continued to grow limited both in concept and material. The bronzes were dead, the marbles white, the concepts often monolithic, often dealing with rarities influenced by fragments preserved or found from classic times. This led to the degeneration, especially noticeable when the sculpture was from the sculptor’s own hand and mind, and not the product of commission from church or state. Both the time element in the actual making and the high cost of material have been and still are factors of sculptors’ low output and consequent lack of scope and fluency. The socio-economic position of the contemporary sculptor is much the same as the contemporary painter. He is a pedestal sculptor as the painter is an easel painter. Architecture, once a mother to both, recognizes neither. The sculptor today speaks what he calls the truth by his own conviction. But here he must work with a size which he can manage, and one which he can afford. This fact may explain the virtual disappearance of the heroic concept in sculpture. But his vision is not directed by church, state or any group. He celebrates his own beauties and comments upon his own ideas of injustice. His habitat, social position, welfare and joys are much the same as those of common men. Aesthetically the contemporary sculptor feels only the limiting law of gravity upon his vision since he must deal in material form. His vision is no longer bound to classic fragments, portraits or the monolithic concept, nor is it limited to marble and bronze. Plastically, he is more related to pagan cultures, with aesthetic directions in Cubism, Constructivism and Surrealism. Modern tools and methods permit the expression of complete self-identity from start to finish. His work can show who he is, what he stands for, in many different ways and with all the fluency he desires, for every step is his own. His identity, pattern and goal are shown in a qualitative unity, an integration stated in a manner not open to mind or hand before. He, like other creative minds today, speaks as an individual without conscious directives or controls from an external authority. But with this freedom he also must foot the very expensive bills to put his ideas into solid form. If his technique does not hinder his vision, his wealth of unconscious response is as great as his draftsmanship. This is, I believe, a specifically mid-twentieth-century privilege, as long as he knows the tools and materials of his time.

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His feeling for natural constants such as gravity, space and hard objects is closer to his medium and can flow more freely into realization than in any other medium. These constants or premises needing no translation make sculpture more immediate for visionary action. He is one dimension closer to vision than the painter. If there can be a conscious premise for the future concept of sculpture, I believe it will be on this basis. The stream of time and the flow of art make plain that no matter what the sculptor’s declaration or individual vision he cannot conceive outside his time. His creating takes place in dialectic order. The flow of art and the time of man still place him within his own period, out of which he cannot fly, and within which all other men exist. For no object he has seen, no fantasy he envisions, no world he knows is outside that of other men. No man has seen what another has not, or lacks the components and power to assemble. If there is a key to understanding, it is simply that sensory power called perception, possessed by everyone, used constantly but in varying degrees. If the artist can speak clearly—but not on the popular assumption that he is ahead of his time—I believe it is impossible for him to produce an imperceptible work. When it seems so, it is usually because the beholder censors his own response and minimizes his natural sense of perception. There are a thousand reasons why the beholder will not exercise his perceptive power in full projection to attain the state known as “pleasurable experience.” Words are limiting. In primary school, where the child’s reaction to perceptual response and projection is most free, the order of education makes suspect any experience which is not explainable in words. The pragmatists who rule set these limits for their own ease in grading, for reports, statistics, graphs. Throughout the educational system, reasons by words are sought to explain artistic excellence, perception, visual experience, though words for these do not exist, because the response is made by a totally different, sense, a thousand times faster, a thousand times more knowing than the recently mastered medium of words. If in analogy, art is the bush, then words can only beat around it. Words from the anthropologist can in part explain the past use of art in man’s progress. Psychologists can in part explain the mind’s function in some art motives, the dream visions, as symbolic modes but they cannot account for artistic excellence. Philosophers may discourse about artistic truth but their conclusions neither make art or make art understood. Critics may analyze to the full extent of word power, state their preferences, make opinions, but still they do not explain perceptual response or the creative irrational. This must come direct, through vision. All the words merely encircle art, for it took vision to make it and only the power of perceptive vision can receive it. I cite this to conclude that the creative process, the aesthetic so natural and free in all of us in early life, becomes inhibited by externals [and] must be learned again. The understanding of art and the creative process is a battle against constant and powerful opposition.

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11. Hudson River Landscape, 1951.

Art is not didactic. It is not final. It is always waiting for projection by the viewer. From the creator’s position the work represents a particular stage in his life, based on the time, environment, art of the past, the history of his own works, and even then shows the dependent continuity of works to follow. In this particular sense a work of art is never finished. But in another sense projection by the one perceiving it can bring it to completion. In my own work I maintain that I deal with realities. These realities are my own choice and are never one, or exist alone. Although the point of departure may be identifiable, the trip it takes in the mind, its attributes, its associations are still within the orbit I choose to call reality. For instance, a recent work called Hudson River Landscape started from drawings made on the train between Albany and Poughkeepsie, a synthesis of drawings from ten trips going and coming over this seventy-five-mile stretch. On this basis I started a drawing for a sculpture. As I began, I shook a quart bottle of India ink, it flew over my hand, it looked like my landscape. I placed my hand on paper and from the image this left I travelled with the landscape to other landscapes and their objects, with additions, deductions, directives which flashed past too fast to tabulate, but whose elements are in the finished sculpture. No part is diminished reality, the total is a unity of symbolized reality, which to my mind is greater reality than the river scene. Is my work, River Landscape, the Hudson River, or is it the

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travel, the vision, the ink spot, or does it matter? The sculpture exists on its own, it is the entity. The name is an affectionate designation of the point prior to travel. My objective was not these words, or the Hudson River, but to create the existence of a sculpture. Your response may not travel down the Hudson River but it may travel down the Detroit River, or any river, and on a higher level travel by form response through choices known better by your own recall. I have identified only part of the related clues, much remains unidentifiable, but the sculpture possesses nothing unknown to you. My wish is that you travel by perception the path which I travelled in creating it. That same wish goes for the rest of my work. But the use of symbols related, associated or envisioned into an object image not existing before does not exclude it from understanding since it comes from the reality we both know, and similarly, from a common subconscious registry. There can be no secrets, I admit to no mysticism, there is no response restricted, precious or holy. If my sculpture is art to you, it need only be seen. Notes 1.  American Sculpture 1951: A National Competitive Exhibition, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, December 7, 1951–February 24, 1952. The exhibition was the second of a cycle of three exhibitions designed to showcase painting, sculpture, and works on paper, organized by the museum as part of an effort announced in 1949 to increase its support of contemporary American art. The jury of admissions, headed by the museum’s associate curator of American art, Robert Beverly Hale, included Smith and five other artists: James Earle Fraser, Donal Hord, Robert Laurent, Hugo Robus, and William Zorach. In a reversal of the previous year’s controversy, when a number of modernist artists refused to submit works for the painting exhibition, arguing that the jury was too conservative, the selections by the 1951 sculpture jury and a separate jury of awards greatly offended conservatives. In a series of public letters and articles in the New York City press, the National Sculpture Society (NSS) decried the “ambitious and destructive” influence of modern art (New York Times, February 10, 1952) and assailed the prizewinning works as “not only of extreme modernistic and negative tendencies, but mediocre left-wing work at that” (New York Times, February 22, 1952). The Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, Inc., New York City, and the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects in turn accused the NSS of slander and distortion; dissident members of the Sculpture Society complained that they had not been consulted before the society circulated its letter. Both the Whitney Museum, New York City, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York City issued statements proclaiming their support of “advanced” art and defending the Metropolitan’s exhibition.

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T H E L A N G UA G E I S I M A G E 19 5 2

The words I use in talking about art do not bear close relationship to making art nor are they necessary directives or useful explanations. They may represent views that govern some choice in sublimation—censored exchange or as opposites. When I work the train of thought has no words, it is simply all in the visual world, the language is image. If I write it is not at the expense of my work, it is done during travel and nonwork pursuit. Probably I resent the word “world” (Joyce, etc., excepted) because it has become the tool of pragmatists, has shown limited change, has rejected creative extension. It seems that the pragmatists have turned words against their creators when dealing with perception. Most of the words on art have been an actual hindrance to the understanding of art—perception. This anti-art verbiage starts in elementary grades and is constant throughout the majority of educational institutions, both state and sectarian. Judging from Cuniform, Chinese and other ancient texts, the object symbols formed identities upon which letters and words were later developed. Their business and exploitation use has become dominant over their poetic-communicative use, which explains one facet of their inadequateness. Thirty or forty thousand years ago primitive man did not have the word picture, nor this demand for limited vision. His relationship to the object was with all its parts and function, by selection, or the eidetic image. Since recorded origins true perception in art has had various official safeguards and mono-interpretations, such limits in making art or receiving art being more or less law and answering to one interpretation, usually literary or confined to an official symbol language for religio-commercial use.

“The Language Is Image,” Arts and Architecture 69 (February 1952): 20–21, 33–34. Smith sent his hand-edited typescript, dated October 20, 1951, to Arts and Architecture editor John Entenza with a directive: “I write unorthodox. . . . I don’t like things changed as long as I sign the article. (Spelling, punctuation, caps, etc., excepted.) I mean statement expression.” Despite Smith’s instructions, two words were changed by the editor or printer that altered the meaning of the sentences in which they appeared; they are here restored to their original forms: “This image even today defies [not “defines”] word explanation . . . ”; and “I have identified [not “intensified”] only part of the related clues. . . . ” Smith reworked his Arts and Architecture text for lectures at Bennington College, Vermont, on November 11, 1951, and Williams College, Massachusetts, on December 17, 1951 (see “Lecture, Williams College,” p. 137). Smith’s remarks at Bennington were subsequently published as a “transcription” in “Hudson River Landscape,” Bennington College Alumnae Quarterly 3, no. 3 (1952): 16–17. See also “Thoughts on Sculpture,” p. 196.

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The cave man from Altamira to Rhodesia had produced true reality by the eidetic image. This image even today defies word explanation as does any art, since it is simply to be received by a totally different physical sense. The true reality of an apple is not any one naturalistic image. The eye of man is not a camera eye, it is a cerebral eye. It is not a two-dimensional photograph, nor any one view. The reality is actually all apples in all actions. Apples are red, yellow, green, round, halved, quartered, sweet, sour, rotten, sensuously felt, hanging, crushed to juice and all the associations two years would take to tabulate, yet when stimulated the mind can select and experience the desired action in a flash; apple is meaningless without memory. Perception through vision is a highly accelerated response, so fast, so complex, so free that these qualities are unattainable by the very recent limited science of word communication. In perceiving, all men are potentially equal. The mind records everything the senses experience. No man has sensed anything another has not, or lacks the components and power to assemble. The word version of art represents both censoring and prejudice. Yet, it is the version educational institutions advocate and is the general public’s basic response. Yet, perception open to any man, in any status, ignores the language barrier. My realities giving impetus to a work which is a train of hooked visions arise from very ordinary locale. The arrangement of things under an old board, stress patterns, fissures, the structure pattern of growth, stains, tracks of men, animals, machines, the accidental or unknown order of forces, accidental evidences such as spilled paint, patched sidewalks, broken parts, structural faults, the force lines in rock or marble laid by glacial sedimentation. Realistic all, made by ancient pattern or unknown force to be recorded, repeated, varied, transformed in analogy or as keys to contemporary celebrations. Some works are celebration of wonders. After several of these a spectre.1 In my life joy, peace, is always menaced. Survival; not only from commercial destruction but the threat of daily existence, the battle of money for material—and welfare during. I date my esthetic heritage from impressionism. Since impressionism the realities from which art has come have all been the properties of ordinary men, the still life has been from the working man’s household, the characters, environment, landscape have been of common nature; the bourgeois or upper class reality and grandeur pretension have not been the realities which the artist’s eyes have transformed. The controls of my art are not outside the daily vision of common man. The vision and organization are very personal and I hope my own. The hostile demand for reality usually is the stopped image, which to me has no place in art, being a totally different value from perception and one related more to photography than art. Hostility to art often exists as a fear—of a misunderstood intellectualism. Primitive man attained the eidetic image. This must have been attained by great desire and affection. At least it was not hostility based on historic standards or censored by self consciousness.

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Limits and lack may exist in the artist’s sense-presentation. Some artists produce for greater sense-perception. Perception is a quality which all men exercise, there being a difference in degree. The creation of known forms or symbols, related or associated into a new image not existing before, does not exclude it from understanding since it comes from common subconscious registry, nothing is secret or mystical. For instance, the sculpture called Hudson River Landscape 2 came in part from drawings made on a train between Albany and Poughkeepsie. A synthesis of drawings from ten trips over a seventy-five mile stretch; yet later when I shook a quart bottle of India ink it flew over my hand, it looked like my landscape, I placed my hand on paper—from the image left I travelled with the landscape to other landscapes and their objects—with additions, deductions, directives which flashed past too fast to tabulate but elements of which are in the sculpture. Is Hudson River Landscape the Hudson River or is it the travel, the vision, or does it matter? The sculpture exists on its own, it is an entity. The name is an affectionate designation of the point prior to the travel. My object was not these words or the Hudson River but the existence of the sculpture. Your response may not travel down the Hudson River but it may travel on any river or on a higher level, travel through form response by choice known better by your own recall. I have identified only part of the related clues, the sculpture possesses nothing unknown to you. I want you to travel by perception the path I travelled in creating it. You can reject it, like it, pretend to like it, or almost like it, but its understanding will never come with words, which had no part in its making, nor can they truly explain the wonders of the human sensorium. Notes 1.  An allusion to Smith’s Spectre series (1944–53), which included the sculpture Race for Survival (Spectre of Profit), 1945 (K209). 2.  Hudson River Landscape, 1951 (K257).

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THE NEW SCULPTURE 19 5 2

Before knowing what art was or before going to art school, as a factory worker I was acquainted with steel and the machines used in forging it. During my second year in art school I learned about cubism, Picasso and González through Cahiers d’Art. From them I learned that art was being made with steel—the material and machines that had previously meant only labor and earning power. While my technical liberation came from Picasso’s friend and countryman González, my aesthetics were more influenced by Kandinsky, Mondrian, and cubism. My student period was only involved with painting. The painting developed into raised levels from the canvas. Gradually the canvas became the base and the painting was a sculpture. I have never recognized any separation except one element of dimension. The first painting of cave man was both carved line and color, a natural reaction and a total statement. My first steel sculpture was made in the summer of 1933, with borrowed equipment. The same year I started to accumulate equipment and moved into the Terminal Iron Works on the Brooklyn waterfront. My work of 1934–1936 was often referred to as line sculpture, but to me it was as complete a statement about form and color as I could make. The majority of work in my first show at the East River Gallery in 1937–1938 was painted. I do not recognize the limits where painting ends and sculpture begins. Since the turn of the century painters have led the aesthetic front both in number and in concept. Outside of Brancusi, the greatest sculptures were made by painters. Sculpture is more immediate than painting for visionary action. The feeling for natural constants such as gravity, space and hard objects are the physicals of the sculpture process. Consequently they flow more freely into the act of vision than the illusion of constants used in painting. The fact that these constants or premises need no translation should make sculpture the medium of greatest vision. This I mention as a theoretic potential; but the conviction and meditation on a concept that the resistance of material presents is an element which is unique to this art form. A sculpture is a thing, an object. A painting is an illusion. There is a difference in degree in actual space and the absolute difference in gravity. My position for vision in my works aims to be in it, but not of it, and not a scientific physical viewing of it as its subject. I wish to comment in the travel. It is an adventure

Typescript of a lecture on February 12, 1952, at a symposium on “The New Sculpture,” sponsored by the Junior Council of the Museum of Modern Art, New York City. Andrew Carnduff Ritchie moderated; the sculptors Herbert Ferber, Richard Lippold, and Theodore Roszak also presented statements.

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viewed. I do not enter its order as lover, brother or associate, I seem to view it equally as from the travelling height of a plane two miles up, or from my mountain workshop viewing a cloudlike procession. When in my shop I see the clouds. When I am in the clouds I am there to look at my work. From there, importances become pattern— depth, bulk are not so evident. In the Rei Sho school of Chinese character writing, the graphic aim was to show such force as if carved in stone or engraved in steel. It is easy to see how this noble intent could express with such conviction. The Chinese painter Chinanpin explained that although the long blade leaves of an orchid droop toward the earth, they all long to point to the sky.1 This Chinese attitude of cloud-longing is an eye through which I view form in works of celebration and conversely, in those of a spectre nature.2 Certain Japanese formalities seem close to me, such as the beginning of a stroke outside the paper continuing through the drawing space, to project beyond, so that the included part possesses both the power of origin and projection. This produces the impression of strength and if drops fall they become attributes or relationships. Similarly, if the brush flows dry into hair marks, such may be greater in energy, at least a natural quality not to be reworked, being sufficient in intent to convey the stronger content. It is not Japanese painting, but some of the principles involved that have meaning to me. Another Japanese concept demands that when representing an object suggesting strength—like rocks, talons, claws, tree branches—the moment the brush is applied the sentiment of strength must be invoked and felt through the artist’s system, and so transmitted into the object painted. And that this nervous current must be continuous and of equal intensity while the work proceeds. As my material already possesses strength akin to the Japanese power stroke intent, I take delight in using steel as a fluid with which to fashion velvet form within images, when the intensity and feeling are the forces within the concept. I have never planned a work of art to be left in the semi-finished state, or in the material not meant to be final. The intermediate stage of pattern, with the casting unrealized would leave me in suspense. Rather I am content to leave hundreds of sculptures in drawings which time, cost and conceptual change have passed by. Even with my production, some twenty works a year, production costs force limits in scale, material and output, but if I depended upon plaster and wax for bronze casting the number of works would be cut in half. When mass space is indicated by line or fenced form, the work time demanded due to the resistance of material before unity, the suspension and projection required by the natural law of gravity, demand more premeditation and sustained conviction than when the same form is drawn on a planal surface. The line contour with its variations and its comment on mass space is more acute than bulk shape. In vision the overlay of shapes seen through each other not only permits each shape to retain its individual intent but in juxtaposition highly multiplies the associations of the new and more complex unity. I do not work with a conscious and specific conviction about a piece of sculpture. Such a decision is not an aim. The works you see are segments of my work life. If you

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prefer one work over another, it is your privilege, but it does not interest me. The work is a statement of identity, it comes from a stream, it is related to my past works, the three or four works in process and the work yet to come. I will accept your rejection but I will not consider your criticism any more than I will concerning my life. I do not consciously feel revolt against past art or European art in particular. I am conscious of the security of that development, from world art and contemporary technics, which permits my particular existence to be active in its own right with its own direction. This is not an exclusive position. This feeling is in part accountable for the tremendous art surge which exists throughout the country. And more so here, than in any part of the world. The material called iron or steel I hold in high respect. What it can do in arriving at a form economically, no other material can do. The metal itself possesses little art history. What associations it possesses are those of this century: power, structure, movement, progress, suspension, destruction, brutality. The method of unifying parts to completion need not be evident, especially if craft evidence distracts from the conceptual end. Yet the need to observe the virtue of the material, its natural planes, its hard lines, its natural oxides, its need for paint or its unifying method, is only valid when within concept. These points related to the steel concept are minor, and depend wholly upon the conceptual realization of the sculptor, but they are unique and have never existed before this century. In work progress, I control the entire process from origin to finish. There are no inbetween craftsmen or process distortions. It is the complete and total processing of the work of art. Economically this process has high virtue over other metal means. Outside of aesthetic considerations the labor in production costs of casting is higher than the sculptor’s own wages. Direct work is not meant to replace casting, but it more often conforms to my concept. But casting is a method and concept which holds its function as it has for 6,000 years. The accommodation to each particular machine tool and its method is made familiar by use. The construction of the whole from its parts is made by fairly unconscious change of machine tools. The machine tool becomes an instrument of aesthetics in the art of addition. The transformation of unit parts into a unified whole from seemingly disparate units, by repeated action results in full order. In fact, my beginning before I knew about art had already been conditioned to the machine. The part of the whole, by addition, or the quantity into quality concept. This aesthetic process relates closer to the mode of painting than to the historic making of sculpture. The term “vulgar” is a quality, the extreme to which I want to project form, and it may be society’s vulgarity, but it is my beauty. The celebration, the poetic statement in the form of cloud-longing, is always menaced by brutality. The cloud-fearing of spectres has always the note of hope, and within the vulgarity of the form an upturn of beauty. Despite the subject of brutality, the application must show love. The rape of man by war machines will show the poetic use of form in its making. The beauties of nature do not conceal destruction and degeneration. Form will flower with spikes

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of steel, the savage idols of basic patterns. The point of departure will start at departure. The metaphor will be the metaphor of a metaphor, and then totally oppose it. I believe only artists truly understand art, because art is best understood by following the visionary path of the creator who produces it. The Philistines will not attempt the projection. A work of art is produced by an expert. There must be expertness in its perception. There are degrees in expertness—some come close, some are on the fringe, some pretend. Degrees of expertness naturally apply to both the artist’s creating and the audience response. Notes 1.  Smith’s manuscript notes for the lecture identify the source of his description of the graphic aims of Rei Sho ink-brush painting and the story told by the Chinese artist Shen Nanpin of cloudlonging orchids: Henry P. Bowie, On the Laws of Japanese Painting: An Introduction to the Study of the Art of Japan (1911; repr., New York: Dover Press, 1951). (Bowie referred to the artist by his Japanese name, Chinanpin.) 2.  Smith alludes to his Spectre series, begun in 1944. At the time of his lecture, he had just finished or was in the process of completing the sixth in the series of seven sculptures: Spectre Riding a Headless Horse, 1952 (K280).

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AT M O S P H E R E O F E A R LY ’ 3 0 S 19 5 2

One did not feel disowned—only ignored and much alone, with a vague pressure from authority that art couldn’t be made here. It was a time for temporary ex-patriates, not that they made art more in France, but that they talked it—and when here were happier there—and not that their concept was more avant than ours but they were under its shadow there and we were in the windy openness here. Ideas were sought as the end but the result often registered in purely performance. Being far away, depending upon Cahiers d’Art and the return of patriots often left us trying for the details instead of the whole. I remember watching the painter Gorky work over an area edge probably a hundred times to reach an infinite without changing the rest of the picture, based on Graham’s account of the import in Paris on the “edge of paint.” We all grasped on everything new, and despite the atmosphere of New York worked on everything but our own identities. I make exceptions for Graham and Davis, especially Davis, who tho at his least recognized or exhibited stage was the solid citizen for a group a bit younger and who were trying to find our stride. Matulka had a small school on 14 St. but maintained a rather secluded seriousness, painting away on 89 St. East as he still does. [Joseph] Stella often was around Romany Marie’s but I did not think his work matched the monopoly discourse he preferred. Xceron1 was back and forth between Paris and New York and in Paris wrote art criticism for several American papers. Our hangouts were Stewart’s Cafeteria 7th Ave. near 14 St. close to Davis’s studio and school and 5¢ coffee was much closer to our standards but on occasion we went to the Dutchman’s, McSorley’s & Romany Marie’s. We followed Romany Marie from 8th St., where Gorky once gave a chalk talk on Cubism, to several other locations.2 Her place came closer to being a continental cafe with its varied types of professionals than any other place I knew. It was in Marie’s where we once formed a group—Graham, Edgar Levy, Reznikoff, de Kooning, Gorky and myself, with Davis being asked to join. This was short-lived. We never exhibited and we lasted in union about 30 days. Our only action was to notify the Whitney Museum that we were a group and would only exhibit in the 1935 Abstract show if all were asked.3 Some of us were, some exhibited, some didn’t and that ended our group. But we were all what was then termed abstractionists. Even the conservatives did not sell altho they were quite in the fore in exhibiting. The expressionists, a number who later formed the 8, did not fare better in sales or exhibiting.4

Handwritten, early 1952, Sketchbook 35: 17, 19, 21.

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Notes 1.  See “Autobiographical Notes,” note 3, p. 98. 2.  The Dutchman’s was a bar on West Street. McSorley’s Ale House still exists at 15 East Seventh Street. The Romanian-born Marie Marchand owned several taverns in successive locations in and near Greenwich Village, New York City, from 1914 to the 1930s. 3.  Smith reviewed the exhibition Abstract Painting in America, presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, in 1935, in Parnassus (see “Current Exhibitions,” p. 21). 4.  Although Smith clearly wrote “the 8,” he seems not to have been referring to the group of figurative painters that included  Robert Henri, William Glackens, and John Sloan, who showed together in 1908 at MacBeth Galleries, New York City, in an exhibition titled The Eight. Instead, he was almost certainly thinking of the group of artists loosely associated with expressionism who came to be known as “the Ten” from an eponymous exhibition at Montross Galleries, New York City, in December 1935. Smith was close friends with several members of the group, including Ben-Zion, Ilya Bolotowsky, Adolph Gottlieb, John Graham, Louis Harris, and Mark Rothko (then known as Marcus Rothkowitz); the members of the group initially numbered nine and showed together for only four years.

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A H E A D I S A D R AW I N G c . 19 5 2

a head is a drawing it is an egg hatched the pain of living of conflict of indecision and turmoil a head sticks in a barrel it sees thru the pickle slime it feels not by true desire it is pummeled it pokes thru bushes to see fields it gets fried flat it gets twisted and wrung dry it is the first to die and the last to rot it is the first out conceived by banging banged during gestation sore ever after the first to respond when kicked in the ass first to go thru the windshield first to know the infidelities where in its drawing keys for the entire structure

Handwritten, c. April 1952, on a page removed from a sketchbook. The text at the bottom of the illustration is from a draft of Smith’s April 18, 1952, lecture at the University of Michigan (see “The Modern Sculptor and His Materials,” p. 156).

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12. Page removed from a sketchbook, 1952.

T H E M O D E R N S C U L P T O R A N D H I S M AT E R I A L S 19 5 2

There was no beginning—art was, and what art is now, was and is an expressive need, along with the origin of man. The history of art contains much guesswork and reconstruction, which change with excavation and hypothesis. But the urge to make art, and to respond to art, are constants in man’s evolution. Archaeologists may never unearth evidences of the greatest periods of art. Greater periods than we know may have been destroyed. I believe more art of man lies undiscovered or destroyed than is dreamed of. It is quite possible that our scholars presume too much on the known quantity of museum holdings, instead of evaluating and reconstructing the basic urge and need of man to make art. Today the art your contemporaries present is still the continuity of first man in transformation. Let no one convince you that the time in our composition does not need art. Or that the contemporary ability or conviction is less than in other periods. Nor that it has totally skipped any age of man’s continuous universe. Time is the one element which is least considered in the study of art. The quality of time is a natural, but a constant, and in perceiving art, must be a felt thing. The making of a work of art, the understanding of it, partakes only of the activity peculiar to its time. Comparisons against time are invalid for conclusions. Our time to make art can only be now. The most important art is the art made now. Art has been continuous and in each transformation the work of art has always been concerned with its present. It must be conceived in its present—but the present is in flux—and before the work of art is complete it must be transforming towards the next work to come, and in its present state of making, must be projecting towards the future. In one respect the contemporary artist is placed in the outlook of primitive man. He may not distinguish so closely between the realm of man and the realm of nature. He is not the modern scientific man to whom the natural world is “it.”1 He is more the man who is an element of the phenomena of nature and regards nature more as a

Typescript of a lecture on April 18, 1952, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Smith was invited to speak by Jean Paul Slusser, professor of painting and director of the university’s Museum of Art, who gave the talk its title. The museum had purchased Smith’s sculpture Tahstvaat, 1946 (K211), in 1950. Smith offered to send the university a group of drawings that “relate to my sculpture and illustrate the conceptual origins before material procedures,” which would “balance with the paper I will read, and the color slides of finished work which I hope to project” (letter to Wells Bennet, March 23, 1952; Slusser to Smith, March 27, 1952). His proposal was accepted, and the drawings were displayed in a room outside the lecture auditorium for several days before and after his talk.

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“thou” than an “it.” When his painting or his sculpture pours forth, it flows from the inside with all the forces and realities in nature. All the object world may be expressed equally—its notes may be of equal size or import. There may be no accent on personage. He may be only an equal in nature “thou.” This position, from the scientific view, is abstract. But from the artist’s view it is natural, and only the eidetic image of the true state of nature. If we take as examples the “man,” the “rock,” the “tree,” the “it” regard of nature depicts the personality of man as all important—the tree, the rock as background. “The man, the rock, the tree,” when the artist regards nature as “thou,” are all of equal status, each with aura and association pouring forth into an expressive whole, not limited to the stopped action of the camera shot, but all actions and all time—depicted in an organized emotional flow, natural and expressive of this particular time. “Thou” nature as a concept is not exclusively the property of painter, sculptor or draftsman. In this concept, craft loses its material importance. As the concept departs from the craft, so does it depart from the word picture, because the verbal world is inadequate for the translation. Literary identities are left far behind. The fields of expression are now in the purely visual world, and are not confined to craft. The eidetic image is the true state of the object, since it contains all its actions and its recurrent images. Another similarity to primitive man is the cause for expression. Based upon the reconstructed need of primitive man, I would presume that primitive man made art to fulfill a very personal need. It does not seem that he was involved in a collective mode for expression. Such expressions, I believe, were needed for exploitation in larger social orders. I, and all the artists I know, express on a very personal basis. The cause for myself, the need to express my own convictions, my ego and therapy are more important than any collective value or collective cause. This does not exclude artists from collective need or make them anti-social. The collective cause in art has always been a subsidy for propaganda or exploitation, wherein the song of the individual artist has been purchased to celebrate not his own conviction but the pretensions of others. He could be bought because he traded some conviction for sustenance or because he was a merchant with commercial wares. The position the artist today enters is most complex when analyzed. He is the product of an untruthful society which does not aim to practice its pretensions. He is expected to perpetuate the pretensions of his art heritage and perform as the uninformed and disinterested society expects an artist to perform. To this disinterested society he is expected to communicate. He is expected to be expert, and at the same time, expected to perform on their inexpert level. Yet as a performer he is expected to be the revolutionary and the man of vision. And as the man of vision he is still expected to be literal, so that the work need not be seen or perceived, but can be explained in words. I had been acquainted with metalworking before studying painting. When my painting developed into constructions leaving the canvas, I was then a sculptor, with no formal training in sculpture. When the constructions turned into metal—lead,

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brass, aluminum, combined with stone and coral in 1932—nothing technically was involved outside of factory knowledge. In the summer of 1933 I made the first group of iron sculptures, two of which were exhibited in the winter of 1933 and spring of 1934. My first show in 1938 was comprised of work from 1935 on.2 This work was primarily gas welded. The first arc-welded piece was made in 1939. My method of shaping material arriving at form has been as functional as in the making of a motor-car or a locomotive. The equipment I use, my supply of material, comes from factory study and duplicates as nearly as possible the production equipment used in making a locomotive. I have no aesthetic interest in tool marks or surface embroidery or molten puddles. My aim in material function is the same as in locomotive building: to arrive at a given functional form in the most efficient manner. The locomotive method bows to no accepted theory of fabrication. It utilizes the respective merits of casting, forging, riveting, arc and gas welding, brazing, silver solder. It combines bolts, screws, shrink fits all because of their respective efficiency in arriving at an object or form in function. I make no claim for my work method over other media. It is not one exclusive to my private experience. It is one part of art that can definitely be taught or learned by the American aptitude for technics. A course in industrial high school or an eight-week course in a trade school makes the start. The direct method, the part to the whole concept, quantity to quality, is not an exclusive approach but it seems to be in function for this time—both technically and aesthetically. A certain feeling for form will develop with technical skill, but imaginative form or aesthetic vision is not a guarantee for high technique. I have seen paper cut-outs that were finer art than piled-up precious metal.3 My own workshop is a small factory with the same make and quality tools used by production factories. My accommodation to each particular machine tool and its method is made familiar by use. If the machine is new, the instruction book and a related aptitude from another machine soon bring its function into familiarity. The switch from one machine to another is an almost unconscious change. The machine becomes an instrument of aesthetics in the art of addition. The transformation of unit parts into a unified whole from seemingly disparate parts by repeated action combines modern technics with our contemporary aesthetic heritage. I am conscious of the contents of purity in this century, such as I see in Mondrian, Brancusi, Malevich. And in the liberation of iron into the form of art by the Spanish silversmith and ironworker, González. The aesthetic arrival of the whole from the part by Cézanne and Kandinsky is another contribution to the concept of construction [as are] the movement and the color of movement by Matisse and, in general, the arrival of the form end by construction, as contributed by cubism [to] the whole method of painting. My reference is personal and is not involved with or at difference with the texts. It is a key to the myth of art as it reflects in my preference and prejudice and is to be valued only as it reflects in my own work. As I accept no rules in the making of sculpture, I accept no verbal interpretations for the visual history of art.

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Notes 1.  See “The New Sculpture,” p. 148. 2.  David Smith: Steel Sculpture, exhibition catalogue, East River Gallery, New York City, January 19–February 5, 1938. 3.  Henri Matisse’s large-scale works in gouache and cut-and-pasted paper were displayed in his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City (November 1951–January 1952).

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I H AV E S E E N S O M E C R I T I C S 19 5 2

I have seen some critics refer to certain pieces of my sculpture as two-dimensional or call some “line drawing.” I do not admit to this, either conceptually or physically. It may be true in part, but only as one attribute of many, and that by intention and purpose. There are no rules in sculpture. This particular criticism is not sufficient or valid grounds for dismissal. If I approach sculpture as line bas-relief, I make no apologies for my end views. They are as important as they are intended to be. If a sculpture could be a line drawing, then I imagine that a drawing removed from its paper bond and viewed from the side would be a beautiful thing, one which I would delight in seeing in the work of other artists. The end view or profile of an interesting person or object arouses the mind to completion of the imagined personality and characteristics, since a work of art or an object of interest is always completed by the viewer and is never in the sterile position of being an end in itself. Any artist must take a rational position, possibly a belligerent position, against critics. At least within my own limitations I have tried—or held this position as a conscious aim. To this end I suspect acclaim, as well as defamation. I have read good reports and I have read the statement by an eminent critic: “I can see no earthly reason for its existence.”1 My own position is of complete confidence in all my work, but the rational view should add the two statements and divide by two. My defense is to demand thirty or forty more productive years before I can brag. Yet as I work in my own studio and in my shop, every effort is with all the conviction that the thirty or forty years more could build up. I likewise grant this creative ego position to my fellow artists. For it is a very egocentric position to create and declare oneself the artist apart from other men, to proclaim that this is a masterpiece—and to demand the attention and recognition of the populace. This may not be an outright assertion by the artist or a socially acceptable one—but it nevertheless is a background directive and a secret confidence. It is the work that equates the artist’s life of public indifference and rejection. The artist is placed in a position of conflict. He desires to be a part of society, its work, its welfare. Yet the vegetative state rejects his vision. Mass pressure and his

Two typed pages, c. April–May 1952, from an unidentified speech. The text incorporates preliminary manuscript notes and portions of an early typescript draft of “The Modern Sculptor and His Materials” (see “The Modern Sculptor and His Materials,” p. 156), and it may have been the basis for a talk on sculpture Smith gave on June 19, 1952, as a guest speaker for Jack Arends’s course, “Cultural Resources of New York City,” Teachers College, Columbia University, New York City.

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environment all act against the concept which projects beyond the solid citizen’s stopped position. Although he may influence the minds who influence the minds of the designers who design the shape of the items in daily utility, the true artist’s function is not recognized nor subsidized. The mere emergence of any artist under these conditions [is] a very rare and noble thing—so much so that it virtually takes a neurotic or a messiah to emerge and survive. I’ve always had great respect for the first fish who flew, his forefather the first fish who left water and walked in the ooze, because they too were neurotic enough to depart from their ordered and static state. How accurate this poetic corollary is does not matter to me. The supposition is from the cause of art. The Hesperornis fossil was found in an artist’s lithograph stone in Solingen. And if not fact is in my romantic mind at least as myth, hence it becomes my working and conceptual reality. Note 1.  See “Autobiographical Notes,” note 5, p. 98.

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On Form

I want to be free from mass and bulk and the solidity of sculpture. I want to deny form as such. I don’t see any need to show that a round thing is an earthly sphere or that it has weight and mass. The mind of man knows that it has mass; even what we call space has weight and mass and energy. Perhaps the Einstein theory, indirectly or poetically, has a certain relationship, not in the sense that artists are influenced by science, but that they take a romantic view of it, and sculptors take a romantic view toward the carving of space, which is an impossible thing as a reality. But instead of making a solid sphere, he makes a circle like the rim of a wagon wheel. It impossible for the mind of man to disassociate the wheel from a sphere. On Tradition

I think I know some of the reasons that sculpture is so leaden. We have held onto the concept of fragments, that worship of classicism, the formed objects of a destroyed culture, and made these segments the point of worship and the point of subject. I think that is responsible to some degree for the fragmentary concept there has been in sculpture. Sculpture has to soar much more than it is. It is on the ground. It is stuck to the monolithic concept. Sometimes the shape of a tree dictates what ought to be aesthetics. The shape of a tree is a fine and wonderful thing, but I don’t see that it ought to confine a man’s mind to a monolithic concept. I don’t see, if the artist’s mind soars to a free flowing and buoyant point in sculpture, why it should be marble, because marble is a substance of mass and bulk. I want to free myself from the worship of material. I don’t believe in its existence. The material is only the method by which the aesthetic concept is realized. I deny the innate beauty of a piece of wood, a piece of marble, bronze or jade. I like it personally, as an object of nature, but I won’t accept its directive aesthetically.

Visiting artist lecture presented during the first week of August 1952, at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine. Published here from the transcription titled “David Smith, Excerpts from Lecture,” with inserted section headings, made by Skowhegan, presumably from a lost audio recording (Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC).

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On Nature

I keep some stones around the house that I bought at the Museum of Natural History. These I conceive of as reality. They are beautiful flowing soft shapes, and wonderful geometry. The critics that say, “I don’t like abstract art because it is too far from nature”—I don’t know where they get off with that stuff, because this is nature, too. It was called abstract by some critic who didn’t like it, the same as cubism was. Any abstract forms that I have seen, I have seen in nature. But it isn’t important whether the abstract form is in nature or not. If I could make a form that didn’t exist in nature I certainly would, but I don’t know how it is done. Because I can’t live in a world outside nature. If I take a sheet of paper and put a placement of dots on it, it conforms to a nature pattern of my existence. It may not communicate to you, you can rule it out, say it’s not art—that’s fine, you don’t have to buy it. I’m the guy that keeps it and calls it art. It is as simple as that. In my sculpture of a fish1 I have said all I could possibly say, under the circumstances, about fish, schools of, vertebrae of, fossil memory, memory of fossils, memory of everything that is in my mind relating to fish. And if you say it isn’t a work of art, then you are absolutely right from your point of view. But since I made it, and I am an artist, the work I choose to own up to is a work of art. I say it is a work of art, then it must be. I have seen some of the fossil things in nature that were very nice, but very definitely natural objects. According to many people there are many things in the Museum of Natural History that are better art than in the Metropolitan. Everybody can make shifts and changes, but there is a definite Museum of Natural History and a definite Museum of Art. On Craft

I don’t see any division between sculpture and painting very much. I accuse critics and laymen, especially laymen who don’t like art, as being responsible for there being a separation in the minds of men. With the exception of Brancusi, I rather think that the best sculpture in the twentieth century, for my money, has been made by what other people call painters, such as Degas. There was no change of aesthetics in their minds just because they changed their craft. The craft business in sculpture is accented too much. It is totally unimportant. It is a thing learned in trade school, and the only difference between a house painter and a canvas painter is the matter of aesthetics. There is nothing to marble cutting; Vermont has a surplus of marble cutters. The most beautiful craftsmanship arrives at nothing by itself, but with the right aesthetics and the right determination you can arrive at anything. The Critics

I insist that we are all under the pressure of critics and laymen, and neither of them like art. As a point of justifying our position, we have not found our potential yet, have not let our poetic vision soar the way it should.

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Many people say that we come [up] in America through a coarse, rough, commercial, uncultural system, but I personally think that the greatest force of painting and sculpture, just basically, is working right within our own country. It has more originality, and more self confidence. That is the greatest thing. God knows why we have the limits that we have, but certainly man has greater power. He concedes all the knowledge of the ages, yet he is confined by the narrowness of the critics. I guess it is because artists can’t be too different from other people. We want a decent place to live in, a family—all the things people want—so we respond to social pressures. The critics think that artists shouldn’t paint unless they can explain it; you have to give a rule for it. But if a painting is good the rules will never be written for it; it is always made before the rules are written. Propaganda exists in your whole life, right from the first day of school. They have to have collective answers, because if they didn’t they couldn’t give tests to know whether you passed. If regents didn’t have rules, you couldn’t get a job. If they couldn’t go on with the same questions and answers year after year, the regent might have to get up and work. That’s how they keep it in a rut. Therefore, they don’t want art to be any different than it is. I like a lot of things better than I like the standard by which they have been considered, just like I prefer da Vinci’s notebook to the Mona Lisa. And to me there is an Italian draftsman called Bracelli, whose drawings far outclass da Vinci’s.2 On Aesthetics

Let’s look at it. Let’s have a response by vision and not this response by words. You can’t explain what music is by words. The only simple thing about music or art is: “How do you like it?” There is no answer to what it is. The artist painted it, and the nearest you can come to appreciation is to follow the artist’s creative footsteps. It is a very simple thing as to what is art. It is only looking at it. There is no verbalized method or logic or philosophical consideration for judging a work of art. A work of art is made by an artist who says it is a work of art. If you can be fooled that a doodle is a work of art, then it must be a work of art. And if an artist makes a work of art and you think it’s a doodle, then, for your money, it is a doodle. To me, if an artist makes a work of art and says it’s a work of art, I will take it as such. I will take issue with it, but not with his right to make the statement. I am not interested in the history of art because the most important time of art is when I make art, not the Renaissance or Egypt or Greece. I identify myself with the direction I go in, rather than with an age I have no yardstick for. The Renaissance is not my history, it is too far behind me. I give it no thanks because it isn’t close enough to give me any help. My feelings are of this day and age. I have convictions, but I have nothing to measure “this is right,” “this is wrong.” So the fight is for my own statement.

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I have to speak very personally and very much for myself. I wish to be identified with the broad group of mankind, but I feel that my function is only with other artists today. I feel that only other artists like art, other people don’t care. I haven’t got a collective conviction, or a mores or a structure to identify myself with. I am too busy making sculptures to worry about how they will be received. About Himself

I don’t approach any sculpture the same way twice, and I don’t want to approach drawing the same way twice. I don’t want to even start a sheet of paper the same side each time. Right now I am working on a series of sculptures called Agricola. I have about ten or twelve planned, about five done. They are called agricola because it is the only word I remember outside of rosa [from] when I studied Latin. All these sculptures are found forms from past machines, farm machines, and I have used them in an organization which I state is aesthetic—that is, past the stage where they were functioning forms, and under their present consideration they function only aesthetically. Sometimes I make the forms, sometimes I use the found metal. The Four Soldiers is made from found objects. They are four turnbuckles which I happened to find in the ashes of a fire.3 I kept them around about four months before I found out who they were, and they were soldiers, any four soldiers. The Eidetic Image

I am very interested in the thing called the after—image—the image relationship to the object—which is sometimes more important than the image. In the case of the most simple example of the apple: What is an apple? To one man it is red, to another man it is green, to me it is Cézanne’s apple. I will accept no other apple, even though I drink apple brandy. To other men it may be sound, falling apples, the childhood memory of sour apples. Every man’s image of apple comes with memory. What I want to convey is, when it is in a still life, how does it relate to the rest of the thing? It is beyond human power not to have some emotional response to the object. Nature isn’t enough, it is one single sterile image. In sculpture, for instance, if I want the relationship of three forms, I suggest their lines, and I demand that you fill in the form by your own association or vision—your own projection. But I want the three things in relationship, the identity of the overlying three. And I want the complexity of the association of the three things. If they were solids, you couldn’t see through them. Drawing

A sculptor has to have a terrific conviction to stay with it as long as it takes to be realized. In order that the time taken does not make the rest of my mind inactive, I try to make at least one drawing every day.

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Maybe I am afraid that sculpture is a confining thing. Maybe I resent the time it takes. I don’t want my medium to hold me [back] from having a soaring vision. Drawing is fine because it makes fast realization of form. Also, many times ideas are formed, or dreams of objects or dreams of sculpture, that I want to record—so that that part of it [that] exists for sculpture is developed. Pattern

There is no such thing as two dimensions. A canvas is not two-dimensional. It is impossible for the mind of man to conceive that there are two dimensions. There has never been a thing without thickness. Every association, every point of existence, has to have three dimensions. If a thing is opaque it has depth, and if it doesn’t show depth by scientific measurements then it’s the poetic association that the mind has about an opaque object. Who said sculpture should be a cubic optic? I have heard people say that sculpture should be rolled down a hill. That is the kind of pure fallacy that critics make up. Who said painting should have chiaroscuro? I have done a certain amount of travelling on a plane at 15,000 feet, and at that distance I can’t see one bit of form. The mountains, hills, buildings, farms are pattern. But that has an identifying shape to me. That pattern suggests its solidity. I know there are animals on the farm. That view is strictly of this day and age. The farm never stays itself because you’re moving. Even a flat field. Notes 1.  The Fish, 1950–51 (K230). 2.  In a 1952 sketchbook, Smith cites Kenneth Clark’s pioneering study, published in Print Collector’s Quarterly (October 1929), of Bracelli’s Bizzarie, a book of etchings that depicted cubical, robot-like figures. 3.  Four Soldiers (February), 1951 (K254).

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L E C T U R E , F O U R T H A N N UA L W O O D S T O C K A R T C O N F E R E N C E 19 5 2

To the creative artist, it is doubtful if aesthetics have any value other than as literature. It is doubtful if they have any value to his historic understanding of art, because his aesthetics are a totality of visual images and not words. Even when aesthetics exist in his time relating to his works, they are made after the work of art is completed, by minds and language other than the artist’s. Historically, he is not subject to what a pedant thinks another artist thought, when he has direct communication with artists of all ages, in their own language. Aesthetic qualities of the artist’s work are in a sense a projection into the future, compared to verbal aesthetics which are based upon the past. Aesthetics do not exist until after the work of art has been made. From the aesthetic point of view, at the time of creation the work of art deals with vulgarization. The work of art does not change. The mellow of time, the pedant’s talk, only legitimize it in the minds of the audience who wish to hear but refuse to see. Aesthetics have value for those who do not like art but who are willing to talk about it. The creative artist should not be impressed by the written directives, for his are intuitive and emotional. To make art, the artist must deal with unconscious controls, the controls which have no echo but guide him, direct and first-hand. The artist does not deny aesthetics, but his aesthetics are memory-retentions by visual selection and carry no moral and do not operate within word limits.

Typescript for a lecture on August 23, 1952, at the Fourth Annual Woodstock Art Conference on “Aesthetics and the Artist,” sponsored by the American Society for Aesthetics and the Woodstock Artists Association, presented at the Art Students League, Woodstock, New York (August 22–23). Smith’s fellow panelists were George Boas, chairman, professor of history of philosophy, Johns Hopkins University; John Alford, professor of aesthetics, Rhode Island School of Design; James Fitzgibbon, associate professor of architecture, School of Design, North Carolina State College; the painter and sculptor George L. K. Morris; Robert Motherwell, painter and editor of the Documents of Modern Art series; and the poet Muriel Rukeyser. Smith’s statement was quoted extensively in Emily Genauer, “Art and Artists: Woodstock Conference Considers Relationship of Art to Aesthetics,” New York Herald Tribune, August 31, 1952. In a letter to Genauer, Smith remarked that his comments on color were inspired by “the old Reinhardt and Gwathmey idea of black. . . . ” (Emily Genauer Papers, Archives of American Art). Smith repeated his Woodstock lecture, with minor changes, at the Deerfield Academy, Massachusetts, on September 24, 1952; The Deerfield Scroll (October 11, 1952) noted that he showed a “series of slides depicting phases of nature as artistic entireties,” as well as images of his own art.

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Verbally stated aesthetic summations are of no benefit in the making of a work of art. Generally considered, aesthetics in verbal form are a bastardization of the creative artist’s beauties. They represent a craft or trade alien to creating. Actually philosophy of art and the history of art have nothing to do with the creative artist’s point of view. They are entirely different fields. But the layman is apt to become confused if he isn’t able to make this differentiation. He often expects the artist to perform according to the philosopher’s truth theorems or the historian’s generalities. The stingy logic of the philosopher, his suspicion that the irrational creative menaces the will, excludes that all-important element of art making which I will call affection. This feeling of affection which dominates art making has nothing to do with the philosopher’s need for rationalization. We must speak more of affection—intense affection which the artist has for his work, an affection of belligerent vitality, satisfaction and conviction. Can or do the critics, the audience, the philosophers ever possess the intensity of affection for the work which the creator possessed? Do they have the belligerent vitality of understanding which seems the attribute of contemporary work? Can they project this intense affection to the work of art? The arguments pro and con have already been taken by Chairman Boas, and I feel convinced that he is an aesthetician with affinity towards the artist, with an understanding of the contemporary point of view. Since all the questions have been handled in an extremely rational manner, there is no point in continuing the conference except to handle what is irrational, or what the aestheticians call irrational. When you ask the question to black: is it white? Is it day or night, good or evil, positive or negative? Is it life or death? Is it the superficial scientific explanation about the absence of light? Is it a solid wall or is it space? Is it a paint? A man? A father? Or does it come out blank having been censored out by some unknown or unrecognizable association? There is no one answer. Black is no one thing. The answer depends upon impression. The importance of what black means depends upon your conviction and your artistic projection of black; depends upon your poetic vision, your mythopoetic view, your myth of black. And to the creative mind the dream and myth of black is more the truth of black than the scientific theory of the dictionary explanation or the philosopher’s account of black. Black is an article of vision defying translation and semantics.

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R E L AT I V E T O TA N K TOTE M I (P O U R I N G), 19 5 2 19 5 2

to use the forms of cultivation to erect and uphold the body of irrelevant cause for the pleasure of pour the graceful elevation of peckerheads to extract and pour—the Catharsis the custom of pouring sacrifice and blood letting the pouring off of living liquid by the bird head the external tract the suggestion by body function of elimination and its ritual lost from taboo the logic to pour water off boiled potatoes the liquids to solids for essence

Typescript, revised from handwritten, illustrated notes, inscribed September–October 1952, in Sketchbook 36: 102–03. The subject is Smith’s welded steel sculpture Tanktotem I (Tanktotem I (Pouring)), 1952 (K282).

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13. Sketchbook page, 1952.

H O W FA R AWAY F R O M I M I TAT I O N O F R E A L I T Y 19 5 2

how far away from imitation of reality— How hard it is to fix exactly where a picture should stop imitating.

he challenges & leads or he follows when he uses others’ ideas he follows when he uses his own he is in the position of leadership

Two handwritten texts, late 1952, Sketchbook 36: 131 and 135.

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S TAT E M E N T, W N YC R A D I O 19 5 2

There is only one way to understand a work of art. That one way is simply to look at it. The artist made it to be looked at, without secrets, words, codes or special knowledge. He made it from things seen. He lives in your world. No matter what his declaration or individual vision, he cannot conceive outside his time or outside your world. Sculpture is a poetic statement of form. The forward sculptor deals with nature, but his nature has changed from the bowl of fruit, the nude and the cloaked figure of virtue, to new discoveries in nature. Today the landscape may be viewed on a crosscountry journey from a plane three miles up. Looking down, all is space until the eye stops on the floor of solid earth, its rocks and hills become an endless flat plane. Houses, factories, hard objects, solids, become only pattern. Rivers, highways, manmade boundaries are flowing, graceful sweeping lines, opposed by spots of lakes and squares of fields. The view from space makes solid form appear pattern.1 The impressionist painter Pissarro might have liked this three-mile view in space, for from his ground position he once said: “Do not fix your eye on any one point, but take in everything, observing how colors reflect their surroundings. . . . Work at the same time sky, water, branches, and ground, keeping everything going on an equal basis.”2 What was a poetic working principle for Pissarro has become an actual view in space today, to be accented differently. Sculpture isn’t made from three miles up, but pattern and line, to represent form, are working on [an] equal basis in contemporary expression. The view of nature changes; the cause of art changes. New views of nature are now man’s freedom point to depart with his flight of imagination. American machine techniques and European cubist tradition, both of this century, are accountable for the new freedom in sculpture-making. Sculpture is no longer limited to the slow carving of marble and long process of bronze. It has found new form and new method. Here I am talking about direct metal construction. Contrary to the carvingaway technique of classical sculpture, the new method is to assemble the whole by adding

Typescript, statement broadcast on WNYC radio, October 30, 1952, for the station’s annual American Arts Festival of programming organized by various New York City museums. Smith had been invited by Lloyd Goodrich, then associate director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, to speak on the “purely artistic aspects and problems of sculpture today” for a symposium on “The Sculptor and His Problems,” recorded on October 23 (no recording has been located). In reply to Goodrich, Smith commented that he had “projected more on some of the pragmatic statements” he had made at the Fourth Woodstock Conference in August but would “introduce the ideas a little gentler for radio—since there is no vision involved and an idea must be a little more ingratiatingly presented” (letter from Goodrich to Smith, September 11, 1952; Smith to Goodrich, September 19, 1952).

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its unit parts. The building up of sculpture from unit parts, the quantity-to-quality concept is also an industrial concept, the basis of automobile and machine assembly in the steel process. Direct metal work has broadened the concept of sculpture and increased the speed of execution, added new tensile strengths to make sculpture as free as drawing. When I begin a sculpture I’m not always sure how it’s going to end. The sculpture always has a relationship to the work that went before it. In a way it is a continuity of the previous piece. I don’t always know its finish but I am strongly convinced for its start—and that is all-important to me. In fact, I don’t want to know how it ends, because maybe the battle for solution would seem too easy. Sometimes the direction it should go is only a feeling, somewhat on the order of a dream. The conflict for realization of the idea is what makes art and not the technique or material used. When the sculpture is finished there is always that time when I am not sure. It is not that I am not sure of my work. But I have to keep it around for months to become acquainted with its newness, and sometimes it is as if I’ve never seen it before. As I work on other pieces, and look at it, all the kinship returns, the battle of arriving, its relationship to the preceding work and its relationship to the new piece I am now working on. Now comes the time when I feel very sure of it; that it is as it must be and I am ready to show it to others, and be proud that I made it. I haven’t thought about where this sculpture will go. I haven’t thought about what it is for, except that I made it to be seen. And I hope, admired. I haven’t thought about how much it cost, or to whom I can sell it. I’ve made it because it comes closer to saying who I am than any other method I can use. This is as near as I can tell you about how I make a sculpture. There is one very certain thing and that is, it was all quietly made. There were no words in my mind, when I made it, and I am certain there are no words needed to understand it. As far as I’m concerned, after I’ve made the work I’ve already said everything I have to say. An artist’s aesthetics are not the same as an aesthetician’s aesthetics. The artist’s working aesthetic principles are visual memories of his choice of art of the past and nature of the present. These controls have not been identified, or as yet become rules. As they reflect in his work they are intuitive and involuntary. The professional aesthetician attempts to arrive at philosophical order. He uses the language of words, and the artist uses the language of vision. The sculptor who makes origins in his work is so earnestly involved in creating and so strong in his own conviction that the work flows without conscious involvement in words or philosophy. It takes belligerent conviction to make art. The artist usually must earn his living and the cost of his materials by means other than the sale of his work. He must express alone and rationalize his whole life to that end. Contemporary sculpture is expensive to make, difficult to exhibit and not easy to sell. The sculptor wishes more people liked his work well enough to buy it—not because he wants wealth but because he needs money to make more sculpture. But the fact that it doesn’t come out this way doesn’t make him change his profession or doubt his concept. It just means that less sculpture gets made while he earns his survival outside his studio.

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Without social acceptance, economic subsidy or historic heritage, the art surge in our country is developing to great heights. Our painters and sculptors are not only great in number, but brilliant and original in concept. They are elevating American art to a world position. Notes 1.  Smith took a series of aerial photographs of views seen from the windows of commercial passenger planes, which inspired a group of drawings on the same theme; see Susan J. Cooke, essay in Drawing Space, exhibition catalogue (Los Angeles: Margo Leavin Gallery, 2011). 2.  Smith paraphrases a quotation by Camille Pissarro, as recalled by the painter Louis Le Bail, which was first published in John Rewald, The History of Impressionism (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1946). Smith referred to the publication in a 1947 sketchbook.

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WHO IS THE ARTIST? 19 5 2

Who is the artist? How does he act? What part of his behaviour and direction is literary lore and pure fiction? How much of his direction is influenced by what society expects, especially that society composed of the people of distinction; museum directors, dealers, critics, collectors? How much of his environment does he censor to meet what demands? Is he able to discard the falsities and hold to true value? How far can his aesthetic projection and revolt go and stay within the bonds of social decency? No one can exist without feeling social expectancy. From what order does the artist feel most influence—the people of distinction, the bourgeoisie, the working class, his own professional associate artists? All categories have different expectations. For whom does he speak? How much revolt and against which level— just a little—or all the way, carrying it to its ultimate conclusion, and as far as possible, renouncing all past art as we know it—its dogma and tradition? What minute bit of experience makes art, or is all expressed experience through the artist’s eyes art? What are masterpieces, for masterpieces are born today as in any day. What concession will the artist make, consciously or unconsciously to the normal needs of man, the family and welfare? How much can a concept change to let him be both soothsayer and inventor, and at the same time the projector of man’s vision, the messiah— and still function as a fairly normal man within society? As much as any man in today’s society the artist must have conviction and courage. Conviction so great that he by means other than art earns his livelihood and the material needed to produce the work of art; the courage to express alone, and to form his whole life to that end. The case of the sculptor is even more exacting by the demands of both material cost, and space.

“Who Is the Artist?,” Everyday Art Quarterly, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (Winter 1952 [late 1952–53]). Reprinted in Numero 5 (May–June 1953). Revised and edited by Smith from the texts of lectures he gave at the University of Minnesota, on April 23, 1952, and the Walker Art Center, on April 24, 1952.

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The artist has never rejected nature—nor can he, for nature is only the world of which he is a part. There is a difference in his consciousness, his selection, his regard, and the activeness of his position. Everybody looks at nature or the external world. Artists have viewed nature and seen different things, selected its parts, made organizations, personally, philosophically, socially; and have found fearful nature, loving nature, mother nature, scientific nature, and sensual nature. The artist has been the element of nature, and the arbiter of nature; he who has sat on a cloud and viewed it from afar, but at the same time has identified himself as one of nature’s parts. The true artist views nature from his own time. The conflict with the audience is often one of time-nature regard rather than art. The hostile audience views nature in the rosy past. The artist views nature expertly before making his statement. The audience usually makes a prejudiced statement about nature before viewing it inexpertly. This makes a breach even before the mode of interpretation is considered. The artist’s creative position to nature is much the same as that of primitive man. He does not take the scientific view of all important man and view nature as “it.” He is the compassionate emotional man who is unquestioning, who accepts himself as a part of nature viewing nature as “thou.” I do not today recognize the lines drawn between painting and sculpture aesthetically. Practically, the law of gravity is involved, but the sculptor is no longer limited to marble, the monolithic concept, and classic fragments. His conception is as free as that of the painter. His wealth of response is as great as his draftsmanship. Plastically he is more related to pagan cultures with directives from Cubism and Constructivism. Modern tools and technics grant the expression of complete self identity from origin of idea to material finish. His work can show who he is, what he stands for, with all the fluency he desires, for every step and stroke is his own. The stream of time and the flow of art make it plain that no matter what the sculptor’s declaration or individual vision, he cannot conceive outside his time. His art conception takes place in dialectic order. The flow of art, the time of man still places him within his own period, out of which he cannot fly,

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14. David Smith in his workshop, Bolton Landing, New York, c. 1953.

and within which all other men exist. For no object he has seen, no fantasy he envisions, no world he knows is outside that of other men. No man has seen what another has not, or lacks the components and power to assemble. It is impossible to produce an unperceivable work. I believe only artists truly understand art, because art is best understood by following the visionary path of the creator who produces it. The Philistines will not attempt the projection. A work of art is produced by an expert. There must be expertness in its perception. There are degrees of expertness— some come close, some are on the fringe, some pretend; expertness naturally applies to both the artists creating and the audience response.

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I was acquainted with metal working before studying painting. When my painting developed into constructions leaving the canvas, I was then a sculptor, with no formal training in the sculpture tradition. When the constructions turned into metal—lead, brass, aluminum, combined with stone and coral in 1932— nothing technically was involved outside of factory knowledge. The equipment I use, my supply of material comes from factory study and duplicates as nearly as possible the production equipment used in making a locomotive. I have no aesthetic interest in tool marks or surface embroidery or molten puddles. My aim in material function is the same as in locomotive building: to arrive at a given functional form in the most efficient manner. The locomotive method bows to no accepted theory of fabrication. It utilizes the respective merits of casting, forging, riveting, arc and gas welding, brazing, silver soldering. It combines bolts, screws, shrink fits— all because of their respective efficiency in arriving at an object or form in function. Underlying the archaeologist-historian record of art is the myth of art which is more the property of the creative artist than the factualists. The myth of art is both lore and image— but an uninterpreted image and an unrecorded myth. It is the record of visual response from the expert eye selection of history. It is the myth quite private by choice, based upon the artist’s preferences from the unknown visual record of art, and visions purely hypothetical of what might have existed between known periods. The keys to these selections are known, are recognized by different schools of artists. Not all schools will admit that the first apple in the world is Cézanne’s apple, but to me Cézanne’s apple is a constant, and it is on this type of choice that the lore is established and the personal myth becomes the art history for direction of my own work. Cézanne believed in the atmosphere of things. He spoke of the soul found in a sugar bowl, and since a sugar bowl is inanimate and only one copy from a line of similarly pressed forms, the soul, or the visionary projection, of the sugar bowl, the animacy the animate nature, the associations which become the true reality of that object must be in the eyes of the viewer. If Cézanne’s napkins possess the structural power of mountains, and the apples possess both the spherical and cubic strength of houses, and the mountains and houses possess the intimacy of form which only holding in the hand and being sensuously felt can imbue,

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then their existence becomes not sterile but a true reality discovered, and an animacy by origin. When I make reference to terms or forms dealing with art history, or historic generalities, please remember that I am neither academician nor historian. I do not work with a conscious and specific conviction about a piece of sculpture. It is always open to change and new association. It should be a celebration, one of surprise, not one rehearsed. The sculpture-work is a statement of my identity. It is a part of my work stream, related to my past works, the three or four in process, and the work yet to come. In a sense it is never finished. Only the essence is stated, the key presented to the beholder for further travel. My belief in this direction is better stated by Picasso who once said, “A picture is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being done, it changes as one’s thoughts change. And when it is finished it still goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it. A picture lives a life like a living creature, undergoing the changes imposed on us by our own life from day to day. This is natural, as the picture lives only through the man who is looking at it.”* There is no conceptual difference between painting and sculpture. Both Picasso and Matisse are sculptors of great origins. The position of creating does not change for them just because the medium changes. *Picasso: Forty Years of His Art, Museum of Modern Art.1 Note 1.  Alfred H. Barr, Jr., ed., Picasso: Forty Years of His Art, exhibition catalogue (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1939).

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N O T E S O N D E TA I L S —T E C H N I C A L c . 19 5 2 – 5 3

I am slightly pleased when I see rust on stainless material, the soft acid stain which denotes either contamination of iron from the grinding wheel or the lack of balance in the alloy or possibly it states philosophically that the stainless is not wholly pure and has a susceptibility, as do humans, to the stains of avowed purpose to the actual. Do I make these statements of taste preference a contradiction to the taste stream, in revolt or is it a natural selection related to my own needs and visages.

Handwritten, 1952–53, on a page removed from a sketchbook.

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DO WE DARE TO DO BAD WORKS 19 5 2 – 5 3

Do we dare to do bad works often they are the best in such a sense bad is only the external opinion but inwardly the artist feels new depths and he is already there where the others are not or may not get for a generation as long as our museums, historians respond to our needs instead of determining them.

Handwritten and illustrated, late 1952–early 1953, on the back cover of a special issue on “Picasso: 1930– 35” of Cahiers d’Art, no. 4 (January 1936). Smith’s sketches relate to his sculptures Portrait of Don Quixote, 1952 (K279), and Tanktotem IV, 1953 (K304).

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S O M E T I M E S A D R AW I N G G E T S T O O C O M P L E T E 19 5 3

sometimes a drawing gets too complete—it is the sculpture sometimes the drawing is a directive whole a need tobe made—but the flow of work in progress is in a medium that cannot adopt the change required by the drawing—so it gets abandoned—part of the experience may be picked up when I’m working in its medium again but that particular drawing meant for a specific work is left behind

Handwritten, c. March 1953. Other notes on the same sheet relate to Smith’s lecture at the Portland Art Museum, Oregon, on March 24, 1953 (see “Lecture, Portland Art Museum,” p. 183). Smith habitually joined the parts of the infinitive “to be” when writing by hand, in a fluid gesture that was both an orthographic convenience and deeply expressive of the generative drive that pushed him to invent new conceptual and sculptural unities. “Corrected” throughout most of this volume for the sake of conventional readability, “tobe” is retained here, in “Sketchbook Notes” (pp. 189–90, 366, and 368) and in “To Make a Mark,” p. 243, in its autograph form as an inseverable element of each text’s meaning.

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LECTURE, PORTL AND ART MUSEUM 19 5 3

The estimation of man’s earliest sculpture making has now been extended to 20,000 b.c. This art was both a separate form and perfectly correlated mixed media with painting. Much of the cave discoveries show no craft difference but a combined and complete realization of the concept in the most absolute expression that could be attained, both incised and colored, utilizing the eidetic image in a manner never again attained by man. In Mesopotamia down through the Egyptian dynasties, sculpture was dominant. In later dynasties, bas-relief painted became a substitute and the later painted picture became a substitute for painted bas-relief. Both Greek and Roman cultures held sculpture as the highest order in Art. The Renaissance extolled the glories of painting often to the detriment of sculpture. Michelangelo, both the painter and sculptor, disparaged sculpture as being [the] less intellectual and demanding of the two, and especially complained of the dust and labor. For a number of centuries it remained a rather clumsy form. It took Rodin to dissolve the enervated forms of the Renaissance and start a new tradition. There are many reasons for sculpture’s position before Rodin, both social and aesthetic, but I do not choose to make either a generality or a moral. Art today is not made on this basis. With the invention of the camera, impressionism, and the new tradition of Rodin, the whole scene has changed. Cubism brought about a form concept which produced a total liberation in viewing and at the same time made the concept in painting and sculpture, one. Chiaroscuro had been abandoned with Impressionism and had liberated painting from sculpture, but Cubism brought liberation to the sculptor by freeing him from mass form. Outside of Brancusi, most of the origins in twentieth-century sculpture were made by painters. When I speak of origins I refer to innovations [such] as the Tiari flower head of Matisse and the found object constructions of the Picasso-González work of 1931. It obvious that the concepts of Matisse and Picasso when making sculpture were not

Typescript, slide lecture, first delivered on March 23, 1953, at the University of Oregon, Eugene, sponsored by the Portland Art Association and Reed College, then presented at the Portland Art Museum on March 24, 1953. The Portland lecture coincided with Smith’s service as a juror for the Portland Art Museum’s exhibition Artists of Oregon, 1953, April 18–May 19, 1953.

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different from those used in painting. Painters seemingly have led the aesthetic front in both concept and numbers. With the exception of Lipchitz, much of the Cubist sculpture was made by painters. was influenced by Iberian sculpture. One of the early Cubist sculptures was the Picasso head of 1909. The concept of both the contemporary painter and sculptor has undergone much change since Cubism. The raw austerity of African form has become beauty, an accepted factor. It is important that Picasso, the first Cubist, was influenced by Iberian sculpture. One of the early Cubist sculptures was the Picasso head of 1909. The whole concept of Cubism was sculptural, much of the constructions and collage were both dimensional and painted. The highly colored forms of Oceania have become accepted and completely integrated. The periods now past of Fauvism, Cubism, Constructivism, Expressionism, Purism, and Surrealism have all become digested history. The view of nature has changed as the only point of departure. There need be no point of departure—man the artist becomes nature. The artist can now be his own subject. His expression can be direct without the subject intervening. It is now the act, direct. Although this is not a result of a manifesto or organized effort, it is a working fact in the view of many in our advance group. Man, the artist, universally has started to celebrate his own feelings by the act of making the work of art. And man under the influence of unconscious impulse reveals a strength and energy along with a directness of action which seems to ally him to the primal force of nature.1 This direct creativity rises beyond the intellect. The subconscious becomes subject—the potential of direct creativity rises beyond the intellect. Partly incorporated in this act of art, are Oriental directives, more as the controls in calligraphy than as formal influences. This might compare remotely in the art of painting to the Stanislavsky mode in acting. Tenets of Rei Sho, although [not] stated, are found incorporated in Western art. The force lines, the strength of claw, being as great in Assyrian as Oriental [art]. After my student period in painting finishing my study with the abstract painter Jan Matulka, my painting turned to constructions which rose from the canvas so high that a base was required where the canvas should be. I now was a sculptor. But there was no change in concept. I had seen the Picasso-González iron constructions of 1931 in the magazine Cahiers d’Art. This was the liberating factor which permitted me to start with steel which before had been my trade, and had until now only meant labor and earning power, for the study of painting. My first steel sculptures were made in 1933. They were partly made from found objects, agricultural machine parts of past function. To a relative degree they relate to my Agricola series, thirteen pieces of this group having been completed within the past two years.2 My work of 1934, 1935, 1936 was often referred to as line sculpture. My first show in 1938 included this work, with the balance being in painted planal constructions. I have always considered line contour as being a comment on mass space and more acute than

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bulk, and that the association of steel retained steel’s function of shapes moving, circumscribing upon axii, moving and gearing against each other and with each other, at different speeds, as the association of this material suggests. The overlay of line shapes, being a Cubist invention, permits each form its own identity and, when seen through each other, highly multiplies the complex of associations into new unities. I rarely work with a preconceived conviction about the end of a sculpture. I rarely work from a drawing. The sculpture starts with a directive since I need the physical labor to be balanced with the mental and conceptual battle. I make 300 to 400 large drawings a year, usually with egg yolk and Chinese ink and brushes. These drawings are studies for sculpture, sometimes what sculpture is, sometimes what sculpture can never be. Sometimes they are atmospheres from which sculptural form is unconsciously selected during the labor process of producing form. Then again they may be amorphous floating direct statements in which I am the subject, and the drawing is the act. They are all statements of my identity and come from the constant work stream. I title these drawings with the numerical notation of month, day and year. I never intend a day to pass without asserting my identity, my work records my existence. My sculpture and especially my drawings relate to my past works, the three or four works in progress and to the visionary projection of what the next sculptures are to be. One of these projections is to push beauty to the very edge of rawness. To push beauty and imagination further to the limit of its accepted state, to keep it moving, and to keep the edge moving, to shove it as far as possible towards that precipitous edge where beauty balances but does not topple over the edge and beyond my time, but at the time of making it, it deals with the vulgar in the eyes of the aestheticians. I work in most media, but my especial material is steel, that which has been longest in my experience, and which seems to me unique in sculptural media. The metal possesses little art history. Its associations are primarily of this century; it is structure, movement, progress, suspension, cantilever and at times destruction and brutality. Its method of unity need not be evident. Yet its mill forms of geometry, planes, hard lines are all constants within my time. Although material is always subservient to concept, certain properties of this material are unique and have not existed before this century. In my own procedure, along with the material, a new concept process has developed. That is where the distant whole or finished work consists of the sum of its parts. That is much like the industrial method of building a machine, but without a blueprint. But here the art function is purely visual. Where the end is never seen until the final part is made and the finality being realized only when each part in unity works up to the whole. Conceptually, this procedure is much like painting. The sculptural entity never takes place until summed up by its parts. The transformation of unit parts into a unified whole from seemingly disparate parts produces the aesthetic whole and the work of art. Romantically speaking, the indication of form by bulk mass does not possess its old validity. Mass is energy. Space is energy. Nothing is without energy. The indication of

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area or pattern is a statement of energy and as sculptural as sculpture can be. Both opacity and transparency have energy and mass, and complete dimension. Certain changes in scientific speculation act in poetic considerations that become working constants in artistic consideration. To me it is impossible to conceive two dimensions. I have seen a Chinese granite carving in the Boston Museum and found its depth to be less than the thickness of paint in paintings by both Van Gogh and Cézanne.3 How thick must a painted sculpture be, to be three-dimensional? How thin must the paint be to be two-dimensional? Philosophical validities and critics’ designations become inactive. The limitations are mental. When poetic considerations change, the audience must be willing to explore with the artist or be left behind. The conceptual premises limiting sculpture to dead white marble and the fragmentary concept, or to the monolith, no longer apply; the sculptor’s world is one of vision with no conception barred. You can no longer expect sculpture to have limits. Notes 1.  The preceding sentence, added by Smith in pencil to the final typescript of his text and credited by him to the psychoanalyst Dr. Beatrice M. Hinkle, was quoted from her book The Re-creating of the Individual (1923; repr. 1949). Hinkle, whose death was reported in the press three weeks before Smith’s lecture, was best known for introducing English-language readers to the theories of Carl Jung through her translation of The Psychology of the Unconscious. 2.  In a earlier draft of the lecture, Smith expanded on the origin and meaning of the Agricola sculptures: “These hand or horse machine parts had served their time in one culture—the forms had outworn their function, been abandoned. I found them, claimed them as parts of nature, used them in revitalized unities, fused the found form with unities made of new steel, where both aimed to function for a new visual future.” 3.  In Smith’s collection of lecture slides are three photographs he took at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, of a Chinese limestone bas-relief—a tomb panel dating from the first century a .d.— with scenes of a deer hunt and seven figures.

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B O O K S: A F R I C A N C L A S S I C S F O R T H E M O D E R N 19 5 3

A handsome book, “African Folktales and Sculpture” is a collection of 81 important tales from the oral literature of native Africa, selected from over 7,000 known to be in print, accompanied by large and beautiful reproductions of sculpture. Both James Johnson Sweeney and anthropologist Paul Radin have written excellent introductions, the former to the sculpture section, the latter to the myth section. As yet there is no definitive authority on African art or myth. Discoveries are still to come, lore is to be uncovered. But certainly this is the most interesting book published to date on native African art. Sweeney, in making his selection, did not attempt to illustrate the tales. The sculpture he picked provides an esthetic accompaniment to the myths, and it might be termed classic. But how classic or “high” the tales are is a matter of conjecture. There is no certainty about their origins or about the degree to which they have been transposed in the recounting. They cannot be understood on the basis of Christian sacrifice-and-reward morality, but they are rare and wonderful on their own level. Ladislas Segy surveys the African art field from ancient to recent times with several hundred photographs, many of them new. His selections illustrate ritual, animals, tools, instruments and gear, as well as figures. His own opinions, supplemented by references from important ethnological, psychological and esthetic sources, are presented in a terse, clear, catalogued way. Many of the objects he illustrates are unique, extreme, and strangely beautiful in the sense that their form is projected to the imaginative edge of the beautiful-vulgar. (The reference is a compliment to Segy’s choice, for that is the precipitous edge on which I want my own work to be.) Both the Segy and the Sweeney-Radin books point up the influence which African sculpture has had on the art concepts of the 20th century. African sculpture, like Cézanne, has become tradition for today’s painters and sculptors. In sculpture, especially, it has been the most important influence on the development of direct working methods and on solutions to basic problems of mass. While the contemporary has

Reviews of Paul Radin and James Johnson Sweeney, African Folktales and Sculpture (New York: Pantheon, 1952), and Ladislas Segy, African Sculpture Speaks (New York: A. W. Wynn, 1952), Art Digest (April 15, 1953): 22. The review was written in February 1953, at the invitation of Art Digest editor Belle Krasne, who had published a long profile of Smith in the magazine the previous April. Smith apologized to his editor for his text’s abrupt ending, writing, “Could not amplify anything, as I haven’t read either of the books,” a claim apparently belied, for at least one of the volumes, by the marginal notes he made in his copy of Segy’s book.

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been accused of dissolving mass, this is not true. As in primitive art, mass in modern sculpture sometimes becomes what is indicated instead of what is actual. This concept has crossed the borderline, moving from painting into sculpture. The 20th-century artist is closer to the art in these two books than he is to art of the Greek-Roman-Renaissance tradition. There are tenets in mythopoeic projection that are common to African primitive and our own vision. Like the African primitive, the contemporary artist works with what he knows, the mythopoeic image of himself as part of nature, dreams, aura, associations, science; for him, as for the primitive, the shape becomes the power. Sentimentality, romanticism, Christian wish fulfillment and moral reward are not importantly involved in either contemporary or primitive art. Both project one mode: the visionary personal rather than the scientific verbal. Neither the primitive nor the contemporary artist speaks in judgment of animate nature; he is part of it.

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S K E T C H B O O K N O T E S: F R O M T H E T E X T U R E S; T H E PA R T T O T H E W H O L E; T H E R E I S S O M E T H I N G R AT H E R N O B L E A B O U T J U N K 19 5 3

from the textures a flash of vertical light a windshield rounding the corner into the sun from flat earth pattern the great solids vertical from dump fires are gas and smoke the shots of spit the seaman blobs lie in hollows of black water are solids more than the known the shading of land to muck more delicate than known before the shading of forest destruction, disintegration—the plowing of five generations the discs & harrows of wood points to steel calamity destruction of a household are delicately placed blades in scattered unities

the part to the whole— the making of form elements to assemble like the fossil findings of a long-beaked porpoise or stegosaur

there is something rather noble about junk—selected junk—junk which has in one era performed nobly in function for common man—has by function been formed by the smithy’s hand alone and without bearings roll or ball has fulfilled its function, stayed behind, is not yet relic or antique, or precious which has been seen by the eyes of all men and has been left for me—tobe found as the cracks in sidewalks as the grain in wood Three handwritten texts, c. 1953, Sketchbook 31: 6, 26, and 33–34. Regarding Smith’s use of “tobe” [sic], see “Sometimes a Drawing Gets Too Complete,” p. 182.

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as the drop in grass out of a snow hummock as the dent in mud from a bucket of poured stones as the clouds float and as beauties come tobe used, for an order tobe arranged—tobe now perceived by new ownership

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NOTES WHILE DRIVING 19 5 3

Notes While Driving—On the way back, Arkansas, 1953

It’s strange how vulgar curios are and how undefinable is that narrow margin between the total vulgarity of curios and the vulgarity in a creative work of art. The truly creative art is pushing so close to that line of demarcation on which the curio oversteps. As looking at an Ozark curio made up of miniature rock specimens from the Ozarks, and very vulgar. A Japanese stylized donkey meant to be cute. The grouping of a dozen or more curios set in green cement with the open-topped Japanese donkey ostensibly for flowers. The total unity to the artist appears as a very vulgar thing, not even having the basis of function, because its flower use was no more than a tenth of its spacetaking. Its use for flowers was a minute excuse for display of specimens. Yet each of the specimens was interesting to the artist’s eye as objects by themselves, or if presented on a shelf. And if in conscious analyzing the logical reasons of the donkey, in the unity only departed in degree. On the way out to Arkansas, 1953—Highway 60 Illinois

A weathered hawk sitting in a tree feeling old and slow feathers gone from the wing one broken in the tail watching the 70-mile traffic roar below thru fields of cotton brush and corn stubble

Two texts on a single sheet, the first typed, the second handwritten, c. May 1953. During his tenure as a visiting professor of art at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, from January to May 1953, Smith incorporated a hawk skeleton and feathers as collage elements in one of his oil paintings.

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THE ARTIST AND ART IN AMERICA 19 5 3

The artist has been told by almost everybody what art is, what the artist’s function is, most often by people who do not perceive, love or make art, but who nonetheless presume the right, because they are laymen, historians, critics or figure somewhere in the art fringe, to make definition. These are the decadent critics and aestheticians whose first premise is that art can never be as great as it was in the Renaissance. Some years ago the demoralizing effect of this viewpoint was to bilk aspiring artists of an identity as creators of works of art and persuade them instead to become dabblers, craftsmen, illustrators, aesthetes, bohemians—anything but to pursue the true and unalloyed identity of artist. According to certain self-appointed oracles, the artist should be the illustrator of church fable, the servant of religion. To others, the so-called socially conscious group, the artist should serve Marxist realism. Official art of any country is largely government advertising specializing in photo-gloria with no thought of the inherent values of art. Then there are those negative minds which insist that the concept of art was finished with Courbet or Monet or Cubism or Matisse. Finally there are those who make no bones about their hostility to art by telling us that the real art of our time is architecture or the machine. None of these opinions is anything more than a sidetracking of the real issue, which is the identity of the artist. The contemporary painter or sculptor sees his identity simply as the producer of the work of art, himself in direct relation to it without any intermediaries. His identity as an artist is concerned with his heritage—his by visual choice and filial position—and the entirely personal nature of what he produces, subject to no outside authority.

Typescript, lecture, on October 30, 1953, for a panel on “The Progress of Art in America,” presented at the American Federation of Arts Forty-Fourth Annual Convention, Corning Glass Center, Corning, New York, October 29–31. The theme of the convention was “Economic Support of Art in America Today.” Smith’s fellow panelists were Francis Brennan, art advisor to the editor in chief, Time, Inc., and Sidney Berkowitz, AFA trustee and panel leader. Stuart Preston, writing for The New York Times (November 8, 1953), noted that the convention proceedings offered a “number of sensible and unexceptionable observations . . . by the foregathered industrialists, museum directors, journalists and Government officials, and the ailing condition of the American artist was gravely discussed, as by doctors at a bedside. (The sculptor David Smith was the only professional artist present. And a very lively patient he made, too).”

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The truly creative substance in the work of art is the artist’s identity. How he comes about this is personal. It is internal, secret and slow-growing. The artist develops his identity by self-confidence. Part can develop by compliment. When that is lacking he can develop the identity defensively. It depends upon his nature and his position, whichever way his conviction is forced to manifest itself. The confidence he may get from critics is usable, but suspect. He is always ready to discard it. He must also develop his identity defensively, even though he may be maturing by compliment, for he knows how easily that can be lost and how tenuous that has been in the past for other artists. Identity begins with a certain defensive belligerence and at many other times in the artist’s life he is forced to use the same means. But the belligerent defense after the inner conviction is acquired is no more a working need but still a weapon in combating adversity. Sometimes he is aided because he has good teachers and stimulating friends. Sometimes there is no compliment except that which one work gives to another. The defenses necessary to gain identity often become the catalyst to form inner conviction. This is most important, because it is fostering the element of revolt which the artist will use when he reaches full action. The acknowledged titans are not always most important to him in arriving. While his horizon is narrow, relatively unimportant things or characters fill a niche which the artist’s identity needed. It is not axiomatic that the best artists are the best teachers, and his most important influences may come from any source of sincerity. The need within the developing identity will make metaphoric exchange with what is at hand. The building of identity is recognized among artists and the compliment one artist has for another is more than membership in a mutual assistance society. There is perceptive communication, because artists within the same mores travel the same path in creating, are therefore closer and have a greater appreciation of art than anyone else. Once identity is made it is stronger than all other authority. The artist is prepared to make his way alone. Aloneness is the condition of the artist’s creative life most of the time. The true artist projects into realms that have not been seen and can have only his identity for company. The adventure is alone, and the act of projection is itself actuality. It is himself and the work. He has left behind what was once the subject, as well as other problems of the past, while the people of distinction are still heavily involved in mass form, perspective, beauty, dimension design, communication, chiaroscuro, social responsibility, and their own limitations of nature. At maturity, confidence and identity merge. It is not necessarily the opinions of others that cause it. It is the development of the artist in his own mind, by the steps of realization in his works. This identity must be pure and undivided. Identity can never be two things. It can serve only one master. If the artist is forced to teach or dig ditches for survival, he is the artist that labors temporarily. He does not yield his identity. He does not become the

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teacher or ditch-digger who makes art. He must know that the work of art is the product of one identity created for the great cause of visual response. Identity determines the artist’s finished work before ability. Ability is but one of the attributes and acts only as a degree of identity. Ability might produce a work but identity makes the works before and the works after. Ability may make the successful work in the eyes of the connoisseurs but identity makes the failures, which are the most important contribution for the artist. What his critics term the failures are his best works from his own working position. These are closest to actuality and the creative process. These are the works still fluid. It takes time and much verbalizing for the critical viewer to recognize. He must always be fortified against the rejection of critics. He remembers Delacroix’s statements on critics. He remembers the abuse to his own family, the Impressionists, the Fauves and the Cubists. He knows that no artist can really be great without having the respect of his fellow artists, but that an artist can be great and have no respect from the museum, the critics, or people of authority. Cézanne, who talked sculpture, finally liberated painting from its perspective illusion. His work around 1900 recognized new purposes which the canvas surface had for painting. Cézanne not only revealed origins which sired Cubism and account for much in the forward art movement today, but equally important was the identity he gave the artist as an independent, free-acting man. He painted with his quick. He responded to insensitive critics by ignoring and withdrawing, not the most judicious behavior for selling, but with the dignity and identity of a sincere artist. To hold this identity the artist must survey acutely the forces which act for and against him. He must select and reject. He sees that the great public is beyond his hope. Like Pavlov’s dog, they are trained to look only when the bell rings. He needs the public on his terms. They have no need of him. He knows that no artist lives from museums and that no artist creates art with the conclusions of philosophers and opinions of officials. The museum can compliment the artist’s identity if the relationship is one of mutual respect. The artist cannot ask for his recognition, nor will he accept being tolerated. The artist’s only defense is to withdraw from those museums and agencies with whom he is at odds. The museums and aestheticians will always find among the anxious and unidentified, followers who gratefully accept their dogma and tradition, custom and charity. But a growing identity is within the forward movement which will not accept unless the hierarchy responds to the artist’s needs instead of determining them. This position is not new. It is all in the artist’s filial heritage, but it is an identity beginning to form and to act.

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I S AT N E A R M Y W I N D O W 19 5 3

I sat near my window and watched a workman trudge Hill Street, a workman with a striped bill cap overalls lunch pail, carrying his coat. I looked at this man, I have been this man when war makes it just a few years ago. Twenty years from now I may be that man. Communism or fascism puts the artist if he survives into practical use. This is the creative artist’s position in either of these societies. I mention this because it relates to your identity. The most important thing to know is who you are and what you stand for, and to acknowledge this identity in your time. You cannot go back. Art cannot go back. The concepts in art are your history, there you start. The projection beyond your filial heritage is as vast as the past. The field for ideas is open and great, your heritage is universal your position is equal to any in the world, except I can tell you no way to make a living at art. To find your own identity as man. Then if it is that of artist, to identify yourself as an artist in your own time, to recognize your personal history, which I have spoken of as filial epoch. This I refer to because it is that immediate and living part which is like a family affinity. You are born to it, it is an irrational bond, one which you feel. Its feeling goes back like a grandfather. The connection is an affinity without reason, its existence is without your doing.

Handwritten on two sheets of Manila paper, perhaps while visiting Corning, New York, for his lecture at the American Federation of Arts Forty-Fourth Annual Convention (“The Artist and Art in America,” p. 192). There is a Hill Avenue near the Corning Museum.

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THOUGHTS ON SCULPTURE 19 5 3

I do not believe that any two people see the same sculpture, simply because no two people are each other. In the same way, no two people see the same apple. The reality of an apple is not a mono-image of stopped action, nor a photo view. The reality is actually all apples and all views; it is an associative image. The red apple may be green, or yellow or black, spotted or striped. It may be halved with the core, or against the core, or segmented. It may be sweet, sour, rotten, sensuously felt, hanging, rolling, crushed to juice, the blossom flower or a bud. The recording of the apple image can go on indefinitely, interlocked with associations until it becomes personal history. In sculpture or painting, if the artist chooses to depict the image denoting apple, the eye sees and the spirit knows, but the knowing is not all the same. The artist has presented the form for perceptual response. The definition is selected from the experience of the beholder. The apple and its mode of presentation are only the spark to fire the viewer’s imagination. There were no words used in the artist’s creation; no words are involved in understanding. No judgment, no logic, no conclusion, no set of values outside of man’s world, no form involved which the eye of man has not seen. The mind records everything the eye sees. In spirit, or more technically, in perception, all men are potentially equal. Man’s lack of visual perception does not represent a lack of ability. Instead, it may be a case of censoring, originating in the doubt that that which cannot be verbally explained, cannot be perceived. Perception through vision is a highly accelerated response, so fast, so free that it is too complex to tabulate, but nevertheless a natural reaction since the origin of man.

“Thoughts on Sculpture,” College Art Journal 13 (Winter 1954 [1953–54]): 96–100. The essay originated in a lecture at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, on April 22, 1953, which itself drew heavily on other of Smith’s recent lectures. After reading the texts of the Arkansas speech and “A Sculptor’s Point of View,” the paper Smith presented at the Southwestern College Art Conference, University of Oklahoma, Norman, on May 1, Henry R. Hope, editor of the College Art Journal, proposed publishing both texts in the CAJ. The Norman lecture was printed in the spring 1954 issue (see “Second Thoughts on Sculpture,” p. 209). Smith initially resisted printing the Arkansas speech because he had already published the section describing the origin of Hudson River Landscape in Arts and Architecture (see “The Language Is Image,” p. 145) and elsewhere: “I’ve used it over because it is one piece which I analyzed. I don’t have the recall on all pieces . . . . I’m not a historian. I sing one song of mostly personal views and my own work procedure” (letter to Henry R. Hope, September 11, 1953).

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The comparatively recent mode of word communication cannot act as a substitute for the perception of form. There are not enough words in the language, nor can the relatively slow conscious mind keep up to record the vision. As an example, based on the most simple element in use by both sculptor and painter, let me pose a question to black. Is it white? Is it day or night? Good or evil? Positive or negative? Is it life or death? Is it the superficial scientific explanation about the absence of light? Is it a solid wall or is it space? Is it paint, a man, a father? Or does black mean nothing? Did it come out blank having been censored out by some unknown or unrecognizable association? There is no one answer. Black is no one thing. It is many things. The answer depends upon individual reaction. The importance of black depends upon the conviction and the artistic projection of black, the mythopoetic view, the myth of black. And to the creative mind, the dream and the myth of black is the truth of black, not the scientific theory or dictionary explanation or the philosopher’s account of black. Black, as a word, or as an image recall, flashes in the mind as a dream, too fast for any rational word record. But its imagery is all involved by the artist when he uses black on a brush.1 From the artist there is little accent on moral judgment, no conscious involvement with his historic position, no conscious effort to find universal truth or beauty, no analyzing of other men’s minds in order to speak for them. His act in art is an act of personal conviction and identity. If there is truth in art, it is his own truth. It is doubtful if aesthetics has any value to the creative artist, except as reading matter. It is doubtful if it has any value to his historic understanding of art, because his history of art is built upon the visual record of art and not written accounts made on a basis of speculation. From the philosophic-aesthetic point of view, at the time of creation the contemporary work of art is a vulgarization. By vulgar I mean the Oxford definition “offending against refinement of good taste.” This describes where the advanced schools of art rate with most critical opinion now, and how Van Gogh, Cézanne and Cubism were regarded by the critics of their time. The work of art does not change. The mellow of time, the pedant’s talk, only legitimize it in the minds of the audience who may wish to hear, but refuse to see. The influential majority of aestheticians are at present a quarter of a century or more behind art. Thus the contemporary artist cannot be impressed by the written directives on art. His directives are emotional and intuitive, arising from contemporary life. To make the art the artist must deal with unconscious controls, the intuitive forces which are his own convictions. Those especial and individual convictions that set his art apart from that of other men are what permit him to project beyond the given art history. This takes blind conviction, for if his contribution is original, it stands little chance of acceptance from the reactionary or status quo authorities. Aesthetics usually represent the judgments which lesser minds hold as rules to keep the creative artist inside the verbal realm and away from his visual world. Actually the philosophy of art and the history of art have nothing to do with the creative artist’s

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point of view. Both are in entirely different fields. But the layman is apt to become confused if he is not able to make this differentiation. He often expects the artist to perform according to the philosopher’s truth theorems or the didactic historian’s speculation. When we speak of the creative artist we must speak of affection—intense affection which the artist has for his work. An affection, along with belligerent vitality and conviction. Can the critics, the audience, the art philosophers ever possess the intensity of affection which the creator possessed? Do they extend affection and vitality into the effort of understanding? Can they project this intense affection to the work of art? Or do they miss it? In his regard for nature the contemporary artist stands in much the same position as primitive man. He accepts nature, intuitively. He becomes a part of nature. He is not the superman, the pseudo-scientist in nature. He accepts it for its own statement as existence. He marvels. Nature is beauty. Beauty becomes the point of departure— for celebration to produce the work of art. The work of art can have subject to any degree of abstracting or the artist himself can act as subject, wherein the act itself is the subject for celebration or identification. Often the artist is asked to explain his work. Naturally he cannot, but in one instance I have recalled a few motivations in the procedure of a sculpture. This work, later called Hudson River Landscape, has been exhibited at the University of Illinois and elsewhere.2 This sculpture came in part from dozens of drawings made on a train between Albany and Poughkeepsie, a synthesis of ten trips over a seventy-five mile stretch. Later, while drawing, I shook a quart bottle of India ink and it flew over my hand. It looked like my river landscape. I placed my hand on paper. From the image that remained, I travelled with the landscape, drawing other landscapes and their objects, with additions, deductions, directives, which flashed unrecognized into the drawing, elements of which are in the sculpture. Is my sculpture the Hudson River? Or is it the travel and the vision? Or does it matter? The sculpture exists on its own; it is an entity. The name is an affectionate designation of the point prior to travel. My object was not a word justification or the Hudson River, but the existence of the sculpture. The viewer’s response may not travel down the Hudson River but it may travel on any river— rivers are much the same—or on a higher level, the viewer may travel through his own form response arrived at through his own recall. I have identified only part of the related clues. The sculpture possesses nothing unknown to any man. I want the viewer to travel by perception the path I travelled in creating it. The viewer always has the privilege of rejecting it. He can like it, or almost like it. He may feel hostile toward it, if it demands more than he is capable of extending. But its understanding can only come by affection and visual perception, which were the elements in its making. My own words cannot make it understood and least of all, the words of others.

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Notes 1.  See Smith’s comments about the color black in “Lecture, Fourth Annual Woodstock Art Conference,” editor’s note and p. 167. 2.  Before Smith’s text went to press, Hudson River Landscape, 1951, was included in three exhibitions: David Smith: Sculpture and Drawing, Willard Gallery, New York City, April 1–26, 1952; Contemporary American Painting and Sculpture, University of Illinois, Urbana, March 1–April 12, 1953; and Initial Exhibition, Summer 1953, Museum of Art of Ogunquit, Maine, July 25–September 7, 1953, where one of the two views of the sculpture used to illustrate the College Art Journal essay was taken. (The second photograph, by the artist, showed the sculpture outside in Bolton Landing, New York, outlined by snow.)

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SYMPOSIUM: ART AND RELIGION 19 5 3

It is a little late even to toy with the idea that art has any chance with ideologies better served by plaster saints, television, radio and Tin Pan Alley. Whole segments of Christianity still shun art which was part of the aggrandizement, pomp and corruption of the Roman church before the Reformation. The association of art with the graven and golden image likewise makes art taboo. The truly creative art of our time cannot play an important part in organized religion because the traditions are diametrically opposed. The artist is not involved with translation. He is not dedicated to a program or a faith other than his work, which for him is a different kind of faith from religious faith. His profundities and philosophy are himself, delicately hidden from verbalizers and proselytizers. His freedom to conceive in visual terms is greater than any other freedom of our time. To produce at his highest, he cannot be harnessed to any doctrine. There is a particular sense of rightness which inspiration and conviction give to the work of art, wholly personal and individual, which organized religion does not understand. The artist’s tradition antedates Christianity by 30,000 years and encompasses pagan cultures which Christianity has attempted to destroy. To the artist, nature does not have in it a god of wrath, jealousy or moral authority. To him, nature is visual, personal. He meets it with an inner feeling of acceptance, for he is a sensual part of it. He does not presume to judge it; he is integrated with it harmoniously and intensely—which may relate him more closely to ancient, pagan or Oriental religions, than to Christianity. In the contemporary field you may point to a few religious commissions. When these become works of art it is because the artists are so fine that whatever they dedicate themselves to becomes art. The literary banalities are transcended and the message left behind. This incurs the wrath of the literal-minded laity and clergy who have no feeling for the contemporary work of art. The proposition that art and the church enjoyed a mutually enriching association during the Renaissance is a piece of wishful thinking promoted by church myth and the Wölfflin school of historians. For evidence of a contradiction, the letters of many

“Symposium: Art and Religion,” Art Digest 28 (December 15, 1953): 11, 32. Typescript dated November 18, 1953. Smith’s text was published along with statements by the sculptors Ibram Lassaw, Jacques Lipchitz, Henry Moore, Anton Refregier, and Germaine Richier; the poet and art critic Nicolas Calas; and the architect Percival Goodman.

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Renaissance artists set forth their true position and the church’s true position in using art. The church as a contemporary patron seeks art on a very limited scale. The plumbing is paid for at a higher hourly wage than the art. When, as and if the sculptor is called in, the architect can barely raise enough money to cover the cost of casting. Few sculptors, even if they have the religious conviction necessary to produce the work of art, can afford to work under these conditions. Whatever contemporary church commission you can point to, I can point out a greater work by the same artist where he has worked purely on his own identity.

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HOW LITTLE I KNOW 19 5 3 – 5 4

How little I know—until I see what happened in the night on the snow—the movement of animals their paths, and why—the animals that fly the night birds leave no tracks except on the mind the star tracks that angle to the earth sharp and direct the broad brushing of the wind shown only by the snow plops from branches— circuling the bushes and trees.

Handwritten, on the back of an announcement card for David Smith: Drawings, Willard Gallery, New York City, December 15–30, 1953. Smith’s neologism “circuling” is a present participle that implies three infinitives: to circle, (en)circle, and circulate (around).

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THE ARTIST’S IMAGE 19 5 4

The greatest force in early twentieth-century American art was against the artist being the artist. Other forces directed him to be a gentleman, an illustrator, a craftsman, primarily accompanied with apology to Greece and Italy. The cause of abstract art received a boot both ways from the Armory Show. One hand may count those who held to that heritage which seemed raw, probing, inventive, but which was natural to the way of American life, and natural to the way our art should have been made. We have always offended good taste and therein lies our heritage. Some tasted the new and deserted to safer beauties, mollification, and adoptation. The Depression and WPA helped the artist towards identity. Through sufferance and picket line, it let him be an artist in certain areas, even an abstract artist. In the Thirties every returning art authority’s ashore message announced the death of abstract art. And it appeared dead. The art press rarely mentioned it. It was seldom in museum showings. But a handful held to their heritage. Now, after two wars, abstraction is legion. And occasionally referred to as the bandwagon. We are born to the filial heritage of our century, we have chosen a family of pagans, from Africa, Oceania, the East to Altamira. Never in the history of man has the artist’s heritage been so great. Never before has the artist possessed such unique freedom. He pays for this freedom, metal and marble, canvas and color, by means other than sales of his work. He is pleased, that the inheritors of culture refine, polish and package. How long does it take for crudities to become beauties?

Typescript, lecture for a forum on the “Contemporary Artist’s Image,” January 30, 1954, College Art Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia. Smith heavily marked his text to show varying degrees of emphasis, here indicated by italics and boldface italics. Smith was added to the panel too late for his name to be included on the printed meeting program, which listed the session participants as Henry R. Hope, chair; the painters Robert Gwathmey and Edward Millman; the photographer Gjon Mili; and the sculptor Herbert Ferber.

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In the making, art is never what others say it is, or should be. Even, when the artist speaks of tangibles, they are past, and art has gone beyond. He may talk about aims and art, without it actually being a determining factor in the work. If Cézanne’s painting had held to his verbal aims it would never have reached such heights. And now, if the artist works big, it is with cause, and not that the painter is an aspiring muralist, or that the sculptor desires the pedestals of park heroes. It is his symbol and freedom and identity asserting [the] stature of the work in ratio to his own being. It is not packaged and pared to size for concession. It is the defiant statement of autonomous control. The artist wonders at judgments, which is masterpiece and which is failure. For each was equal in its making. That judged failure, still fluid, held most promise for growth. That which was masterpiece, ended and final, fully arrived. If one is good, why is the other bad? There was nothing qualitative in both their making, both were conceived with the same love. There is still arrogance and error from all the officials that put him on trial. It is good, if he stands guilty of bad art before critics, aestheticians and historians. For his work may be free from fastidious indulgences. And it is very good that the work of art is a lone process. If art is not who the artist says he is, or that which the artist makes, what then is it? It is not the conclusion of the non-artists. And if you say it is what it was before, there are plenty of artists to meet your demand, willing and anxious cameras.

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The image is the aura in space, after the subject is gone—starting a sequence of origins, more pointed than auras. Or they are visual metaphors, of other metaphors, transparently overlapped. Both humorous and profound. If it can be seen, why violate vision by saying? For whom do you pass a test—and what is the degree? There are trains of form reflections, speeding, to form realization more meaningful to the work of art, than conscious action. Reality is the work, there is no subject but the act. Reflections in an action of origins. The creative act is in a constant state of movement, even to try to name its parts would stop its action. Visual perception without external subject is a part of all action, constant and daily involvement. Perception and action are not creatively private or personal, but have become suspect by pragmatists and thus often consciously denied. Images before they can be named have changed and renewed themselves. They are still the same in the art making process as they were thirty millennia back. And the verbalizers are but babes with their words. Images are part of the values in the work of art, profundities for which there are no identifications. Identity within man, the artist, the drive and the conviction, make the work of art. The work of art is not premeditated. There is movement, and cycles of associative influences, which are involved right up, until the end. The end may represent only a superficial detachment until it picks up again in the next work.

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There was a certain culminating stage reached, but it was not anticipated before the work started. There is naturally bound to be much error in a verbal interpretation or explanation, especially since all reflection and association are now too far behind to isolate, and which in the first place were visual and never identified. And in the final analysis all the components are dissolved in the true reality, the work itself.

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N O T E S F R O M A S K E T C H B O O K T I T L E D “ N AT U R E ” 19 5 4

order in nature nothing a man selects can not be nature then it becomes the selection and meaning in nature the honest artist will always be the man of the vulgar, vagabond of Breughel, the Zen Buddhist, the revolutionist, an element of nature, with no dots on his “i”s he will never be the nature of the poetic pretenders of money or the scholars of museums who are the go-betweens of trustee money (conscious) and public effect artistic nature human thot (projection) to be great must renew itself continually—the renewal may be a paradox, a symbol of a symbol, it may be satiric or humorous, it may be any exchange or contradiction but it will be a beauty newly found and unknown—it will not be a pretender or a trustee’s beauty which is only a posthumous beauty of the artist which when repeated over and over again becomes a banality

and if Chinese painters depicted minute nature, the forces related to harmonies of the universe, the microcosm lives not without its relationships—to the artist’s own personal universe—his physical universe and how many other visionary universes and that springboard for vision called in our dimension “time” time—the cubic demander, felt by the artist new in the artist’s consciousness undefined—but a force felt which pushes cubes—the demand upon his vision

we deal with realities

Four handwritten texts, early March 1954, in Sketchbook 38 (titled “Nature” on the cover): 1, 3; 5; 6; and 7.

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but they move too fast to name they are bound in actions they are forces and structures

the artist is not the verbal philosopher of nature, he is an active part—the action cannot be spoken—to be spoken it must be stopped—because it is still moving and the maker of action is not bound to direction by moral or reason

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SECOND THOUGHTS ON SCULPTURE 19 5 4

What were the origins of sculpture? On the basis of what we believe so far, the first evidence of sculpture occurred near 30,000 b.c. It may have originated in the carving of implements, or in celebration, or in the rite of food-gathering, or as an integral part of cave painting. We probably shall never know. At any rate, a conclusion based upon probability is of no particular use in the understanding of art. What does seem certain is that sculpture came as an origin and need in man. From the contemporary position, the psychoanalyst may attribute the artist’s creative urge to his feminine nature to create, to feelings of insecurity, inferiority, aggressiveness, and various other asocial motives. Whatever the motives, none is outside the nature of every man. The accent is on degree. The analysis and the moral conclusion, even if either could be made, have nothing to do with the work of art. We cannot perceive a motive but we can perceive a work of art. The artist can usually trace his call back to some childhood incident. The why is not important. It is set, he is it. But he of all men must have conviction and in our social order, belligerent conviction, to survive and produce the work. Not one in a hundred survives from the sale of work. His devotion and conviction of purpose must exceed that of other men. He has no security, but he will not trade. He makes his living at work other than his art, but his wage-earning must in no way be a compromise of concept. He expresses alone, with the art of the twentieth century as his heritage, with his fellow-artists as his audience. His daily battle in perceptual sensibility is opposed by all odds. His position is wholly irrational. Society expects his creative behavior to be rational and philosophers expect his beauties to be reasons. He has no patron to cajole, but as Herbert Read has pointed out, his great embarrassment is publicity, which seems a necessity in order to become known, but which is so broad and undefined that he couldn’t aim his concept to it if he tried.1 At the same time, he feels the strength of numbers, for his profession gains force and new recruits. He feels equality in world concept and at times superiority. He knows that art is not merely French art—it is truly international and that includes him. He is not falsely modest. He knows that the product of the artist is the work of art. He feels strong in his heritage. He knows that a masterpiece of all time, like Guernica, was conceived internationally and that it is as much his heritage as any. He has

“Second Thoughts on Sculpture,” College Art Journal 13 (Spring 1954): 203–07. The essay originated as a lecture titled “A Sculptor’s Point of View,” presented on May 1, 1953, at the Southwestern College Art Conference, University of Oklahoma, Norman (see “Thoughts on Sculpture,” p. 196).

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seen the beauty of language invented by Joyce, and the origin of sound by Schoenberg. He has felt dimension as invented by Einstein and he knows that it was the product of the creative irrational which also makes art. He feels that the great creative age of man is his, no matter what its social and environmental contradictions. He feels his strength against the weakness of the men claiming reason. When the artist starts to make his own statement, he must recognize that he is a product of his time, that what has gone before is his heritage, and from his particular vantage point, his purpose is to project beyond. He will identify himself with his filial epoch, which is only his present history, probably not many decades back, possibly only as far back as the oldest artists of his time. But whatever distance back he accepts as his filial heritage, his concept must press beyond the art of his time and in this sense he must always work towards that which he doesn’t know. Many artists of my generation feel that Cézanne is the beginning of their filial epoch. In the twentieth century Cézanne used the room–still life ratio of viewing for the distant landscape. The cubist views were from all distances—the room, far away, in equal stature and in actual identification with the artist. It may have been Kandinsky during cubism’s first decade, who moved farthest, paralleled by Mondrian, but here the move was not only in distance but in identity. Both painters were moving independently farther from the object identity. The contemporary artist has not only inherited the feeling of moving and distance on the earth plane but also possesses the newly found distance element of viewing vertically down, from which view the current mode of travel gives him the working tenet. Poetically he has known that pattern is form. That chiaroscuro is not his age. That no area can be indicated without man’s intuitive vision projecting the dimension. Practically he sees the fallacy of any two-dimensional supposition. This two-dimensional reference which critics have used to distinguish painting from sculpture seems to be the most abstract kind of thought. Especially when he reflects that the thicknesses of some of Van Gogh and Cézanne’s paintings have been equal or greater than the dimensional contrasts of Han dynasty tomb carving. And yet the work of the advanced artist is not influenced so much by his physical position in distance or the contradictions in rationale but by the poetic position, that irrational creative state upon which his whole approach depends. Most important in this poetic point of viewing has been his moving and the lengthening of distance between the artist and the object. He has moved so far away from the object that he meets it from the other side, consumes it, and becomes the object himself, leaving only two factions involved, the artist and the work. The artist is now his own nature, the work is the total art. There is no intermediary object. The artist has now become the point of departure. Like many changes in art critically termed revolutions, this position is not wholly new, it has occurred in art before to some degree. This represents a closer position to the total or ultimate degree. His new position is somewhat that of primitive man. He is not the scientific viewer of nature. He is a part of nature. He is the nature in the work of art.

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Art history is one thing to the art historian and another to the creative artist. Art history to the artist is visual. His art is not made up of historians’ words of judgments. His choices are made the same way he makes the work of art—by the visual, irrational, creative. His history is a selection of his own preferences. His visionary reconstruction goes farther back in the history of man than the evidence. His history may even leave a few openings for mythical reconstruction or epochs destroyed or lying still buried. Actually, the artist by his working reference to art of the past is often the discoverer of new value in historically unimportant epochs, and the first to pick out the art value in work which was previously viewed as ethnographic only. The artist sees a wholly different set of masterpieces than those the art historians have chosen to acclaim. He first sees the forms of the Venus of Willendorf before those of Melos. He sees the structures of Bracelli before the ripples of Michelangelo. A Cameroon head, a Sepik mask before a Mona Lisa. Using his visual art references he will go to an earlier and perhaps neglected period and pick out an approach that is sympathetic to his own time. In Chinese Rei Sho character writing, the graphic aim was to show force as if carved in stone or engraved in steel. In Japanese painting the power intent was suggested by conceiving a stroke outside the paper, continuing through the drawing space to project beyond, so that the included part possessed both power origin and projection. Even accident—which is never accident but intuitive fortune—was explained. If drops fall, they become acts of providence. If the brush flows dry into hair marks, such may be greater in energy. And that in painting certain objects possessing force, the sentiment of strength must be evoked and felt. I do not cite these tenets to show that we are directly influenced by oriental art. The forces involved have occurred in art without declaration. The visual aesthetic the artist retains by memory of an Assyrian wounded lion frieze is still more his aesthetic on the power stroke than the oriental statement. In contemporary work, force, power, ecstasy, structure, intuitive accident, statements of action dominate the object. Or they power the object with belligerent vitality. Probably the fact that man the artist can make works of art direct without the object meets opposition by its newness. Possibly this direct approach is a gesture of revolt representing the new freedom, unique in our time. Possibly there is a current ecstasy in the artist’s new position, much like that of 1910–12 cubism. From the artist there is no conscious effort to find universal truth or beauty, no effort to analyze other men’s minds in order to speak for them. His act in art is an act of personal conviction and identity. If there is truth in art, it is his own truth. If beauty is involved, it is only the metaphor of imagination. From the philosophic-aesthetic point of view, at the time of creation the contemporary work of art is a vulgarization. By vulgar I mean the Oxford definition: “offending against refinement of good taste.” This describes where the advanced schools of art rate with most critical opinion now, and how Van Gogh, Cézanne and cubism were regarded by many critics of their time. The work of art does not change, only the evaluation and the mellowing of time, the verbal rationalizing on the ears of those who wish to hear but refuse to see.

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Opposing the rear guard aestheticians of the universal-truth-beauty order are the contemporary statements by Focillon, Herbert Read, Malraux, Larrea, Clement Greenberg, Suzanne Langer, Eluard, Apollinaire, Picasso, Kandinsky and Klee.2 The acceptance of the creative point of view has its sympathy outside of this century as well. In the early third century Plotinus made the following insightful remarks:3 Deliberate reasoning occurs in our mortal life when the soul is uncertain and troubled and not at its best. . . . For the need of reasoning is a defect or inadequacy of apprehension. So in the arts; when artists falter, reasoning takes the reins; but when there is no hitch their imagination governs them and achieves the work. Notes 1.  “ . . . the contemporary artist must form the taste and recruit the public (through the intermediary of the art critic, in himself a modern phenomenon) on whose patronage he will then depend. The modern artist is miserably dependent on the media of publicity. That is his deepest humiliation,” in Herbert Read, The Philosophy of Modern Art: Collected Essays (New York: Horizon Press, 1952), a book Smith owned. 2.  Smith owned a copy of Henri Focillon’s Life of Forms in Art (1934; first English trans., 1943). His library also contained copies of Juan Larrea and Alfred Barr, Guernica: Pablo Picasso (New York: Curt Valentin, 1947); Paul Eluard, The Inner Life of Pablo Picasso, J. T. Shipley, trans. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947); and Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art and Painting in Particular, 1912 (New York: Wittenborn, 1947), and he made note of writings by Herbert Read, Malraux, Greenberg, Apollinaire, and Klee in magazines and other books he owned. In the spring of 1954, he was reading Langer’s Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art (New York: Charles Scribner, 1953) (letter to Herman Cherry, March 7, 1954). 3.  Smith credited George Rickey for the Plotinus quote: “Note the finis with the Plotinus quotation. George Rickey sent it to me, we talked about that subject and I wanted the statement. He found it and gave it to me. It’s nice to lean on old timers sometimes (meaning Plotinus, not George)” (letter to Henry R. Hope, College Art Journal editor, September 11, 1953).

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T H E A R T I S T, T H E C R I T I C , A N D T H E S C H O L A R 19 5 4

For a long time the artist in America was intimidated by what authority said art was. Our natural way of life was crude and raw, an offense to good taste. We were told to imitate Europe. At the turn of the century the American artist was expected to be an English gentleman. In a new country, there were no great forces acting upon our painters and sculptors, nor did the environment give them culture. From many sources came the defeatism that said American artists could not produce the work of art. This defeatism had a demoralizing effect until a group, mostly artists, organized and presented the Armory Show. Everybody now accepts those 1913 crudities as beauties, but there is always a hangover group which holds that beauty ended back there and that present advanced art is not beauty but crudity. Beauty is not a word the artist likes to use unless it can be meant to represent his particular canons. Too often the limitation of verbal reference holds beauty to a sunset, which is not meant to change. What the advanced artist has, be it raw, vigorous and without good taste, he has by heritage and complete independence. He is now very certain of his identity and acknowledges his position as the producer of the work of art. His identity is concerned with his own heritage of visual selection and filial position. The work is of a very personal nature, and is subject to no outside authority. Art is what he makes and he will allow no outsider to meddle. The truly creative substance in the work of art is the artist’s identity. It is internal, secret, it is image and vision, images that never take place in words. It is slow-growing, but ever-moving. Visual images associate without the limitation of logic, morality or philosophical discourse. Personal image, chosen image, all moving and associating differently in the vision of the mind from one work to another. The artist develops his identity by self-confidence. Confidence in part can come by compliment. The confidence he may get from critics is usable, but suspect. He must always be able to discard it in case it turns against him. He must also develop his

Typescript, lecture for a symposium, “The Artist, the Critic and the Scholar,” on April 23, 1954, at the Albright Art Gallery (now Albright-Knox Art Gallery), Buffalo, New York. Smith was given the last word, following speeches by art historian George Heard Hamilton and critic Clement Greenberg. Smith repeated the same themes in a more informal talk to students in a class taught by Jack Arends at Teachers College, Division of Instruction, Department of Fine and Industrial Arts, Columbia University, New York City, adding references to Rodin’s sculpture, “[which] has a plasticity and fluidity very common to painting,” and to Matisse’s drawings: “ . . . no statement is more explicit and poetic than the Matisse statement while working on the Vence chapel: ‘To draw with scissors, to cut right into color . . . ’ reminds me of direct carving in sculpture.”

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identity defensively although maturing by compliment. He knows how easily compliment can be turned, how tenuous it has been in the past for the great within his filial heritage. Both compliment and rejection must serve his development in building the artistic conviction. He must learn to survive with no compliment, except that which one work gives another. Nothing outside can ever be as important to the artist as the secret assurance which one work builds for another, and the promise of accomplishment in continuity. In the very early period of the artist’s life, identity begins with a certain defensive belligerence. At many other times in his working life he is forced to use the same means. But usually the belligerent defense after the inner conviction is acquired is no more a working need, but still a weapon in combating adversity and injustice to his work. It must be controlled and always aid the work growth. This defensive action never loses importance because it fosters the element of revolt which is always the artist’s role, especially so aesthetically, when he reaches full action. In the training stage he may be aided by good teachers and stimulating friends. The acknowledged titans are not always most important to the artist in arriving. When the horizon is narrow, relatively unimportant things or characters fill a niche which the artist’s identity needed. Nor is it axiomatic that the best artists are the best teachers. Some of his most important influences may come from any source of sincerity. The need within the developing identity will make metaphoric exchange with what is at hand. In this relationship Gustave Moreau, a pretentious and literary painter, meant much to Matisse. Urgell, a painter unknown to us except as Miro’s teacher, is traceable for certain action in some of Miro’s works; but the teacher shows up no more than other sources, such as the picture postcard scenes of musical cats that also relate to several of Miro’s works. Although the imprint of source is evident it is the creative metaphoric transposition through the identity of the artist which produces the important thing, the work itself. The world is full of source but it is the artist who makes the work of art. The building of identity is felt among artists. The compliment one artist has for another is more than a mutual assistance pact. It is a sharing of dream. Often artists are the artist’s only audience. Artists are the best judges of art. Their judgment eventually shapes opinion. They understand the work of creation. They know the power of creation is durable. They recognize that belligerent combat must carry great love in its approach. They know that all life experience gets used—the thing they like for its contribution, the unwanted (which cannot be avoided without breaking identity)—all are used in metaphoric exchange towards forms right up to total opposites. When the artist determines his identity, it is stronger than all other authority. The artist is prepared to make his way alone. Aloneness is his creative life most of the time, but it is likewise his independence. If the true artist projects his vision into unknown realms, he can have only his identity for company. The adventure is alone and the act of creating is in itself the artist’s nature. He has left behind the problems of others and the problems of the past, while the people of authority are still involved with mass

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form, perspective, beauty, design, communication, chiaroscuro and the other limitations they have set upon nature. He has dropped Mona Lisa as just another portrait, accepted the Renaissance as another art period and added to his heritage African, Oceanic, Incan, cave painting, Pacific Northwest sculpture, and the feeling of other periods which have been newly found and form his visual history. At a certain maturing point confidence and identity merge. It is not necessarily the opinions of others that cause it. It is the development of the artist in his own mind, by the steps of realization in his works. Possibly there is here a relationship to the amount of work produced, not that numerous works alone represent merit, but as an indication of his intensity and conviction, and each work is a step upwards. Identity can never be two things. It has one master. The practical question of survival while holding this identity I have not yet solved. But I do know that if I am forced to teach or work in a factory for survival, I am the artist who labors temporarily. The identity does not yield. I am never the teacher or factory worker who makes art. It is identity, and not that overrated quality called ability, which determines the artist’s finished work. Ability is but one of the attributes and acts only in degree. Ability may produce a work but identity produces the works before and after. Ability may make the successful work in the eyes of the connoisseur but identity can make the failures, which are the most important to the artist. What the critics term the failures are apt to be unresolved but of greatest projection. They had to be done, they held promise. The promise, the hint of new vista, the unresolved, the misty dream, the artist should love even more than the resolved, for here is the fluid force, the promise and the search. The artist feels his own family, that part he was born to, that part he has chosen. Cézanne often talked the words of sculpture but in the end he liberated painting from perspective illusion. He not only revealed origins which sired cubism, but equally important was the identity he gave the artist as a free-acting man. He painted with his quick and responded to insensitive critics with the same sensitivity, ignoring and withdrawing, with the dignity and identity of a sincere artist. To hold this identity the artist must survey acutely the forces which act for and against him. He must have respect from the agencies with which he deals or he must withdraw from them. He must no longer be put in the position of soliciting. He cannot ask for his recognition but he will not accept being tolerated. Whatever combat he may meet must be accepted philosophically but it should never interfere with the creative process or the work.

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TR ADITION 19 5 4

Tradition is the perfection of others. To follow tradition demands imitation, and as we use the word it denotes conformist identity, and the verbal statements of aestheticians and historians. In this sense it must always be the thing we oppose. Our mere questioning of the word shows that the unartistic propaganda of verbalizers has made us prey to their terms. Tradition to us is nothing we can accept without accepting its motive. Even that which it stands for in our analogy cannot be well named. It is different for each of us, and represents a personal selection of visual memory. Tradition can only say what art was. Tradition cannot say what art is. Only to a small extent do we visually select any part of ancient art into our memory store to become heritage then, not as it was made, nor for its original intent, but by interpretation as it reflects in filling a hastened recognition in our own stream of work. What we do depends upon how we aim or devote ourselves. Tradition teaches us to be an also ran. But art is created from the working conviction that the artist is the principal. Are we content to be the traditional, the modest conformist, repeating pleasantries and accepted forms or do we accept the challenge of high art and devote ourselves with full application towards top discovery? What art we create is related to our own inner secret expectation and challenge. I do not mean that one verbally challenges other artists. For the secret challenge of other artists is defeatist. Our challenge is against tradition. It is this challenge which activates our individual identity. Tradition comes wrapped in word pictures. Words are the traps which lead the non-artists into clichés and conclusions which shape their thought. Tradition, as long as we recognize it by this name, is what we are against. As creative artists we have been raped by word expectancy before we were old enough to rebel, and the horror of it still patterns our action unless we are constantly on guard and develop a working defense.

Typescript of Smith’s statement for “The Attitude Toward Tradition of the Contemporary Artist,” a forum sponsored by the Woodstock Artists Association, Woodstock, New York, on August 6, 1954. The other panelists were the painters Sidney Laufman, Anton Refregier, Herman Cherry, and Ralph Wickiser. When Smith’s text was published under the headline “Sculptor Opposes Tradition as Perfection of Others” in the Woodstock Press (New York), September 2, 1954, two errors were inserted into his original transcript: “To follow tradition demands limitation [read imitation] . . .”; “. . . the ration [read ratio] of courage . . . .”

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Vision, the language of form and personal identification are our expectancies. Few except artists will accept this. Art is made from dreams and visions and things not known and least of all things said. It is made from the inside of who you are when you face yourself, but since who you are is never who you are but always an expectancy, it must amount to the declaration within yourself of who you aim to be and to what purpose your expectancy is pledged and the ratio of courage you have to put towards life devotion. Beneath the whole art concept, every pass in the act, every stroke, should be your own identity, with its expectancy, not so much a thing that can be put into words, but an inner conviction. The result is not that which can be spoken but that which is felt. In the eighteenth century the philosophers left nature and aimed their logical analysis towards art. It has been a sorry day ever since for the perception of art. It has influenced the weak and consumed defense time from the strong and caused the public to talk or withdraw instead of looking. Analogy, critical estimate, and comparative conclusion have become the tools of tradition, the philosopher, historian and often the critic’s approach to art. Wherever the influence has been felt it has hampered the understanding of art. It invariably concludes by damning the innovations of our century. This approach to reason when reason was not the aim of the artist has even confused the artist, [to] where he has felt himself to be on trial and tried at times to defend himself logically and verbally. Since Cézanne, cubism and the Armory Show, we have found our autonomy. We have been born to an age of freedom. We may ignore all authority outside the making of art. Hanging as a distant and unrecognized fear has been the stigma which critical authority might place against the artist who showed contemporary influence in his work. When this is faced it merely amounts to whose influence and how good the work. If an artist shows influence, it is probably with the older artist’s blessing, for he too has accepted influence, and passes the right on, as an artist’s debt paid by generation exchange. Very often heritage and external situations cause aesthetic arrival quite independently and quite separately. Most often so many factors are involved that even to name the parallel of purpose serves no particular end within the family of art. Since we arrive within the heritage of our fathers, it is quite natural that we feel and have in our blood some of what constitutes our family. What matters is not to what we are born, but what we are in particular. Such and to what degree is within our need and identity, our family is a part of us never to be denied, forgotten or wished away. Let us exult in our heritage and work to compliment it and not be concerned with the pretensions of outsiders who claim to know better who we are and what our family should have been. With the autonomous freedom in concept and the illustrious heritage of the twentieth century, no artist has had a greater period in which to work.

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L E C T U R E , S KO W H E G A N S C H O O L O F PA I N T I N G A N D S C U L P T U R E 19 5 4

smith: I want to show you some slides. They’re all mixed up and we’ll go real fast, and then I want you to take me up on some of the statements I made. You want to start? It doesn’t matter where—the slide part is just kind of entertainment.   [Slide: Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer, 1878–81] You recognize that as a Degas sculpture, and Degas paintings in the background.   [Slide: Woman’s Head (Fernande), 1909] That is a sculpture made in the year 1910, by a painter named Picasso.   [Slide: Maternity, 1934] That is by González, whose work was shown in the Modern Museum about four or five months ago.1 Outside of one or two pieces, it’s about the first time more than one piece was ever shown here. He helped Picasso in 1929, ’30 and ’31—González was a Spanish silversmith—and did some welding assemblage for Picasso of metal objects put together. If you’re acquainted with the sculpture of Picasso in 1930 and ’31, you can see those groupings of metal things, which were welded. González’s sculpture is independent of found objects. I don’t think anything in it is found—it’s all made.   [Slide: Duchamp-Villon, The Horse, 1914] That sculpture is from 1911 and was important in early Cubist sculpture, though I don’t recall very much work by that sculptor again. That was Duchamp-Villon, in 1911, I think. It’s in the Modern Museum. Anyhow, you have probably seen it. But it seems to me a very good sculpture for that period. Outside of Picasso and Matisse, I don’t recall any other sculptors of that same time that made any better sculpture than that.   [Slide: The Man with a Lamb, 1943] That’s that recent Man with a Goat or Man with a Sheep, by Picasso, which is not classic, not abstract, not Greek, but very individual. And even the form isn’t natural, yet it is very natural. But if you examine the making of it, it is very unorthodox—in the sense of nature.

Transcribed and edited for this publication from an audiotape of Smith’s talk at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Faculty Lecture Series, Skowhegan, Maine, mid-August 1954. A transcript made by Skowhegan, and now part of the Skowhegan Lecture Archive at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, includes Smith’s introduction (omitted here) to the slide portion of his Skowhegan lecture. His introduction closely followed the text of the statement he had made a few weeks earlier at the Woodstock Conference of Artists (see “Tradition,” p. 216). The identifications of specific works of art in Smith’s slides are the editor’s, based on slides and slide film in the artist’s archives; all the photographs, including those of works by other artists or of natural forms, were taken by Smith. Lecturing apparently without the aid of a written slide list, Smith occasionally misremembered the titles, dates, and locations of some of the works he showed.

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  [Slide: Woman with Her Throat Cut, 1932 (cast 1949)] That is a Giacometti sculpture. I think that was made about 1937—I don’t remember exactly. But it’s made of cast bronze forms that are rather loosely hinged. They can take different positions, but I think that is the way it’s usually shown in a museum.   [Slide: Standing Woman, 1932] That’s our American sculptor Lachaise, whom you know, who is a very fine sculptor.   [Slide: a rock] This is a cubist piece of rock—a specimen of fluorite. And if you can examine it closely, there are very wonderful little cubic structures that take place in there, ordered by the crystal construction of nature.   [Slide] Is that Lehmbruck? No, it’s another driven sculptor. question: Kolbe? smith: Kolbe—that’s it. I don’t know whether the Modern Museum has it. It was in a spring sculpture show this year.   [Slide: Nelson Blocher Mausoleum, 1888, Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, New York] That was an American 1890 sculpture. That’s a glass-enclosed monument in a cemetery in Buffalo. On the left, fully clothed, is the wife, and the husband is reclining, and above him is the angel.2 It’s rather self-explanatory, but it’s a perfectly made sculpture. The most beautiful marble, and not a flaw in the craftsmanship, and just about as real as you could get—except the angel, and that must be visionary. (Laughter.)   [Slide] And in looking at nature—that’s not a painting, it’s just a side of a barn in Maine that I took last summer, where some farmer had been spotting spots on knotholes before putting on a coat of paint. But I liked it because it’s a part of nature, and I don’t mean to draw any conclusion about it. I just mean that there’s nothing that you can paint or the mind of man can imagine that isn’t nature.   [Slide] That is a piece of rock in Maine, on the seacoast. I liked it very much. I don’t know why—but it’s a very nice piece of bas-relief.   [Slide] And that was just a piece of beach, after a wave had receded—with stone, seaweed, and things.   [Slide] That was a cubist rock pile, dug from a quarry here in Maine.   [Slide] And another study of a piece of rock that laid on the main street of Woodstock, New York. You know—it’s an artist’s colony. I thought that was kind of a nice sculpture.   [Slide] Next, just some mud.   [Slide] That’s some more mud, and an old piece of iron, and a stone, and a discarded license plate.   [Slide: Carved Head, Collection Oregon Historical Society] That sculpture is from Sauvie Island, where the Willamette and the Columbia River join. It’s not known who made it or how old it is. There are a lot of sculptures in the group. They’re presumed to be eight hundred or nine hundred years old, and yet when some of the same type of sculpture was taken out of the cave, before the river was

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flooded, at halfway down through the excavation the ash checked [out as dating from] two thousand years [ago]. So, maybe they had two thousand more years to go to get down to the bottom of it. And it may be that sculpture was made in this country over four thousand years ago. I mean, maybe we have a tradition still underground. But there are a lot of very wonderful sculptures in that northwest region around Portland and even in Washington [State]. And then there are many known excavations that come from Alaska, British Columbia, and all along the seacoast.   [Slide] That’s a halibut head that I laid on a Boy Scout tent, which accounts for the green. Well, I don’t know what to tell you about that. I think it’s the historians that, more or less, lead us to believe that we ought to talk about something we like. Well, I like that.   [Slide] That’s one of my own sculptures.   [Slide: Agricola V, 1952 (K269)] So is that.   [Slide: Agricola III, 1952 (K267)] And that, also. question: What kind of metal is it? smith: All three of those are iron. Iron or steel—there’s really no difference in— question: Can you tell us what starting point you had in doing these, or if anything in particular is small, or did these involve found objects? smith: Well, I try to have no point that I could say in words. I try to deal strictly with my own preferences and imagination, and sometimes objects are found. I might find a piece of iron or see a piece in my own shop, and from that one piece I start a relationship which finishes. In that [one], there are a number of pieces that relate to farm implements. I made fifteen sculptures in a series called Agricola, which is all I remember about Latin. (Laughter.)   But I remember that that had some reference to agriculture. And so did this have some, but it wasn’t very important, and that’s about the only identification that I could make.   [Slide: Agricola III] Do you see this particular form here? Well, you know, that’s a U-bolt on some kind of a hookup on plows—it’s used in hooking a horse to whatever outfit it’s drawing. And sometimes some of the objects have relationships to farm tools or farm machinery. But when they do—or when one piece does—it acts as a key which demands everything else. question: Can we go back? [Smith returns to Agricola V.] The reason I asked about that was it seemed to have a very definite, sort of flight or a bird-form to it. I was wondering whether you had any thoughts in mind of that nature, at the time you did it. smith: It does, but this particular form here—it’s the one that goes back like that— that probably suggests it. Yet that form I made, when I made it I didn’t have a bird in mind. At the same time, that is very much like the runner on a sleigh—like a

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form which exists in nature in hundreds of ways. And it also is just like a metal bar that’s picked up and bent halfway—you know, with a ninety-degree bend in it, without hammering it or doing anything to it. It’s a very natural bend. And so I don’t know which one of them it is. And the bird part had no particular relationship in my making, though I like very much the element of flight and the grace which a bird has, and which any kind of flight has. But the balance from then on has no other—well, I would like to make a sculpture that I couldn’t talk about, that I couldn’t make any relationship at all. Other than that, just very abstractly, each form had to have its relationship adjoining it or related to it, but yet, when viewed, was a complete entity by itself. question: Well, by that I don’t mean that you have to explain it, that you have to say that this is inspired by a bird, or a fish, or anything else. . . . smith: No, I understand. I would say, first, I am a sculptor, and whatever I choose to make I’m the authority for. The same as any other artist—I grant him that same right. And then, anybody outside, who’s not an artist, I grant him the right of accepting or rejecting. But any natural element was not in my conscious thinking in the making of that. question: Does this piece of sculpture [Agricola V] have a base? Or is this a piece that’s suspended? smith: No. You see that “U” form underneath the breast—the bird-breast form that comes down there? The “U” form which supports it is on a flat piece of iron about three-quarters of an inch thick. The sculpture is about forty inches high, and maybe thirty-five inches in length. [Returns to a previous slide of Agricola III.] Well, though I wasn’t making a head or a portrait or anything, that very definitely has a certain linking of form which is very much like a head and shoulders. Yet I’m not sure that I had that in mind. And if I did, it was secondary. question: . . . what is the sort of kick that gets you off on the thing? I mean, how you get going? Once you get going then, it’s no problem. (Laughter.) smith: Well, I’ll tell you. Once you do get going it’s never any problem as to what to do, because you have so many things to be done that you really don’t ever get done, even if you work every day, all day long. What makes it is your identity, when you identify yourself hard enough or you become convinced of it so that you don’t have to convince yourself. You work with the conviction. Also, you can make failures— what other people call failures. You don’t have to succeed in every one. And really, you’re more concerned with expressing what you have to say than you are with whether it is a success or a failure. You make them all the time, and don’t think about it. You make it because you have to, and when you’re not working, you’re unhappy. So the natural thing is to keep working.   [Slide: Agricola VIII, 1952 (K272)] That is in the same group of sculptures called Agricola. That top form is an antique coleslaw knife. The center form is an old buggy

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wrench, and I think the rest of it is made. But those were certain elements in nature which in another civilization had outlived their usefulness. But I found them already made to my purpose, so they belong to me. Which isn’t new in art at all. question: You mentioned that this is one of a group. Do these groups have any special significance or are you just working on specific forms, for yourself? smith: No, they don’t have any special significance. But there was something about these machines of a past period which appealed to me, and sometimes I found these things and used them in an assembly where maybe one found object was the key to what the sculpture had to be. No, there was no significance at all. They stand or fall strictly on their drawing of form.   [Slide: Tanktotem II (Tanktotem II (Sounding)), 1952–53 (K283), and Tanktotem I (Tanktotem I (Pouring)), 1952 (K282)] That one on the left is in the snow. But you see in silhouette two sculptures which are about seven feet high. The one on the right is called Tanktotem Pouring because the one form sort of pours out. I didn’t make that pouring thing related to a ceremonial vessel, but I did kind of see some ceremonial [objects] where sacrifices were made—and they had certain little basins and things for letting the blood off. Probably these were Egyptian works that I saw in the Metropolitan Museum. I like that element very much, that pouring part. So this sculpture has one of its forms pouring off. The other one is called Tanktotem Sounding. I don’t know why exactly, other than that certain forms run into the center of that large circle— that concave, center thing up there. It’s intersected several times by a form. And the nearest relationship I can come to putting a name on it was another Tanktotem and call it Sounding. This last year I haven’t been terribly satisfied by putting names on sculpture, so I put dates on them and got myself all mixed up. I don’t know how to identify them to myself or how to even pick them out from photographs—what the names of them are. Having a name kind of helps me a little bit for identification, but that’s about the only reason—the name isn’t important to it. question: Do you get responses or respond to a feeling while you are working, or do you choose the titles only after? smith: Usually, long after—only when I stand and look at the work, when I’m forced to title it, exhibit it or something, or to title some photographs. All these [slides] are just snapshots that I take myself and I title the photographs and put them in a file drawer. I just look at the sculpture and then let something—whatever comes along—I name it. question: Do the lines of these abstract forms remind you of some real experience or not, while you are making them? smith: I don’t know how to answer that. I don’t quite understand. question: I mean, if the act of putting a straight thin line and two kinds of flowers up there have for you a certain feeling, or a certain memory of experiences during your life as a man, not as a sculptor?

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smith: Yeah, it must. I mean, you can’t work, otherwise. It’s got to have a memory recall, but I cannot tell you what the memory is. I don’t want to know what the memory is. question: They are much more unconscious than conscious? smith: No. You know, the mind of man is so much greater than anybody knows that it is. There is nothing you’ve ever seen in your whole lifetime that you don’t have in your mind stored as an image. And don’t forget, the mind of man has been storing images ever since man began. But these words we use to convey meaning or feeling or thought are only three thousand years old. They’re in their infancy, and everybody is trying to keep them at a standard rate of a few thousand words. I mean, maybe fifteen to twenty thousand words—and to convey all thought, all feeling, all vision, all everything all in words. There are many very pragmatic people or pedantic people that don’t want to give the artist the privilege of using vision unless it can be said. Or that unless you can explain it in words it isn’t logical. But the mind of man has had visions running through it—he responds automatically to an unknown situation, in danger or something. He takes in the whole visionary field and acts quickly before he can even say one word. Well, when you work that is the mind you should be using and not, “am I drawing realistically, naturally?” Or anything that conforms to logic or reason. And that is where I want to work. I don’t want to be where the educators are. I want to be where artists should be. question: I see what you mean about being influenced by what you’ve seen—but the artist can’t put himself off in a vacuum and exist for more than a century. I mean, it seems highly impossible, just the idea of making a living. smith: Well, when it comes to making a living—that has nothing to do with art. That’s a very personal thing and each one of us has to fight it just as hard as the other guy does. I’ve found no solution to that and I don’t know any solution. I don’t know any artist that has found a solution. There is no generalization to make for it. Each guy has to fight for his survival, the same as he has to fight for his vision in his own work. And that’s a very personal thing. I could tell you collective things that would help us all, but nobody is going to give it to us. Outside of that, I don’t know how to approach it, except on a personal and individual way. That’s the hard part. But also, that’s not as hard as being an artist—that is more difficult than the making of a living. But how you can make a living and create art at the same time, I don’t know. And I don’t know anybody who does—who would know how to tell anybody else how to do it, any more than anybody can tell anybody else how to make art.   [Slide: Parallel 42, 1953 (K300)] That’s a hanging sculpture that I started on in Bolton. When I went down to the University of Arkansas for four months, I took part of it with me and finished the rest of it down there. I was working on it and I found that it wouldn’t go on a base—one of those three iron forms below, kind of limp and kind of hanging—so to put them on a base would have been rather forced,

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and I would have had to have an extra brace in there. So I just hung it with a thin piano wire or a Monel fishing leader. It’s not a very heavy sculpture. It weighs thirty pounds and the fishing wire was made for a sixty-pound test—so it was well over weight. question: Did rust color that red? smith: No, I painted that red on there. It simulates rust because I had no way to rust it in a hurry. question: Did you show these slides of the natural forms as having any affinity to your own work? smith: Not directly. They’re just parts of nature that I look at and admire. I have no immediate, translatable thing. But I also will say that no man can ever make an abstract sculpture or an abstract painting, in the sense that no man can make what he hasn’t seen in nature. He makes certain organizations which might be different than [those] seen in nature, but I doubt it very much. I think that anything the mind of man can do or paint or devise is not unknown to another man, and occurs somewhere in nature, more or less, or not outside the comprehension of any other man. question: Would you say that your feeling—making sculptures—has something biological, as nature has, even though it’s really very different? smith: There is nothing that I feel that is unbiological.   [Slide: Anchorhead, 1952 (K276)] question: Who’s this one by? smith: This is mine. It’s a sculpture. It does have a definite relationship as a figure. Maybe even as a figure sort of opened up. And yet, that group of words has no real relation to it because I didn’t feel that way about it when I made it. I’ll say it’s female, but that’s as far as I’ll go. (Laughter.)   [Slide: Ark 53, 1954 (K320)] That is another hanging sculpture. I took that [photograph] on a dark afternoon before I loaded it on the truck to go to an exhibition. It was four o’clock in the afternoon on a winter day and I couldn’t get the lens and the camera open any bigger than that, so the photograph is dull. But down in here is a rather large bronze form that hangs also. The only relationship to life is this form right here. And that has a very particular beauty to me, and may be Egyptian, may be a neck of a swan—but it actually is a 1914 Dodge brake pedal. (Laughter.) question: It could be a loon neck. smith: All right, it could be. And yet, you know, I don’t think there is any one thing that is one thing. I don’t think you can have one object. Any object is many other things. It is never simply of one meaning.   [Slide: Drawing 3/12/53, 1953 (K288)] Well, that’s kind of “birdy,” too, isn’t it? (Laughter.) But it is meant to be a drawing. It’s a drawing in metal—there’s mixed iron, a few cast iron pieces, some stainless steel. These forms here are cast iron forms

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that came from an iron bed, and then they were changed. What beauty or what interest exists, I hope I’ve made. But I also hope I have found something, in that case, that has been discarded, also. And then the whole sculpture is painted with sort of a bright cadmium red. There are some found elements in that, and some made elements. It isn’t very important as to which is found and which is made, as long as the particular unity of that group of forms is mine. I could draw them or I could make them and cast them in bronze, it wouldn’t matter—the important thing is their relationship. question: In which years did you make these sculptures, more or less? smith: These are just selections from the last two years.   [Slide: Tanktotem III, 1953 (K303)] And that is one called Tanktotem III. The other two Tanktotems were two years ago, and this was last year. question: How high is it? smith: That is about seven feet high, and not too heavy. So far, I don’t make anything heavier than I can carry myself because it’s just practical. I have to pick it up and load it on my truck and, usually, truck it to New York and take it off and carry it up several flights of stairs. One time I had a show at Sam Kootz’s gallery, which is on the fourth floor.3 Those two Tanktotems, that I mentioned a while ago, were too big to get in the elevator so I had to carry them both up four flights of stairs. question: Those words are “tank totem”? smith: Tank totem. question: Would you mind saying why you selected the two words to go together? smith: Well, in all of those I use that concave form—very much like the end of a tank. question: You mean like a water tank or— smith: Yeah, like an industrial tank. You see, this is like a tank end bent like that, and this is very much like a tank end—or it is also like a dish or a salad bowl or a halved melon—but it was just sort of an easy identification for me. And also, it was far enough away from a natural object to be kind of an independent thing.   [Slide: Tanktotem IV, 1953 (K304)] That is Tanktotem IV—and that has another group of segmented concaves in it. It could be called another name. That is a little bigger than the other one. This is about seven feet, eight inches, I think. And this, too, can be carried. This back section is rather big, but it’s hollow. It’s made out of steel, which isn’t too heavy.   [Slide: 8/6/53, 1953 (K290] I don’t remember the name of that one, but it was a sculpture within a circle.   [Slide] I don’t know the name of that, either. But you see, it’s impossible for a person, for any man I think, to leave reality. In a certain sense, he looks upon everything else in relation to himself.

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  [Slide: Agricola XIII, 1953 (K285)] That’s part bronze and part iron, and that back wall is one of the walls of the Art Center at the University of Arkansas. In that one, there were only a few very simple planes and one spiral. I like it because it’s very simple, but I can’t give you any relationship for it. And that’s what I like about it. Certain sculptures, like this and the red one we had, I call drawings because I put them all, more or less, on one plane. And they depend, mostly, on their linear quality. I admire drawing very much and I like to draw. And at the same time, I like to make sculpture and I like those elements together. question: Do you remember whether or not you feel gay when you do them? The bedstead ones, they look gay. smith: Why, I don’t know. When I work, I’m elated, but I stay right within that level most of the time. Whether it’s gay or not, it’s subservient to the sort of work level. I appreciate the feeling of making a work and feeling successful within my own mind about it, of having succeeded to the best of my ability at that particular time, though I know the next one will be better. [End of slides.] Well, don’t you want to take issue with me on the Italian Renaissance statement? question: You say that the Italian Renaissance is only one facet in the history of art. Well, that’s very true. And you also say that people should be independent of tradition. I think that any group of paintings, or works outside of the Italian Renaissance that you look at—whether the Romanesque, or the Gothic, or the Byzantine—they’re all a product of a very definite kind of tradition in many cases, which completely subjugated the individual. Now, if you like these better than the Italian Renaissance, why should we preempt tradition? smith: Wait a minute—(Laughter.) question: It’s involved, I know. Why should we repudiate tradition? Basically, that’s the main question. smith: Tradition means nothing to an artist. Tradition is something you have been hoodwinked into thinking means something to you, when it doesn’t. question: Why doesn’t it? smith: It can’t. Because you can’t understand it. You can only understand that period of life which is like your family. Your family is like your father, your mother, your grandfather, and maybe your great-grandfather, and it doesn’t go back very far. For me, it goes to Cézanne, and outside of that the rest is heresy and hearsay, and everything else that the historians have been feeding you. Your only true relationship with it is looking directly at the work of that time. And you’re so far out of understanding—the age has changed so far—that you can’t have a working affinity with it. You can have a respect affinity. question: But those men do, I mean, who are out there. They reached back, you know, to Africa. So that we only get it from that particular tradition, which is a tradition of its own, too. 226

smith: It’s an admiration, but it’s not a tradition—it’s not what the name implies to an artist. Tradition belongs to the historians. question: But if this were true I wouldn’t be able to understand Homer when I read it. smith: Homer isn’t art. I’m talking about art. I’m talking about painting and sculpture. question: Well, but the painters and sculptors are the same thing as— smith: No—they are not the same thing, from my point of view, because painting and sculpture deal strictly with the language of vision. question: Yes, but the language of vision corresponds to feelings, and they are still human. smith: Well, all right, but I am unable to translate it. I have to stick strictly to the visual. I have a very great fondness for Renaissance painting, specifically, and I have my preferences in it. But my relationship is directly with the artist, and in that sense I know no tradition about it because we have no intermediaries. What he paints, I understand—in its plastic quality of painting. But I do not understand his relationship to his time and his painting. question: Well, if we are clear—like Rilke is a clear thinker—we can put ourselves in the same position he was, and we can decide what is different, what is near our own feelings. question: Why is Cézanne easier for me? I mean, he’s smart, he’s strange, he did differently than I. Why must he be my family? smith: Well, I don’t say he must be your family. I say he’s mine, because I have known two men who knew him and I have asked them about him. And I have gained a little firsthand knowledge. I feel that the artist is born now and he’s born to a family, the family of art. And the family of art is like the family of his own birth. question: How far does it go back? Your grandfather, great-grandfather? smith: I don’t know. It goes back for different people—and some people deny their family. This is all very individual and all very personal. And that’s why I say there is no tradition, as such, because each person has his own. And there’s no collective tradition. But when I say tradition, it is the historian’s use of tradition and they always make a collective, depending upon who the philosopher or the historian is. Some make seven arts and draw the same rules for each art of seven arts. Some make five and some three. I know my affinities and my knowledge are very narrow and very limited, and I prefer painting and sculpture. And if I say anything, it’s my point of view. I’m not generalizing. I don’t mean to. It’s very personal, and it’s the basis on which I work. This collective generalization by philosophers is nothing that makes or helps us make art. question: It seems to me that it would be more charitable to say that the artist’s heritage is everybody’s. We are particularly artists, but we are generally the human

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race, and it seems to me the painting and sculpture are, in a sense, imagery— communication. smith: Well, you know, nobody gets entertained by my work. I’m a human, and there’s nothing I can do that isn’t human, and nothing I can do is beyond the knowledge—perception—of any human being. question: As such, it’s entertainment, though. smith: No, as such, it is a work of art, which is not entertainment. I work to express myself. I’m a human being, and I’m interested in making this human being work to the fullest extent of his capacity. I don’t care how well it’s received or how much it’s received or whether it’s a social good or not. I’m interested in making one person work to the full extent of his ability and I have respect for other people who do that, too. I have respect for James Joyce or Arnold Schoenberg or Sean O’Casey, or anyone else who does that. And in the long run, all three guys I’ve named might be said to be working in the same way. But in the end, they make a greater contribution to our social life than anybody else does. question: Mr. Smith, do you think anything can be done to influence the release of working to a vision? You said you work to a sort of vision that you have when you are in danger, or sense danger. It’s that sort of vision that can’t be described and it’s automatic. smith: I mean that the visual response and sense in man is so much older than communication by words. It’s so much so that it doesn’t have to be explained. Every man on the street has it. Every man or every child ten years old has seen everything he’ll ever see for the rest of his life. The only trouble is that every child, every person, when he gets to be ten years old—can see it. They make a snap judgment, verbally or logically—“I’ve seen it”—and they don’t look again. They never look again at that object. question: But don’t you think what you’re doing and what other artists do influences the way they see things? For example, they see a tree the way our tradition in art has conceived a tree and painted it on canvas. That influences their seeing, does it not? smith: I suppose it does, but not for very many people. question: What I meant was, what can be done here? Most people here are interested in learning how to sculpt or learning how to paint. And what are the factors, in your opinion, that would be beneficial to students arriving at this stage of creating in accordance with this inherited or acquired vision? smith: Each man has to make that for himself. I think the first thing—the most important thing, as far as I know—is to identify yourself as being an artist and do what you do when you’re an artist. The only thing I know to do is to work at it seven days a week and as many hours as I can find. And then there are other years—there are plenty of times when I work in factories or teach or do anything I can do,

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because sculpture is an expensive thing. But I hold the identity of being an artist. If I work in a factory I’m not a welder, I’m an artist who is welding. I am not a welder and an artist on the side. I’m always an artist. And I will not give that right up to anybody or to any social system or regime. question: . . . Rilke advised his unknown poet friend not to attempt to write poetry unless he would die if he didn’t write it. Now, if you were advising a student to take up the study of art would you feel that he would have to have that same drive in order for him to attempt to be an artist, or do you think he could train himself to be one? smith: Well, that is a very difficult thing to say. I don’t know. I do know that you start out doing some things—you drag yourself to do them. For any number of years, you don’t succeed or don’t finish anything, maybe. Or you don’t reach any expectation with it. And the only thing you have to go on is knowing that the next work is better than the last one. That is the only encouragement you have. It takes a very blind devotion and a driving devotion and a very secret one. You can’t go around and tell everybody about it. But you’ve got to have a kind of inner—I mean, you can’t tell everybody what you think. It’s a hard thing to pull these things out. But I did think of a few things that I wrote down. I said, if you even secretly and innerly challenge another artist, that’s already defeatist. You have to have an innate, blind conviction within yourself that you are a very principled person. You don’t have to do it today, but you’ve got to have that belief in yourself in the long run. Otherwise, you’re going to give it up and turn to something more profitable, or turn to something that’s more easily realized. You’ve got to have a long period of realization. question: You said that for yourself, one of your principle aims was to make a piece of sculpture that was not expressible in words. It was just a visual thing. Now, when an artist picks his particular family, do you allow the validity of an artist picking a family which is based on the type of painting that can be expressed in words and carried away? smith: There’s no painting that can be expressed in words. question: Well, something can be said about it. I mean, you can say something about what’s in it, figures in it, or something. smith: Yep, that’s very superficial. question: It’s superficial, but it’s something. smith: Yes. But I think anything you can say about a realistic painting I can say about Mondrian. And neither of us will get the point. You can tell that there’s a vase and a pitcher and a nude in a Matisse painting, but that doesn’t mean a thing. That isn’t even important enough to put into words, because the life of Matisse is in it, the color relationships you can’t state. That beautiful freedom of line, that very simple all-encompassing single line that says so much—there aren’t any words to fit it.

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question: Are there any laws that you abide by, or do you make up your own? Do schools mean anything? smith: There are no rules at all, and any rule you give me I will show you a work of art which violates your rule. question: Then what is the purpose of a school to teach you? smith: The purpose of the school is because you need encouragement. Nobody teaches anybody to make art. In school, your teachers are there to encourage you and sometimes the association is the thing that does it. Sometimes it’s association with your fellow students. And sometimes there is a good, hardworking student in the class and there are a few lazy people in it, and they kind of work hard, too. They kind of bring out something that they didn’t know they had. And after they’ve followed somebody else and keep on painting and make a lot of pictures, they bring out what is the catharsis. And it becomes enjoyable and a pleasure. Within themselves, then, they need a certain challenge and find that that is an expressive thing that is them, finally. question: But couldn’t anyone have an emotion or feeling and put it down, and consider it a work of art because it comes from within them? Isn’t there some sort of law you go by? smith: There is absolutely no certain law, no. There’s good and bad art. question: Then how can you tell good from bad art? smith: I can tell. question: But aren’t there critics to say whether it’s good or not? I mean, can everyone say what he feels is good about it? smith: Everybody can if he’d like, yes. What’s wrong with that? Would that upset anything? Who’s going to say Matisse is bad? Who’s going to say Matisse is a bad painter? question: But how can you determine whether it’s good or not, because for each person it means something else, doesn’t it? smith: Each person has a particular set of exchange with it, but it’s the same picture. And some people will say Matisse is a lousy painter. question: Well, I’m not speaking of Matisse. I’m speaking of people who enjoy painting and they paint pictures that are sincere to them, and yet they might be very poor. Yet they think they are good pieces of work. Who is right? Isn’t there something that you go by? smith: They are right for themselves, and I’m right for me. I rejected it, and they accept it. And what more do you need in art than accepting or rejecting it? What else is there? Where would a rule come from? Where would a standard set of evaluations come from?

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question: Why do you believe that the forms of painting—like lines and colors and so forth—are impossible to express in words? For instance, Mondrian wrote a book. And in this book he’s just explaining the painting of Mondrian. Kandinsky wrote a book, too, and Klee wrote a book, and Cézanne. We judge Cézanne more from his letters than from his paintings because we are guided by the letters Cézanne wrote. smith: I am at odds with Cézanne on the letters. I think much more of his work than I do of his aims and his letters. question: You can’t be completely sure that you just judge Cézanne with your eyes. You learn. Perhaps there is this strange belief that we understand just intuitively, and instead we understand logically. moder ator: Well, Mr. Smith, I think you’ve almost proven this chap’s point tonight. I’m sure most of us here understand your work and feel it much better than we would had we not heard what you said tonight. smith: Well, all right! (Laughter.) I still want to stand on the work and not on what I say. (Laughter.) But I also know one thing—that the philosophers and the art historians are all wrong. You spoke about Rilke, and I think of one thing—when he was in Paris and he was working for Rodin as his secretary, he was also writing letters to his wife. He was talking about Van Gogh, and what one color did to another, and how it worked. Rilke wrote to his wife that Cézanne, who was so clumsy with talking and with saying what he was doing, was a much greater painter. But Rilke expressed it very poetically and very nicely in his letter to his wife, written in 1910, about the evaluation of Van Gogh and Cézanne. question: I’d like to make a correction on that statement. I don’t think we like your work better because you talked, I think we like you better. (Laughter.) When you started talking and you showed your work, and then someone asked you to show it again, it was just as beautiful, before, as when you started to talk about it. We knew you better. smith: Well, I wasn’t talking about my work, necessarily. I was talking about what I think, and when I work I try not to think. question: I’m curious to know your reactions to the sculptures by Picasso of about 1930, 1932—as analogous to yours with the found objects. smith: I think that some of the greatest revelations and contributions in sculpture have been made by painters. I mean Picasso in one sense and Matisse in another sense. Picasso, especially in that period of 1929, 1930, 1931, when he made a lot of metal rod sculpture and when he used found objects and put them together. To me, that was a great breaking with tradition, a great revelation, and it had never existed before. It was also breaking sculpture from a material sense; it destroyed the sanctity of bronze, marble sculpture. And it also broke up the monolithic concept of

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sculpture—that it had to be a released image form—sort of the Galatea complex. It really broke open a great vision—to my way of thinking—sculpturally. It freed sculpture, so that the sculptor has as much freedom as the painter. Sculpture has lagged behind painting. All the brilliant things hit painting right from the beginning of impressionism. Impressionism was a very brilliant and revolutionary thing. But at that time there was no sculpture going that way. There was no brilliant uprising in sculpture.   Matisse—I think it was around 1911—made some very wonderful sculpture which isn’t like sculptors’ sculpture. It’s different, like a painter’s sculpture. Matisse took from the influence of a Tiare flower and made a head, and he carved the head, and the forms were in convolutions. The head was broken down, in a sense, to where the sculptor was the prime object of this particular sculpture and the head was a secondary factor—the subject was secondary. What was most important was the fact that the sculptor was making an object. The head was of a secondary nature. And in that sense, he took what he knew very well and knew best, maybe— the head—and made the convolutions in a very beautiful way. question: A very small but historically necessary correction is that a Genoese painter invented what Picasso really reinvented, and his name was Bracelli. . . . smith: Yes, he was a fifteenth-century Italian engraver. . . .4 As far as I know, he was sort of found by the cubists and came to light at that time. I’ve never seen his work reproduced in books before that, other than in the time he lived. His work was sort of dug out of archives. He wasn’t a very popular man and he died very young. In this country, there are only three or four museums that have any of his work, and none of them have the complete folios, which he engraved and presented to the Crown at that time. He died very young. Goodness knows what he would have been if he had lived to a mature age. Well, that goes for many sculptors—I mean, goes for many artists, of any nature. question: What schools have you attended, or background have you had that led you to the field of sculpture? smith: I never studied sculpture. I studied painting. And when I went to the Art Students League, I studied with a painter named Jan Matulka. That was about the first time I heard about cubism and Mondrian, Kandinsky, De Stijl, and the various movements. At the time, I didn’t know there was any difference in them. I just thought it would all belong and I got interested in what the cubists had been doing. You see, I said cubism was essentially a painter’s movement dealing with the problems of sculpture. Well, it was. Kahnweiler, who was there, says that it was an attempt to enlarge the concept of painting so that the objects were seen from many views. That statement conforms, more or less, to a sculptural concept. And it’s proven by the fact that around 1911 to 1914 Braque and Picasso put in pieces of wood and tin. I think Kahnweiler credits Braque with putting in a cane of a chair as the first material introduced into the picture, within that movement. Then

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Braque let it lie, and Picasso picked it up, and they both went back to it at another time. Zadkine, Laurens, Lipchitz, all the other men, Villon—Villon didn’t make very much sculpture that I’ve ever known about.5 I haven’t seen it reproduced—just two or three . . . that I know—and then the American, Archipenko—he was in there in 1914 to 1917, when there was a rather heavy sculptural period. But it was inspired, essentially, by cubism. If you look at those sculptures I think there wasn’t anything very far in departure from the concept of cubism at that time. What was the question? I forgot. question: What schools you’d attended. smith: I went to a number of colleges, and in some of them they were teaching me how to teach other people to make art—without teaching me, or without helping me to do it. You were dealing with problems that you used in teaching other people. And then I went to the Art Students League in New York. question: Did you have these convictions when you were going to college? smith: No, I didn’t even know what art was. I was born in Indiana, and I never saw an artist, never knew one, never knew what art was. I once thought it was cartooning and then I once thought that it was painting waves and making them look “live.” It changes all the time. question: How do you decide that the sculptures made by Picasso, where found objects enter the sculpture and make imitation of forms, were made for a real purpose? For instance, I saw a monkey where the head was composed by two toy automobiles. Or the goat, where the back is made by a branch of a palm tree, and so forth, and there are many intrusions, as you say, of real objects. How do you judge if it’s a way of understanding a form within other forms? I mean, composing a form with found objects, which is different from your work. smith: Well, I don’t know. I have a blind fondness for Picasso because that was the first sculpture I’d ever seen. I’d been a steelworker before I started to study art. I worked in a factory—steelwork. And as I say, I was born in Indiana. I never knew an artist. I never knew what they looked like, what they did, or how they behaved, or anything about it. I’d been a factory worker and a steelworker and when I came to New York and studied art a little bit, I happened to see a magazine called Cahiers d’Art. That was about 1931, and it had pictures of Picasso’s sculpture. . . . It was in French, so I didn’t read it. I just looked at the pictures. When I saw that art was being made with material I knew and could work, it appealed to me immediately. So from then on, I was a sculptor. question: Yes, but it changed with Picasso, because whether he always was a little anthropomorphic or he had the forms, he was always imitating something, more or less. But now he just puts in objects to substitute for other objects. smith: Well, one object is never one object. It is impossible for the human mind to name an object and have its action stop at what its name is—whether it’s an apple

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or a bicycle seat or anything you want to name. It’s impossible to stop the action without the association. You can’t say apple and think of one thing. An apple is a hundred things. And, specifically, an apple is not an apple. It is what it is to you. It’s a sour one, it’s a red one, and it’s different to each one of us. And yet, when a man like Cézanne paints an apple he sort of ends it sometimes. So when I say “apple,” I think of Cézanne’s apple more than I think of the one that I just ate, or more than I think of a red one or a green one, because I think of Cézanne’s apple—and it’s both red and green. No object is one thing. An object is just as complex in its relationships as you are yourself. question: So an object is valid for its illumination, for the power of evaluation it possesses? smith: An object is its visual memory. It’s the visual memory of it. It’s all images. When you say “apple,” all the apples you’ve ever seen or known have flashed through your mind and have entered your working consciousness as a painter. It is all ready to use. All the apples you’ve ever seen have flashed by, and all the associations are there and it’s all ready to use—as your ability to project your own vision, and as you can take your vision and express, it is there. question: . . . Basically, the real tool is tradition. You don’t paint what you see, you paint what you have learned to see. You don’t make a sculpture of things that you have seen or experienced in nature, but these are innate to our consciousness, and can find an echo always in tradition. Would you agree with that statement? smith: I think I do. I place certain accents on parts of it. I believe, though I can’t prove it, that the most important part of what you work with is what I call heritage. It’s that particular part of your family that you can identify yourself with, that you feel without having to learn about it. I use the analogy of the family because you cannot be told by an outsider who your father or mother is, or how you feel toward them, or who your grandfather is. You take your grandfather for granted, if your father or your mother told you about him. You have a feeling. You have a working feeling for your family. You can’t deny it and take on a new family. You are influenced. I was influenced by Lachaise, John Sloan, Bellows, Ryder—by people like that, whether I use the influence or not.   You are influenced, also, by what other people have done and solved and you don’t have to do. You are influenced even though an artist existed that you reject, that you don’t like. It’s still an influence on you because you have made the effort of rejecting and selecting, maybe, something else. But it is a very, very complex thing and a very personal thing. I think that what is more important is that particular heritage that you feel, because you were born to it and you can’t unfeel it, any more than you can unfeel your own family. I have a tremendous admiration for Mesopotamian sculpture, for African, Oceanic—I have just as much for Oceanic sculpture as I have for Italian Renaissance, maybe more, because I found out about it later, and there isn’t so much written about it. There’s so much sculpture even in Crete

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that hasn’t been uncovered, and in Greece. And I’ve got lots of spots in my appreciation that are open to fill yet, that I’ve kind of filled, in a visionary way. I’m not dependent upon it, but I’m not making conclusions about it and I’m not making conclusions about the Renaissance. I think that an artist now—when he does accept those particular influences—he takes them, and they are of a very minor nature. He only takes them because they happen to fit in his working order, and they happen to fill a niche that he hasn’t quite filled yet. But he cannot take Renaissance sculpture or Egyptian sculpture for the purpose it was made, or the intent in making it. I mean, he never can feel like the artist felt that made it in that time. question: Do you feel perfectly satisfied working in iron? Do you have any hankering to work in wood, or stone, or terra-cotta? smith: Yes. I have some money to cast three bronze sculptures that I’m taking to the foundry next week. I have a lot of trees that I cut fifteen years ago that are sort of drying, stuck in a barn, and I am going to carve those. I like all materials. And I think they’re very personal. I’m not against anything. I like everything. But the material has to come secondary to the concept. I’ve got to have the importance for what it is, before I have the importance for the material. Which is contrary to the Bauhaus point of view, isn’t it, Henry? henry varnum poor: It’s certainly contrary to your point of view the last time I talked to you, when you said that you believed in sculpture being completely freed from the material. And I remember I had told you that I thought that half of the sculpture would be from the material and half was the intention within the material.6 smith: Well, in one way, I hope I’ve changed in two years, Henry. And in another way, it’s only a metaphoric exchange, I think. Maybe I didn’t make it clear. It’s a narrow line, when the found object starts, whether it’s an influence or whether I think I have the influence first and the found thing fits it. It’s very narrow as to which one it is. I meant it that way about wood. I’ve got to work along in a certain way, and work a lot of line sculptures and a lot of things where the volume is suggested by the most elementary symbols before I want to attack the mass-form thing. But I don’t want to draw any conclusive morals from it. Each thing is a matter of how convinced you are about it, more than I want to question the concept of any other artist. Because every artist has to have his own concept to do his own work, and it’s how well he does his work or whether it’s art—that’s the end, and I don’t want to make a rule, most of all. Maybe I did dispute myself from two years ago, Henry. I hope so. (Laughter.) question: You say that you studied art, and yet you say that you don’t believe in any rules or laws or anything about it except what you feel. So what did you study? smith: Drawing and painting, because I had too much fear that I didn’t know enough words in order to draw. And I thought maybe it was something you had to know. And now I know it’s nothing you have to know, it’s something you have to do.

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question: Yes, but don’t you feel that from drawing and from all that experience that you’ve had before that you’re able to do this now? You just don’t put objects together—you have certain shapes and feelings about them from the past, from your experiences in drawing, and you understand the rules and laws. smith: And yet, if I could, I would do things that nobody has ever done. question: Well, still, you wouldn’t put one shape that was exactly like another next to it, would you? I mean, because it would be uninteresting. smith: Maybe if I had enough courage, I would. question: But if it’s uninteresting? You would? I mean, two shapes that are exactly alike? smith: Gee, I don’t know. It seems to me Mondrian put two shapes that are very much alike together, and it’s art. question: It doesn’t mean it’s good. smith: No, no, it doesn’t. And it doesn’t mean it’s bad, either. I said Mondrian was good, and you said that the two shapes together wouldn’t be good, but neither means good or bad. It’s how good you do it. It depends upon the individual picture, and not upon the rule. There is no right and wrong. One man can do it right and another man can do it wrong. question: Like they say not to put an object right in the middle of a canvas. smith: Who says? You spoke about the two equal spaces or sizes, and I said I think Mondrian has done it. I think that you’ll find in a Cézanne painting maybe two apples the same size right beside each other. Or maybe in a Matisse still life you’ll find two cookies beside each other, and you might find something right in the center. It depends upon the rest of the picture and it depends upon the conviction that you do it with. Are we all worn out? (Laughter.) Well, I’m through then. (Applause.) Notes 1.  Smith may have been thinking of Sculpture of the Twentieth Century, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, April 28–September 7, 1953, which included Maternity and three other sculptures by González, as well as his own sculpture The Banquet, 1951 (K246). 2.  The mausoleum was built by John and Elizabeth Blocher to honor their adult son, Nelson, who died in 1884. Three marble sculptures created in Italy by the Swiss-born Italian sculptor Frank Torrey depict the recumbent Nelson flanked by the standing figures of his parents; above his head hovers a female angel. 3.  David Smith: New Sculpture, Kootz Gallery, New York City, in association with Willard Gallery, New York City, January 26–February 14, 1953. 4.  Giovanni Battista Bracelli, an Italian printmaker best known for his etching series Bizzarie di varie Figure, was active in the seventeenth century. 5.  Raymond Duchamp-Villon, whose sculpture The Horse Smith had shown earlier in his lecture. 6.  The painter Henry Varnum Poor was one of the founders of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

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CONTRIBUTION BY THE AESTHETICIAN 19 5 4 – 5 5

Art is the sensuous enjoyment of reality Or any other definition How many definitions Produce how many word patterns Which echo in the mind And warp their harangue into impression In the moments of creative doubt When the vision is raw and open Waiting for paths to lead to new places Repeat the harangue over again And before the direction clears Stridently cut into the place Where new patterns were wanted By clamor are closed Wearing down creativeness with Verbal repetitions Authenticating their necessity Over creative will Standing for things you don’t stand for

Typescript, with handwritten title, on one sheet of Indiana University, Bloomington, letterhead. Smith was a visiting professor of sculpture in the College of Arts and Sciences, Indiana University, fall 1954 through spring 1955.

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DEFINE TECHNIQUE c . 19 5 5

technique is what belongs to others technique is what others call it when you have become successful at it technique as far as you are concerned is the way others have done it technique is nothing you can speak about when you are doing it it is the expectancy of imposters

they do not show a respect for themselves or for what they are doing

Handwritten, on a single sheet of paper, c. 1955.

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E D I T I O N S , D U P L I C AT I O N c . 19 5 5

Since the artist’s job is the extension of his concept by successive new works, duplication does not help—because its time robs new work concepts. If he is involved each duplication occupies a niche in his consciousness—and identifies him with commercialism, when he should be battling with his own aesthetic truth. If this is a debatable point, my answer is that one should then be in the production business, preferably on an item that can have greater distribution. An artist should be selfish to concept—morally, ethically and practically. I do not believe in reproductions or editions of sculpture for us. Let us not cite history. Our logic and time are now. Our own truth as the artist is our dominant identity. I see no collective ideals, nothing outside of personal truth, to identify with. We have no clients, no clients’ preferences. We also have no excuses—and mostly we earn our own way at work other than sculpture.

Typed, c. 1955, on the verso of a numbered sheet of Terminal Iron Works, Bolton Landing, New York, letterhead; possibly from an unidentified lecture.

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IT HA S GOT TO MAKE BIG 19 5 5

It has got to make big high with challenge it has been overlooked it has lain on the floor and in the rack it has been there—timidly put together before but—relax with the rack relax with Biff’s yard in June before the weeds Remove—Hang—Drop—Stack—Paint hung from Bloomington

Handwritten and illustrated, January 28, 1955, Sketchbook 42: 1. Smith was in New York City to attend the annual meeting of the College Art Association, January 26–30. His sketch of a sculpture resembles Yellow Vertical (Construction in Three Elements), 1955 (K347).

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15. Sketchbook page, 1955.

NOTES—IMPROVISED UPON 19 5 5

following are notes—and were improvised upon without pretense—before its advent to the artist’s life, dating possibly from childhood— the piece of paper—a freer field—the first piece of paper when all was freedom when everything was origin and art other than your own was not known—and it was not known what was expected the paper and your expression were all that existed— to a helpful degree the artist and the paper have maintained this early intimacy As Odilon Redon expressed it, “the more ambitious study does not give as enduring results as those fragmentary passages that come without thought or composition. It is not the ambitious study which the artist will consult when he needs help. The naive study—when one forgets what one knows and approaches what one sees with humility, remains a real document, fruitful, inexhaustible in its lessons and one that will never tire.”

Handwritten, c. March 1955, on a single sheet. During his tenure as a visiting professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, fall 1954 through spring 1955, Smith took a leave in March to be a visiting artist at the University of Mississippi, where he taught sculpture and held informal discussions with drawing students. Smith’s source for Redon’s statement may have been Arnold Lionel Haskell, Black on White: An Arbitrary Anthology of Fine Drawing (London: A. Barker, 1933).

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TO MAKE A MARK 19 5 5

to make a mark—to set a stroke—which demands its space, to defile the white sheet or make the mark of honor—to erect a solid or set a limitation how many choices defy you, are ready to tear it down because it has no words—are the voices tobe or old memory echoes are these the strokes which elicit sympathy or are these the strokes that isolate the differences whom are you making them for—you and whom else—are all essential or is essential ideal and inhuman—a vanity a ballet of poses needing words for music to give it the illusion of unity that stroke is it a figure—is it I there in space, an ancestor, or am I outside looking into the mirror and is it noble like a sumi stroke or is it weak in spots like I or do I brag or aspire or am I distant enough to be impartial—or does it yield to others, that it is not all mine or me—and am I solo or are we in unison—or should I be embarrassed or is it all in the day’s work whatever—it does not deal death—I need not have guilt like a scientist—nor does it exploit the day’s labor for profit—nor sell a product has it been led to a trap by a name—have words baited what should be vision—and if you name it—is it too worn does the line possess order to the others or is the markmaker lost—how much lost is human and when is too much order tight—is it the cut line in stone—the hard line of mill iron— Handwritten, c. March 1955, on two sheets of University of Mississippi, Oxford, letterhead. Smith spent the month as a visiting artist at the university, teaching sculpture and meeting informally with drawing students, while on temporary leave from his teaching position at Indiana University (1954–55). Regarding Smith’s use of “tobe” [sic], see “Sometimes a Drawing Gets Too Complete,” p. 182.

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16. Untitled, 1955.

has it come from source but selects the white sheet to function and move on out to its end—or is its performance limited to the fenced space is it figure or post—a rent in space, a separation or a foundation—a key—does it stand alone meaningless

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THE ARTIST IN SOCIET Y 19 5 5

To talk about nature as the artist’s subject has been more the preoccupation of those who do not like to look at art but need easily recognizable objects to talk about. Nature has especially been the harangue of professional critics who lack the courage to oppose openly certain advanced schools of art. The demand for nature usually boils down to the fact that what is wanted are echoes instead of invention. At times artists talk about nature and state dependence upon it. Some echo the demand made by critical expectancy. Some use the word in their own particular terms with their own meaning. After all, everything that happens in art must happen in nature. An attitude critical of nature comes from those outside of art making and usually represents a limited vision. Artists learn more from art than from nature. Works of art are more the artist’s identity than nature-object identity. But with the change of time, and the change in environment, different artists choose different aspects of nature. Nature, after all, is everything and everybody. It is impossible for any artist not to be of nature or to deal with problems other than those of nature. On the whole, we are more compassionate than to view nature critically. Being a part of nature we do not question it. We accept it and as one of its elements called creative man, we function. Reality better represents the artist’s term for his position and that, like his own term for nature, includes man the artist along with his imagination. Reality includes the visual memory of all art, and the working reality of his particular art family. The filial heritage to which he is born is something he knows and accepts as his identity, as one knows and feels his own personal family. His interest in reality is not its prosaic representation but the poetic transposition of it. Like primitive man, the artist often imagines reality better than he can understand or explain it. In fact, the whole creative process in art flows by vision, without questioning it, without words or even the thought of explanation.

Typescript for a lecture on March 14, 1955,1 at the University of Mississippi, Oxford. The talk was presented at the Fine Art Center, where an exhibition of Smith’s drawings and sculpture was installed. Following his speech, Smith answered questions from the audience. He spoke the following week at H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, Tulane University, New Orleans (see “Drawing,” p. 254), and gave an informal talk on March 24 at the Memphis Academy of Art. A printed announcement for the talk billed it as Smith’s “first public lecture” at Ole Miss and described its topic as the “artist’s relationship to society, the community and the museum.” It was also noted that Smith would show slides of artworks and scenes from nature to illustrate “the contemporary artist’s concept of ‘the new reality.’ ”

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The eidetic image, the after-image, is more important than the object. The associations and their visual patterns are often more important than the object. Ambivalences in visual terms may be more expressive. White is more white when dominantly black. Visual metaphoric exchange is perceived daily in many ways. When it is verbalized its poetic value is lost. The mind’s eye and not the mirror eye contributes to the perceptual realization of art making more than the reporting view or the idea way. From the most recent contemporary view the only reality the artist need recognize is that he is the artist. Within this realization he identifies himself as the maker of art, independently, personally, wholly devoted. The maker of art is his nature and his reality. In effect he becomes his own subject matter. He has not arrived at this position suddenly and alone. It has been a family heritage, especially his art family of the twentieth century. Impressionism, post-impressionism, fauvism, cubism, constructivism, De Stijl, and surrealism are all in his kinship. The United States aesthetic at the turn of the century was dependent upon the European. Most of our artists studied in Paris, the art center of Europe; encountered, followed or contributed to the various new and revolutionary ways art was forming. In 1910, the Stieglitz Gallery in New York exhibited some returning painters essentially influenced by post-impressionism, namely Weber, Hartley, Maurer, Karfiol and Halpert. This was the beginning of our change. After the Armory Show, in 1913, early cubism introduced another vision to accompany post-impressionism. For a short time these two movements stimulated United States artists to a semi-abstract position. The sculptors Archipenko, Laurent and Lachaise became United States residents, bodily moving their work and views into the academy conservatism of the United States sculpture scene. There was no unifying stimulus and little public support. The conviction of the new view for most of the artists was not deep enough to last long. The concept of cubism was still fluid, and not well defined. Some of our painters got waylaid by Italian futurism, its speed and machines which, in a way, was more definite due to the manifestos, writings and organized effort. Most of our painters worked with a realist concept, applying a futurist or cubist rendering. Until 1940, the abstract painters or sculptors in our country could be counted in single numbers. After 1946, the abstract painters and sculptors blossomed by thousands. With 1950, a new movement, yet unnamed for certain, but most often referred to as “abstract expressionism,” developed without manifesto or organization, indigenous and independent, the birth of the United States’ first native art movement. The history of this is in process, the situation is still fluid. Claims are made that France had a simultaneous movement, but I believe history will show our lead. Some of the French critics have acknowledged this credit to us. This movement in the United States was much like cubism in France. Cubism was not an organized movement, but those who participated in it agree that its collective result came from each man’s individual poetic vision and from wholly within his own nature. Nor did cubism include all the great artists and innovators in Europe at a peak

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in 1910–1914, anymore than abstract expressionism includes all the truly creative work in the United States up to 1955. The reference to schools by either name is most general. It doesn’t matter particularly whether the French or United States artists were first. We have come of age, and intuitively create with an autonomous conviction. I couldn’t begin to name these new order painters and sculptors. There are thousands. Their number increases steadily in all parts of the country. The masters—Picasso, Matisse, Bonnard, Rouault, Brancusi, Braque, etc.—have stayed the masters. We are their inheritors as much as their own countrymen or the countries in which they have chosen to live. Many Europeans have come to our country either as guests or refugees: Chagall, Leger, Miró, Masson, Klee, Moore, Brancusi, and many others. Even as visitors they have fortified our air. Others, like Lipchitz, Mondrian, Gabo, Duchamp, have become United States residents, bringing part of the international heritage to our country. Nothing in particular, but in general many things have made our environment. I suppose historians will be able to find reasons to suit their needs why we have happened, but I hope we are eclipsed as the relative beginning of a greater movement. As we stand, we have no dependence upon the outsiders who say what art is, was, or should be. We realize that the aestheticians only can speak after the act of art. We are always ahead, and further separated from them by the fact that the heritage of our art is always visual and not verbal. The theory-laden historians’ truth-beauty calculations of past ages have no connection with us. We work with our own convictions. We will stand or fall with the confidence that art is what we make. Painting carried the creative banner at the turn of the century. Brancusi, our greatest living sculptor, was the only exception. Cubism, essentially a sculptural concept originated by painters, did more for sculpture than any other influence. Besides, some of the greatest departures in sculpture were made by painters. Both Picasso and Matisse contributed works with origins quite outside the sculptor’s concept. Picasso made the first cubist head in 1909. It was Picasso, working with another Spaniard, González, in 1929, who made the iron constructions utilizing “found” or collected objects. Cubism freed sculpture from monolithic and volumetric form as impressionism freed painting from chiaroscuro. The poetic vision in sculpture is fully as free as in painting. Like a painting, sculpture now deals in the illusion of form as well as its own particular property of form itself. Both new vision and new material have contributed importances and new paths. But certainly what is most important on our scene is the identity the artist has attained. question: Why the complications and added details of your work during the early 1940s? smith: I don’t know. I don’t question, or try to analyze. I just work through a period.

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question: How long does it take you to do a piece like that one? smith: I don’t know. I can never know exactly how much time I spend on any one piece because I generally have four or five going at one time. I probably spent about two months on this one. And when I say two months, I mean working every day with workdays of about twelve hours each. Sometimes a year passes when I have a piece in progress before I finish it because I go from one to another. question: Why do you like the linear ones better than the volumetric ones? smith: In metal, I do not think the volume is necessary. It can be suggested with line. Volume is necessary, in marble, for instance, and was necessary when sculpture was based on the human appearance, [such] as the Greek goddesses. Cubism is my heritage and volume no longer seems important. question: Doesn’t cubism imply volume? smith: No—it was the breaking down of volume. “Cubism” was a term of disrepute— a sort of slam that an art critic gave it. They were not dealing in cubes and did not wish the name. But with use, the name stuck. question: Is not the same true with the term Gothic? smith: Yes. Names of periods of paintings were named that way. There were very few periods in which manifestos were written and a definite name adopted and the work of the group held up. Usually the work of a group so organized and named failed to hold up. On the other hand, those who worked more or less independently, not concerned with directing a movement or adopting a name, somehow did hold up and acquired a name later, in the manner of cubism. As to volume versus line, I think of line as symbolic of volume. I take it for granted that when you see a circle, you know it is a sphere. Metal is more fluent and free. You can take off something from metal and put it back. In marble you can take it off, too, but you can’t put it back. Metal is something I was familiar with from working in industry. When I saw the first metal sculpture I was at once attracted to it because there was a material that was known to me, one that I was familiar with, and so it seemed quite natural to work in that medium. I had found that painting did not hold for me what I had expected it to hold, by the time I got there. question: How much importance do you attach to your titles? smith: Not much. They are for my own identification. I feel that they are of little or no value to the viewer. It would be just as well to give them numbers; in fact, I did that last year, but couldn’t remember which numbers I had given to which sculptures. But with titles—it simply makes it easier for me to refer to the various pieces. question: Do you suppose composers forget the numbers given their compositions—such as opus so-and-so? smith: You will have to get a musician to answer that one. dr. gr ant: Most of them also have titles.2

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response from audience member: Musical compositions also get “nicknames” not given them by their composers. question: Are artists offended when the observer sees something else in their work entirely alien to what the artist intended to convey? smith: He doesn’t know what he saw. question: I feel something quite different from what the title suggests; is that wrong? smith: No. It is gratifying that you looked; it is better if you liked what you saw. But I am not going [gap in transcript]. In realists’ paintings, many people recognize the lemons, for instance, but that doesn’t have much to do with the painting. Everyone takes from a painting what they project into it and who is to say what [gap in transcript]. If we all had the same responses we would all paint alike. As it is we all work differently. question: If you are trying to say something . . . ? smith: I am not saying anything. question: A message . . . ? smith: That means visual communication. In one flash of time the mind can recall so much vision and action, complex and extensive, that it would take days to relate it. The visual response of man is so much more highly developed than his talking. Also, responses that tend toward extrasensory perception—perceptual responses above what he can relate or tell. No object is one object. The most abstract thing I can think of is one thing, or object. You take the simplest thing—an apple, for instance. It is entirely different to all of us because of different responses. Red or green, sweet or sour, apples rolling down a chute, apples on the ground. To the grower maybe it means seeds; to the engineer, perhaps a cross-section. It is not simple. The people who make words rebel so much against all new words and extensions of the language; words can never quite do it. question: I notice all your work is quite different. Are you afraid of running out of ideas? smith: The more that I do, the more ideas I have. I never fear that. Time is so short. There has never been enough time to do all the things that I want to do. I never question it. Never have I been able to make as much sculpture as I wanted to make. question: Doesn’t it take a great deal of strength? smith: You will see very small girls doing it in sculpture classes here. It is a matter of controlling the materials. question: Do you ever reach a plateau—get stale? smith: Yes. When I do, I clean up the shop and get so bored that before I am through I am so bored with putting stuff away and sweeping, etc., that I am completely rejuvenated.

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question: Also shovel snow? smith: No. Our house is a long way off the road and if I should try to shovel a road out to the main road, the first part would be drifted over again by the time I had reached the end. No, we live in an area, similar to the USSR in that there is a one-party system. We do all our voting in the primaries and when I need the road clear for something specific, I speak to the highway foreman and when the plow comes to clear the main road for the school bus, he will come up my driveway and turn around and go back. I remember one time I had to get a truck load of sculpture out for a gallery in New York—they will do the same for anyone—if someone has a load of hay to be shipped, or anything. It’s different from down here, different party, maybe.3 response from audience member: No snow, maybe. question: When you were doing welding for a living, did you feel out of place, an artist working with people who had little or no interest in art? smith: Yes. But during the war, when I was welding tanks, you didn’t have too much choice about those things. The same thing would be true if you were an art student during the school year and then took a job during the summer that had no relation to your work here as a student. When you teach, you feel different. Your job of teaching is to teach [students] primarily about the art that has gone before them so that they can identify themselves in a contemporary scene. You cannot teach art in the sense that they are going to make art and make a contribution. You do teach what you know and your teachings are based on your heritage and theirs. When you go to your own studio you will try to project. A creative life is, in a way, a secret life. You cannot talk about it. If you talk it out then you do not work it out. Everyone has a sort of secret life in their dreams. question: What do you teach? smith: I am trying to teach them to project. It is a thing that I know—that drawing is easier when I get close to what I do and project myself into the drawing. If I work large, there is no diminution of a larger thing into the smaller thing. question: How do you grade them? smith: I don’t. question: But as a professor you have to. smith: No. I am a visiting professor. I do not have to. I didn’t have to when I taught at Sarah Lawrence for two years.4 There are no grades there. Reports are sent in on individual students—what they are doing and whether they have used their full capabilities. response from audience member: You would be judging their secret lives in grading. response from audience member: You could only assign a definite project and grade performance on that.

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question: Do you try to avoid repetition? smith: In a sense, yes. question: Do you ever suspend them instead of putting them on bases? smith: Some. On some of them a base interfered, so I suspended them instead.5 question: How much do you think mature students should worry about developing an individual style? smith: I do not think that you can develop a style. A style is something others say you have after you have had success in it. But I do not think that you acquire a style by setting out for it. question: Should you worry about doing the same type of thing over and over to develop a style? smith: I would certainly not encourage it. I would like to not do what I have done before. When they are found, they are found. When you repeat, you repeat. I do not think an artist should linger on what is successful. question: Is it true that there is pressure on the artist from galleries and dealers for work like what he has succeeded with before? smith: I don’t think so, not the really good ones. In that case you should ignore the galleries and the dealers—they must take you for what you are. Pollock, de Kooning and Rothko have all changed quite a bit. And I do not think you can keep a man to a style. If pressure can keep a man working in a particular style, he has lost anyway. I do not think a man can say, “I have changed my style.” It comes from within. If a man is busy producing he seems to grow without any conscious change. Picasso probably is the best example of a man of many styles. question: Why is it that a Picasso is almost always recognizable as a “Picasso,” even though he worked in many styles? smith: I don’t know. There are[n’t] too many Picassos in this country of one of his early cubist periods but it is usually possible to identify a Picasso. The same is true of Brancusi, whose work is very simple—but not because of its simplicity. There is that tremendous personality in each. question: On what basis do you judge pictures? An incident in a drawing class: all students making free, quick drawings, which were spread on the floor and a secret vote taken in which the entire class decided upon one as the best. Everyone in the class concurred in this selection except the student who had the chosen work. This student thought another was better. Explain. smith: I cannot explain it. At the same time I do not know what is wrong if each one had picked a different one. In the selection of a drawing, there is a background of other things that that person likes which are involved in the selection. I might say that I have seen this happen time and time again. A young artist is aided by his father in his early decisions, his selections, his taste, and after a time he will reject

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the father’s advice and turn back to the grandfather. On what is good or bad, we here are pretty much going to agree. But you take another group and they won’t agree. Who sets the rules when it comes to other classes, or sections of society? We say and agree on Bonnard, Matisse, Van Gogh, and Cézanne, but it doesn’t carry much weight. Who sets the rules for the larger group? I can tell you: Norman Rockwell. I say for myself and give each other person the same right. What good does it do you to agree with a group, a feeling of security? I don’t know. question: Does an artist have to be a draftsman? smith: Artists must have draftsmanship. question: Then why don’t you teach it anymore—teach it the right way, that is? smith: Who is to say what is the right way? question: Do you teach balance? I like pictures in balance. smith: I try to make them in imbalance. question: They are balanced to the eye. Every one of your sculptures has balance. smith: A sculpture, in a sense, has to have balance, else when put on a pedestal it will fall over. I certainly don’t try for balance. I try for imbalance. question: They all have balance. smith: Give me time. question: Are there any uniform standards of excellence to be applied to modern art or do you think that without such standards art might eventually completely disintegrate? Must there be some standard, or is it purely individual? smith: It is not the same on any two days, and certainly not the same in any two ages. question: I am thinking about some of the art of the 1920s which had so much to say at that time, but which has very little to say to us today. But as of today what can we expect of contemporary art? Are there no standards or is it a personal matter? smith: I have to stop and think because I am too busy doing it. question: In modern art we may be becoming too subjective. smith: But what will happen? Who knows? I am too busy creating to concern myself with that. That is business for the historians. Who can see ahead? I want to do what I have to do in the way that I think is the best possible way. I am too busy. . . . But I do know that I do not think that they or anyone else can go back—really go back, to any style. It goes back to the heritage. They cannot do what Courbet did because so much has happened since that time. . . . People all react or receive different vibrations. If some are more sensitive than others they react more. And people react according to their interests. This is a period of great and rapid change. Scientists react in one way, artists in another. This group may even be doing it to be different rather than to be like an earlier period.

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question: Should not the artist attempt to create what he believes is “lasting” art? Is that not an effort on a higher plane? smith: An artist cannot work that way. He has to do what he has to do in the best way that he can. I don’t care who likes it—whether it has a purpose, a message, etc. That is my nature and I do the best that I can do. question: Are you searching for something, as you read that Cézanne was always searching for? He never found it. smith: I do not think Matisse [had] found it when he died very recently at a ripe old age. question: Do you think that the change in Giacometti’s work is the result of his having tried so many things and at last found something which he felt was the thing for him to do? smith: I think the change was from personal conviction. The public can refuse it, but because of his personal conviction he has to do it, because he feels that way. You cannot question a man if he does his best. You can reject it, but what point can you make by questioning it? The public is not paying him to do it. He is not a civil servant. If you do not like it you do not have to look at it. question: Can you name any artist painting today realistically who is producing good work? smith: De Kooning is, in a sense, painting realistically and well; but I can name more who are painting abstractly who are good. After all, realistic painting has not been done in the last hundred years. question: Do you think that those people who know and like modern art are expressing a revulsion to so much realistic art? smith: I do not know. I don’t question it. Why question it? Why analyze it? Why must we decide upon a right and a wrong? It is rather to accept or reject. Notes 1.  The lecture text was published in David Smith, Garnett McCoy, ed. (New York: Praeger, 1973), with the title “The Artist and Nature,” and dated March 8 (the date of the typescript of Smith’s reading text); McCoy may have been unaware of the printed announcement for the lecture. 2.  The speaker was Dr. William Parks Grant, associate professor of music education, at the University of Mississippi. 3.  Smith also participated in party politics in Bolton Landing, New York, by running, unsuccessfully, for election as a justice of the peace in 1949. 4.  Academic years 1948–49 and 1949–50. 5.  Parallel 42, 1953 (K300); Untitled (Hanging Sculpture), 1953 (K314); and Ark 53, 1954 (K320).

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D R AW I N G 19 5 5

Many students think of drawing as something hasty and preparatory before painting or making sculpture. A sort of purgatory between amateurism and accomplishment. As a preliminary before the great act, because everybody can draw some, and children are uninhibited about it and do it so easily, and writing itself is a style of drawing, and it is common on sidewalks, board fences, phone booths, etc. But actually only a very experienced artist may appreciate the challenge, because it is so common an expression. It is also the most revealing, having no high expectancy to maintain, not even the authenticating quality of gold frames to artificially price or lend grandeur to its atmosphere and, by its very conditioning, it comes much closer to the actual bareness of the soul and the nature of free expression. It is not expected to carry the flourish, the professionalism of oil painting, nor the accuracy and mannered clarity in the formal brushing of the watercolorist. If it is pompous, artificial, pretentious, insincere, mannered, it is so evident, so quick to be detected and, like the written line, it is a quickly recognized key to personality. If it is timid, weak, overbold, or blustering, it is revealed much as one perceives in the letter or a signature. There is not the demand or tradition for technique and conformity. The pureness of statement, the honesty of expression are laid bare in a black and white answer of who that mark-maker is, what he stands for, how strong his conviction, or how weak. Often his true personality is revealed, before repetitions or safer symbols can come to his defense. More his truth than other media with technique and tradition, more his truth than words can express, more free from thinking in words than polished techniques, drawing more shaped like he is shaped, because the pressure of performance has not made him something he isn’t. The drawing that comes from the serious hand can be unwieldy, uneducated, unstyled and still be great simply by the superextension of whatever conviction the artist’s hand projects, and be so strong that it eclipses the standard qualities critically

Typescript, lecture, on March 21, 1955, at a symposium on drawing at H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, Tulane University, New Orleans, organized by the sculptor George W. Rickey, then chair of the Tulane Art Department. The painter Jack Taylor and Reginald H. Neal, chair of the Art Department at the University of Mississippi, Oxford, where Smith spent the month of March as a visiting artist teaching sculpture and drawing, also participated in the symposium. Smith repeated the Tulane talk, making only minor changes, on March 26, 1959, at the opening of an exhibition of his drawings at Bennington College, Vermont; the Bennington version of the lecture was published as “On Drawing,” Bennington Review 2, no. 1 (Winter 1968): 11–12.

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expected. The need, the drive to express can be so strong that the drawing makes its own reason for being. Drawing is the most direct, closest to the true self, the most natural liberation of man—and, if I may guess back to the action of very early man, it may have been the first celebration of man with his secret self—even before song. But its need doesn’t stand on primitive reconstruction—anyone knows, everyone feels the need to draw. I truly believe that anything anyone has seen he can draw, and that everyone here has now seen everything he ever will see, and that all that stands between his drawing anything in the world is his own inhibition. What that is we don’t know. Each must dig himself out of his own mind, and liberate the act of drawing to the vision of memory. It is not so much that this correlation is impossible—but more that the mental block keeps him from trying that which he deems impossible. We are blocked from creative ways of expressing, by ways we feel about things, and by ways we think we ought to feel, by word pictures that cancel out creative vision, and intimidations that limit creative expression. If drawing could come now as easily as when man was six, he would not doubt or think, he would do. But since he approaches it more consciously, and not with the child’s freedom, he must admit to himself that he is making a drawing—and he approaches mark making humbly, self-consciously or timidly. Here he finds pressure and intimidation and inhibition. But the first mark of drawing is made. Sometimes it takes courage to make this one statement. This stroke is as good as he can make, now. The next and those to come, lead towards creative freedom. He must try to be himself in the stroke. He dominates the line related to image and does not permit the image to dominate him and the line. Not a line the way others think the line should be—not how history says it once was; nor what multitudes say they cannot do with a straight line. For a line so drawn with conviction is straighter in context than the ruler. The deviations outside mechanical realism, which usually with a bit of hostility represents the average expectancy, are the nature of human line—the inaccuracies, socalled, are often other images trying to assert themselves in association. And the truth of image is not single, it is many—the image in memory is many actions and many things—often trying to express its subtle overlapping in only one line or shape. Simply stated, the line is a personal choice line, or his line to himself. The first stroke demands another in complement, the second may demand the third in opposition, and the approach continues, each stroke more free because confidence is built by effort. If the interest in this line-gesture making is sustained, and the freedom of the act developed, realization to almost any answer can be attained. Soon confidence is developed and one of the secrets of drawing felt, and marks come so easily and move so fast that no time is left to think. Even the drawing made before the performance is often greater, more truthful, more sincere than the formal production later made from it. Such a statement will find more agreement with artists than from connoisseurs. Drawings usually are not

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pompous enough to be called works of art. They are often too truthful. Their appreciation neglected, drawings remain the life force of the artist. Especially is this true for the sculptor who, of necessity, works in media slow to take realization, and where the original creative impetus must be maintained during labor, drawing is the fast-moving search which keeps physical labor in balance.

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A N D D R AW I N G S B E F O R E T H E E T C H I N G O R T H E P R I N T 19 5 5

. . . and drawings before the etching or the print—more rugged—more essential in the drawing before the act—I am thinking of Goya specifically, with the etching tradition and the scratching needed and how these scratchings bring change in concept and develop detail and how the boldness & rawness gets modified and more literal—and how the bold flat sepia marks and planes of the drawing turn reductions—sometimes each printed plate instead of possessing the drawing energy of the plate—shares it  by . . .

Handwritten, c. May 1955, Sketchbook 42: 12. This fragmentary text may originally have been continuous with sections of text on preceding and following pages that are now missing. Francisco de Goya’s drawings and prints were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, and at Weyhe Gallery, New York City, in May 1955. Smith produced almost a score of etchings in the 1930s and 1940s; all except Women in War, 1941 (edition of about fifteen), exist in only one or two impressions.

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S K E T C H — O I L PA I N T I N G —T H E I N F L U E N C E—T H E H I S T O R I A N c . 19 5 6

Sketch—oil painting—the influence—the historian—the vile word—that word used to intimidate the student by the intimidated teacher—the word which has the effect of full expectancy to a future time—that excuse—that slur—that part in the stage before the whole—that thing asked for by the superior to get free—that free bone to be picked by the executive and handed back to the serf with vision—that handy name by the critic which keeps him off the edge and in false safety, the name like youth which disobligates recognition, that favorite of the connoisseur in haggling and evaluating and that which the artist never uses when speaking his own words.

Handwritten, c. 1956, Sketchbook 53: 164.

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GONZ ÁLEZ: FIRST MA STER OF THE TORCH 19 5 6

The Bull in its symbolic action has stood for many things in Picasso’s history, things Spanish and things noble. The Bull has been the artist, the people of Spain, the openeyed conscience of free men, the disemboweler of the lie of Franco, the aggressive protector of women, and among other symbols, the lover of woman. But after the death of Julio González, Picasso’s friend of forty-five years, the Bull becomes a skull on a green and blue fractioned table before the window curtained in violet and black. Coming home from the funeral Picasso had done this picture of a bull’s skull and dedicated it: “En hommage à González.” To the wall of his studio was tacked a snapshot of his friend. For Picasso all source of life becomes the nature of painting. On what peaks did memory ride—for they were friends from youth, from the days of the Barcelona café, “Els Quatre Gats.” In 1901 Picasso shared González’s living quarters in Paris until he found a studio. Throughout the succeeding years they remained on good terms, visiting each other, even working together; and then, the end at Arcueil in March of 1942. The youngest of four children (the others, his sisters Pilar and Lola, his brother Juan), González was born in Barcelona in 1876. Both Juan and Julio were apprenticed in their father’s metal shop, becoming third-generation smiths. With other ideas in mind, the brothers studied painting at night at the Barcelona School of Fine Arts, which Miró was to attend fifteen years later. They knew “Els Quatre Gats,” the Spanish counterpart of the Parisian “Chat Noir” and gathering-point of the local avantgarde. Here the youthful Picasso had decorated the walls with twenty-five portraits of writers and artists who frequented the café. During the 1890s the tension between the impoverished multitudes and the wealthy few of prosperous Barcelona manifested itself in a series of strikes, reprisals and acts of anarchy. Dispossessed refugees pouring in from Cuba increased the degree and extent of the economic problem.

“González: First Master of the Torch,” Art News 54 (February 1956): 34–37, 64–65. When the manuscript Smith submitted exceeded his allocated word count, the magazine omitted the final four paragraphs of his text. These have now been restored and constitute the last four paragraphs of the essay printed here. Smith’s essay was commissioned in August 1955, by his friend the art critic and executive editor of Art News Thomas B. Hess, to coincide with a retrospective of the work of the Spanish artist at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, the following spring.

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The intellectual reaction to the social distress and rebellious temper of the times was to revolt against tradition and authority and embrace the attitudes of “modernism.” Thus Barcelona awoke to the romanticism of the age, Art Nouveau, the Gothic Revival, Wagner’s music, Lautrec’s presentation of Paris and the Bohemian life, Maeterlinck’s drama, the Pre-Raphaelites and the climaxing monument to the new art, Gaudí’s cathedral. I feel González coming from Barcelona and looking back lovingly at Gaudí’s Cathedral of the Sagrada Familia, respecting Gaudí’s source in nature and the unities of iron and stone. González’s notebook contains statements about the new art which seem almost parallel ideals for the Catalonian Gaudí’s cathedral: “To project and draw in space with new methods . . . Only the pinnacle of a cathedral can show us where the soul can rest suspended . . . These points in infinity were the precursors of the new art.” In another reference to a cathedral he speaks of “the motionless arrow” which to me seems more the arrowhead Excelsis Hosanna towers of Sagrada Familia than the Gothic or Romanesque spires which he loved in France. His notes several times speak of form by established “points or perforations.” There is a marked unity in his stone bases and the iron sculpture, a sensitive feeling for material and proportion. I feel the kinship with Gaudí’s stone angels, their iron trumpets and iron arm supports, in the feeling of flying form and unorthodox balance. Work by the González shop may even be in the cathedral. I can find no verification for this, but José de Creeft, who worked on it as a plasterer’s helper at the age of twelve, says that every craftsman in Barcelona did. The craft work of both brothers progressed so well that it was shown at the Chicago World’s Fair, 1893, and in the same year took a gold medal in the Barcelona Exposition. The period from his arrival in Paris around 1899 until 1927 did not show strong sculptural conviction. This, perhaps the most difficult and dramatic period of his life, was the least fruitful. Unproductive months followed the death of his brother. Then, repoussé masks, drawings and paintings proceeded out of his struggle for some fifteen years. There seems to have been conflict between the divided identities of painter and metal-smith. When a man is trained in metal-working and has pursued it as labor with the ideal of art represented by oil painting, it is very difficult to conceive that what has been labor and livelihood is the same means by which art can be made. (Perhaps I am basing this more on sympathy than fact in Gonzalez’ case, because it is a reconstruction of my own experience. Before I had painted very long I ran across reproductions in Cahiers d’Art of González’s and Picasso’s work which brought my consciousness to this fact that art could be made of iron. But iron-working was labor, when I thought art was oil paint.) In this period of groping González felt the need of men strong and firm in their destiny, like Brancusi and Picasso. Undoubtedly their encouragement played a part in

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his slow battle with himself. At the same time the very closeness to these two titans personally could not permit any influence in his own work. It seems true that something kept his painting from flowering. At the same time he pursued metal work, which apparently represented the sculptural part of his nature before it had asserted its singular self. From the chronology of his life and from the knowledge of friends, as soon as he accepted his true identity as that of the sculptor, his expression became more challenging and his works more prolific. Concurrent to this came the use of the acetylene torch which was not, I think, a part of his early apprenticeship or of the metal-craft period. He was past fifty when he accepted the sculptor’s identity, discarded the silversmith’s scale and purpose and abandoned oil painting formally, accepting drawing as the complement of sculpture. Some of the fine parts of craftsmanship were dropped, a casual approach technically developed with the dominance of conceptual ends. Craft and smithery became submerged in the concept of sculpture. The aesthetic end was not dependent upon its mode of travel. The period in which González worked for Picasso has not been determined by the statement of either as far as I can learn. It does not seem important. The technical collaboration made neither change nor influence in the conception of either artist. During the several years it existed, each pursued his own work in his own way, Picasso with his concepts for Mediterranean monument houses, the elongated bronze stick figures, etc.; González reaching his prolific period with Don Quixote, a number of still-lifes, the best of his masks, and a large number of flying iron drawings, like Standing Personage and Woman Combing Her Hair. The possible dates of this intermittent collaboration lie somewhere between 1928 and 1932. González was encouraged by Picasso to continue and expand; something very definite was gained by their union, but it was more abstract than a recognizable influence. The best of González is in his abstract work, but existing concomitantly is a socially conscious theme of realism. These are the Montserrats or her variations. They start in 1932 with a small head, Montserrat, continue to the full-sized figure in 1936 and end with a bronze head in 1942. La Montserrat is the symbol of Catalonian woman in her nobility, her cries against injustice, her suffering. She is the symbol of things noble and things Spanish, analogous to Picasso’s bull. Of the two unfinished plaster works begun in 1941, one was abstract; the other a screaming woman on her knees, which parallels the Montserrat series in its realism and sympathy. I have learned of no notes relating to the realist approach. There are no poetic “directions to carve space,” no “motionless arrows pointing towards the stars where the soul can rest suspended or indicate points of hope,” as he gives his ideals for sculpture. These are volume sculptures, arrived at with great love and patience. They show the tremendous urge to speak out in the way the quiet man and artist could best present his statement.

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A man as withdrawn as González was ordinarily not given to fraternizing. An exception was his attendance at weekly meetings held at the studio of Torres-García in the late twenties and early thirties. To these discussion evenings came an interesting group, mostly young, almost exclusively expatriate: Mondrian, Arp, Bissière (later Hélion), von Doesburg, Seuphor, Daura, Xceron, John Graham, Vantongerloo, Queto, Charchoune, Cyaky, Brummer and others. From the same address was published the magazine Cercle et Carré, edited by Garcia and Seuphor. The painter Xceron, then writing art reviews for the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune, was probably the first American to write about González’s work, which he did most favorably and understandingly. Graham, another painter-member of the group, was probably the first American to buy González’s sculpture. The three pieces he bought in 1930 were, as far as I know, the first in this country. A. B. Gallatin, who was known to most of this group, in 1934 bought a silver sculpture done two years earlier and a drawing for his Museum of Living Art. Graham describes the noted sculptor as he remembers him in 1930: “Small, dignified, dressed in black like a real Mediterranean, lean, graying, a quiet and modest person, dreamy and detached, in the way of many thoughtful Spanish men, an attractive person looking more in than out. He commanded sympathy and respect.” One of those who knew him best during the last years of his life was Henri Goetz, an American painter living in France. In 1937 Goetz became acquainted with González, his wife and sisters through Hans Hartung, who married the sculptor’s daughter Roberta. A strong family friendship developed, with Sunday dinners at Arcueil in the house González had built according to his own plans, and drives through the countryside to look at Gothic churches in an old Citroën González bought in 1938. Indicating the sculptor’s gentle humor, Goetz recalls the way he used to pass the weekly dish of carrots and slyly say, “Do take a wing.” González was not much given to art talk or theory and in these family discussions of abstraction, Mondrian, Kandinsky, etc., he was at esthetic odds with Hartung and Goetz, who took the favorable view. In one of his infrequent confidences of an aesthetic nature he told Goetz that he sometimes used the Gold Section (1.6180). This mathematical ideal of the relationship of the diagonal with the side of the square may be an homage to Cézanne and the 1912 Section d’Or exhibition or something very personal from his painting period. The Golden Section has always been a constant in the eye of man. It may have been a personal method of evaluating, but it is certainly not the inspiration. Regarding his own work, González was adamant in pointing out the relationship between his sculpture and the real elements—such as hair, teeth, eyes—which in a very indirect way composed them. Goetz recalls his buying what was for his circumstances a very costly tool—possibly a shearing tool—to work on the teeth of a sculpture. The beautiful head of 1936, which Alfred Barr acquired in 1937 from Christian Zervos for the Museum of Modern Art collection, clearly illustrates his preoccupation with features.

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González was extremely prudent. Early in the war he gave up welding, fearing that if bombs dropped his oxygen and acetylene tanks would blow up, although the lorry factory less than a hundred yards away had many tanks in constant use. González never became a French citizen. He was Spanish, but insisted on the distinction of being a Catalonian. Critical accent has been placed upon who was first in iron or welding. This speculation is no more valid than the Renaissance oil paint controversy. González was an apprentice in his father’s shop, his work with metal starts in childhood. It is not innovation that makes art but inspiration. On the relationship with Picasso, Xceron recalls that he came to González’s studio in rue de Médéah around 1928 to work on the statue for the tomb of Apollinaire. In Picasso’s iron sculpture the concept and the forms were strictly his, as are González’s in his own work. With Gargallo, whom González instructed, the technique becomes developed in a spectacular way, but the concept remains essentially academic. The Cubists used iron (i.e., Lauren’s Composition, 1914) as did the Constructivists (Tatlin in 1917, Meduniezky in 1919, etc.). De Creeft made an iron stovepipe Don Quixote in 1925; Lipchitz told me of a 1928 iron sculpture he exhibited in his 1930 Paris retrospective show. No one was first. All materials have properties by which they are shaped; art lies in the concept, not the technique. You can find more art in paper scraps than in crafted gold. Wrought metal sculpture goes back to the Bulls of El-Ubaid (3000 b.c.) and the life-sized figure of Pepi I from Heirakonpolis (2300 b.c.). A whole age of iron welding and forming flowered in Syria in the eleventh to ninth centuries b.c. The iron headrest of Tutankhamen (1350 b.c.), believed to have come from Syria, was welded. In Genesis, Tubal Cain, husband of Zilah, is referred to as the instructor of every artificer in bronze and iron. Iron welding and working has been in evidence in almost every period of culture in both art and function. González’s workshop in rue de Médéah and late at Arcueil was equipped with the simple tools for hand-working—hammers, shears, chisels, hand-powered forge, anvils, vise, liures (circles with chain-tackle), various smaller tools and two oxygen acetylene torches. Space was close, with paintings and drawings interspersed among odd iron pieces, plaster casts, an easel and a number of unfinished works hung on the wall or stacked in corners with finished work. González’s welding technique was not of commercial efficiency. It appears to have been developed by caution and artistic need. There was no effort to produce an outstanding welding bead, only a natural, untutored seam, rather casual and slow, as if the need to join parts was the only concern of the man and the torch. In the best work nothing in technique stood out as Spanish ironworking, this had been left behind for the esthetic end. On some sculptures the iron is forged and personalized as if it had been wrought and reduced from ore before its final shape. His greatest work is the most abstract, especially those which perch on their bases (often stone) trumpeting out sharp points

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to cleave space. Here volume is discarded for directions which challenge tradition, and a lyrical synthesis of utmost economy becomes the new element to displace form. Like a painting, every minute part bears the caress of the artist. No other hands have touched this work, there are no production marks, no caster’s errors nor shrinkage from pouring. Innumerable directions pointed this way but González became the catalyst for many of us in the negation of form for new elements. It is a pity that González did not live to see his catalogs and exhibitions.

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L E C T U R E , S KO W H E G A N S C H O O L O F PA I N T I N G A N D S C U L P T U R E 19 5 6

I’ve been more concerned with questions than I have with answers. And in my work I really don’t have any answers yet, outside of very personal ones. A number of years ago I used to think that I knew things, what things were, but now I’m very much in doubt about it—because it changes. I don’t find that any one thing is ever the same thing at different times. So I am asking you the questions. But I don’t think unfairly so, because they’re all questions that have occupied me. And I have no answers for you I can give you—if you want to ask me the answer to any of the questions I asked you, remember the number and just say “seven” or “fifteen” and I’ll go back and tell you what I think about it. Or, you tell me what your answer is and we’ll kind of take it back and forth. My wife says these are kind of disorganized, and they weren’t separated into their right sequence. But since we’re all in the same profession, I just presumed that you would know what I was talking about. And we’re always talking about art and the life of the artist and what it stands for—what you stand for. The first question I want to ask you is: 1. Do you make art your life, that which always comes first and occupies every moment, the last problem before sleep and the first awaking vision? 2. Do all the things you like or do amplify and enjoin the progress of art vision and art making? 3. Are you a balanced person, with many interests and diversions? 4. Do you seek the culture of many aspects, with the middle-class aspiration of being well rounded and informed? (Laughter.) 5. How do you spend your time—more talking about art than making it? How do you spend your money? On art materials first—or do you start to pinch here? (Laughter.) 6. How much of the work day, or the work week, do you devote to your profession? And is that profession that which you have chosen to identify you for the rest of your life—or to represent you as your life? 7. Will you be an amateur, a professional, or is it the total life?

Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Faculty Lecture Series, Skowhegan, Maine, on July 13, 1956. Smith began by posing a series of questions to his audience, reprinted here from his original typescript. The transcript of the discussion that followed (Skowhegan Archives) has been corrected against the original audiotape and edited for clarity ([. . . . ] between sections indicates deletions of redundant questions and responses); Abbott L. Pattinson’s introductory welcome to Smith has also been omitted. The Skowhegan faculty members who posed questions to Smith were the sculptors Henry Varnum Poor and Sidney Simon, who helped found the school in 1946, and the painter Isabel Bishop.

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8. Do you think the artist has any obligation to anyone but himself? 9. Do you think his contemporary position is unique or traditional? 10. Do you think art can be something it was before? Can you challenge the ancients? 11. Have you examined the echoes of childhood and first learning, which may have once given you the solutions? Are any of these expectancies still operating in your choices? 12. Do you hold with these or have you recognized them or have you contradicted them or have you made metaphoric transpositions? I said the echoes of childhood because those are the little things that are back in your mind that are governing you and your choice now, that you don’t even know about. Somebody said to you—that maybe had a relationship to the first drawing you ever made—either, “It doesn’t look like so and so,” or “It does look like so and so.” There are so many things that teachers and schools [tell us]—the things that are in your mind that you don’t even know about, that you haven’t recognized. You’ve really got to dig for them, but they’re still operating and they’re still there, and they’ll never be removed unless you make a metaphoric transposition of them. 13. Do you examine and weigh the art statements of fellow artists, teachers, authorities, before they become involved in your working tenets? 14. Or do the useful ideas place themselves in a working niche in your consciousness, and the others go off unheard? 15. Do you think you owe your teachers anything, or Picasso or Matisse or Brancusi or Mondrian or Kandinsky? (Laughter.) 16. Do you think your work should be aggressive? Do you think this is an attribute? Can it be developed? 17. Do you think your work should hold with tradition? 18. Do you think that your own time and now is the greatest in the history of art, or do you excuse your own lack of full devotion with the half belief that some other time would have been better? 19. Do you recognize any points of attainment? Do they change? Is there a final goal? 20. In the secret dreams of attainment, have you faced each dream for its value on your own basis or do you harbor the inherited aspirations of the bourgeoisie or those of false history or those of critics? 21. Why do you hesitate? Why can you not draw objects as freely as you can write their names and speak words about them? 22. What has caused this mental block? If you can name, dream, recall vision and auras—why can’t you draw them? In the conscious act of drawing, who is acting in your unconscious as censor? 23. In the conceptual direction, are you aiming for the successful work? And to define success, I mean the culminating point of many efforts. 24. Do you aim for a style with a recognizable visual vocabulary?

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25. Do you polish up the work, beyond its bare aesthetic elements? 26. Do you add ingratiating elements, beyond the raw aesthetic basis? 27. If you add ingratiating elements, where is the line which keeps the work from being your own? Or, I might add, what keeps it from being a potboiler? 28. Are you afraid of rawness? For rawness and harshness are basic forms of our nature, especially United States nature, and origins are both raw and vulgar at their time of creation. 29. Will you understand and accept yourself as the subject for creative work, or will your effort go toward adopting your expression to the verbal philosophies of non-artists? 30. If you could, would you throw over the present values of harmony and tradition? 31. Do you trust your first response, or do you go back and equivocate consciously? Do you believe that the freshness of first response can be developed and sustained as a working habit? 32. Are you saddled with nature propaganda? 33. Are you afraid to exercise vigor—seek surprise? 34. When you accept the identification of “Artist” do you acknowledge that you are issuing a world challenge in your own time? 35. Are you afraid to work from your own experience, without leaning on the crutches of subject and rationale? 36. Or do you think that you are unworthy, or that your life has not been dramatic enough, or your understanding not classic enough, or do you think that art comes from Mount Parnassus or France or from an elite level beyond you? 37. Do you assert yourself and work in sizes comparable to your physical size, or to your aesthetic challenge, or to your own imagination? 38. Is that easel-size or table-size or room-size, or a challenge to nature? Or, I might say, a challenge to the out-of-doors? 39. Do you think museums are your friend, and do you think they will be interested in your work? 40. Do you think you will ever make a living from museums? 41. Do you think commercial art, architectural art, religious art offer any solutions in the maturing of your concept? 42. How long will you work, before you work with the confidence which says: what I do is art. 43. Do you ever feel that you don’t know where to go in your work—that the challenge is beyond your immediate solution? 44.  Do you think acclaim can help you? Can you trust it? For you know in your own secret self, how short of attainment you always are. Can you trust any acclaim any farther than adverse criticism? Should either have any effect upon you as an artist?

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There is one question in particular I want to make to the sculptors. And it has probably more to do with traditional art and more to do with most of the art of museums and the art you see in public places, than with us. But if a drawing is traced, even with the greatest precision, from another drawing, you will perceive that the one is a copy— although the differences may deviate less than half a hair, recognizable only by a perceptual sensitivity. We would unanimously rule that the work of the intruder’s hand is not art. But where is the line in true art, when the sculptor’s process often introduces the hands of a plasterer, or a plaster caster, a mold maker, a grinder, the polisher, the patina applier—all these processes and foreign hands intruding deviations upon what was once the original work? And then, I wish to ask another question to sculptors, which would be: do you think the concept of painting has led the concept of sculpture in this century? I rather do, but I want to ask that question of the sculptors. Because I think the concept of sculpture has kept up with the concept of painting—has been as brilliant and as imaginative in this century. Mainly what I’m talking about is this century, our own particular time. And then, in particular to the painters: is there as much art in a drawing as in a watercolor, or as in an oil painting? I ask that very simple question because I see all these three things are the same size at highly differing prices. You know the drawing is very cheap and the watercolor is a little more, and the painting is real expensive. I want to know if there is more art in one than the other. (Laughter.) Do you think drawing is a complete and valid approach to art vision or a preliminary only towards a more noble product? I’ve not had very many questions. (Laughter.) But if you would like to say a number, I will repeat it and you can answer it. Or we will talk about it. You better do that, because that’s all there is, there are no slides or cookies! (Laughter.) question: Well, how about questions eight and ten? smith: Eight is: “Do you think the artist has an obligation to anyone but himself?” Are you answering or asking? question: Asking. smith: I absolutely do not. In my position, I have no obligation to society, or to any museum, or the culture, or the Republicans, or the Democrats. henry varnum poor: What about your children? smith: That is an unfair question, Henry, because my work does not have an established market value. (Laughter.) But I wish I could buy them many things. I couldn’t make a promise of it, that’s the trouble with that. To my children, generally speaking and idealistically speaking, I owe them to be the best I can possibly be—which is any direction I happen to think I can work best, and which any artist should be and do—do what he can do best. As long as it’s not anti-social I mean, as long as you can’t prosecute him for doing it, as long as it’s within what we consider

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as not unlawful. I don’t mean that an artist could make George Washington engravings on steel, you know, and put ten dollars on them. But I mean that far from me having obligations to society—it has an obligation to me. I don’t think that will go much farther than this room, but I feel that way about it. Will you let me have [question] ten, Miss Bishop? Do you think art can be something it was before? Can you challenge the ancients? isabel bishop: It can’t be something it was before, I would say. And to the second half, I would say, yes, you can challenge the art of the ancients. smith: Yeah, it’s a loaded question, isn’t it? (Laughter.) bishop: I said “no” to the first part of the question. smith: No, we know that nobody can be somebody else, and you can’t live in any time other than the time you live in. I meant, to adopt the ideals or purposes—to think that you could have the same ideals that Uccello had—because he already did it. And your obligation is an entirely different thing. But I just said that because I’ve had friends say, “Well, it would have been so much easier if we had lived in the Renaissance, when our work would have been cut out for us,” or “and we would have been paid, and we wouldn’t have had all these troubles since the concept was all given to us, the subject matter at least was all given, and a certain amount of gold leaf was provided.” But that’s a useless kind of thinking, because it can’t be. In no way can it be. I probably shouldn’t have put that one in there. question: What on earth is “a raw aesthetic object”? smith: I said, “Do you work beyond its bare aesthetic elements?” And then, [question] twenty-six was, “Do you add ingratiating elements beyond the raw aesthetic basis?” question: What is this raw aesthetic basis that we are to leave alone? I’m curious. smith: Well, I meant that to be a question, and each of us has to answer it for ourselves. I know what it is in my own work. I know when I make the essential, basic— well, I don’t know any words for rawness. But it is the unaccepted verities that haven’t yet been accepted and called aesthetic. It is the basic things which later, when they become accepted, are called beauties. question: But how can you avoid adding to this charming thing if it varies from person to person? How can you tell where one person’s aesthetic—raw aesthetic object—ends and his ingratiating element begins? smith: That’s why I asked. I don’t know. I am guarding against that in my own work. It is a thing that I can’t answer. It is a thing that you can see in a lesser man and it becomes decorative, and you see it in a greater man and it’s simple and noble. I mean, it’s as if you put eyelashes or some recognizable thing on a Brancusi. This is a sort of a mental asking for the acceptance of, related maybe to embellishment, maybe of adding ingratiating elements, which might be color or might be anything. It’s mainly a point of view in the work process, rather than any identifiable part.

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sidney simon: Slightly disagreeing, David, certain times when you work you find a thing—whatever, the drawing—coming out completely refined as you do it and it doesn’t need any extra embellishment. Other times it’s all of itself. It might be just a crayon line, but nothing that you can do to change it will alter the work. I think that sometimes, with sculpture, it tends itself to need—or you feel a need—to round it out. We talked today about the photographs we saw of just the armature being built, which looked handsomer before the clay was put on, in our minds, today, than certainly the sculptor thought. That armature certainly was conceived and thought out with an idea to go on, because something was going to be added on to it. But to us today, we feel very excited about these strips of wood being built, before the clay even gets put on. Do you think it would have been right to stop right at that point, without embellishing it with the intention? smith: Well, we weren’t making this. We were talking like connoisseurs. I mean we were putting ourselves in the position of judgment there. We were showing our taste over his taste. This was an academic sculpture we were talking about, that happened to have a very beautiful woodwork build-up—very geometric and very nice in the build-up—and we mentioned that that was more handsome than when this sculptor got through putting the skin parts of the clay on it, and made just an academic sculpture or an imitation of a person. But neither of us made this. We were just choosing it as collectors. We weren’t using our creative interest in it. I don’t think either of us works that way, either. simon: I can understand the therapeutic value in smoothing off a piece of plaster when you sit there. I hate it myself. I just sit there and smooth the thing off because it looks better. It certainly doesn’t change it at all. The original concept, if anything, gets a little watered down and milked out—if it has any concept at all. And I think that’s the sculptor’s problem. I can also understand the painter who glazes out and glazes out and softens up all the forms so that it will offend no one. And there again, softening the thing, and each time doing it in the sense that it would be appreciated or not hurt anybody’s feelings. That, I feel, is a great danger.   But at the same time, I think of things that happen and are right the first time— and it’s murder even to touch it. On top of that, another evil would be to become so precious about it and fear changing it. For instance, I find in my own work that a lot of things happening change it, but I would never find that if I left it alone the first time in its original little early birthright. And I just wonder where one draws the line, from the question you ask, as to when it begins to get the simonizing—no reference to me—(laughter) and when it still is in the process of being in a state of change or alteration or editing or purification—or whatever word you want to use. smith: Well, I don’t know where it stops. And I don’t—least of all—don’t know for anybody else. I think we all have to stop it at the right place—but I think we have to be aware of it. I just meant the question to give everybody else the same problem about it that I have myself.

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question: Mine is on question eight, once again—about obligations. smith: Number eight was: “Do you think that the artist has an obligation to anyone but himself?” question: Or do you think that he has a basic obligation to communicate something? I mean, he can’t ignore everyone else and just work for himself. He has to think that he’s doing it for someone else to see. smith: Well, let me have at that point, and then you come back. In the first place, it is impossible for him not to communicate. It is impossible for him, as a human being, to speak in a language that other people can’t understand. Now, if you want to cite what language he’s going to speak in—on what level—then that’s something else. question: Well, it’s entirely possible to use certain set symbols or something that means something, not to the man in general but to himself. smith: No, that’s impossible. That’s absolutely impossible. question: Don’t you think that the artist should have in mind the people who are going to see it, as well as himself, when’s he doing it? smith: He should not have anybody else in mind but himself. question: In other words, it doesn’t mean there’s a possibility it would be meaningless to everyone else? smith: No—absolutely not. No one man can do something that’s beyond the minds or the ken or the perception of other people. Nobody is going to be that great. There was never a time when Cézanne worked that he was not within the comprehension of other people—and mostly other artists. question: But in his time it was true that there were many people who saw his work and could not see it as they later did. And I also feel when an artist spoke about what he was doing and why he was doing it, or when it was tied up with religion, he was rather clear about what he was doing and why he was doing it. And in our time, it seems to me that the artist is less clear about what it is that he is trying to express. smith: Well, what’s the difference? Who said he should be clear in naming his ideals? question: I would be interested to hear you express what you think the difference is in art—in our time—and to art in other periods. smith: I mean that the artist—for the first time in the history of art—is a totally free and untied human being. He isn’t tied to anything. question: Why? smith: He is more free to work by the statement of himself than he has been at any other time, in this century. question: The fact that you use questions rather than giving a statement points up something that I’ve felt for a long time, which is that we are now faced—we who are

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not religious—by the fact of death, which hasn’t been accepted in our time. Or hasn’t been faced by our painters. And that the artist is faced by that concept, which he doesn’t mention, but which he expresses, over and over again. I mean, in Henry Moore there’s a hole, and in a lot of sculptures being done today, all over the world, you find these kind of creatures—headless people. It seems to me that a certain amount of thinking over what the conscious message is might be helpful. smith: It might be, if the artist has the conviction that that is his position or that is his job. But in a contemporary position, most artists are trying to be the best artists they can be as a statement from themselves—the statement of one human being, wholly individual. question: And yet, when one sees almost all art— smith: And what? question: But for some reason—because we are not free, we are faced by something that we cannot accept, which is death. That’s why I feel people hark back to the Renaissance, because in a sense they had this religious crutch. In a sense they were freer—in the sense that they felt the time was eternal and we don’t. We feel time is limited. smith: Well, in a sense, they had their order cut out for them. And they had even their subject matter given, before they approached it. And there were even times when Renaissance artists finished the picture and then one of the authorities said, “Well, it isn’t good,” or “It isn’t right,” and they took it off and had to do it over again. There’s a little dispute as to what it meant, but Pope-Hennessy says that about Uccello—a painting of a horse by Uccello.1 The artist of today has no subject given to him, he has no work cut out and often he doesn’t believe in any collective ideology. And he is speaking for no one else but himself. No man can speak anything that won’t be heard by others or won’t represent others. It is a matter of interpretation whether he speaks broadly or not. Since Brancusi, and Picasso and Matisse have been painting—in this century—their work has always been understood or heard by many other people. And mostly, and always first, by artists— because they speak the language of art. And it’s always been understood by artists—they’ve always spoken a language. If you set out to speak in a language unintelligible to other people, it would be impossible. You’re bound—being a human being of good will—you’re bound to be able to speak to other people. But you cannot presume to speak for them. You speak only because you represent some of the things that they stand for. But I would not wish to presume to speak for the minds of others. question: What is the obligation the public owes you? smith: Well, I said that facetiously. I don’t suppose it does—no. question: I wondered if you said that to annoy the Museum of Modern Art or something. (Laughter.)

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smith: No—well, maybe if I qualify this a little bit I can find some reason. Everybody pays for everything. They pay to go to the Modern Museum to get in the place. And if I show a sculpture there, nobody pays me anything. Or if I show a sculpture in a museum it’s apparently not for sale. They never sell anything. The museum pays for a catalogue and puts the name in, and maybe the picture. And they take it and then they keep the grounds up and polish the doorways and sweep the floors—but what they’ve got the museum for, they didn’t pay me anything for. So, I just mean that—in a very delicate way—maybe they owe me more than I owe them. question: Well, your name’s there though, isn’t it? smith: Yes. question: And doesn’t that have some importance? smith: I don’t think after exhibiting for about twenty years—I don’t think it has much. (Laughter.) At no time in my life have I been able to sell as much as it has cost me to make it. Every year it costs more money than I get from selling things. The cost for working, the cost for making sculpture is always more than I get in, so I’m always teaching or doing something else to balance it. question: But does that make sense, when you say that you’re not doing anything for anybody else? You’re saying the only person that the artist needs to be responsible to is himself—and that isn’t logical. (Laughter.) question: That’s the price of your own unfettered position. That’s part of the price we pay for that extra amount of freedom. smith: Well, that’s true. While we do have that unique privilege at this time, we may not have it in another generation or two. I mean, it may be collective to such a degree that we’re kind of taken in. The artists have more freedom than the American scientists. The scientists are more or less behind barbed wire and told what they can do and whom they can associate with, and things of that nature. question: Is that temporary, or is that because we know more about the artists than we do about the scientists? smith: Well, that’s temporary, because the government has a particular use for what they can do and they have no use for us. That’s why we do have that freedom. But maybe sometime somebody will develop a use for our work and then we won’t have that freedom. You see what is happening in other countries. There’s becoming much more collective use of everybody, socially, and maybe there will be certain limits as to what you can paint and what you can’t paint. It has happened in other countries. question: What transaction would mean more to you: a museum would choose to buy a work at a lesser price [or] a substantially good collector for a much better price?

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smith: The collector. question: Why? smith: I would sell to the collector for more. question: Even though the public considers it a chance to view your work in the museum? smith: Yes. For the simple reason that with that money I can make more sculptures. And that’s why I want to sell my work—because I want to live, and my work is to make more work. I never cease to feel that that is my duty, that’s my way of life—to make more. And I also know that the more work I make, the less bad I become. I feel that the more work I make, the better I get, and the more vision I have as to what is possible. question: And you think, in a sense, that the museum would hamper you from producing more work because they would give you a lesser price? smith: Well, in the first place, it’s a hypothetical question, because if I said a piece of sculpture is so much, I wouldn’t sell it to the museum for any less—or to anybody else for any less. I just decided that this year. (Laughter.) I mean, ordinarily, when a museum says, “We want ten percent or fifteen percent”—and sometimes, like the Chicago Art Institute, they want twenty percent, because they want it wholesale because they’re a museum. Well, I don’t see why. I have done that, but now for some strange reason I just said this year—to hell with them! There are no discounts.2 simon: Do you feel that the museums should be responsible for supporting all the artists in the country? smith: No! That’s a question I cannot answer. I haven’t found the solution for my own support, let alone have an opinion on support for others. (Laughter.) And that is one big problem. question: I’d like to ask you a question which I believe is related to what we’re discussing here, and I’d like you to answer me quickly, if you can (laughter)—without thinking too much about it. And I’d like you to answer it without considering your own work at first, if you can. The question is: which sculptors do you feel today express you and express our time? smith: Of course, each one of us feels our own. question: That’s why I ask you if you could go beyond that. (Laughter.) smith: Well, I couldn’t answer that even if I did, because I’ve already thought about it. The sculptor Picasso, who is called a painter—somehow the sculpture of painters interests me very much, because they haven’t had [to deal with] the intimidating factors that sculptors have. I said, “Do you believe that the concept of sculpture has kept up with the concept of painting?” And if you went back in the twentieth century, the origins and the great things have mostly been given by painters. Picasso, I would say, was a very brilliant sculptor. And Matisse, too. Matisse contributed sev-

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eral very special origins in form to the language of sculpture. Picasso has treated it absolutely with abandon, negating the traditional concept of classic form. If anything could be less classic, it is the figure of an ape with two toy automobiles placed like this (gestures)—and an old jug for a belly, and a piece of a barn hinge stuck down for the tail and cast in bronze, with his personalizing of it. And yet, it’s a very wonderful ape, and great to me, in a sense, because it is done that way. Because it has other forms that kind of miss their use in culture—or have exhausted their use—and were used by an artist in another way. question: Well, don’t you think that one of the reasons that these painters have come up with sculptures is they’ve taken a lot of pomposity out of the sculpture that existed in the twenties? smith: Yes! Sculptors have been tied to a monolithic concept. Somebody gave them a Galatea complex and they got the idea that they always had to release this virgin from a hunk of stone or a piece of a tree as a simple—single—form. And then mother and child—well, that’s an indisputable subject, nobody can talk against a mother and child. That was the ideal for so long. And yet cubism, which was one of the great things of this century, was not all painter-concept. It was sculptor-concept. It was the introduction of actual materials in a painterly way, and even applying newspaper at the same time. It wasn’t strictly the painter’s concept—it became the concepts of both. I don’t believe in trade definitions. Sculptors ought to start painting their sculptures and painters ought to start sculpting their pictures, if they are so convinced or so believe. question: Would you please explain what you meant by your question about nature propaganda and how it relates or doesn’t relate to the use of forms outside the conventional and classic? smith: I said, “Are you saddled with nature propaganda?” I meant that very simply, because there is nothing outside of nature. When I read a paper that says that the abstract artist, or Mondrian or the abstract expressionists—or anybody—has denied nature, it’s totally impossible. When [critics] object to it because it is not nature, it is because they wish to give you an editing or a selection of what nature is. Anything you show me in anybody’s picture or anybody’s sculpture—I can show you that in nature. Even if I can’t, I can show you a man—which is a very noble thing in nature. And as long as a man does it, it’s still nature—he lives in nature, and he hasn’t seen anything that you haven’t seen, and he’s bound to be of nature. And if he can make it without leaning on nature, the more original he can make it the greater man he is. question: I know what you mean by propaganda—selection, the closing down. Is that the part you do battle with? smith: Yes, the propaganda of nature. When they say that, they are giving you a particular language that they prefer in nature. And especially, I’m thinking of critics

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who use that as an objection to an abstract work where they don’t feel confident to say it’s good or it’s bad. So they try to give some feeble little rationalization—it isn’t art because it isn’t such and such. But, it’s either good or it’s bad. The New York Times, and sometimes the New York Tribune, will resort to things like that. Or they’ll say that maybe they know it and they don’t make the time to write it—and most always I think they don’t know it. They’re just reporting, and throwing in a little irrationality in that sense. And sometimes you get that in academic institutions. Colleges bred that more than they do now. They’re changing somewhat now, but academic institutions and the philosophers and the art historians will give it to you even though you have a good painting teacher. Not all, some. question: Did you say a minute ago that the more you can make a work of art without reference to nature, that that’s a greater artistry? smith: That’s my answer—at the moment. question: What about Rembrandt? smith: Rembrandt, I can’t judge—nor can anybody judge. Rembrandt’s position is so sure and so assured, he’s beyond comparison. I can only compare within a contemporary time, because I’m talking about actual working. I’m not talking about appreciation. Rembrandt can’t be considered in relation to the abstract way that I am using—because he never had a choice of his own. Nor did I live in his time. I wouldn’t say what I said, if I had lived in his time. question: You mean you’re narrowing your language of appreciation down to— smith: I’m narrowing what I’m talking about mostly to my experience in the twentieth century. Because I believe that an artist is born to his family. He has heritage— an immediate heritage—which he can never deny. He cannot deny the age in which he was born, any more than he can deny his father and his mother. He may renounce it, or deny it, but he never can get away from it. That is his true heritage. He may adopt the attributes of more bold members of his family. He may even look up his genealogy and select somebody from way back that he wants to emulate—like I would, if I were using Rembrandt in my work. I admire Rembrandt. I like to read about Rembrandt. I like to read about his life, and his troubles, and the things he collected, and his family, and his age, and I like his work very much—but I don’t feel that there is any comparison I can make between my time and his time. poor: I don’t feel there’s any separation at all. smith: Not in the sense of appreciation, but in a sense of working. poor: I feel he was a man just about like you, and that the world he lived in was very much like the world we live in. And I don’t feel that there’s any great separation. I feel that something has happened that makes us more self-conscious and makes us put the accent on individuality. We’ve reached this extreme state of selfconsciousness that makes us feel ours is a special age. I don’t feel that it is.

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smith: I share my interest and affinity for Rembrandt, and I have special people like Uccello—I would much rather have known Uccello, and be like him, and have his troubles, than to be like Brunelleschi or Donatello. I have strong personal sympathy for Rembrandt, but I cannot personally have any of the problems or do any of the things that he did. Cézanne was my grandfather, rather than Rembrandt. poor: Do you think that Cézanne’s greatness is in a way measured by his departure from reality, from nature? smith: I can’t speak generally, Henry. For Cézanne, it was. For me, it is. But I can’t speak generally. If I said no, that would preclude the realist work of Picasso and Matisse, which I cannot do. Or that would eliminate the realist sculpture that Picasso made of the old man with the ram, which is a very wonderful sculpture. question: Did Cézanne ever depart from nature? smith: No—nobody has departed from nature. I said that as an artist, if I could depart from nature, I would—I mean personally. question: How do you mean “depart” from nature? smith: I don’t know. I would have to be better than I am to do it. question: Are you trying to depart from nature now? smith: Not exactly. You never can depart from nature; you never can depart from your environment. What I am trying to do [is] by my own identity. By saying, “I am the artist, and I am making sculpture or I am drawing.” I am not drawing women, flowers, or fruit. I am drawing the best I can and marshal all the forces I have—in my own identity as an artist—to say that what I’m doing here is sculpture. You see, it’s my statement first, and not the statement of fruit, women, or guitars, for instance. It’s a close line and it’s a hard thing to explain, and I admit I can’t do it very well. question: I guess the basic question I was interested in was whether you would depart from nature entirely if you had the ability or the capacity to do so. You said you think you would want to, if you could. smith: I would. question: So it seems completely contradictory. smith: No, it’s a point of attainment, which I probably can’t reach. question: Why do you see that as an extremely important goal for you to strive to attain? smith: Because it’s an unsolved thing. It’s a thing somebody else hasn’t solved. There is no rational rationale behind the “why” of an artist. He is permitted any irrational. Usually his creative is irrational and it defies the rational. Because he doesn’t speak in a rational language—and the language of vision is not a rational thing. The language of sight and the relationship to things one sees by the eyes is at least fifty

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thousand years older than this thing called rationale—that we’re trying to arrive at in words. Man looked and probably drew fifty thousand years before he ever said words, or before he identified things by words. question: Why do you think, or do you think, that Picasso or Matisse, who are considered revolutionary, go a great deal to the antique and to tradition for all of their most important sculptures—like this [Man with a Lamb].3 smith: Well, I can’t answer that. It’s the same subject. The one by Picasso is made totally irreverently and the other—the archaic Greek sculpture—is made with more reverence, and I can’t say why. question: There’s a parody, would you say? And the parody is irreverency? smith: I don’t think it turned out as a parody, but I think he was dealing with irreverences when he made it, in that the forms that compile it are not of great consequence. It’s made up out of all sorts of pasteboards and boxes, and things put together [and] used just to quickly assemble it. question: What beyond just the fact that these are known would you want to communicate or what do you want to communicate when you’re resolving the choices? smith: Maybe I ought to withdraw that statement about going beyond. (Laughter.) Because I know you can’t do it. I mean you can’t deal with things that aren’t in the world. You can make assemblies of things which haven’t been seen before. And the way I look at life, or what we call objects in nature—no one object ever has a monomeaning. And a thing like a pear—oh, geez, that’s lascivious as can be. I mean I never see a pear but what I think of a lot of things, including music. And the same with any object. I never see a mono-meaning in an object, so sometimes I am confused as to what the thing is. [. . . . ] question: Tell us about Picasso’s redoing of the man with the goat, or the lamb. I think that Matisse said, “Don’t look for models or for people to imitate or for people to draw your ideas from around you. Don’t look around at the artists that are living during your time or even the artists that lived before you. Go two or three generations back.” And I do feel that this has been something that artists have done all their lives. There is richness in the past, in the relationship of the artist to eternal problems, that is endlessly fascinating to present-day artists, or to any-day artists. smith: Well, that’s true. And even more so than that, I said: “Do you think you owe your teachers anything? Or Matisse or Picasso?” And my answer to that is, “No.” But when I’m talking about Picasso and sculpture, I much more prefer Picasso to be remembered as a sculptor by what he contributed to cubism and by his sculpture of the late twenties and early thirties—[his] montage sculpture—which I think was pretty brilliant and [contributed] original concepts to the whole of sculpture. More so than the Man and the Lamb. I just said I like that Man and the Ram or the Lamb, because it has a tremendous soft feeling. I meant that the whole emotional

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feeling of it appealed to me. But as far as the origins of sculpture go, it was the time of cubism that is my greatest point of admiration for Picasso—like the Guernica, and the 1928, 1930, up to 1932–1933 period of sculpture—when he made assemblages of iron and all sorts of forms, and when his sculpture was very original and it dealt in origins. As far as originality goes, I also credit Kandinsky and Mondrian [who] both did things, as far as dealing with art, that Picasso and Matisse never touched. question: Isn’t it true the innovations that Rembrandt brought about were at his time considered completely unnatural and completely unheard of? And because we completely misinterpret and project symbols upon the past—that we cannot challenge the past? [. . . . ] question: Perhaps this is to ask an impractical question, but in order to achieve the best art forms does it seem that we should master craft—I mean realism and attitude, first—in order to get technique and a real feeling, and then to recreate it through our own personal experience? smith: I think that tradition has intimidated us in relation to the size of picture we’re expected to paint or the size of sculpture we’re expected to do. And even if we don’t become intimidated, we’ve heard the words and maybe they bounce around in our minds—and maybe they do sometimes show a little influence. I don’t think people paint big enough. bishop: May I ask you, David, do you think there should be any relationship between the size of the idea and the size of the canvas? Can they be inverted—the smaller the idea the bigger the canvas, the smaller the—(Laughter.) smith: No, I don’t think you should ever paint small ideas any place. (Laughter.) I see a great big man paint a small picture and going like this (gestures). There’s nothing else in his life, or his training, or anything he does that goes like this, except to write a letter. bishop: Well, Vermeer did. smith: Vermeer isn’t here. bishop: Why should we work large and have small ideas, when Vermeer had a large idea and could make it small? question: People live in houses where they don’t even have enough room to paint. smith: That’s not the point. An artist isn’t living in a house. An artist is an artist first. question: Of course, he’s living in a house. He’s like other people. smith: No, he isn’t like other people, otherwise he’d have a television set. (Laughter.) question: Don’t you have television in your neighborhood?

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smith: I could if I bought one, and if there was anything on television. question: Wait ’til those kids get two years older. (Laughter.) smith: Maybe the kids won’t be artists. question: You think [television] will stop you from being an artist, David? smith: No. I mean if a man is an artist, he’s an artist first. question: Even with all the television sets nearby? smith: No, no, no—anymore than I can absorb the décor or anything else of the middle class that is middle-class standards. You cannot deal with these low middleclass methods of evaluation and be really creative. question: What do you mean, “middle class”? What class are you? (Laughter.) The things that you might disagree with—you can’t lump them all together in that category. smith: You’d be surprised what I can do. (Laughter.) What I do is more or less working class, in a certain sense, and what I think is more or less professional class, which takes in artists. But I said that you cannot deal with the middle-class things, and that’s what I think is the choice of most people—the majority, the salt of the earth, the U.S. standard. You just cannot have those evaluations and expect to create art and create things that are original and things that haven’t been seen before. You’re only walking in the paths of others—and you have to walk in the path that you bring and make for yourself. [. . . . ] question: About the paintings and the drawings, whether the price is in relationship to the medium— smith: Well, I was actually a painter. Which has the most art: the drawing, the watercolor or opaque watercolor—either transparent or opaque –or the gen-u-ine oil painting, which has a difference of two tablespoons of grease over the opaque watercolor? Now, maybe the drawing is this big, just for comparison, let’s say, [and is priced] $100—and [the same artist] has a gouache, so big—for $300. And he has an oil painting, so big, for $600. Well, which has got the most art in it? Theoretically, the man has projected his best bet in each one of them. And you know that sometimes a drawing takes just as long, and it certainly must be as creative as a gouache or an oil painting. I just say, “Why?” I mean, I know why—it’s just purely an artificial, established tradition by dealers. question: Well, I prefer Technicolor movies to black-and-white. I mean black-andwhite is fine, but it doesn’t tell me the whole scoop. smith: But are you making all three, yourself? You’re making the black-and-white and the Technicolor, too. Have you got less art in the black-and-white than in the Technicolor? question: No, but I don’t think it goes as far.

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smith: Well, is there less art? Can’t you go as far in black-and-white as you can in gouache or oil paint? I was thinking about a black-and-white drawing by Isabel Bishop. bishop: Well I’m sorry, sir, they’re not enormous—that won’t please you. smith: No, I didn’t make this generalization. I’m not answering it, I asked the question. bishop: I think it’s a serious question. I believe there is an answer to it [that] perhaps you may agree with. I do think that the concept involved in an oil painting is more complex, because of the coverage of the surface with an opaque material and the necessity for a developed concept that that requires. I really do. I don’t think there’s more art in every oil painting than there is in every drawing, but I think if it works within the concept of oil painting, it has a depth—it has more layers to it— conceptually, not physically. smith: Well, what is the validity of that? bishop: Well, I think it’s valid. I don’t think it’s valid in every instance, but as an idea I think it’s valid. question: I think the answer to your question is: you aren’t buying art. You’re buying an object. A drawing, as an object, possesses to some degree less permanence, possesses less revelation of the total power of the artist. I think it’s fair to say, for instance, that Goya could not have made as beautiful drawings as he made unless he had also made his paintings. And I think that holds for every artist. I don’t think that any artists ever became masters just through drawings, unless they are also painters. smith: I was only interested in what the artist thinks and whether there’s a relationship in it. I happened to see two paintings by the same person in an exhibition. It was Baziotes, at the Kootz Gallery, and the painting was double the price of the gouache, or tempera. I thought the gouache was better than the oil painting, though the oil painting was quite the value—I mean quite the price. And I thought there was a little bit of accepting of tradition, in that they were the same size. I think, among all of us, there are traditions that we accept without thinking and we just let them go on and govern us. Maybe in the drawing and painting we have a difference in time and a difference in material, but in the difference between the gouache and the oil painting, I don’t think there is any difference—in what it is, in material. But there is an artificial value in it. I have been thinking about what artificial values exist in the whole structure of my life, in my relationship to anything in that order. I think it’s the ability rather than the object that makes art. question: Isn’t that a personal question? I mean, if you like a drawing better it has more art—for you. If you like the gouache better— smith: I’m asking you because you’re making all three. question: Well, this is a personal question.

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smith: I’ve asked myself the same question. Whatever I’ve got, I put in the drawing the same as I do in the painting. But as far as the dealer is concerned, the fact that it’s gen-u-ine oil paint gives it a much higher sales value. question: I’d like to bring up a question—the one where you suggested that you had to get rid of all these layers of education from the past tradition of art and from your whole family life, and the whole culture that surrounds you—to get back to the original conception, which seems to be granted you at birth. You seem to feel that we’re all granted a true and pure artistic vision to begin with, and all these layers that are foisted on us are falsities. smith: I don’t know what you’re granted with, before you start getting things. I don’t know that you have anything in particular, you know, before you start learning, or before you start having impressions. I only asked whether you have evaluated these kind of unknown echoes in your mind, and whether you agree with them. question: But what criteria can you evaluate, except what you have from the start? smith: One of the things relates to drawing, maybe. A child will take a chalk—or anything—to make a mark, to make a drawing. And to almost every kid, somebody has said, “It doesn’t look like so and so,” or “it doesn’t look like an apple,” or “it doesn’t look like a wagon” about that drawing. And maybe he’s so young he doesn’t remember that that was said to him. And maybe he’s working to make it look like what other people think a wagon looks like, rather than making a wagon like he wants to make it—which might be a drawing that doesn’t look like the thing, but might have associations and overlapping of other objects and other wagons all in the same line. question: He is very often dissatisfied, without anybody saying anything. He will see the wagon and try and make it, or try and make whatever the concept is, let’s say, and do it over and over and over because he cannot make it the way he wants to see it. And that is why he goes and he starts listening. That is why he goes and starts working and why he starts listening to other people—because he is not satisfied originally with what he wants. smith: Well, I don’t know what he wants. But then when he gets learned, and can draw a wagon like a wagon is supposed to look, in the Sears and Roebuck catalogue, then he learns that wagons don’t look like that—one wagon may look like many wagons. And even a line that is drawn may have relationships to other objects and overlapping images, right in the same line. And maybe he has to unlearn and learn all over again. Because I don’t think anybody draws badly. I think that you only draw badly because you’re intimidated. Or you can’t draw because you are intimidated, because you censor it out—because of the influences of other people. I think that if you can say the words, or you can dream of it, or you can recall the vision in your mind, you ought to be able to draw. question: You do?

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smith: Yes, I do. [. . . . ] question: I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about nature when you spoke of nature as being a copy of nature—and whether man’s nature is within him or outside him, or around him, or in his eye or in his mind. smith: Well, mostly, the use of nature that I referred to was people arguing that their vocabulary of nature is the right one, and that the other vocabulary is not of nature. And my point only is that there is nothing that is not of nature. question: Do you think that communicability in an artist’s work enhances or mitigates the quality of his work? smith: I don’t know that I have any estimation of its value in that sense. Do you think that Mondrian and Kandinsky communicate or do not communicate? question: I think perhaps the communicability of Mondrian’s work—although many of his sentiments were not meant to be directly communicable in the sense of immediately recognized symbols—is gathered in certain forms that are communicable to the observer. smith: I consider Mondrian and Kandinsky as communicating, in the way I define communicating. And if you don’t accept that, then I say that I don’t care whether I communicate or not, whether my work communicates or not. It depends upon to whom you wish it to communicate. To the middle-class level, the symbols that any creative person uses—poet or painter or sculptor or musician—aren’t going to communicate. I don’t believe that you should bow to the needs of anybody else or to their standards. Your job—the artist’s position, and the way I see his placement in society—is to be the very best possible artist with all the force he’s got. And I don’t care which way it goes or how it goes—it will be evident. And I don’t care who understands that—there will always be other artists who understand it, as there were with Cézanne. I mean Matisse and Picasso and some of the others—Degas and a number of artists—bought works of Cézanne during his lifetime, and one dealer bought some. But there weren’t very many, and there wasn’t any communication by Cézanne with any audience at all, or even [by] Van Gogh. And now his reproductions are all around. question: When a child draws an object, he draws not what he sees in front of him but what he looked at for a minute and he wants to let the world know. He says the word “wagon” and he sees the wagon and he knows it has four wheels and he puts the four wheels down. So he tries to relate outside himself, while his adult part can relate inside himself and not worry about the extent [he] feels no responsibility towards society. So basically, it seems to me, you could say that a lot of your impression comes from childhood. smith: Let me qualify that. I asked a question, I said, “Are there echoes that influence your choices now that were placed in there at childhood? Have you examined

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those to see whether you still want to live up to them, or still want to use those?” I feel that there are many things in a person’s mind that are running around without being identifiable—they’re rather hazy and overlap. But they are also influences that cause one to do this or to do that and make choices. I ask, have you examined as closely as possible to see whether all of these—that are producing influences and making your choices or influencing your choices—do you want them all? Or have you made substitutions for them? I think once you’ve heard something, you never can forget it; it’s always there. You never can wash it out of your mind. And if you want to utilize it, you can’t unlearn it. You have to make a metaphoric transposition of something that you more prefer instead of that—in its place, somehow related. So that when you want to use that reference—from memory—you use the transposition form that you put in there instead of the bad form, instead of the one that you rejected. question: Wasn’t there another question, about expectancies that you had in childhood? smith: Yes, I asked you, whether you had examined the expectancies that you first had. Now, what do you think an artist is? And what was the first idea you ever had of what an artist is? And then that changes as you mature, maybe. Or is it the same thing? And are you going on and building a life on something that you acquired the impression of, without wanting to do it—without holding that as an ideal anymore. I don’t know. I first thought that an artist was just a person that painted. And then when I did paint, I changed my view. And it became much more complex. And then I thought the point of attainment was to exhibit in a gallery. And maybe another point of attainment was to sell a picture. And another point of attainment was to have a work exhibited in a museum. Now I don’t know what the points of attainment are. Other than, you know, in the commercial points of attainment, or in the outside life. I asked you this question because I’ve been examining it for myself, now. Because I think that all I can be is to be the best possible artist and to utilize everything I’ve got, and to utilize all the time I can possibly put in on it, and drive everything just as hard as I can possibly drive it to express the most I’ve got to express. And that’s as much of an answer as I have right now. And I mean that that question is yours too, and will always be yours. I don’t think there’s an answer to it, exactly. I just ask the question because I think it always remains a question. question: Is there an important inspiration that you have in mind? smith: I think an artist kind of gets pushed as to why he’s an artist. I think something happens. I don’t know whether we all know what it is. And I don’t know whether it’s one thing or a group of things. But I don’t think any ordinary sane middle-class person would ever want to be an artist. question: Well, don’t you think the term “artist” is somehow or other in contradiction to bourgeois and general taste? That artists must lead and direct artistic taste,

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guaranteeing that he must always be against the bourgeois or lower middle class or else he’s not really an artist? smith: Well, I use the term vulgar and raw, and things like that. And there are artists—I think Cézanne qualified in that particular sense, at his own time, and he’s accepted now. But it takes time and many things to make it so. I said our culture—the United States culture—is built on a raw, vulgar basis. And I believe so. And you can say, “No, it isn’t”—that it’s a thoroughly cultured thing. At the same time, I think it’s one of our most valid things. And that, I think, is why American painters are painting rings around the French right now—of our own age—who have all the benefits of traditional culture behind them, and who polish and package their paintings a great deal more. The virtue in what is art at this very moment— the painters of the United States are in the avant-garde—is much better, because it is not polished. It’s raw. Clyfford Still and Rothko and de Kooning and Pollock are very raw and— question: Why, in your opinion, has sculpture lagged behind painting, and what are the new forms that you are continually referring to? smith: Impressionism and postimpressionism carried over into the twentieth century—and the fauves and cubism, of course, and surrealism. But even in our own country, in what’s called abstract expressionism, there aren’t as many sculptors as there are painters. It’s more costly and it’s more difficult in many ways. It takes a kind of a solid, dogged tenacity to be a sculptor, because a painter can realize a conceptual aim much faster than a sculptor can. A sculptor has to maintain, to hold his inspiration up or his stimulus—he has to hold that and maintain that from day to day to day to day, much longer than a painter does. A painter can realize his result quicker. question: Some painters. smith: I’m not taking about bad art, I’m talking about good art. (Laughter.) [. . . . ] question: To go back to something else you said about drawings: don’t you think that the fashion now is that drawing isn’t valued as much—in the marketplace, that is to say? After all, the painter is working because he likes to, but he’s also making a living and he has to have a show. Drawings, in that way, are the more instinctive vision—and they’re not taken as seriously by him, in a way. They’re the expression visually of looking for an idea. . . . smith: That is the greatest thing, looking for the idea. It’s not the found idea, it’s the travel; it’s the looking for it that is the great thing. question: So if the original instinctive thing—and his best thing, his instinct—is in his drawings, that really does have real value. But it has value in that way because in a way he’s doing it just for pleasure. Children need to make a lot of drawings, just as you have an idea a day or you work every day.

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smith: I agree with you. I don’t think anyone draws enough. One reason I like Uccello so much is because he was supposed for many years just to have made drawings—stacks and reams of drawings, according to Vasari. Of course, there are only about two of them that they think belong to that group. They all seem to have been lost. But his drawings were everything about circles—I mean as far as we can find out. It interested me, because Berenson said he didn’t amount to very much, that he wasn’t really a painter—that all he did was paint a little bit to relate to the science. Berenson didn’t think much of Uccello. poor: Wouldn’t you say that a sculptor like Noguchi, who has consciously and deliberately accepted obligation to society and responsibility [for] how man uses space, has come up with answers that are a lot more valid than a sculptor who’s just relating his work to himself? smith: No. poor: Knowing Noguchi, you wouldn’t say that? smith: Nope, Noguchi wouldn’t say that. In the first place, he wouldn’t admit to that. And in the second place, if we had an example that fit your statement that was not Noguchi, I would still say “No.” I know some of the architects that he has worked with, and I have a feeling—a personal feeling—that these things end up mostly as design jobs, which often means the mixture of more than one mind. It’s a collective effort, to a degree. Those efforts are never as great as the individual effort. And I don’t know anybody—any sculptor—whose sculpture has made a contribution to the concept of sculpture, generally, by an architectural commission. Or where the architectural commission exceeded the work . . . which was done from his own private mind. question: To whom does the failure belong, the sculptor or the architect? smith: The collective thought, the cause and the collective thought. And I don’t say it can’t be done, I just say I don’t know where it is. I think [the sculptor] gets the best out of himself, in this century, by the pure extension of his own self. Because I don’t think he has a collective feeling. And certainly architecture is not a collective feeling. It’s a strictly commercial proposition. There’s no great feeling about it. simon: David, if an architect saw a piece of yours in a museum and said that that would look very nice on the front lawn of a building, but it has to be twenty feet higher—how would you feel about enlarging it? smith: That’s a very hypothetical thing. (Laughter.) Don’t tempt me. But even if I did enlarge it, I still wouldn’t say that the enlarged piece was better than that first concept that was made to my size. I’ve made a lot of work which I have meant to be twenty feet high. Only for the last four years, I’ve tried to get enough money to buy the stainless steel to make them twenty feet high and I haven’t succeeded. And now, after four years, I don’t feel anymore that I want to go back and make these concepts. I’ve sort of gone on to other things and I wouldn’t want to go back and make

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them, even if I got the money. So they’re gone. Maybe if somebody asked me to make one twenty feet high, maybe I wouldn’t feel that way. simon: You wouldn’t feel that you weren’t going to do your best work, in doing something twenty feet high? smith: Oh, undoubtedly it would not be my best work because it would have some degree of copying the first thing. Just the mere fact of enlarging a work from six feet to twenty feet isn’t going to increase the aesthetic concept one iota. In fact, it’s going to show a little bit of the banality of enlargement in it. simon: Now, secondly, if a piece was accepted at its original size and put in place, would it in any way take away from or detract from what you feel about the piece as a work of art? In other words, the piece in relation to architecture—automatically, there are two elements involved. Do you feel that would in any way lessen it, or do you think it may enhance it? smith: Well, it could or it couldn’t. But if I sold it, I still don’t think it’s my privilege to kick about it. I don’t know where it’s meant for. Mostly my work is made in my own shop, and that’s where its relationships are. And mostly I walk outside and I think about the space around me. And then I also think it’s out there. But if it’s strong enough, I don’t think it’s going to be ruined wherever it’s placed—given any decent environment. And, if it’s strong enough, you can paint it red and it’s still going to be sculpture. simon: I think that the artist isn’t trained, during these times, to really work with the architect—or the architect isn’t trained to work with artists, and that’s our times today. But I think there’s great hope. I just feel the artist has to enlarge his capacity to work with these people and sell that thing, which he has to sell and do it the best he can. I feel that the limitations that are imposed on him—in the sense of what surrounds the object or what architecture is involved or what the placing of it is— sets a problem for the artist, which only he, himself, can solve to its best advantage. And the limitation enlarges his capacity—it defines new problems within himself that possibly he never came up against in the studio, working out his own style. smith: That is true in essence, and it also depends upon the individual. But the way I feel about it is that no advances in the conceptual vision will ever come out of architectural commissions—never. The artist may do them, there may be a certain advance in them, but there will never be great things that come out of it. And there won’t be origins developed in them. It will be a repeating of certain already discovered things. Maybe he will arrive at a financial state where he can go on and make his discoveries by himself, but the great origins and the concepts are not going to come out of that relationship. Architecture is strictly a commercial proposition. It’s a collective, commercial thing. simon: There’s a new commission coming up, which was very wisely chosen. Picasso, Calder, Arp, Noguchi, and Miró are going to do commissioned pieces for a new

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building in Paris, the UN Building—UNESCO. I’m anxiously waiting to see what these—we’ll call them contemporary giants—are going to do with this project. The architects seem to have considered the artists very deeply in the way they’ve placed them and given them a relationship to their work. In other words, they’re not being hindered in any way and certainly nobody’s going to tell these people what they want, I don’t imagine. [. . . . ] smith: All I can say is that, first of all, Mr. Simon, architects don’t like art. (Laughter.) All right, let’s make this the last. question: [. . . . ] Wouldn’t a piece of sculpture, which is an expression of a community and which is an integral part of an architectural environment, be a much greater statement than something which has a relationship to a shop or studio? And that the failure of art to have meaning and relationship to society is the failure of the artist to relate to his environment? smith: Well, who said he should relate to an environment in order to be able to have this failure? (Laughter.) I mean, who says he should relate to that environment? He should relate to himself. I just don’t understand any obligation that anybody has on an artist—except that of the artist on himself, is to be the best possible artist he can be. [. . . . ] poor: David has indicated he’s long been ours. (Applause.) Notes 1.  Smith is referring to discussions of works attributed to Uccello in John Pope-Hennessy, The Complete Work of Paolo Uccello (London: Phaidon, 1950), a book he owned. 2.  A year earlier, Smith had threatened to cancel the sale of Agricola IV, 1952 (K268), brokered by the Art Institute of Chicago, to a private collector, rather than agree to a twenty percent discount. Ultimately, the sale was concluded, with the museum receiving fifteen percent (paid by Smith’s gallery). 3.  Smith was referring to Picasso’s cast bronze sculpture Man with a Lamb, 1943; later he describes it as depicting “an old man with a ram.”

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S K E T C H B O O K N O T E S: H E M AY B E I N T U I T I V E E N O U G H T O M A K E I T; N O T H I N G P U T D O W N W I T H F O R C E A N D C O N V I C T I O N I S ME ANINGLESS 19 5 7

he may be intuitive enough to make it but not bright enough to rationalize the lack of his own acceptance— when the sculpture is human size or of slightly above human size it presents a personal challenge to the beholder himself if the size is above and the nature aggressive it is too much and competition for the beholder and he turns away—unless the sentiments are soft or the sex opposite—or not too outsize but that it presents a challenge that the viewer can win over

nothing put down with force and conviction is meaningless my drawing is meant to reveal me as one man, it comes from my life my problems—it shows no social responsibility for I have no shares in the commonwealth Chance favors the prepared mind—Pasteur my sculpture is not made to fit someone else’s space— A clarification of myself to my purpose. In one sense and that I believe is to the outer world—whom I resent for intimidation and deprivation—an identity of independent non-apologetic selfishness—in another inner sense an apology to art time for my ineffectualness—for not contributing faster higher greater towards the out of reach dream, towards which I work but in the dream can reach for it and only grip fog. And it is so slow for the more I produce, the more I advance. I can see an advance by looking backward, but the more I am able to step—the farther it recedes and even brightens.

Handwritten, 1957, Sketchbook 51: 63 and 285.

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SCULPTURE AND ARCHITECTURE 19 5 7

Sculpture has from the esthetic point of view shared little with architecture at any time in our century. Its vision, technics, production and the character of the men who conceive it are quite different from those of architecture. And yet you can still read and hear that they are related and dependent, or that each needs the other in order to fulfill itself. The source of this misconception is the art historian, who has linked sculpture and architecture together for all time by certain misleading generalizations which everybody has come to believe—everybody except sculptors and architects. Sculpture in our century has been nurtured on total freedom. If it has been linked with architecture, it is only by circumstance. Its esthetics is shared only by painting: the two have been interchangeable conceptually and productively since Cubism. But neither painting nor sculpture has been helped by architecture. Architecture has come close to the point of being the product of a collective of engineers and businessmen. That part in it which is devoted to “embellishment” is often ruled by cubic-foot cost; the marble and bronze that were once sculpture now form walls and the fixtures of the restrooms. The collectivized client has accepted the architect’s collectivized conception without feeling the need for works of art. At the same time the sculptor has become more autonomous and individual, but not by choice necessarily. Pursuing his concept, he projects the boundaries of sculpture in the other direction. The sculptor lives within his environment, creates from his personal nature. No part of his life, or of his convictions, or of his dreams, is on the same level as that on which architecture works. His environment is plain, its walls have cracks, you ascend by stairs. The fare is supermarket, the still life is in season, the bottle is of no special vintage. The view from the window is roof and chimneys. The plein air is the street.

“Sculpture and Architecture,” Arts Magazine 31 (May 1957): 20. Smith’s essay and a separate text by Sidney Geist were paired as guest editorials presented under a common title. Smith had served on the art jury convened in 1955 to select winners for mural and sculpture commissions for the new United Nations Headquarters building designed by the architect Wallace K. Harrison. Smith’s distaste for that experience still resonated in his remark, cut from an early draft of his essay: “On rare occasions when the sculptor is called in by the architect, it appears to be an afterthought presenting a problem somewhat analogous to the making of a work of art to integrate with the modern car for the place where the radiator cap used to be.”

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Sculptors live in lofts, garages and tenements; a few in studios, a few in country conversions. Their view of contemporary building is from the edge and at quite a distance. But from them comes the work of art. In the sculptor’s view, the work of art is the product of the labor and esthetic vision of one man, a work made purely for visual response. The same can be said of painting. It is a free and individual art, without outside reference or compromise, from origin of vision to completion. The sculptor cannot turn creation on for a demand outside his nature. Along with the painter, he has worked from personal choice for a hundred years. In this century and this country the creative position has changed for both the painter and sculptor; part of that position has changed during this decade. Artists have won battles for independence, and they no longer feel, at least not in quite the same anguished way, the need to be loved by the public. Their opinion, expressed without organization or method, eventually determines art taste. Their avant-garde discovers and rediscovers merit before the connoisseurs are aware of it, and elevates its own preferences, which eventually acquire legislative force. This is a situation that artists themselves still do not grasp completely, that art historians are not comfortable with, and which is altogether rejected by the architect, who somehow feels sheltered by the myth that he is the father of us all. However, the theoreticians—art historians in the main—who are responsible for such myths are daily losing credit as the formulators of the relations between artists and contemporary esthetics. Architectural recognition or application of sculpture has not furthered it by so much as an inch in our day, whether materially or qualitatively. The achievements, the impulses, the great concepts of our age have come from the artist alone. The fact that no contemporary sculptor or painter has ever done anything on an architectural commission that matches the best things done out of his own need suggests a failure of contact in whatever relation has been established between the fine arts and architecture. When, and if, the sculptor is called in by the architect, it is as if by an afterthought. In any case, good sculpture is not decorative; it is not made to fill the space in which the architect used to appliqué his own scrolls of fauna form. Painters have fared no better. They have worked in mural size since Courbet, and yet in the hundred years since Impressionism began, the architects have passed up many works of art that were on an architectural scale. Monet, Rodin, Bonnard, Matisse, Picasso, Brancusi, Gargallo, Laurens, Lachaise, and Lipchitz, and a hundred other modern painters and a dozen other modern sculptors, have had their full-scale works go unnoticed by architects. The latter have generally commissioned artless anecdote. Only rarely have they commissioned art; oftener, the architect has designed his own substitute. To get art, architects will have to prepare themselves to take sculpture on its own independent merits. And they will have to subordinate their own egos to

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the extent of permitting the work of sculpture to relate itself to the work of architecture as one contemporary autonomy to another, in a relationship of esthetic strength and joint excellence. This is up to the architect, not the sculptor, and until the architect acquires the needed humility, the two arts will remain the strangers they have long been to one another.

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S E L D E N R O D M A N , C O N V E R S AT I O N W I T H D AV I D S M I T H 19 5 7

I talked with David Smith first because I’ve known him the longest, and because he has done just about every kind of sculpture well—figures in the round, medallions inspired by Greek seals, antiwar propaganda pieces, spiky birds, “pure” abstractions. The first sculpture I ever bought was by David Smith—and it is the only thing bought at a time when my taste was very uncertain that still gives me pleasure. But I am leading off with him here for a different reason. His point of view—not necessarily his sculpture—is closest to that of the painters interviewed in the preceding chapter. As a matter of fact, Smith began his artistic career as a painter, coming to New York from Indiana in 1927, going to the Art Students League, steeping himself in cubism and constructivism, and then finding out that the images kept forcing themselves “out” of the canvas. “Collage” wasn’t enough and he took to sculpturing. At first he used solder to hold the bits of brass, tin and wire together; but as E. C. Goosen, his most perceptive critic, says, “No real workman can put up with solder long, especially a heavy-industry man. On a summer junket to Bolton Landing, New York, where his present home and machine shop is, he borrowed welding equipment from a local garageman and began to weld.”

“David Smith,” in Selden Rodman, Conversations with Artists (New York: Devin-Adair, 1957): 126–30. The interview took place in spring 1956. © Selden Rodman, 1957, used by permission of Carole Rodman, executor. Rodman was the author of numerous books of poetry and writings on contemporary American art. He and Smith had been acquainted since at least 1946, when Rodman purchased the artist’s small bronze sculpture The Rape, 1944 (K185), from Willard Gallery, New York City. Rodman had also provided a letter of reference for Smith’s first application for a Guggenheim Fellowship, in 1950. In his introduction to Conversations, Rodman acknowledged that “no tape recorder was used and I do not take shorthand,” but insisted that his interviews were “more than notes—a word-for-word transcription of actual phrases and sentences, often whole paragraphs.” Nonetheless, when Smith read galley proofs of the interview in early 1957, he vehemently criticized the accuracy of Rodman’s report and directed his attorney to seek the removal of quotes referring to Alfred Barr and other museum curators, “false attribution to Mr. Smith of characteristics of a Marxist,” attribution to him “of a boast that he uses a belligerent questioning technique when he teaches,” and a photograph of him taken by Rodman (letter from Joseph S. Iseman, Smith’s attorney, to Devin-Adair Co., April 1, 1957). In other correspondence, Smith expressed his fear that the book might derail his negotiations with the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, for a one-man show later that fall (Iseman to Alfred D. Clark, April 3, 1957). Smith’s legal efforts were unsuccessful, although he had the satisfaction of publishing letters to the editors of Art News and Arts Magazine that denounced Rodman (see “False Statements,” p. 297). Smith also encouraged his close friend Herman Cherry’s negative review of the book in Art News 56 (April 1957): 36–37, 61–62. A major retrospective of Smith’s sculpture, drawings, and paintings opened at MoMA five months later.

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My talk with David Smith took place at a difficult moment in his career, just after he had broken his long and profitable association with the Willard Gallery, and if he spoke with unusual bitterness of galleries and museums I am sure that it was in no small degree because of the pain that the break had caused him. He had some hard words to say about Alfred Barr and the Museum of Modern Art. They had bought a piece of his in the late thirties1 and had been talking, he said, about acquiring another piece ever since, but since it is their policy to pay less than the asking price, and since he had given specific instructions to his gallery to charge them twenty percent more, there had been an impasse. Of course Smith, who referred to James Johnson Sweeney of the Guggenheim Museum as “the gravedigger of modern art,” was at this moment thinking of all entrepreneurs of art as his natural enemies. “I wrote a deliberating insulting letter to Barr,” he said “offering him ten percent more than he paid and accumulated interest, if he would sell back to me the one piece the Modern Museum has.”2 He explained why he had priced the pieces in his last show at the Willard so high that not one had been bought, and he added that from now on individual buyers and galleries alike could come to him for pieces. If they didn’t he couldn’t care less. He’d go back to commercial welding if he had to support his family. Then he opened up with his theory of the artist’s absolute freedom as his most precious possession. “It’s the only good thing about our age, but it’s so good that I’m thankful I never had to make sculpture in any other age.” He had gone to Europe recently and come back after one quick look at France and Italy. “All of those sculptors were trying to sell one kind of a dogma or another. That kind of prostitution, whether it has the religion label on it or not, is alien to my way of looking at things. The Medici Chapel?” (He threw up his hands.) “We are without their tradition. Well, I don’t miss it—or want it. This is the greatest time to make art. I enjoy watching the world crumble and the old values go down. Why shouldn’t I enjoy it? This is my time! But it may be short. Already the State Department is cracking down on everything after Marin. They have no respect for us because they have no relationship with us.” I asked him what went through his mind during the preliminary phases of a new work. “I have no conscious premise while working,” he said, “of why I am working, what it is I am making, or whom it is for. Nor do I feel any kinship with those who exhibit it or buy it. I don’t want to know them, or see my things again—ever. Only with other professionals do I feel any sense of equality. I’m a revolutionary, and hope always to remain one. An arrogant independence to create is my only motivation. But of course artists are poor, and are involved with the struggle for survival, and that is bound to show in their work.” He changed the subject abruptly. “You still like Shahn’s work?” I said that I did. “When I look at such a work of art as Shahn’s Pacific Landscape,” he said, “as I did at the Museum the other day, I am moved by the professional elements in the way the pebbles are painted, but not by the dead marine lying on them.”3

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“Why not?” “Because the dead marine is a piece of sentiment. I know too much about the marine and the series of stupidities and blunders that got him to that beach.” “Then pathos and human sentiment have no place in art?” “All painting and sculpture made by human beings is human. The question is fallacious. George Rickey learns from Mondrian as Calder learns from Miró, but no one of them is less human than the other. Mondrian sees his human values in geometrical terms. We paint abstractions today because that is the valid direction of art, and we are free to follow it. Nor will we go back, in either sculpture or painting, to any form of representation.” He scoffed even more vehemently when I asked him what was going to replace folk art and craftsmanship in the world of tomorrow. I felt, the way he looked at me, the way I used to feel sometimes in the thirties when a Marxist confronted me with his religious faith and his absolutes. “Who gave you that question?” he growled. “It’s the kind of a question one art historian asks another and therefore has no meaning. And I wish you’d quote me on that!” I assured him I would. “The creative impulse,” he went on, “never leaves the history of man. There are no rules to show where it will crop up. Why are the Scandinavian countries, for instance, producing no art, whereas here, where society is so much more opposed to it, we’re producing so much?” “You’ve answered my question,” I said, “in your peculiar way.” He relaxed and laughed, to the extent he can, bitterly but good-naturedly, his eyes remaining hard. “When I talk, I fight. Even with my wife. I’m never making dispassionate judgments. I don’t even believe in mathematics, except emotionally. Einstein admits he got hunches—and then organized them. When I teach, I ask belligerent questions. You heard me ask Kearns” (we had met James Kearns at Gallery G and looked at some of his sculptures there before lunch) “why he makes such small figures. I question the demand of the small format—unless it’s for financial reasons on the part of the artist who can’t afford space and materials. But if the size is motivated by the expectancy of people who live in small apartments or can’t ‘afford’ to pay—I’m against it.” “Gravitation,” he continued, “is the only logical factor a sculptor has to contend with. The parts can’t float, as in painting, but must be tied together. Because these parts are necessarily more controlled by gravitation than by esthetic factors, I draw a lot. I want to be free from this logic when I can.” We spent the rest of the afternoon visiting shows, first Alton Pickens’s retrospective of paintings, then the summer drawing exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. His dogmas melted away. Pickens was a close friend, he admitted; but even so, I felt he was responding to the torment in this realism genuinely. Even at the museum he seemed to concur in my enthusiasms, the Koerner, the René Bouché portrait, the Baskin,

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without spending much time looking at the nonobjective work that I expected him to devour. “It’s the very human quality in you and your work that I go for, David!” He pretended to haul off as if to let me have it, smiling grimly. Notes 1.  Head, 1938 (K82). 2.  In 1953, Smith, frustrated by what he perceived as Barr’s lack of interest in buying his recent sculptures, offered to purchase Head, 1938, back from the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, (letter to Dorothy Miller, October 6, 1953). Barr countered with a proposal that Head might be returned to Smith “as partial exchange” should the museum “purchase a later and more important example of your work” (letter to Smith, November 24, 1953). Offended by Barr’s characterization of the financial and aesthetic terms of the exchange, Smith rejected the offer (letter to Barr, December 1, 1953). Head remains in the museum’s collection. 3.  Painted in 1945; acquired by MoMA in 1950.

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FA L S E S TAT E M E N T S 19 5 7

To the Editor: I’ve heard art historians for whom I have the profoundest respect call Vasari a number of things from scandalmonger to fabricator. How this relates to the present issue I’m not sure, but I wish to disclaim a number of statements attributed to me in a recent book—statements purportedly giving my views on J. J. Sweeney, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., George Rickey, Calder, Mondrian and certain contemporary sculptors, as well as assorted topics including the pricing of my work. An author is certainly entitled to express critical opinion of me or my work, but false attributions must be labeled for what they are. I was not given a chance to check the text of the interview for accuracy, and I cannot understand why a stenographic record or tape recording was not used. The report of my interview is unreliable, untrue, contains “quotations” that are simply false. I denounce the validity of the entire barroom assignation. David Smith Bolton Landing New York

EDITOR’S LET TERS 19 5 7

Sir: In Rodman’s barroom interview with me, statements attributed to me about J. J. Sweeney, Barr, Ritchie, Calder, Mondrian and the Medici Chapel are not mine. Equally untruthful are the statements pertaining to the “high prices of my work,” “not caring whether my work was purchased,” “not wanting to see my work again” and the “selling of dogma by European sculptors.”

“False Statements,” Arts Magazine 31 (June 1957): 20 and “Editor’s Letters,” Art News 56, no. 4 (Summer 1957): 6. Smith’s letters refer to “Selden Rodman, Conversation with David Smith,” p. 293.

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Elsewhere in his book are tangled statements, over-dramatized recounting and malice, through to the very end, where I am reported to have “hauled off at him.” Even this is not true, but if I thought his report might be taken seriously by my fellow artists, this last misstatement does suggest some sort of constructive action. David Smith Bolton Landing, N.Y.

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CONTEMPOR ARY SCULPTURE AND ARCHITECTURE 19 5 7

Not too many years ago in Germany the hope was expressed that architecture and art might collaborate and enrich each other. The inaugural manifesto of the Bauhaus declared: “We must desire, imagine and work together for the institution of the future in which Architecture, Sculpture and Painting will combine in harmony.” To desire, imagine and work together in harmony is a marvel in idealism which may have succeeded to some degree within their own school. But it is hard to say that Klee, Feininger or Albers influenced later architecture, or that Gropius and Breuer affected the course of experiment in art. The contributions of these men from the Bauhaus seem to be found in the identity of each, as artist or architect. The art historian has developed a myth—because both employ form—that brotherhood and joint need should bring together artist and architect in a working relationship. This academic fancy of kinship and dependence is still heard and read, despite the obvious difference in viewpoint, ethics, means of production and nature of the professions. There is no cultural or moral mandate saying architects should support artists. Even so, had the affinity the art historians talk of existed, the architect’s practice would be to use art as art in buildings, instead of art as decorative detail or afterthought. No truly notable place has been found for Lipchitz, a sculptor in the monumental vein. Mondrian was similarly neglected, although ironically his ideas were taken over and worked for architectural purposes. If these men with already secure positions in art history have been overlooked, how can painters and sculptors who have not reached their eminence consider architecture in their future? This lack of interest in each other’s ideas is not recent. Since the days of Impressionism, art and architecture have proceeded independently. Great and original art was being made in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while planners of buildings were occupied with imitation Gothic, Romanesque, Renaissance—designing their own sculptural banalities and commissioning artless anecdotes. Monet, Rodin, Seurat, Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse and Brancusi, with their mastery of the vast size, were naturally suited to the space of architecture.

Typescript for a lecture on November 20, 1957, at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, School of Architecture, Troy, New York. Smith’s talk was one of a series of lectures by artists and architects funded by the Alcoa Foundation, established by the Aluminum Company of America. According to the press release for the event, Smith intended to show slides that would “illustrate how he plans and executes his work in his studio, the Terminal Iron Works. . . . ”

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Of course architects do approach painters and sculptors. A sculptor recognized in the art world will on occasion be asked to submit sketches on speculation, without fee. Usually the architects don’t know enough about art or artists and have to ask museums for a list. There are competitions for commissions, a gamble few can afford. Consequently these do not attract the best, and the winning entries are considered poor within the art profession. Once an architect, professing interest in an early sculpture, asked to retain the photograph. The only result of this was that some time later a glass-topped table appeared with a base very like my sculpture turned sideways. This was a detail for a newly designed house in Long Island. Years ago this even then successful architect leafed through a book of a European fair, showed me an illustration and wondered if I couldn’t do something like it about fifteen feet high, for $1500. My point is not the money, but the ethics of lifting, which to him was just competitive business. When the world’s noblest building was proposed, there was no echo of the Bauhaus dictum. A collective of the world’s most noted architects planned it exclusive of painters and sculptors. When completed, it had some folk art, a blown-up copy of a Léger painting, and an architect-designed background for the podium which some of the younger architects referred to as a wall of police buttons. As I learned subsequently, five of us were given individual tours for suggestions or commissions to do remedial work on the police button effect.1 The architect failed to foresee that none of us would be interested in a job that was not sculpture but re-designing. In current practice the designer seems to fill the architect’s need better than the painter or sculptor. Designers are paid less, work faster, are more amenable in adhering to the decor. Designers can make the compromise with something that looks like art but stays with the building. As long as the architect can direct elements even the designer will not usurp his space or challenge his purity. He has nothing like this certainty with a sculptor, whose whole outlook and history have not accustomed him to the demands of commercial designing. If his work does not contain his full identity and represent his own aesthetic convictions, it may show up as a weak compromise. Architects often infer that art prices are too high. Generally speaking they are considerably below the architect’s scale. The big architect betrays a touch of condescension in his attitude, as if aware of himself as the Gothic master builder dealing with just another one of the craftsmen. My impression has been that no strong desire for the work existed, and that I was expected to price the work low out of gratefulness for the chance to have people see it. Avant-garde sculptors and painters commissioned for abstract work in some of the new religious buildings have found that when their figures were all in, they had made equal to or less than plumber’s wages. These were small buildings, supported by small congregations. Had it been a big job with a big firm, probably the architects would have designed out the need for any creative artists. If it is true that the architect rarely calls for his services, it is also true that the artist does not make work with architecture as a frame of reference. But it is more than this. It is an encompassing difference in aims, methods and ends.

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For most artists in the last hundred years the struggle has been hard, but with it has come a conceptual freedom and independence enjoyed by few other professions, and a gradual ripening and developing of a true art identity. This identity permits the artist today to work from his inner responses, not even beholden to nature, except as he the artist reflects it. For an artist in this country, the absence of a cultural history is not the blight it once was, nor is the achievement of past European art any longer an intimidation. For the first time in our short history, the art is so strong that its influence is felt abroad. At this moment the art of this country does without the polish, seductiveness and packaging of the Europeans, having an aggressive vigor and a rawness approaching vulgarity. If the statement is powerful and demanding, the vulgarities will be recognized as beauties. Our nature and ideology run counter to the architect’s obligations. He must deal in immediate beauties. To execute his work he must sell it beforehand, while the artist may take a lifetime or longer to have his vulgarities revealed as beauties. Big architecture becomes increasingly complex and collective. The sculptor’s method of operation is just the opposite. Even the practice of editions of sculpture has almost disappeared. Instead of producing duplicate bronzes from the original plaster, sculptors are producing one direct original in metal. This permits more direct action in working, a sustained continuity to completion and the entire elimination of any marks of labor on the work except his own. Like the painter, his work is unique, a copy would seem unethical. In addition, reproductions or copies take time. Having accepted the challenge of ideas he is not content with a past position of performance on a static concept. Like the painter, he is interested in the speed of ideas and upon each work drives to project his concept still further. There are architects who believe that architecture is the bona fide sculpture of today. The sculptor can only differ in opinion, replying that sculpture is made for visual aesthetic response, essentially executed by one man, serves no physical function and doesn’t have to be conceived with allowance for indoor plumbing. Sometimes architects defend the myth that architecture is the mother of all fine art. Wright less than two weeks ago publicly inferred that painting and sculpture are dependents of architecture.2 Corbusier has painted his murals and designed his sculpture. We know the attempts of Wallace Harrison at painting and sculpture. There is no ideal union of art and architecture when art is needed simply to fill a hole or enliven a dead wall. Good architecture does not need art if the architect himself doesn’t see it in his conception, feel it as a complement. Good sculpture has its own form. It is based upon a different aesthetic structure. Until the architect gives up the preconception that sculpture is merely another of his details and accepts it on its own terms, seeks it as one contemporary autonomy meeting another in a relationship of aesthetic strength and excellence, art and architecture will remain the strangers they have been for at least the last hundred years.

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Notes 1.  Wallace K. Harrison directed the design of the United Nations Headquarters, New York City, by an international team of architects that included Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier). The original plan for the wall behind the president’s podium in the United Nations General Assembly Hall envisioned seventy-two gilt disks (described as “buttons” by the project’s architect) holding the seals of the UN member states. When the plan ran afoul of aesthetic and political concerns, the disks were replaced by a gilt wall embellished by a single circular panel decorated with the emblem of the United Nations (“U.N. Shelves Plan to Adorn Its Hall,” New York Times, January 11, 1955). 2.  Frank Lloyd Wright was quoted as asserting that his design for the new Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, then under construction, showed “ . . . twentieth-century arts and architecture in their true relation . . . . Architecture is the mother art.” Aline B. Saarinen, “Tour with Mr. Wright,” New York Times, September 22, 1957.

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L E T T E R S: A M E R I C A N A R T AT T H E M E T 19 5 8

To the Editor: In the present struggle for the survival of the human freedoms the United States has failed to recognize the paramount importance of the creative arts. It is essential—not only for artists but for the general public—that we have the constant opportunity to see and become familiar with what we have accomplished in painting and sculpture. American literature, music, philosophy, architecture and science have long held the respect of the world. Today for the first time our painting and sculpture are a recognized influence abroad. Yet there has rarely been a museum with permanent galleries set aside for the exhibition of American art of the present day as well as of the past. This fact has been commented on with surprise and disappointment by interested foreigners. Last October the Metropolitan Museum opened its new American Paintings and Sculpture Galleries, set apart for the permanent exhibition of American art. This space, however, is inadequate for the Museum’s enormous collections. It is hoped that funds will be raised for the construction of a new building attached to the Museum and dedicated to this purpose. It is proper, then, that we, American artists, should express our approval to the president, the Trustees and the Director of the Museum. We believe that this new policy marks a step forward toward the understanding of American art. But it is only a beginning. We therefore express the earnest hope that every American museum which houses painting and sculpture will, to the extent that it is practical and not inconsistent with its charter, similarly set aside permanent space for such American art as it owns or can otherwise obtain. Only when such a policy becomes nationwide can we look forward to the full development of American painting and sculpture.

“Letters: American Art at the Met,” Arts Magazine 32 (February 1958): 6. The letter was signed by Smith along with George Biddle, Stuart Davis, Oronzio Maldarelli, George L. K. Morris, Henry Varnum Poor, James N. Rosenberg, Andrew Wyeth, and William Zorach. Smith’s sculpture Tanktotem II (Tanktotem II (Sounding)), 1952–53 (K283), purchased in 1953, was among the works on view in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new galleries.

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I S T O D AY ’ S A R T I S T W I T H O R A G A I N S T T H E PA S T ? 19 5 8

I’m interested in all art—from 50,000 b.c. to 1958. I have preferences as they relate to man and expression and as I respond personally to it. I prefer the emotional visual response to the verbal equivocations of the art historians. Art of the past explains past behavior, but does not necessarily offer solutions. I believe that art is yet to be born and that freedom and equality are yet to be born. My hope is always future and my work is always about two years behind the expectancy of vision—that vaporous promise which I cannot yet take hold of. The challenge of tradition activates our individual identity to excel, to project beyond that which has been given us as family heritage. When I did go to Europe in 1935—London, Paris, Greece, Crete, Russia—my trip oriented me that art must be made where I was, and my decision was that I lived here and could not live anywhere else in the world. At that time, there was intimidation of artists that art was made somewhere outside the boundaries of this country—that the ideal place to make art was abroad, in France or, for some, the U.S.S.R. Then and now, I did not accept the illusion of the expatriate. After I came back, I was able to make peace with myself in time and place. When I saw a show of five hundred drawings by Dutch and Flemish artists at the Orangerie in Paris in 1935, I realized what an inadequate draftsman I was.1 That is why drawings have been a large part of my work time ever since. In the 1930s, when I was still in art school, I went often to the Metropolitan to see the Impressionists, the Egyptians, Greeks, Sumerians, etc. My grandmother had a Bible with reproductions of Egyptian and Sumerian art in it, but it is hard to say how much of an influence they were as I saw them before I could neither read nor write. I revolted against Bible and family, but in maturity I began to realize that these reproductions were often in my background consciousness. Certain Japanese formalities seem close to me, such as the beginning of a stroke outside the paper continuing through the drawing space, to project beyond, so that the included part possesses both the power of origin and projection. I first became

“Is Today’s Artist With or Against the Past?: Part 2, An Inquiry by the Editors of Art News,” Art News 57, no. 5 (September 1958): 38, 62. The other artists interviewed by James M. Schuyler were Frederick Kiesler, Franz Kline, and Joan Mitchell. Part I, with statements by Stuart Davis, Willem de Kooning, Robert Goodnough, Grace Hartigan, Carl Holty, Landes Lewitin, Reuben Nakian, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, Milton Resnick, Herman Rose, and Esteban Vicente, appeared in Art News 57, no. 4 (Summer 1958): 26–27, 44–46, 56–58.

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interested in the Japanese from what the Impressionists did with them—in the Met, and in the Freer Gallery in Washington. Also from books on Oriental painting. I never went to a museum to copy a work of art. When I went to school this was considered an unethical crutch. After I left school, I didn’t need it. My schooling was with teachers imbued with Impressionism, Cubism, Non-Objectivism, Constructivism, etc. Copying would have been theft. The ethical position of the artist was to attempt the projection of a concept beyond that already given. I do read art history, but as fiction. My art history and working reference is solely visual. My memory of preference is not identified by works nor by historic order. Note 1.  Smith is probably referring to the exhibition De Van Eyck à Breughel, presented at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, in the fall of 1935.

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C U LT U R E A N D T H E I D E A L O F P E R F E C T I O N 19 5 9

Culture & the ideal of perfection is the refinement which belongs to gentle men—art is the raw stuff which comes from the vitality, labor of aggressiveness by men who got that way fighting for survival. Perfection It always surprises me, but where art comes from is spiritually much closer to the dump and discard of the culture. Art is painting & sculpture—not photographs, architecture, etc. Survived and excelled over industrialism—degenerated cultural atmosphere.

Handwritten, on the back of a handwritten letter dated February 1, 1959, to art dealer Martha Jackson, who exhibited Smith’s work in 1956 and 1957 and purchased Tanktotem III and IV (both 1953; K303 and K304) from the artist.

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L E C T U R E , O H I O S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y 19 5 9

When I lived and studied in Ohio, I had a very vague sense of what Art was. Everyone I knew who used the reverent word was almost as unsure and insecure. Mostly Art was reproductions, from far away, from an age past and from some golden shore, certainly from no place like the mud banks of the Auglaize or the Maumee, and there didn’t seem much chance that it could come from Paulding County. Genuine oil painting was some highly cultivated act, that came like the silver spoon, born from years of slow method, applied drawing, watercoloring, designing, art structure, requiring special equipment of an almost secret nature, that could only be found in Paris or possibly New York, and when I got to New York and Paris I found that painting was made with anything at hand, building board, raw canvas, selfprimed canvas with or without brushes, on the easel, on the floor, on the wall, no rules, no secret equipment no anything, except the conviction of the Artist, his challenge to the world and his own identity. Discarding the old methods and equipment will not of course make Art. It has only been a symbol in creative freedom, from the bondage of tradition, and outside authority. Sculpture was even farther away. Modeling clay was a mystic mess which came from afar. How sculpture got into metal was so complex that it could be done only in Paris. The person who made sculpture was someone else, an ethereal poetic character divinely sent, who was scholar, aesthetician, philosopher, continental gentleman so sensitive he could unlock the crying vision from a log, or a Galatea from a piece of imported marble. I now know that sculpture is made from rough externals by rough characters or men who have passed through all polish and are back to the rough again. The mystic modeling clay is only Ohio mud, the tools are at hand in garages and factories. Casting can be achieved in almost every town. Visions are from the imaginative mind, sculpture can come from the found discards in nature, from sticks and stones and parts and pieces, assembled or monolithic, solid form, open form, lines of form, or like a painting—the illusion of form. And sculpture can be painting and painting can be sculpture and no authority can overrule the artist in his declaration. Not even the philosopher, the aesthetician or the connoisseur. I have spoken against tradition, but only the tradition of others, who would hold art from moving forward. Tradition holding us to the perfections of others. In this

Typescript, lecture, April 17, 1959, at Ohio State University, Columbus.

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context tradition can only say what Art was, not what Art is. Tradition comes wrapped in word pictures, these are traps which lead laymen into cliché thinking. This leads to analogy and comparative evaluation and conclusion, especially in the hands of historians. Where conclusions are felt the understanding of art has been hampered, and the innovations of the contemporary scene are often damned. Art has its tradition, but it is a visual heritage. The Artist’s language is the memory from sight. Art is made from dreams and visions and things not known and least of all from things that can be said. It comes from the inside of who you are, when you face yourself. It is an inner declaration or purpose, it is a factor which determines artist identity. The nature to which we all refer in the history of art, is still with us although somewhat changed, it is no longer anecdote, or robed and blindfolded virtue, the bowl of fruit, or that very abstract reference called realistic. It is very often the simple subject, called man the artist. Identifying himself as the artist he becomes his own subject, as one of the elements in nature. He no longer dissects it, nor moralizes upon it; he is its part. The outside world of nature is equal, without accent, unquestioning. He is an element in the atmosphere called nature, his reference to nature is more like primitive man addressing it as “thou,” and not “it.” Aura and association, all the parts into the whole expression, all actions in an emotional flow manifest as artist as subject, a new position for the artist but natural to his time. Words become difficult, they can do little in explaining a work of art let alone the position of the artist in the creative irrational flow of power and force which underlies the position and conception. Possibly I can explain my own procedure more easily. When I begin a sculpture I’m not always sure how it is going to end. In a way it has a relationship to the work before, it is in continuity to the previous work—it often holds a promise or a gesture towards the one to follow. I do not often follow its path from a previously conceived drawing. If I have a strong feeling about its start, I do not need to know its end, the battle for solution is the most important. If the end of the work seems too complete, and final, posing no question, I am apt to work back from the end, that in its finality it poses a question and not a solution. Sometimes when I start a sculpture I begin with only a realised part, the rest is travel to be unfolded much in the order of a dream. The conflict for realization is what makes art, not its certainty, nor its technique or material. I do not look for total success. If a part is successful, the rest clumsy or incomplete, I can still call it finished, if I’ve said anything new, by finding any relationship which I might call an “origin.” I will not change an error if it feels right for the error is more human than perfection. I do not seek answers. I haven’t named this work nor thought where it would go. I haven’t thought what it is for, except that it is made to be seen. I’ve made it because it comes closer to saying who I am, than any other method I can use. This work is my

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identity. There were no words in my mind during its creation and I’m certain words are not needed in its seeing, and why should you expect understanding when I do not. That is the marvel, to question but not to understand. Seeing is the true language of perception. Understanding is for words. As far as I am concerned, after I’ve made the work, I’ve said everything I can say!

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SIXTIES

NOTES ON MY WORK 196 0

I cannot conceive a work and buy material for it. I can find or discover a part. To buy new material—I need a truckload before I can work on one. To look at it every day— to let it soften—to let it break up in segments, planes, lines, etc.—wrap itself in hazy shapes. Nothing is so impersonal, hard and cold as straight rolling-mill stock. If it is standing or kicking around, it becomes personal and fits into visionary use. With possession and acquaintance, a fluidity develops which was not there the day it was unloaded from Ryerson’s truck.1 For bronze casting that are parts, although I have made the foundry patterns, I need this perceptual curing. Very often in bronze, the parts do not take their original order. Rarely the Grand Conception, but a preoccupation with parts. I start with one part, then a unit of parts, until a whole appears. Parts have unities and associations and separate afterimages—even when they are no longer parts but a whole. The afterimages of parts lie back on the horizon, very distant cousins to the image formed by the finished work. The order of the whole can be perceived, but not planned. Logic and verbiage and wisdom will get in the way. I believe in perception as being the highest order of recognition. My faith in it comes as close to an ideal as I have. When I work, there is no consciousness of ideals—but intuition and impulse. To identify no ideal—to approach each work with new order each time. I try to let no sequence or approach in daily living repeat from the day before, but like my work, my day can be identified by others. My rebellion is against putting on the right sock and punching time clocks. Mozart said after Opus 30 that he had seen the light, it would all be different now, but Opus 31 sounds consistent to me. The view is not so important, nor the ideal—but the inner conviction which sparks the drive for identity. To me apples are fruit—to Cézanne they were mountains. My sculpture grew from painting. My analogy and reference is with color. Flash reference and afterimage vision is historical in painting. I chew the fat with painters. My

“Notes on My Work,” Arts Magazine 34 (February 1960): 44–49; part of a special issue on Smith. Reprinted in First2: An Occasional Magazine, St. Martin’s School of Art, London (1961): 34. The article was illustrated by photographs taken by the artist, on which he had added handwritten comments.

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student days, WPA days, Romany Marie and McSorley’s days were with painters— Graham, Davis, Reznikoff, de Kooning, Xceron, Edgar Levy, Gorky, Stella, etc. In these early days it was Cubist talk. Theirs I suppose was the Cubist canvas, and my reference image was the Cubist construction. The lines then had not been drawn by the pedants—in Cubist talk, Mondrian and Kandinsky were included. Probably what turned me most toward sculpture, outside my own need, was a talk with Jean Xceron walking down 57th Street in 1935, the day his show opened the Garland Gallery.2 That fall my wife Dorothy and I went to Greece. Most of my sculpture is personal, needs a response in close proximity and the human ratio. The demand that sculpture be outdoors is historic or royal and has nothing to do with the contemporary concept. It needn’t be outside any more than painting. Outdoors and far away it makes less demand on the viewer—and then it is closer in scale to the most vociferous opinion-makers today whose acquaintance is mostly from reproductions. An exception for me started in 1957 with a series of stainless-steel pieces from nine to fifteen feet tall.3 They are conceived for bright light, preferably the sun, to develop the illusion of surface and depth. Eight works are finished, and it will take a number of years on the series to complete it. Stainless steel seems dead without light—and with too much, it [be]comes car chrome. Jan Matulka influenced me last and most as a teacher, yet Richard Lahey’s encouragement after the first year of art school was decisive. I got anarchy and cones and cubes from John Sloan. John Graham means much to me, as he did to de Kooning and Gorky. He introduced me to Davis, Xceron, Gorky, and to de Kooning, whom he presented as the best young painter in the U.S. He included us all in his book, System and Dialectics of Art, finished in 1936. In the beginning thirties we drank coffee and hung around together in New York like expatriates. Graham lived summers at Bolton Landing. His annual trips to Paris kept us all apprised of abstract events, along with Cahiers d’Art and Transition. In 1935 we were both in Paris. His introductions and entry to private collections made my world there. On Bastille Day we all paraded with the Maison de la Culture to Père Lachaise Cemetery. Though I often declaim against things French (except art and wine), Paris for a few months meant much to me. I was against the current desire of artists for expatriation. After going to the USSR and visiting Graham’s former wife and children and Benno’s sister,4 I matured enough to realize that no matter how inhospitable New York was to my work, my life and destiny and materials were here. I was also very bad at speaking French. In 1934 Graham had given me a González, one of three he had bought in ’28 or ’29. These were the first González sculptures in America I think. When we were in Paris in ’35, he took me to González’s studio, but he had moved to Arcueil. I never met

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17. Double-page spread, Arts Magazine, February 1960.

González. Henri Goetz (American painter who lives in Paris), a friend of Herman Cherry, sent me photos and told me much about him. My first liberation toward iron, which I was acquainted with manually, was from Picasso’s sculpture of ’28–’29. At the time I did not know that Gonzalez had done the welding for him. Nor did I know when I saw the Gargallo exhibition at Brummer’s that González had taught him welding.5 Many of us now pay homage to González. I often think about it, and wish González, Gorky and Pollock could have had some of the homage sales during their lives. Notes 1.  Joseph T. Ryerson & Son, steel processors and distributors. 2.  During the 1930s, the Greek-born painter Jean Xceron, who spent most of his life in New York, was based in Paris, where he was a member of the Abstraction-Création art group. His first New York exhibition, which opened on March 22, 1935, at Garland Gallery, New York City, was the gallery’s inaugural exhibition. 3.  Smith’s Sentinel series (1956–61) ultimately comprised nine sculptures (K382, K430–K432, K470, K518, K520, K526, K529). 4.  Benjamin “Benno” Greenstein. 5.  Pablo Gargallo, Brummer Gallery, New York City, February–April 1934.

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I N T E R V I E W B Y D AV I D S Y LV E S T E R 196 0

sylvester: There has been a lot of talk in England in the last few years about collaboration between sculptors and architects and, indeed, British avant garde sculptors have had a number of opportunities to do work for architecture. Now, I come to New York and see a tremendous amount of activity in architecture, a tremendous amount of brilliance too; and, one doesn’t feel that there’s such collaboration going on [here]. Is this so? smith: There is not collaboration, nor is there any affinity between us. Architects have had the opinion that they are the fathers of all the arts, and more or less the masters of the arts; that their buildings are sculptures, and that the use of painting and sculpture ofttimes defiles their purities. There are no affinities between us, especially with me. I do not solicit architects. I do not care for any architectural work. There is not any place that I’ve seen in this contemporary scene where the work of the individual sculptor or painter has made a point of progression in his work. I have seen that a man works better when he is working within his own spirit than when he is working with the domination or the collaboration of the architect. Now, we’re not working for money. We’re working to make greater art out of ourselves. We’re working to extend our own potential. I don’t think any of us really wishes to revert and repeat a point of arrival that we’ve arrived at before—to make a repeat for the sake of money. I don’t know where this ideal collaboration would be. Mostly, architects look down upon us and, mostly, architects are big businessmen here and we’re just one of their small clients in the building. They choose to put the marble in the men’s room, and they put the bronze in the fixtures, and they really don’t need sculpture at all.

Interview by British art critic David Sylvester, recorded on March 15, 1960, at the New York offices of BBC Radio. First broadcast on July 29, 1960, on the BBC’s Third Programme, with the title “Self-portrait of an American Sculptor.” © David Sylvester, 1961, used by permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Limited. The text printed here is from the original transcript of the complete interview made from a “Telediphone Recording from the [BBC] Talks Department” (Sylvester Papers, Tate Museum). A slightly shorter version of the interview was broadcast by BBC Radio (audiotape in DSE Archives; transcript in BBC Archive). The broadcast transcript was reprinted in Living Arts, April 1964, with a short summary of Sylvester’s introductory remarks. In his introduction to the radio broadcast, Sylvester provided his U.K. listeners with an overview of Smith’s work and explained that the artist’s opening statements continued a discussion between Sylvester and Smith that had been prompted by the sight of Lee Lawrie and Rene Paul Chambellan’s sculpture Atlas, 1937, installed in New York City’s Rockefeller Center, outside the entrance to the BBC’s offices in the International Building, where the interview took place.

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sylvester: If you knew an architect whom you found sympathetic, would you like to see some of your sculpture placed in architectural settings—outside buildings, inside the large entries of buildings? smith: I would like to see it, certainly. But I’m working in quite a large size; you know, my work is running from nine to fifteen feet high. Right now, I have a very modest acceptance and rather modest sales and I am surviving without architects. And if they choose to use my work—as it stands—I would be delighted to sell it to them and have them use it. But I do not think that I will change my point of view to meet theirs. I think we’re on a different scale—in a different world. I have no natural affinity to modern architecture. I can’t afford to live in any of these buildings. It is not a natural attitude. It is no celebration that I want to take naturally. I would have to be—like in the old days—I would have to be patronized. I am patronized by them when I make one of my works to fit theirs because their building is alien to me. It’s nothing I can afford to live in; it’s no part of my world. My sculpture is part of my world: it’s part of my everyday living, it reflects my studio, my house, my trees, the nature of the world I live in. And the nature of the world that painters and sculptors live in are walkup places with cracks and you look out the windows and see chimney tops. We just don’t belong in that world. And, I don’t think any of us can make the old-fashioned royal bow to suit their needs. Liberty—or freedom—of our position is the greatest thing we’ve got. Now, I’m not speaking for other sculptors. I’m speaking for a few that I know and I’ve talked to and we determine these things. But I’m not speaking collectively for anybody because we have no organization that speaks collectively for us, and even on which we agree. We’re all very individualist in that sense. sylvester: There’s a picture in London of the American artists of your generation—you and the action painters, who are naturally enough rather linked together, as being rather a group. I mean, has there been a sort of collaboration of ideas between you? Did you find knowing Pollock, being a close friend of Pollock and people like that, fruitful for your work? smith: No—we talked about other things usually, but we did spring from the same roots and we had so much in common, and our parentage, our heritage, was so much the same that, like brothers, we didn’t need to. sylvester: You didn’t need to talk about it? smith: We didn’t need to talk about it. We were of that; anymore than I need to talk about nature or anymore than I need to defend myself as taking images from nature. I’m a part of nature; I belong here. sylvester: The parentage, I suppose, of course, was the whole Cubist thing. But why do you think it suddenly exploded in this way, into this terrific growth that began in the late forties, of American art? smith: Well, practically everybody I can think of that is of our age or our time—you know, forty to fifty now and sort of “arrived” artists, in a sense—all came from a

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depression time. We all came from the bond of the WPA,1 which we affectionately call it—the Works Progress Administration—and it was government employment of artists for— sylvester: A New Deal thing? smith: Yes, it was definitely the New Deal thing, and somewhat of a defensive thing. We made very little more by working than people drew for, you know, not working—for unemployed relief. We drew maybe five or six dollars a week more for working, which was very nice because for the first time, collectively, we belonged somewhere. sylvester: And this gave you the stimulus? smith: Well, in a sense, we belonged to society that way. It gave us unity; it gave us friendship; and it gave us a collective defensiveness. sylvester: Do you still have this same sense? When you say “belonging to society,” do you mean belonging to society at large, or merely belonging to your own group? smith: Well, in a sense, we belonged to society at large—it was the first time we ever belonged or had recognition from our own government that we existed. sylvester: Do you still feel that you belong in that way or has that now been lost? smith: Well, we don’t belong to the government any more. I mean times have changed. sylvester: Do you still get any patronage? smith: No patronage. Not that I know of. There are a few of our more traditional men who’ve had monument patronage or they design a coin or something like that, but there is no patronage, generally speaking, and not even recognition. sylvester: So the postwar thing owes absolutely nothing to any help from official— smith: We owe nothing to the federal government for recognition, not now. And the Federal Government, when it sends exhibitions of American art to other countries, often starts with buffaloes and Indians, you see, and when a few of the contemporary men were put in those exhibitions—more or less by the demand of museums and general recognition here, some of the Senators raised such a fuss about it that it was slightly embarrassing. Now, if I’m invited to any of these Federal things, I don’t choose to take part in them because I just don’t like to be distressed. sylvester: There wasn’t a lot of help at first from American collectors, was there? The private collectors? smith: Private collectors were quite few and far between. But there was another thing the WPA did—it stimulated the interest in art. You see, while some artists were employed—don’t forget there were a lot of teachers, and there were critics, and all [sorts of] people related to the arts. They were related to us and were related to the connection between the painter and the sculptor and the people. There were

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many public classes—adult painting classes, adult sculpture classes, WPA exhibitions that traveled throughout the country and went to places where art had never been shown before. They went to union halls and schools and places like that, that never had any [art], and there was an interest stimulated there by people and the response to it, and also other people to do it. You know, amateur response is sort of a groundwork for professional collectors. Most collectors can paint or draw to a degree, and therefore they seem to recognize the artists who are full-time artists quicker. sylvester: So, really, government help in the thirties had a lot to do with creating the climate which produced this thing postwar, although there hasn’t been help postwar? smith: Oh no, there hasn’t been help postwar. Reasons are very hard to find, and reasons are never one thing, they’re a hundred things—but I can’t think of one thing that stimulated the response of the public better than the WPA educational projects did. Nor do I know anything that kept so many artists alive during the thirties than the WPA. There was nothing else. sylvester: A lot of the work that was being done in the thirties by the abstract painters now, was sort of figurative work—some form of social realism, wasn’t it? Some connection with Diego Rivera, and so on? smith: The great body of work at that time was called “social realism,” which did relate to Rivera and the men using figures. sylvester: But not in your own case? smith: Not in our own case. We were kind of expatriates right in our own country— even in the Village, in New York. But there were a lot of die-hards here. Men like Glarner and Bolotowsky and Diller and Reinhardt, and many of those men who were what were called non-objectivists even, went right through the thirties firmly convinced of their own stand. There were many of us—not too many—but there were groups of us who came from fathers or grandfathers who were Cubists. We came—not very directly, you see—we came through the French magazines Transition and Cahiers d’Art. We came through both of those magazines and we came through men like Stuart Davis and Jean Xceron and John Graham and men like that, who more or less went back and forth between Paris and here, and told us what was going on in Europe. sylvester: You, yourself, were working abstract before a lot of the painters, weren’t you? smith: Well, I don’t know which painters, not— sylvester: De Kooning, Kline? smith: De Kooning was abstract very early and had had several phases and so have I, so have we all, I think, to a degree. But I have been essentially an abstract sculptor.

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sylvester: But you were in Europe, yourself, for some time in the late thirties, weren’t you? smith: 1935 and 1936. sylvester: In what way do you think this affected your development? The others weren’t actually in Europe, as you were, for a long time, were they? They mostly got it through the magazines, didn’t they? smith: Most of us tried to go to Europe if we could. Most of us did. I don’t remember if Jackson did or not. Of course, de Kooning had come from Europe, and Gorky had come from Europe. Graham was a Russian, and he had come from Europe. Stuart Davis had gone to Europe, earlier, and more or less had been a part, a little late, of Cubism. sylvester: How do you feel it affected your development, going there at that moment? smith: It was very important. Most of all it was one of the greatest points of my own liberation mentally. Before—in the early part of the thirties—we all were looking for a kind of Utopian position, or at least a position where somebody liked our work. In the early thirties none of us could—oh, like Pollock or Gorky or de Kooning—could show our work any place. Nobody wanted to show it. And it seemed that the solution was to be expatriates. Most of the men a little older than we were had sought a solution in expatriatism, all the way from Majorca to Paris itself. And the one thing that I learned in 1935 and ’36—I was in England and Russia and Greece and France, and places like that—and when I came back, I realized that I belonged here. My materials were here, my thoughts were here, my birth was here, and whatever I could do had to be done here. I thoroughly gave up any idea of ever being an expatriate and I laid into my work very hard. There is no other place; this is where my roots are. I belong here, and that must have been in the minds of other men otherwise there wouldn’t be so many of us here now. We’re growing by thousands, every day. There are thousands more painters and sculptors in this country. Why, nobody knows. It’s not very profitable, but there’s just a feeling in the air and a kind of liberty. sylvester: It’s often said that one of the reasons why American art built up after the war was that it was stimulated by European artists who came here from Paris in 1940 and stayed here during the war. And this gave a certain impetus to the building up of American art post-war. Do you think there’s anything in that, or not? smith: That was part of the scene, and it was important and it was very nice. It has been very rewarding to us to have men like Lipchitz and Mondrian and Gabo become Americans, and live here with us. That is good and it’s been very nice. We’ve had guests here and we have met them and we have found that they were humans like we were—they were not gods, and they were human beings, and fine artists. And so we know more about the world now.

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sylvester: Going back to the artists working for the WPA, lot of the more or less social realist work being done then was involved in a sort of social commitment. I believe you were exceptional in having a strong left wing commitment but working abstract. smith: I had strong social feelings. I do now. I admit that. And about the only time I was ever able to express them in my work was when I made a series of medallions which were against the perils or evils of war—against inhuman things. They were called Medals for Dishonor.2 One of the ideas for that came out of the British Museum. When I was in the British Museum, in London, in 1936, I bought a series of postcards which were made during the First World War. They were of war medallions of the Germans. And that and Sumerian cylinder seals that I had been studying in Greece and intaglio carving and so forth, impelled me to do that series of medallions, which took me three years. I first had to learn how to carve in reverse, in order to make them. It was about the only thing I have ever done which contributed by my work to a social protest. I don’t feel that I have to protest with my work. Whatever society I belong to must take me for my ability. My effort is to drive to the fullest extent those few talents that were given me or my desire to push my ability as far as I can go with it is as good as I can do. I consider myself to be a social human being and propaganda is not necessarily my forte. sylvester: When I talk about your being abstract, I mean that, a lot of your forms seem to me to be referential to nature. These big stainless steel things—I see of lot of them as personages. Are they at all this for you? smith: They don’t start that way. But how can a man live off of his planet? How on earth can he know anything that he hasn’t seen or doesn’t exist in his own world? Even his visions have to be made up of what he knows, of the forms and the world that he knows. He can’t go off his planet with visions, no matter how they’re put together, and he naturally uses his proportion and his sort of objectivity. He can’t get away from it. There is no such thing as truly abstract or non-objective. Everything is objective in the sense that man always has to work from his life. Everything that he knows and sees in his consciousness, even if it’s an object that he’s never seen before, it all must have tangible relationships. And it was also made by a man, so it’s going to have the world of that man in it and it’s going to have, somewhere in it, his image, too—or his relationship to that image. sylvester: And you have no preconceptions about which way the thing is going to go? smith: I try not to have. I try to approach each thing without following the pattern that I made with the other one. sylvester: And they tend to begin with a formal idea? smith: They can begin with any idea. They can begin with a found object; they can begin with no object; they can begin, sometimes, even when I’m sweeping the floor

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and I stumble and kick a few parts that happen to throw into an alignment that sets me off on thinking—it sets off a vision of how it would finish if it all had that kind of accidental beauty to it. They go that way, they go any way. I want to be like a poet, in a sense. I don’t want to seek the same orders. Of course, I’m a human being, I have limited ability, and there is always an order there. People will recognize my work, even if I think that I’ve really been far out in this work—that it’s something that I’ve never seen before. Other people know it’s my work so I don’t get very far out of myself. I strive very hard to move a little bit but you can’t move very far. Picasso moves far. He’s a great man who moves very far, but I still recognize Picasso’s work no matter how far he moved from one phase, from one new picture, from one new sculpture. I always recognize his work. I don’t know what his intention is but it’s not a conscious intention; it’s a force that a man has in his progression in relation to the world—to push beyond certain known borders, to push himself to greater capability. sylvester: How would you—if you ever did—if you ever do—think about it in verbal terms, which perhaps you don’t. How would you analyze the difference between your work and its intentions and the Cubist constructions by González, Picasso—of which it is a continuation? smith: Well, there is one thing. Living here in America at that time—going to school at the time that I went to school—I didn’t read French. So when I had a Cahiers d’Art, I didn’t know what it was about; I learned from the pictures, just the same as if I were a child, in a certain sense. I learned the world from seeing before I ever learned the world from talking or learned the world from words. So, my world was the Dutch movement De Stijl, it was Russian Constructivism, it was Cubism, it was even Surrealism. All of these things I did not know, had divisions in them— or even German Expressionism, or even Monet. They all fitted into me. They were all so new and so wonderful and they all came to me at one time, practically. The historians hadn’t drawn the lines yet as to which was which and where at which particular time, and my heritage was all those things, simultaneously. So, I am all those things, I hope, with a very strong intellectual regard for Cubism and an admiration for it, because it was great at a particular time. It was both painting and sculpture, neither separated but in equal affinities, and it also was the thing which liberated all sculpture from then on. It was a great point of liberation in both painting and sculpture, and especially sculpture. sylvester: Why do you say, “especially sculpture”? smith: Well, because sculpture had been quite conservative up to that time and Rodin was probably the most liberated sculptor up until then but he was still somewhat of a traditionalist. And after that came Laurens and Lipchitz and Picasso and Matisse and González, Moore—everybody, Gauguin—they’re all departures since Cubism.

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sylvester: This thing that you talk about, this sort of uninhibited eclecticism, I mean taking Cubism, Surrealism, Expressionism, and not worrying about the thing—now in Europe, I had the impression that there was a more doctrinaire, more exclusive attitude among groups. And I wonder whether the sort of vitality of postwar American art has something to do with this sort of absolute freedom of attitude, which you’ve talked about in yourself. I wonder whether this also applies to people like de Kooning and Pollock, and whether this has helped them not to worry, but to take what they could and what they wanted to take quite freely from earlier modern art? smith: I think it has. Gorky didn’t read French and I don’t think Bill read French either. We were all together at a particular time in our early days and we were sort of expatriates. We drank coffee together in cafeterias and walked around town and talked—and when I say we drank coffee, it was usually one cup because few of us could afford more than one five-cent cup of coffee in those days, plus a cookie maybe. And all we did was walk around and talk sometimes, but mostly we worked. And we each sort of took according to what we wanted. You must remember, when we all kind of met here in New York—I came from Indiana and I had only seen a sculpture a couple of years before that, or a painting—Gorky came into Providence and de Kooning came into New York. I think they all had a little bit more knowledge of museums and art than I did, before, and they both were Europeans in a sense, and I think all Europeans know more about art than people from Indiana do. Certainly they have museums to see and they have public monuments and that sort of thing; they have a certain closer relationship to it than I did. I don’t think I had seen a museum out in Indiana or Ohio, other than some very, very dark picture with sheep in it—you could hardly tell which was sheep and which was trees—that was in the public library. But as far as anything I ever knew about art, I didn’t know it until I came to New York and that was within just a couple of years of when I met them. sylvester: But you’d wanted to produce art before? Or this happened when you came? smith: Oh, I wanted to be a painter when I came. sylvester: And you did paint for some years? smith: I painted for some years. I’ve never given it up. I always—even if I’m having trouble with a sculpture—I always paint my troubles out. sylvester: What was it that made you turn from painting to sculpture suddenly? smith: I think it was seeing Picasso’s iron sculpture in a Cahiers d’Art, in about 1928 or ’29—it might have been 1930, ’31, but the work was done in ’28, ’29, as Jean Xceron later told me. He was there, and had seen it and was a friend of González and Mondrian that that group in Paris called “Circle and Square.” Jean Xceron was an art critic for the Boston Transcript at that time and he was there and used to write

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about it.3 Seeing iron and factory materials used in a way of producing art was quite a revelation. And since I had worked in factories and had known iron and metal and metalworking since I had been very young, it came to me that it should be. And then, I had seen ironwork by the Russian Constructivists—Rodchenko and Malevich and, I don’t know, Tatlin—I’d seen reproductions of their work, in German magazines, so it was a revelation in a way. Later on, I learned that González had done the welding for Picasso in those ’28, ’29 works that went into ’30, but I didn’t know it at the time. And if it had said so in the article, it was in French and I wouldn’t have known it anyhow. sylvester: This seems to be important, incidentally, going back to what we were talking about before—the fact that you and the others were seeing the works in reproductions and you weren’t reading the texts, so maybe this was why you were able to use them so freely? smith: Yes. And I also like the idea that we had no history, that we had no art history and we paid no attention to art historians and that, all of a sudden, we were even free from the connoisseurs and the historians and the minds of museums and collectors and everybody else. We are very independent here; we’re indigenous and independent and we have no authorities, and we didn’t grow up within an art history or an art heritage. We all were pretty raw, I think. sylvester: You weren’t at all—in your use of sheet metal and so on—you weren’t at all influenced by Calder? smith: No. I knew metalworking before I knew Calder. And Calder is one of our great men, and he is earlier by a few years than any of the rest of us. Calder had worked in Paris quite a bit in the early days, though he did go to school here in New York at the Art Students League, I have been told. sylvester: But your own experience of working previously with metal—you worked in a factory? smith: Yes, after my first year in college I worked on the assembly line in the Studebaker plants up in Indiana and I had enrolled at Notre Dame University, or I had matriculated, but the courses weren’t such that I chose, so I went back to the factory and worked the year out then came East, and finally wound up at the Art Students League. And that’s where I studied in a rather traditional way the first year. And then the second year I studied with a man named Jan Matulka, who had had his schooling in Munich and was somewhat of a Cubist and Expressionist, and the world sort of started revealing there, and for some reason I belonged there and no place else. sylvester: Have you ever had any temptation since to work in traditional materials—carving or modeling? smith: Why, I do both. sylvester: You do!

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smith: Sure. Sure I model in wax and make bronzes that way, and I carve sometimes—some of my early work was carved. I don’t choose to close out any method, approach, or material, you know. Oh, I draw figures and things like that, at times. sylvester: Do you ever do it from a model? Do you ever do it from nature? smith: Sure, sure. As a matter of study, and a matter of balance, and just the same as I draw a great deal because sculpture is such hard work. If I put in ten hours or eleven hours, sometimes twelve hours a day, I’m at hard labor—you know, it’s sort of dirty work in my profession. I like to take a bath and change my clothes and spend the rest of the day drawing. sylvester: You do it all yourself, don’t you? I mean, you could now afford studio assistants? smith: Well, I can’t use studio assistants any more than Mondrian could have used assistants to paint in solid areas, or any more than de Kooning, or any of my friends, can use somebody else to put their backgrounds in even though they might be pure white. They don’t want the marks of another hand on their own work. Now that is twentieth century, too. That is defensive in a certain way, because it’s contradictory to the progression of this age. We are among the few people left who are making the object from start to finish. sylvester: You never feel it will be conceivable for you to make a model and have an assistant make it on a big scale? smith: No, I don’t even make copies. If I make a cast sculpture, I make one, and all the marks are mine. I don’t approve of copies and I don’t make and produce copies for the sake of making more money. sylvester: And this, of course, connects you very closely to the painters of your generation, doesn’t it? I mean this to-and-fro between the artist and the material, this special emphasis on it now. This makes you very closely linked with Pollock and de Kooning. smith: Well, we were all friends, and I talk with painters and I belong with painters in a sense, and all my early friends were painters because we all studied together. We used to sit in cafeterias—most of the ones that I knew who sat in cafeterias were painters. We talked there. There was a café called Marie’s,4 where many painters used to congregate and they were all painters outside of myself, I think. And I never conceived of myself as anything other than a painter because my work came right through the raised surface, and color and objects applied to the surface. Where it came from I don’t know, but it belong to the concept of painting to a degree and yet, who are painters? How are they different? Some of the greatest contributions of sculpture to the twentieth century are by painters. Had it not been for painters, sculpture would be in a very sorry position. Some of the greatest departures in the concept of sculpture have been made by Picasso and Matisse. There was a series of heads that Matisse made called . . . .

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sylvester: Jeannette. smith: Jeannette. In there are some of the very brilliant departures in the concept of sculpture, the same as Picasso had added to them. And they are different even than the collage conception of Cubism, you known, the painting and sculpture being in absolute unity. Your man, Moore, I don’t know whether he was a painter before he was a sculptor. sylvester: He was never a painter. smith: He was not. Well, his contribution is very independent as not being a painter. It is unusual, but then two other men like Picasso and Matisse are, as we think of them, essentially painters who have made sculpture. sylvester: Yes, and even Giacometti paints a lot. smith: Yes, well, he’s a painter. Lipchitz was a painter first. Now, I’ve made no survey about it. These are feelings or just casual pieces of information and I draw no conclusion about it at all, but they’re not very far apart. Painting and sculpture aren’t very far apart. sylvester: This is one of the great twentieth-century discoveries, isn’t it? smith: I hope it is. I hope it goes that way together. The reasons they are so far apart has been a kind of traditional separation by the critics and the connoisseurs more than it has ever been a choice of the creative men themselves. There were a number of Impressionists who made beautiful sculptures; Degas certainly did . . . his horse series and animal studies weren’t known nearly as much until after his death as his ballet dancers were. sylvester: You could say that the first model sculptors were Gericault and Daumier, smith: Well, Daumier I meant to mention, too. I think Daumier’s sculpture is every bit as good as his paintings. sylvester: And there are two or three pieces by Gericault which are extraordinary. smith: I don’t even know them. sylvester: Rather pointing towards Daumier’s sculpture. smith: Where are those sculptures? I mean they are not in this country. There are no Gericault sculptures in the country that I know of. sylvester: I have seen one or two casts. I don’t know how many there are. Two or three, perhaps. smith: Well, if there are, I don’t know them. [Gap in the transcript.] . . . in the unity of organizations or even aesthetic unity, but we do have a very strong bond and, in our own defense but we also are strongest in our individual identity. We have no organization that collect us, and each man is on his own and no man speaks to any-

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body else and we’re all . . . our effort, I think, is all shooting off in independent directions. sylvester: So the New York School is not a theory—it’s not a group theory—it has a basis in personal friendship but the artists are—you feel really independent of one another? smith: Yes, and the artists themselves will not admit to the New York School. They won’t admit to any classification and those painters known as Abstract Expressionists are the first ones to all say they are not Abstract Expressionists, so even names don’t apply to any collective designation—there is no order. sylvester: If you take any one of the movements—I mean, if you can take an Impressionist or a Cubist’s work and there’s a possibility if you look at the work without a catalogue that you might take a Picasso for a Braque. Now you could never take a Rothko for a Pollock; you could never take a Kline for a de Kooning and so on. There isn’t a resemblance of appearance and there’s not really any mutual theory. smith: Yes, and the men you named don’t conform to any form of abstract expressionism, or even abstract impressionism. There’s hardly enough men that conform to that terminology to use even use it. It is only a verbal written thing. It’s nothing that we all recognize or adhere to. I think I’ve heard all of those men defend themselves as not being that. sylvester: But, now there is one thing, you said in a recent statement, “In my work, there is no consciousness of ideals, but intuition and impulse . . . to identify no ideal . . . to approach each work with new order each time.” Now this would seem to be, would it not, one aim that is common to you, to Pollock, to de Kooning, to Kline? This is an important attitude that you share? smith: I think we do. Maybe each man would define it in a slightly differently way, but by knowing and talking to each other, I think we agree somewhere close to that statement. However, we are so obstinate that we would not agree to the other man’s terminology therefore (laughter), his statement of aesthetics. You see, we are all so independent in that way. But yet, we collectively are kind of brothers in a particular way. But most of all, we work from our own identity. We have the strength of having identity now. You see, we have survived against conflict. We also know that strength comes from conflict, so who can hurt us now? Nobody can tempt us with anything. We are all our own identities by this time, and we’re going to go with it as far as we can go. sylvester: Now that a lot of you have become extremely successful and are getting big prices now, is this going to make a difference? Is this going to make the thing more difficult? smith: Absolutely not! Absolutely not. It hasn’t hurt one of our men. Oh, maybe we drink a bottle more per week or per month than we ever did, but even a lot of our

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men do not sell when they don’t feel like selling, and if they’ve sold enough they say, “Well, that’s enough for that year, I’ll sell next year.” No, they don’t even want money other than for a few of the nice things. When any of these men do get a little sum of money it goes into a better studio, more paint, maybe a new suit of clothes, maybe a party for other artists; a few of us have cars. I still stick with a truck, which I’ve always had. A lot of the artists have no cars. But it goes into a better studio and another suit of clothes and certainly more paint and bigger canvases. Five different men that I know that have made a little better livelihood recently, have been more successful—they have gotten out of a coldwater flat and gone into a nice big, long studio. Some of them are painting pictures twenty-six feet long, ten feet high. Well, that’s a wonderful point of liberation now. If they had any mercenary reasons for such a thing, you would lose it there because they never in the world could sell a picture twenty-six feet long and ten feet high. It doesn’t fit any place; it’s nobody’s royal command, it has absolutely no functional need any place. But it’s their desire to do it and it’s a statement of freedom against having painted little pictures so long, in a little studio with canvas that was small—and it’s a statement of liberty. Notes 1.  Regarding Smith’s employment with various WPA programs, see Chronology. 2.  See “Medals for Dishonor,” p. 46. 3.  See “Autobiographical Notes,” note 3, p. 98. 4.  See “Atmosphere of Early ’30s,” note 2, p. 152.

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T H O U G H T S T R AV E L A N D C O M E U N E X P E C T E D LY 196 0

Thoughts travel and come unexpectedly rarely down the same path—I was drinking beer with Kanemitsu one evening—he mentioned studying with Zadkine—my thoughts saw concave convex—and the sculpture I had recently finished called Bouquet of Concaves and immediately my vision grew to concaves larger than my own being and on a piece of cardboard I made a unity of concaves in orders I had not found in my previous “concaves”—they shined—and the material demanded stainless steel— which I have now started to put into work. This was a flash recognition related to my previous work yet a reference atmosphere existed in the filial history of Zadkine. And an afterthot appreciatively recalled Léger in 1913, like the pictures of so-called tubism in the Arensberg Collection in Philadelphia.

Handwritten, c. May 1960; an excerpt from an early draft of “Memories to Myself,” p. 330. Smith gave the same title to two sculptures: Bouquet of Concaves, 1959 (K463), and Bouquet of Concaves II, 1960 (K486), both painted steel. The abstract expressionist painter, draftsman, and printmaker Matsumi (Mike) Kanemitsu was particularly known for his use of Japanese sumi ink brushes. The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, which included Fernand Léger’s Contrast of Forms, 1913–14, was given to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1950.

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MEMORIES TO MYSELF 196 0

The title meant everything when I was up in the country, snow on the ground, and it was lonesome, and I said, “Yes, I will, sounds like a good idea, I can get down to New York.” The title was inclusive enough, would cover anything I could think of. I made some notes, came to New York. After several days I was working very seriously. I must have had twenty sheets of yellow paper in longhand. It seemed reasonably good so I got a stenographer and had it typed up. Then, as I sat reading it, I thought it was pompous, and it was didactic, and it was all the things I declaim against. I got discouraged and threw the speech away, and so I have no address. The night before last a couple of friends dropped over—Robert Motherwell and his wife, Helen Frankenthaler. Mr. Motherwell has been on the staff of Hunter College and has lectured at a number of universities. I told him my plight, and he said, “Be honest, if you are really honest, what would you say?” I said that is a very hard thing to be, and is a very hard thing to ask other people to be, and this can only be hypothetical as if it took place in a vacuum. And if it took place in a vacuum and I were really honest with you, I would apologize because I have not done better, because I have wasted time. I know that more than anybody else. I have fallen for divertissements, followed blind alleys, when I should have been working. Work has always given me back more than anyone or anything so I’m not sure what I’m going to say. In our talk Motherwell was saying, “What are your resentments?” I said, “I have a lot of resentments.” And he said, “Why don’t you start with those.” I want to start with some resentments. They begin early. I’ll start with the first college I attended, my first hope. I resent their art without painting. I don’t think I’d seen a genuine oil painting, I had not seen an original sculpture, when I went there to study. They had me making tile designs in the Department of Education. I was not able to enroll in the department which they call Fine Arts until a year or so after I had made tile designs. I had never seen a tile design in my life and I didn’t know what I was doing, and neither did the college, except that they were teaching me how to teach something I couldn’t

Typescript, address on May 5, 1960, for the Eighteenth Annual Conference of the National Committee on Art Education (May 5–8), titled “The Art in Art Education,” sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art, New York City. The other conference speakers were Alfred H. Barr Jr., director of collections, MoMA; Victor D’Amico, chairman of the National Committee on Art Education and director of MoMA’s Department of Education; composer Henry Cowell; René d’Harnoncourt, director of MoMA; Harold Taylor, former president of Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York; and author Gore Vidal.

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do. I’ve been sore at art education ever since. There are a lot of things I wish people had taught me. I wish somebody had taught me to draw in proportion to my own size, to draw as freely and as easily, with the same movements that I dressed myself with, or that I ate with, or worked with in the factory. Instead, I was required to use a little brush, a little pencil, to work on a little area, which put me into a position of knitting—not exactly my forte. There wasn’t a movement in my life up until that time that ever made me knit or make a tile design. I think that the first thing that I should have been taught was to work on great big paper, big sizes to utilize my natural movements towards what we will call art. It doesn’t matter what it might look like. I think the freedom of gesture and the courage to act are more important than trying to make a design. I’ve tried to make up for that in my teaching of other people. That has been one reason I’ve taught. That, and the necessity of earning a living. In the 1930s my work was small—even small work was difficult to produce—so were paintings small. Part of it was the tradition of our time. I think everyone worked small—because it wouldn’t fit into apartments, or because you didn’t have the idea of working to your own size. Also during the WPA, at twenty-three to twenty-seven dollars a week, you couldn’t buy materials to make sculpture very big, and painters couldn’t make paintings very big, either. As far as a way of working, my concept developed in a strange way. When I worked with parts to the whole—it was a “natural” that started in the thirties—the unities and the parts that I put together were on the defensive. Maybe I didn’t mention it then, and possibly nobody knew it until the whole conception was presented, but sometimes some of those things had to be done because I didn’t have the money to do it any other way. There were very few of us that made bronze castings in the thirties. Then there was a period after that of maybe ten years when one just kept working, and nothing publicly happened: little chance to show, surviving on the appreciation of friends, but mainly other artists. In the thirties it was very nice because everybody said what art was, except artists. The authorities all declaimed and in unity declared the abstract concept dead. I read it in the press any number of times. Connoisseurs and distinguished critics came back from Europe declaring that our concept was dead in Europe. Presumably, so were we. The critics said so, the dealers said so—there were very few exhibitions of abstract art during those years. It seemed then that there was a known secret about art, known to the connoisseurs or the authorities. One secret about art—of course, it was all made in Europe, but then abstract concepts were also supposed to have passed. I know that it really didn’t matter very much what the concept was. We all know it now. It doesn’t matter so much what the point of view is, whether it is abstract or not abstract. The art that’s produced depends much more on the conviction of the man who produces it. You work from your identity—that demand from yourself—and by personal conviction of your own cause more than the fads or the order of your time. I can appreciate at the same time artists like Bonnard, Matisse, Picasso, Mondrian and Kandinsky. From this group it is more the man and his challenge and how he identifies himself as an artist.

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Another resentment I hold against higher education called colleges, is that the teaching of tradition always left me feeling defeated. Art history has been a pre-defeat on the artist, in a contemporary sense. If I could choose I would teach the student for at least three or four years to be a painter and sculptor, and nothing else. I would teach these as the true arts. I would teach this without history or crafts. There is no true art history, no true appreciation. All are prejudices to be developed after the teaching of painting and sculpture. They come afterwards, if at all. They really belong to the non-artist. At this particular time in the world, I think we are ready to openly face the fact that we need painters and sculptors in society. The statement is axiomatic, probably, because they already exist. I think we should face true art and teach it. Is it practical? I imagine there are more painters and sculptors surviving today than there are potters, bookbinders, and any of the crafts. Practically, true art teaching can hardly be objected to, but spiritually it involves an effort to teach perception—and an opening towards perceptual vision, which exists nowhere else in the educational system. I wish to make a very arbitrary statement about what art is. Art is painting and sculpture. From these we must start. It is very necessary to have a good gallery and a responsible staff and an acquisition policy to maintain the contemporary review. You cannot organize good exhibitions unless you make acquisitions. It’s a stimulation to have a gallery. You teach art—and painting and sculpture—and more by visual stimulation than by word wisdom. I don’t think that you can use half-ancient analogies in teaching painting and sculpture. I don’t think you can say—in the fifteenth century, such and such. Those analogies have no basis. I haven’t heard one without holes. The only analogy to teach with is in the contemporary sense, or a contemporary act. You first of all teach people to use their own senses. That is not always easy. I don’t know how you teach roots— visual thinking, courage, perception—but all people have and use these and do not exist without them. They develop by work and work discipline. Very few people think with words, never the artist. If you don’t confuse with word thinking, the students naturally think or perceive by vision, and their evaluations are all done in a perceptual way. But much of the educational system confuses thinking, thinking by words. I’ve read discussions by mathematicians on the way they think. They do not think with words. Once in a while one of them does. But it may be one in about twenty. Most mathematicians think very much like artists. Their original impulses are visual. I would like art to be taught as artists are taught and as artists make art. That is in a perceptual-visual way. In teaching art I haven’t inquired who is, or who is not, going to be an artist. I don’t want to teach a special art for the educational department. I am interested in teaching art to the best of my ability. I do not wish to make adaptions. First of all I don’t think you can be a good art teacher unless you are a good artist. I think art teachers ought to be painters or sculptors and I think they ought to be active. They stimulate by the fact of their being. There is so much to be conveyed that is not a word matter in teaching, it is not all direction, and it is not the still life you set up. It’s

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a stimulation, in a fine sense, a professionalism that is projected. I do maintain that the best way to learn is to follow the act with complete conviction—to teach art as though everyone in that class is going to be an artist, although we do not expect everyone to be an artist. What they do will be their own problem. And I think most artists might agree that that is the way to teach art. We have all let anthropologists, philosophers, historians, connoisseurs and mercenaries, and everybody else tell us what art is or what it should be. But I think we ought to very simply let it be what artists say it is. And what artists say it is, you can see by their work. I would like to leave it just like that. I use the term drive because I think it an essential element in arriving. When a student fails to do his assignment and gives an excuse instead, after two excuses—I just assign a hundred extra drawings—that’s a new requirement of the course for them before they can pass. That’s not so bad. I’ve seen dullards, after they did a hundred drawings under pressure, get so they liked to draw. One of the best students I had was a girl to whom I once gave this assignment. Of course, we may have had to decide what was a drawing. I accepted the definition of drawing as any piece of paper that had a mark on it, on the basis of self-respect. A student wouldn’t give you a hundred pieces of paper with a mark on each one. Possibly one sheet of paper with one mark, but it isn’t long before he feels the need of more than one mark. By the time students make three or four marks they are already draftsmen. Everybody is intimidated about marks on paper, or marks on canvas. One is a very simple thing to do. You must help to uninhibit and unintimidate people before they can get involved in the creative act. I think that is one of the important things in teaching—to unintimidate. Freedom should be first before judgment and self-criticism. Utilizing another atmosphere is often an elevating aid in drawing. Music appeals to me in that way, rather than art history or art appreciation—I would much rather teach with music. I would also prefer to have them read the autobiography of Sean O’Casey to learn about conflict. Practically nobody I know has so much conflict, or meets so much opposition as O’Casey did in his early life. Even now, up to today, O’Casey’s life isn’t without it. He has high respect, but he’s not a man of commensurate means. The first year it is very important to make students work. Because our whole attitude is too soft, I am against students wasting my time and their opportunity—it leads to the wrong life attitudes. To develop the work pattern, you may have to drive, but work in the class should be tougher than usually it is in most schools. It’s just as important to develop drive as it is to develop the coordination of movement of your daily action to the coordination of making art. I wouldn’t remove art from the movement of the person. As I said at the outset, people have different states of gesture. Some people move bigger than others. I would try to develop the gestures so that the act of growing came within the natural gesture of that person until he is free—and until his decision controlled him to do otherwise. I said art ought to be taught by working artists. I am certain of it. I think the whole order of teaching should be toward developing the student to the highest degree. I don’t think direction without example is effective. Poor

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teaching is not always the teacher’s fault. But everything is the teacher’s fault. If you really started on it, you would probably have to change the president, the board of trustees, and the deans and all that sort of thing to get a decent teaching situation to produce the best students. Ossification has started at the top. There is an elusive quality called determination. I don’t know how you teach determination. Sometimes the most able and the most brilliant students are the ones who fall out before they arrive at a career. On the other hand I’ve seen seemingly dull students succeed because of their determination. I’ve seen it happen a number of times. I’ve witnessed it recently, under my teaching. Seemingly I could get nothing across— no response to urgency. They were slow on the take, or they needed other people, or they needed other experience. But finally, not being the best artists, being the slowest and showing the least result, they turned out to have the bite—maybe they were bitten harder. And because they got there they had to work harder. I know two or three artists in New York who came out of the mid-west. They were not exceptional to start, but now they are. It took longer. In teaching there are statements from other arts that compliment our own direction. There are statements by Camus, Stravinsky, O’Casey—there are statements by Gabo, Ben Shahn, Duchamp. There are hundreds of statements by artists. You can even take the difference of position in statements by Kokoschka and Shahn as against maybe Duchamp or Gabo—and even in different points of view. But those things have so much more contemporary and immediate importance to the young artist than Plotinus or Theophilus or Vitruvius—or most anybody of the classic position, because I do not believe that artists utilize the myth of history and the past. I think the most impressive and the most useful thing they get is that their true influence comes from the present—it’s very immediate, it’s very much like a family, it’s very much like their own family—father, grandfather. This particular position in time is quite twentieth century. I don’t think the influence of the Renaissance—I don’t care how much Renaissance you inject, or how much Gothic or Romanesque or Greek or Roman you present—helps in a working direction—like the feeling of their own family, like immediacy and heritage of their own time. You work as you feel—and you are as you are. You come from your own family— your own heritage, and that is a thing you cannot denounce. You also exist in life within that family and within that century and within that time. I don’t think you ever leave that, no matter how much or how nobly you aspire, or how many ancient ideas you embrace. I’m not much given to art history for students. I think the contemporary position of this student is more important than all the art history you can give him. O’Casey said, “Thrust ahead slowly and deeply—if it is in you to do a thing. If you decide that you can, then do it even if it keeps you busy until the very last hour of your life.” I would have liked somebody to have told me that when I went to college. I didn’t know it was that easy. I didn’t know it could be done at all. Somehow it seems to me that the way you progress is by the amount of conflict and the amount of struggle that you survive. That also means the physical struggle. The

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more of the conflicts you survive, the stronger you are for the next one. It happens in daily life. To any creative person it happens every day in his work. It’s a natural thing in working. But the strength is not the high-flown ideology. It is the conviction you have in yourself, how you identity yourself as the artist, as the worker. You never teach equality. To my way of thinking equality is defeatist. You have to teach him what the world is now. The challenge is to excel beyond what he is given. The artist-student has to be different and better than his history. Any type of equality teaching is only in a sense historic teaching, because you are leading the student up to the unknown quantity which becomes his challenge. You can help identify him in the time he lives, and with his family. That is why I say equality is defeatist. The challenge is beyond the known factor of equality. I would also teach art students that provincialism or coarseness or unculture is greater for creating art than finesse and polish. Creative art has a better chance of developing from coarseness and courage than from culture. One of the good things about American art is that it doesn’t have the spit and polish that some foreign art has. It is coarse. One of its virtues is coarseness. A virtue can be anything, as long as that conviction projects an origin—and fresh courage. As long as it has the fire, I don’t think it matters, because there are all kinds of qualities in art, and I’m not very involved in the differentiation or the qualitative value of who has what in art. I would much rather have a man who has no ideals in art, but who has tremendous drive about it with the fire to make it. There are minor things that relate to our time now that are changing. I am personally interested in a man-made object. Now because this is a productive age and it is more unique there is freshness of origin. If I’m making a sculpture I wish to have just as much integrity as a painter. I want to make one image, I want to have controlled every mark in it. I am not the least bit interested in having one image and having it cast into reproductions. In this relation I think very often about the flood of Degas sculptures. There were Degas waxes, small ones. Now they are reproduced by the foundry— there’s a fair amount of myth and misinformation about it—but they are not originals, they are reproductions. They never had the eye of the artist on them. He had his eye on the original piece. The waxes were later restored and now seem to exist in the hundreds. I would rather, than see all these thousands of Degas horses running loose, make a trip to the original waxes and see the touch of the artist’s hand. In the thirties there was a great deal of talk about art for the people. The idea seemed to be that you make art and spread it out to a lot of different people. I think that people should spread themselves and go to the museum where art is. I am looking at some photographs which you needn’t see, because I’m using them to refer to the way I work. Very often, I seem to be much more concerned with the monsters than with what are called beauties. But these monsters are big constructions which have wheels.1 Sometimes the wheels work and sometimes not. But the wheels have meaning, they are no more functional than wheels on an Indian stone temple. It is a playful idea projecting movement. I don’t feel at all like the age

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of graces. I like girls, but I don’t feel like using that feminine grace in concepts. The equality has worked it in. I don’t think this is the age of grace. I don’t know whether my monsters on wheels will become graces to other people and I don’t know whether or not they will be rationalized as being a need or a statement of my time. They are non-rational, but they filled a need within me. If I try to tell how I make art, it seems difficult. There is no order in it. A night or two ago I had stopped to see Mike Kanemitsu.2 In talking, Mike had mentioned Zadkine and Paris—the reference to Zadkine and my train of thought going back made me remember about a big sculpture I wanted to make. So I might never have thought of that one if he hadn’t mentioned Zadkine and if I hadn’t thought of concave and convex, and if I hadn’t thought of that sculpture, which I had finished and which had already been shipped to the West Coast, that I probably will not see again.3 I wouldn’t have made the sculpture I am going to make this summer which is going to be made out of big forms, but that’s the way process can go. I’m trying to explain that I have no noble thought process or concept. Its origin is often chance. Yet of all the things I was thinking in those certain moments that we were sitting—I guess it was an hour—while talking and drinking beer, I thought of a hundred other relationships, but none of them fitted in my niche. I spoke about the integrity of painters. For example, a painter makes a picture. Even if he could sell two or three, or five or seven, he would not consider reproducing—the practice still exists in sculpture. Maybe a sculptor will make from one to nine or any of those numbers. Each cast shrinking from the original as the metal cools, the bronze undergoes changes. There’s welding, grinding and manufacturing on it that is not of the artist’s hand. It doesn’t come out of the same integrity that a painter presents in a picture. Nobody can make a copy with integrity. A painter couldn’t make a copy or have a copy made with the integrity he used in the original picture. I just want to see sculpture reach that state of integrity, too. I admit that right now it’s pretty much up to the individual sculptor. Gauguin made a little terra-cotta and there are now ten bronzes of terra-cottas. And he didn’t mean to make the bronzes, any more than Daumier made bronzes. Somebody gets a bronze from a little Daumier wax, and somebody else makes a number of bronzes from this bronze, and bronzes get made because they have a royal establishment that true art belongs in bronze—it may have once been royal demand and designation, and it still seems to be going that way. Some day people will understand that the original gesture of the artist—the original object—is the true art—that the others are the reproductions. And I think that soon the original plaster sculpture will be truer art than the bronze is in the minds of artists, as it will have to be in the minds of museum directors and the public. Reproductions must be only reproductions. The authorities involved, and the historians and critics have not spoken about this very much. They haven’t very loudly proclaimed what are the true bronzes, or what is true art—not as loud as they should. Nor do there seem to be any laws or rules about it. But I would like to see it recognized. That’s it.

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Notes 1.  By May 1960, Smith had incorporated wheels into four sculptures—Sentinel III, 1957 (K431), Sentinel IV, 1957 (K432), Doorway on Wheels, 1960 (K487), and Land Coaster, 1960 (K490)—and would add them to fourteen others constructed over the next four years. 2.  See “Thoughts Travel and Come Unexpectedly,” note 1, p. 329. 3.  Probably Bouquet of Concaves, 1959 (K463), which Smith shipped to a collector in Santa Monica, California, in late April or May 1960.

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A P R O T E S T A G A I N S T VA N D A L I S M 196 0

To the Editor: My sculpture 17 h’s, made in 1950, painted with six coats of cadmium aluminum red, has been partially destroyed by one or more parties involved in its sale and donation to a collection. This willful work of vandalism causes me to deny this work and refuse its attribution. I will refuse any future sale to any of those connected with this vandalism. I tried to repurchase this work but was refused. There seems to be little legal protection for an artist in our country against vandalism or even destruction. Lacking full proof, I cannot name the guilty participants, but I ask other artists to beware. Possibly we should start an action for protective laws. David Smith Bolton Landing, New York LETTERS

Sir: Since my sculpture, 17 h’s (44 3/4 inches high), 1950, painted Cadmium Aluminum Red, during the process of sale and resale, has suffered a willful act of vandalism (see Editorial, May 1),1 I renounce it as my original work and brand it a ruin. My name cannot be attributed to it, and I shall exercise my legal rights against anyone making this misrepresentation. Three letters to the editor: “A Protest Against Vandalism,” Arts Magazine 34 (June 1960): 5; “Letters,” Art News 59 (Summer 1960): 6; and “Rescue Operation,” Arts Magazine 35 (November 1960): 7. Leo Castelli included Smith’s painted steel sculpture 17 h’s [K236] in a group exhibition at his gallery in February 1957 and agreed to purchase the work from the artist on an installment plan over a two-year period. By March 1959, Castelli had found a buyer for the work—Edward J. Gallagher, a Baltimore collector who intended to donate it to the University of Arizona Museum of Art—and arranged, at the new owner’s request, to have the paint and varnish removed from the sculpture before it was shipped to its new home in Tucson in April 1960. As a result of the controversy created by Smith’s public objections to the removal of the paint, Gallagher and the university agreed to cancel the sale. Castelli then sold the sculpture back to Smith in August, at the same price he had paid the artist. Smith repainted 17 h’s that fall, and the sculpture remains in the collection of his daughters. Following Smith’s death, Gallagher purchased a small iron sculpture, Drummer, 1937, from the artist’s estate as a gift to the University of Arizona’s museum.

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All persons involved in this act of vandalism will be, to the best of my ability, prohibited from acquiring any more of my work. I declare its value to be only its weight of 60 lbs. of scrap steel. David Smith Bolton Landing, N.Y. R E S C U E O P E R AT I O N

To the Editor: I wish to thank you for publishing my letter in the May issue2concerning the violation of my sculpture 17 h’s. Since my position became known, all parties concerned have co-operated in permitting me to repurchase the work. I am restoring the six coats of paint, and the work will now belong to both my daughters, Rebecca and Candida. David Smith Bolton Landing, New York Notes 1.  T. B. H. [Thomas B. Hess], “Editorial: Notes from Utopia,” Art News 59, no. 3 (May 1960): 23. Hess criticized the lack of legal protections in the United States for artists’ rights: “ . . . the collector says his (whose?) sculpture looks better as it is—shiny. And he may be right; he may have committed an act of ‘positive vandalism.’ But the issue is one of vandalism and of whose work of art it really is.” 2.  Smith’s error; his letter appeared in the June issue of Arts Magazine.

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W H AT I S T H E T R I U M P H 1961

What is the triumph over one’s indiscretions one’s infallibilities one’s lack of expression or intention over those who have died the time is so short it is hardly a victory Be generous for it is dialectic

Handwritten, on a fragment of lined Manila paper, dated September 19, 1961. Smith’s text was his response, possibly unsent, to an invitation from Jack Meyer, John Graham’s dealer, to contribute short texts to a catalogue for a memorial exhibition for Graham presented in October 1961, at Gallery Meyer, New York City. (Letter from Meyer to Smith, dated September 1, 1961.) The published catalogue did not include any texts by artists.

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LET TER TO THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTE 1961

Gentlemen: I do not wish to accept the prize your guest jury has honored me with. I wish the money involved returned to Institute direction, and I hope applied to use for purchase. I believe the awards system in our day is archaic. In my opinion all costs of jury, travel, miscellaneous expenses of the award machinery could be more honorably extended to the artist by purchase. A few years ago I was chairman of a panel in Woodstock, New York, wherein the prize system was under discussion. The majority of artists spoke against the prize system. Dr. Taylor, then President of the Metropolitan Museum, was recognized as a speaker for the prize system. He spoke eloquently and defended this as of being the donor’s prerogative and ended by summing up that the prize system is longstanding and honorable and goes back to the days of Ancient Rome when a prize was given for virginity. After the applause—a hand was raised for recognition by painter Arnold Blanch. His question: would the last speaker care to qualify the technical merits for second and third prize. Thank you and greetings.

Typescript, letter dated October 26, 1961, addressed to the Fine Arts Committee of the Board of Trustees, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh. Smith was awarded third prize for sculpture for Zig IV, 1961 (K534), exhibited in the 1961 Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, organized by the Carnegie Museum of Art. Ten additional sculptures by Smith were exhibited in a one-man show at the museum, one of seven such installations presented concurrently with the International to honor artists also represented in the group exhibition. First and second prize for sculpture were awarded to Alberto Giacometti’s Walking Man I, 1960, and George Sugarman’s Six Forms in Pine, 1959; both works were purchased by the museum from the exhibition. Smith’s rejection of the prize was widely noted in the press, with many writers commenting that the price he had placed on Zig IV—$45,000—made it one of the most expensive works offered for sale in the show (New York Times, November 1, 1961). Later that year, the Carnegie Museum used Smith’s rejected prize money to purchase two 1953 drawings from the artist; soon after, he presented the museum with two 1961 drawings, as gifts in the names of his daughters, Rebecca and Candida. Smith had chaired a panel, “Exhibitions and Juries,” at the Third Woodstock Art Conference, in September 1950. A report of the panel proceedings, which included Francis Henry Taylor’s address and the twentyseven resolutions passed by Smith’s panel recommending changes in museum policies on the exhibition, purchase, and promotion of contemporary art, was published in John D. Morse, ed., The Artist and the Museum (New York: American Artists Group, 1951).

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COLLECTIVE CONCEPT 1961

collective concept Collective of equality—the common denominator—the great plaza statue—the government—the bureaucrat’s concept of what the people understand The accent must always be on concept over casting and I refuse any discourse on technics alone. This belongs to the foundry journal. what do you want from bronze—to perpetuate the ruling class connotation idols— that if it’s bronze, it’s art I wouldn’t like to see sculpture become a craft—and like etching a reproductive process—sculpture is a conceptual process—and needs not bronze—but sticks and stones, rags and bones—depending upon the artist’s conviction a plaster over bronze reproductions

Handwritten, on the back of a letter dated December 14, 1961, from Everett Ellin, whose gallery represented Smith in Los Angeles.

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I N T E R V I E W B Y K AT H A R I N E K U H 196 2

kuh: Do you use either signs or symbols in your sculpture? smith: Those two words don’t mean a thing to me. I don’t use them in my vocabulary. They’re not even in my consciousness. Under cross-examination I might possibly understand what the words mean. As far as I know, I don’t consciously use either signs or symbols, but if they appear to be used in my work, then they’ve arrived in my mind as exchange images. kuh: What do you mean by exchange images? smith: I mean dream images, subconscious images, after-images. They’re like the series of paintings I made where the image was the hole from which the sculpture was removed. What was formed there was the after-image. kuh: Does innovation play an important role in your work? smith: We are all subject to our own time and to our own history. The best artists are probably both innovators and children of their parents. My parents were every artist before me whose work I knew. There are first your immediate parents, your blood family who directly influence you, and then there are relatives you adopt and feel close to. Even the artists you don’t like influence you. But you can’t leave your own world; you’re born into it. You’re always stretching to reach beyond yourself— you make a little stretch each time, but you always remain yourself. Art is made by people. It’s not made by German art historians. What is interesting is the artist, and what is interesting about the artist are his own convictions. There are no rules or principles. My world has been broadened when a painter like Jackson Pollock comes along, though I fail to see how he influenced me directly. kuh: How did you happen to start with metal sculpture? smith: Most sculptors have had training in sculpture. I had training in painting, none in sculpture. I arrived at sculpture through montage and cubism—you notice I paint my sculpture. I’ve always made painted sculpture; not one year that I’ve

Katharine Kuh, The Artist’s Voice: Talks with Seventeen Modern Artists (New York: Harper & Row, 1962; repr., Da Capo Press, 2000). © Katharine Kuh, 1962, used by permission of Avis Berman, executor. The bracketed comments in the text are Kuh’s. Kuh’s conversation with Smith took place in 1961, on one of her regular visits to Bolton Landing (they had met in the early 1950s, when she was a curator at the Art Institute of Chicago). According to her biographer and literary executor, Avis Berman, Kuh did not tape-record her interviews, relying instead on her notes and memory. No transcript of her conversation with Smith has been found.

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worked have I failed to do this. Take the Albany series—there are about ten or eleven in that series, all painted black except the last two, where I introduce varied color areas.1 kuh: Why did you call it the Albany series? smith: Actually I suppose because I bought the steel from the Albany Steel and Iron Works and because Albany is kind of a dirty place, especially the parts I know best—along the river where there are steel mills and casting plants. kuh: Do you still use both iron and steel in your work? smith: Iron and steel are about the same. Iron is an old-fashioned term I use in an affectionate way. Cast iron and steel are something different. The process of working with them is different. I’ve used both in my work. The average person can’t pick up a bar and tell whether it’s iron or steel; you can only tell by analysis. kuh: But you haven’t told me how you got started with metal sculpture. smith: Between my first and second years in college I spent a year working in the Studebaker plant in South Bend, in Department 348, Steel Frame Assembly.2 Before that, I’d worked as a telephone lineman. At these times I always thought of art as oil painting. After that I spent one semester at George Washington University in Washington, where, by the way, I took only poetry courses and worked at the same time in the Morris Plan Bank. Later I came to New York and started studying painting at the Art Students League with Lahey. The next year I met Jan Matulka, the abstract painter, who had just come to the Art Students League to teach. It was from him in 1928 that for the first time I learned of cubism and constructivism. Then the world kind of opened for me. I also learned a lot at that time from just looking at reproductions, mostly in European magazines. I first saw Picasso—then his iron construction in Cahiers d’Arts—and I realized that I too knew how to handle this material. At about the same time I saw reproductions of the Russian constructivists in some German magazines. I couldn’t read the texts in either the French or German magazines, so my acquaintance was purely visual—from reproductions, and of course from the explanations of Matulka. Matulka was the most notable influence on my work—I was going to say “life,” because my work is my life. I could also say that he probably had the same influence on I. Rice Pereira, Burgoyne Diller, Dorothy Dehner, George McNeil and a dozen others who studied with him. It was a little later that I met Xceron, John Graham and Stuart Davis, from each of whom I learned further about cubism and Paris. I didn’t go there myself until 1935. kuh: How did you happen to do the Medals for Dishonor? smith: The idea developed in Europe, really in Greece, from my interest in Mesopotamian cylinder and coin intaglio seals. Mostly I guess I was interested in the idea of intaglio—as a reverse process. The theory is that you’re on the opposite side pushing the walls out. The immediate reason for doing the Medals for Dishonor

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probably grew out of a series of postcards I bought at the British Museum, showing special war medallions the Germans awarded in the First World War, medallions for killing so-and-so many men, for destroying so-and-so many tanks, airplanes, et cetera. That aroused my interest in medals. From a naturally anarchistic, revolutionistic point of view, the idea of “medals for dishonor” became my position on awards. From a strictly humanistic point of view, medals are always about the same. It only depends on where you were born, where the killing is done. I believe in any revolutionary idea when it’s necessary—in any push against what I believe is wrong. You do it in defense of your own convictions, even if you feel it won’t work. Revolutionary action is never lost. Something comes out of it finally. kuh: Critics say you’ve been influenced by American folk art. Is this true? smith: No, absolutely not. It wasn’t American folk art; it was cubism that awoke me. I don’t know who the hell says it was American folk art. I don’t have any particular admiration for American folk art and I fail to see where it’s been involved in my concepts. Mondrian, cubism, constructivism and surrealism all came on me at one time, without my even knowing the difference between them. kuh: Have you ever worked in anything but metal? smith: The first constructions that grew off my canvas were wood, somewhere between 1930 and 1933. Then there was an introduction of metal lines and found forms. The next step changed the canvas to the base [of the sculpture]. And then I became a sculptor who painted his images. kuh: I notice you often work in series. smith: Yes, in this way I try to get out all I have to say. I may be working on three different series at the same time. I’ve just started some very large pieces—painted ones—called Ziggurats. No one knows what a ziggurat is; we’ve only seen reconstructions of them. No one knows the purpose of a ziggurat; for that matter I don’t know the purpose of mine. The title is just an affectionate reference, because these are my own, and I call them Zig I, Zig II, III, et cetera. I’ve just finished the third, but during the same year I’ve been working on Tanktotem XII. I started the Tanktotems about ten years ago and I’m still working on them and don’t rule them out until the day I die—that is, as long as concave and convex are still a mystery. My Tanktotems are relationships to the end of tanks. [The tanks were boiler heads, and boiler heads are stock items in the steel data book from which Smith frequently orders his materials.] I’m still working on the stainless steel pieces too. These I just call Unities, and they are further identified by the number of planes they have.3 I have absolutely no tangible word relationships with subject matter where these are concerned. They’re completely visual. kuh: Aren’t some of the recent ones related to semaphores? smith: Never. I have no spiritual affinity with semaphores. kuh: What about some of your other series, like the Agricola sculptures?

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smith: The Agricola series is comprised of many found objects, like hand-forged parts of agricultural implements, that have functioned in a past era. The first two iron heads I made in 1933 were essentially part of the Agricola series, but I hadn’t named them that yet.4 They were mostly made from found objects—wagon parts, and one was made from a slaw cutter, a piece of binder chain and a piece of cut-metal plate. I never think of my series as variations on a theme. That’s not in my lexicon. kuh: If they’re not variations on a theme, what are they? smith: They’re continuous parts of my concept. kuh: How do you feel about materials? smith: I don’t particularly want the material to show. Now steel, that’s a natural thing for me. I buy it in flat plates—that’s the way I use it. After cubism, who cares about form? It’s planes. kuh: How about space? smith: How about space? Who knows where space stops and what isn’t space? “Space” means nothing just as “nature” means nothing, because all is space and all is nature unless you have defined limitations. Space is like sex; it has a different qualification for each one of us. Otherwise we’d all be pursuing the same woman. I’m not worrying about space. It’s not my problem. kuh: What is your problem? smith: My problem is to be able to work every day and to press my limitations beyond their endurance. kuh: What are these limitations? smith: They’re me. kuh: Do you think of certain of your works as drawings in the round, like Australia or Hudson River Landscape? 5 smith: You use your words. I made the work. And about words—I think we artists all understand English grammar, but we have our own language and the very misuse of dictionary forms puts our meaning closer in context. I think we’re all closer to Joyce, Genet and Beckett than to Webster. But you ask about Australia—I gave it to my two daughters. That gives you some idea what I think of it. I was never in Australia; that’s why I called the piece Australia. It’s made up of somewhere I’ve never been. Hudson River Landscape was made after I’d done more than a hundred drawings of the Hudson River while riding on the train between Albany and New York when I was teaching at Sarah Lawrence.6 kuh: Has the sculpture anything to do with the drawings? smith: Yes, it’s the after-image of all those drawings. kuh: Are you interested in architectural sculpture planned for a specific place, like the stair rail you did for David Thompson?7

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smith: There were no architects involved in that job. I did exactly what I wanted. Also you must remember that I owed a lot of money then; I had a mortgage and loans at the bank. I believe that out of all the architectural sculpture I’ve seen, the same artists have always made greater works of art on their own. Personally, it’s too late for me to make money; I’m interested in concepts now and, as I said before, I’m interested in pushing my own limits. kuh: How do you get started on a sculpture? smith: There’s no one way, and if I found myself resorting to a repeated approach, I’d change it. kuh: Why? smith: No why. That’s just the way I live. The trouble is, every time I make one sculpture, it breeds ten more, and the time is too short to make them all. And don’t forget, there’s a lot of damn labor in making a sculpture. Notes 1.  The Albany series, 1959–62, ultimately totaled thirteen sculptures (K456–K461, K480–K482, K504, K505, K545, and K546). 2.  Smith worked as a riveter on the Studebaker assembly line in South Bend, Indiana, during the summer of 1925, after studying at Ohio University for two semesters. That fall he enrolled briefly at the University of Notre Dame before returning to South Bend to work in Studebaker’s finance department. In the summer of 1926, Smith asked to be transferred to Washington, DC, where he worked at the Morris Plan Bank and took night courses at George Washington University. 3.  Smith is referring to such sculptures as 8 Planes 7 Bars, 1957–58 (K445), and 25 Planes, 1958 (K451). 4.  Smith is referring to Chain Head, 1933 (K18), and Saw Head, 1933 (K21). 5.  Australia, 1951 (K245); Hudson River Landscape, 1951 (K257). 6.  See “The Language Is Image,” p. 145. 7.  Pittsburgh Landscape, 1954 (K329).

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S C U L P T U R E T O D AY 196 2

It’s in the work or it’s not—It’s in 1933–5–6–7 or it’s not—it’s in the eyes of others it’s not me—then—were there blinders on your eyes—I see time as the difference. How deep—how far can one man challenge the fallacies—the cherished beliefs—the verbal traps of a thirties day or this day—How far can one see beyond the horizon given him and still hold equilibrium in the outside world—How worn are the edges of words—for words are the limitation of ideas—never the dreams—never the visions—words are the tools of authorities who reject their invention—trim their limits—words saddle perception—an army of coppers inhabits the academies—ants in their hill protecting classic sands. Love or no love—food or no water—fire or no shelter—I maintain the rage and develop its resource—not the ulcer rage—the resource rage—which makes realization of the unattained closer—only a step—but the rage maintains the journey—rage is positive—born with some or born with none—I use what I have with the force that creates a want. To stop—to rest at any wayside—whose only journey is the end of my time—like Cézanne the running man—is the cancer of self-satisfaction—a social disease of the outside world its current jam and down slide—I am its part—I trip on its roots—joust windmills—but in the act of work—I view it from afar—not a part of my dreams—its objects are—its context not.

Howard W. Lipman, “Sculpture Today,” statements by Smith, Alexander Calder, Richard Lippold, and Louise Nevelson, Whitney Review, 1961–62, n.p. The artists wrote in response to Lipman’s query, which introduced their essays: “It has seemed to many people in the art world that American sculpture has shown constantly increasing originality and vitality in the last generation. What factors do you consider have most importantly contributed to this unusually vigorous development at this particular time in our culture?” This presentation here restores the formatting of Smith’s original manuscript text (slightly altered in the published version), in accordance with his instructions to Lipman: “no punctuation except dash—no changes—except for spelling if necessary. Period at end of block forms paragraphs. . . . If you need a title call it ‘March 9, 1962.’ ” Smith’s statement was illustrated by Lectern Sentinel, 1961 (K518), acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, in 1962.

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The ogres of authority I reject—once the patron purchaser benefactor wielder of favor now colors as opposition—the work never makes from their values—never blooms from their architecture—in their clothes—I wear the anti-social suit in their park. The rich hibernate in guilt behind facades—wear middle class expressions—to accept their equality places me servile—I see always revolt—feeding from conflict for survival. Our identity—freedom from master minds—came late—still new with starch— sculpture hasn’t had a chance—in an atmosphere without honor—by cost ruled—perverted by patronage—delayed its immediacy—commoned its metal—banaled its uniqueness—committed fraud by reproductions after the hand and eye of the artist had long ceased to work—relatives—dealers—authorities indiscriminately fill museums with copies and untruth. The fortunate world of painters is more honorable—not committing time to reproduction—nor reproduced against—by authority who by theft make royal with bronze—yet fear a like act by canvas—Is it posthumous theft from the artist or immorality of act—all copies are equal in negative fidelity—what ghoul dares exhume the eye and hand of an artist. One feeds from the outside fruits no more than its poisons—from fellow artists inside—compliment is food—on the identity table—the big basket—too public— sweet manna gaudy and consuming. I like the empty spots and holes where things have been—hole spots have conditioned my dreams more than jukeboxes—the empty spaces have caused assembly— agricola—totem. A log rolls before the door—ropes on the floor—parts underfoot—survival knowingly attunes emergency—these—not the tripping root in the outside forest—I sense heat acutely—burns are from matches or skillet—not from the work where I need neither accident nor punishment—the rage—the windmills are in nature outside.

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S K E T C H B O O K N O T E S: T H E G R E AT D E C I S I O N; T O T H I N K—T O D R E A M; I D O N O T C A R E F O R T H E H O M E E N V I R O N M E N T 196 2

The great decision lies with how one identifies oneself. Whether this challenge is as the revolutionary dealing with the projection beyond the knowns towards a vulgarity or the functionary dealing with variants of exploration within the areas of the known territory of beauties. The latter is safer, usually, and more apt to reward in one’s lifetime. In the former a genius could have been madman or misfit for several generations except [for] recognition of artists.

to think—to dream the ideas roll the visions unique flow past the open door— to draw—unrealized totally—I know what they symbolize for I saw the image to make lightly—fragilely—undersize like a kite— with matches and napkins—hastily weathers not, as a fart in a hailstorm nor is it complete as object—but closer more dimensional than the chiaroscuro symbol not the size of a man only that realized man affords satisfaction—whose elevation aspiring may challenge his own size

Three handwritten texts, early 1962, Sketchbook 57: 3, 66–67, and 83.

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there attained in its magnitude—it is closer to vision image—but so many more reflections not contained—that always further effort is necessary 1–27–62

I do not care for the home environment I’d rather have a plain wall in a factory or warehouse or the plain Gallery or the neutral of sky

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S K E T C H B O O K N O T E S: T H E F O U N D O B J E C T; I S N ’ T I T G O O D 196 2

the found object— has made poor men the possessors of things—and rich men the collectors of junk and yet this factor is not new, for the artist has for a hundred years used his lower environment and his poor objects in his work which in comparison to the collector’s life were junk (discards)

Isn’t it good—4–11–62 I forgot my coffee during its overboiling while making a drawing the meat was close tasting a bit high from lying store-wrapped in the icebox— the toast fell on the floor—but I’m free it would have been good to have a girl breakfast properly scrambled—properly made—Is a briefcase the requisite—the sounds were not but the sounds of expansion—birds and my own worries— there were no complaints—and I am still free but the coffee is cold now and still overboiled

Two handwritten texts, spring 1962, Sketchbook 50: 13, 69.

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L E T T E R T O D AV I D S Y LV E S T E R 196 2

Mr. David Sylvester The Sunday Times   11–12–62 Dear David— Carandente sent word—thru Beverly Pepper who phoned—Menotti met me NYC explained Menotti offered dedicate opera daughters—Candida, Rebecca (7 & 8 years) I said fine they like your works, I’ll go—having neither job nor love to hold me here—went Genoa was expected by Italsider, given everything I asked for—residence Columbia Excelsior—interpreter—chauffeur—6 workmen—chose abandoned factories at Voltri to work—(Chadwick worked at Cornegliano) we lived same Hotel—good friends—prowled night life Genoa together—at first was overcome by grandness of opportunity—but quickly recovered—launched into serious work so fast—I had not time to think—worked 12 hours day 7 days week—not speaking Italian, I had not known I had been asked make 1–2-pieces—but had fire started and 26 done at end month. Some, large chariots on wheels—I had come with some drawings but abandoned them, seizing opportunity of wholly new world— dismantled machines used everything that appealed—left behind in the factories— had started project on railway flat car—asked for it—was given same—but its vintage ancient and Railway could not chance hauling it on tracks to Spoleto—I intended to use flat car as base and erect big sculpture using whole car—since I had to abandon it—I used wheels in many of the sculptures for mobility and aesthetic reasons—I had full cooperation of Italsider for my needs—I had full cooperation with the Ministry of Transport in getting my tons to Spoleto on short notice—one would have thot my work was known there, but Venice was the only show I’ve had in Italy.

Published in Giovanni Carandente, Voltron (Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 1964). The letter was published in the form of a facsimile of a handwritten letter dated November 12, 1962, that Smith ostensibly sent in reply to a letter from the art critic David Sylvester, asking for information about the sculptures the artist had created in Italy the preceding summer. The facsimile text (reprinted here with Smith’s misspellings retained) was actually a later version, slightly revised for publication by Smith in late 1962 or early 1963, of the original letter he had mailed to Sylvester in November 1962, which Sylvester quoted in his article, “The Spoleto Experiment,” Sunday Times (London), December 9, 1962: 12–17.

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I fell in full ease with the workmen despite difference language—I learned some Italian (Berlitz)—they some English (American to you). I’m as much factory as professor having worked in auto & locomotive factories in U.S. for a living roughly equal to teaching time—I enjoyed working there—I enjoyed the confidence of the workmen—they brot in the specialties of Voltri and home cuisine for our 3 p.m. wine break—such as mussels—snails—birds—fungi, etc—we ate together exchanged confidences—differences. I think we were all a little sad that it ended. They gave me 2 gold medallions with angeles—inscribed—Voltri to Rebecca—Voltri to Candida— Sometime I’ll take my kids to Voltri Italsider let me roam all the factories—pick out whatever I wanted—let me work without interruption—I still do not understand how this confidence and generosity generated—Carandente—Menotti—the Italian government? I was never bothered with officials, questions, teas, social affairs or check ups— Somehow word was extended that I had prviledges—it was a delight and an honor— but to see whether I fulfilled their confidence—you must decide by the work—But from me—I have never made so much—so good so easy in such condensed time as in my 30 day Italian phase—that was damn near a piece a day. While I work in a concentrated way in USA—I’ve never done this before—Ugo Mulas of Milan came several days several times and recorded part of the progress—His photos I do not have yet—the ones I enclose are some I took for record. His photos are great. Write him direct. Prof. Carandente mounted four of my works in the city—balance in the Roman Theatre. In my own country I’ve never had such interest—maybe it takes a socialist turn of the government to do such things—All works I own—except a sculpture on the bridge entering to the City Hall in Spoleto—which in behalf of Italsider I gave to the city of Spoleto—The Mayor said he liked it and all seemed acceptable when I left in late June—Carandente installed it so well that it looked like it belonged— After 26 finished works (4 were of relatively modest size) I had work in progress and parts started—so I piled up all the parts—tongs—wrenches—wheels—safety signs (in Italian) which I wanted for my shops in Bolton—shoes, etc.—all on the floor in one pile—and said Send them to me in USA—they did and I will finish my Italian period here—all my large works are called Voltri—where the factories were located—in honor of my love for the fine food—friendship with the workmen of Voltri—and fond memory. With neither wife nor secretary—I must write longhand—which I hope you can interpret—try David—you know me and how I speak—add it up and guess when in doubt. My work in Spoleto I have marked—not for sale—and I hope I can have some museum exhibitions in Europe, since I’ve never had a one man show—I’d like it to go to England also in a non commercial way—afterwards I don’t mind a sale but I’d rather it be shown together without the possibility of a sale and the piece withdrawn. I think it was climate—locale—at least it seems to me that my Italian work took on a different feeling than my USA work ever had—yet it was natural and without

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intention—I’m proud of it altho I’m not sure what it is that is different—I’ll never work without certain influences of this Italian period nor forget—certain things are not possible here—there is no affinity of the government or industry for my work (other artists as well). The Italian government had to know about it with approval— I’ve never known for certain but somewhere I’ve heard that Italsider is 51% government—one way or other they gave me the priviledge Carandente and Menotti the introductions and intercession. Regards—memories friend David S greetings from the Chelsea—Noland has my old studio now. Ugo Mulas—Vitruvio 44—tel 200549 Milan (Photos enc.)

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R E P O R T O N V O LT R I 196 2 – 6 3

Morning 1

On opening the day—I had no recall—I did not know where I would go or do. In Bolton I have a pre-state before rising—where I see my workshops—the scene complete—the pieces I’m working with—moving—the parts arranging themselves—running off to horizons. I cannot use the arrangements always that fit for themselves, they are often known but the survey is acquaintance. In Genoa the bells across the street threw me out at 5 ½—there, effort at review had no history, the key was lost—recall of parts was not complete. The scene thru all the factories was like a 5-negative overlay—it was like Menotti’s Labyrinthian Hotel with factory distances—The moment was not an introduction to work—it faded into the practices of dressing—continued reverberations of bell endings—that made the swallows swarm—fruit—coffee marmalade and rolls and the practical journey thru traffic—past the furnaces of Cornigliano—thru resort towns—flashes of the bay—and into the ease of Voltri. Morning 2

In Bolton I have a survey work dream—then rise and let my eye float the fields—for changes—a passing fox or deer—migrations—shift of snow—no sounds except from nature and the mechanics of an icebox—I ease into day having working continuity from the night before—the work is marching even before I enter the shop.

The following report was arranged and edited based on a review of the texts pertaining to Smith’s stay in Voltri found among his papers after his death and additional autograph versions donated by a friend of the artist to the estate’s archives in 2003. Smith worked in Italy, from mid-May to mid-June 1962, at a decommissioned Italsider factory in Voltri at the invitation of the organizers of Spoleto’s annual Festival of Two Worlds, founded in 1958 by Gian Carlo Menotti. Intending to make only one or two sculptures to accompany Cubi IX, 1961, which he had shipped from Bolton Landing, Smith ultimately completed twenty-seven sculptures, twenty-six of which (along with Cubi IX) were presented in Spoleto’s streets and in its Roman amphitheater as part of the exhibition Sculpture in the City, curated for the festival by Giovanni Carandente (June–October 1962). After returning to Bolton Landing, Smith wrote an extensive report of his time in Voltri, adding to and revising multiple handwritten and typed drafts from late 1962 into 1963. The account may have been prepared in the hope of attracting an Italian publisher for a book to accompany an exhibition in Europe of the Voltri works to be curated by Carandente. Neither of these projects came to fruition, and although Smith had ordered certain portions of the report, its final structure was left undetermined.

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Italsider

Ilva—of Voltri where the wild strawberries grow—was a complex of some five factories—set in a narrow valley—based by a small stream—once making springs— trucks—parts for flatcars—bolts—spikes—balls—many things by forging. It had been consumed by automation of Italsider at Cornigliano halfway in to Genoa eight kilometers distant. As the guest of Italsider I lived at the Columbia Excelsior Hotel in Genoa—was picked up at 6:30 by my Italsider car—stopped for Ruello my interpreter—arrived at the machine shop—where we started work as the sun came over the hill and hit the shop door. For the first ten days Lynn Chadwick lived at the same hotel so we rode together and kept the same schedule 6:30 to 6:30—Chadwick worked at Cornigliano—some days I’d ask the chauffeur to pick me up and go to Cornigliano for lunch with Chadwick—on the top of a hill above the factory was a homestyle restaurant—the best local cooking to be found—Italsider had arranged my lunches in a shore restaurant supplied by local fishermen each day. Chadwick came to Voltri for the seafood—wild strawberries—apricots—fungi—etc. Food may not make art—but without outside life—it helps—and when one lives alone in the hills—it’s a treat—in a restaurant one doesn’t have to wash the dishes. A few times we were joined by our Italsider contacts Sig. Piccardo and Sig. Ruello whose interest was to see that we were happy and had what we needed. Although Menotti had said I had the red carpet and I had asked for a big-busted girl interpreter, I was fortunate in finding Sig. Ruello who had been a POW in New Mexico and was an expediter of supplies at Cornigliano. He kept oxygen acetylene, polishing equipment, acids, safety equipment, etc., coming in as needed. Everything was supplied—I took nothing but my safety shoes and glasses. He was complete liaison—expediter, and when not involved pitched in for whatever work at hand. Through him we all communicated—religion—family—politics—customs—hopes. The crew was equally divided politically between communism and socialism. All lived in sight of the factory—and at work without political dissension. I’ve always moved thru the climate of workmen more evenly than through that of the connoisseurs. My kids and I were at a garden party in Georgetown—what prompted it I’m not sure—but my daughter Rebecca came up and asked—Daddy what class are we—I answered we are artists—of no class unless it is artists class—above the uppers in use—equal or below the working class in income—she accepted its complications— not the hostess. The creative artists may be most important in her maturity—(excepting mass destruction) overproduction and automation do not need the upper class.

Workmen

Variera, a machine shop foreman, was the champion snail finder—the snails were always north on the compass end of his umbrella. Variera was a gourmet and a magician with supplies in the factory. Vassallo and Ferrando were electric welders and

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oxy-cutters first class on any operation with primitive equipment—both lived and had worked here in Voltri before. Coffee break was in the morning but wine break and delicacies were at 3 p.m. Each man was a winemaker and sampling of homemade wine was a contribution which brought forth chiding and good natured devaluing of the others’ wine. Cova, the electrician, was a bird man—he could hear the chirp of a new born bird in the highest peak. We had whole birds sautéed in oil and garlic. We had mussels roasted on a flat steel sheet until they opened, from Cova. We had snails found in the yard in the green of the tracks by foreman Variera who poked for them with his umbrella, at noon hour (after their twenty-one days confinement, of course). I took my crew for lunches, which I intended to pay for but found that I could not; Italsider had figured it all in. I left my noontime restaurant, my Genoa hotel unable to pay. Being their guest was complete. Cova was a great provider, he could disappear and come back with strawberries. When Laurel, an American friend, visited the factory, he disappeared and came back with flowers. What Cova couldn’t find wild, he grew. He had a blue thumb for all the archaic electrical units we had to cope with. Bruzzone and Cortesia, master towmotor operators. Bruzzone and I talked about our kids. We all talked with gesture—chalk— little American, I a little Italian—I tried out my Berlitz lessons on them all. In fifteen lessons there wasn’t much factory talk. Bruzzone’s children came to visit me after mass one Sunday, little beauties in their white starch. Cortesia’s mother made the greatest roasted snails I’ve ever had—these for a 3 p.m. wine break. Problem—Confront

Day 1 was introduced in white collar to my workmen to whom I couldn’t speak—awkward to us both—I’ve been them. In equal garb the next day—challenges. Request for swept floor not met—I swept the floor. Request for moving of heavy objects not moved exact place—I moved to positions. After welding—moving—sweeping—my collar was OK. An interpreter—unusual work—added to first problems but only several days—their desire to produce first class and to my need never failed. Concentration

My own problems surmount the practical. To what degree of concentration can one delve with noise and workmen who present other presences. My thoughts were often in creative vision during factory work—I’ve put in years at machines dreaming aesthetic ends—one never becomes oblivious to the surrounding order—in concentrated work alone under the ideal conditions—outside vistas intrude like sex—hungers and assorted fears—fear in survival—lonesomeness for my children—many waves intrude during the most ideal setup—one works with one’s nature—sets his own equilibrium, develops his resources, evens up his rage in whatever conditions present or the first

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hundred works would not have been made. When elements like noise, others, dirt, grease enter the procedure they are but elements in nature more easily transposed— than intruding mental pops. Safety measures—machines—like any other conflict can be consumed and utilized toward complete concentration as any other conflict which trips one during a day. Beginning

The first Sunday alone in these factories—functional in an era long past—abandoned only a few months—were like Sundays in Brooklyn in 1934 at the Terminal Iron Works—except that here I could use everything I found—I dragged parts between buildings to find their new identity—I thought of my Agricolas. There was a relationship—but the language was different—and the size bolder. The first two Sundays—not even a skeleton crew around—the great quiet of stopped machines—the awe, the pull exceeded that of visits to museums in Genoa or even the ancient art in other cities. Part is personal heritage—part prejudice against connoisseurs’ air castles. Since I’ve had identity—the desire to create excels over the desire to visit. There is something quite middle class about ancient art in museums—choices by the order of scribes—fakes—gifts and rationalized purchases mix to one part—with 99 parts destroyed or still uncovered. My preference is ethnographic and archeological where discovery was made without taste—where bargains and whims of guilt-ridden iconoclasts—bronze plate attributions are less in evidence. There are no sedan chairs in an old factory. Workbenches

A factory stripped of its function—leaves on the floor from holes in the roof—quiet except for a bird cheep—from factory to factory I laid out workbenches—I finished two there—left more—I felt the awe and the scared air—like one returning survivor after holocaust—and as I had felt, very young in Decatur, when I went thru the window in my first abandoned factory. After the first shock of its immensity and the privilege—I felt at home—and then to work. Blacksmith Shop

Specialty tongs were hand-forged at stations—since this method was abandoned—the work in process was left in varying stages of finish. At this blacksmith station I worked up units but no completion—I shipped the units to Bolton where part are in the Voltri-Bolton series of December 1962 and January 1963.

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Mill

What I found I could use—what I arranged was never touched—by any of the occasional directors checking dismantling—or the salvage crew—even those assemblies unmarked. In the big operating factory at Cornigliano, any plate end or found piece— I wrote my name and Voltri—was delivered. I had been introduced by Sig. Piccardo and had full freedom of the mill and scrap cars, anything I could not find—I asked for. Layout Table

A thick steel layout table was never white. I had it painted with lime and water, ancient in use practical because it was there—it provided me an order and contact—which from then on let me work freely without order. The gauges and calipers were those of blacksmiths rough and imprecise. After Voltri XXII, five pieces of a different scale came from the layout table. One owned by Carandente, one my daughters gave Menotti and an iron ballet dancer for Mike Pepper’s daughter in Rome—Jori, a devoted doll collector. Some of the units and gauge assemblies conceived in Voltri were shipped back and figured into spray paintings—producing a white sculptural image in a dark ground—these are—in technique—like the paintings in the French & Co. show of 19591—they are like the white hole from which one of my field sculptures stepped out and left on a dark night. Forge

The beauties are in the forge shop—parts dropped—semi-forged—cooled—stopped in progress—as if the human factor had dissolved and the great dust settled—the found tombs of early XX century—from giants to tweezers, mine to use or headed for the open hearth—to feed the world’s speediest rolls. Rigging—moving—welding—cutting—obtaining tools, materials—all were facilitated by my crew—there were no aesthetics except my own—most of my time was for vision—relatively little was manual—Time at noon and parts of Sundays I made twenty-seven [land]scape paintings on paper and four on canvas. Almost one work a day, not by program but by interest [and] ideal conditions. I’d have blown with pressure—I steam with freedom. Yard

The yard had flowers and fig trees planted by yard workers—now called to automation—these factories were from the handcraft days—the 10–11–12-hour days when working was also living at work—in the new automated plant—the hours are shorter the man is a machine part—he lives outside the gates only—one remaining symbol not common to our factories is the wine bottle—and aluminum pasta container held

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hot by the company steam table. Their yard had the locale and nostalgia of my first ironworks in Brooklyn—except on a grand scale. Plates of varying weights lay rusting in the yard—I used them but I had to hurry—A salvage crew was in several days a week with their gondolas and switch engine for heavy scrap to feed the melt at Cornegliano. Had I failed to take it first I could go to the mill and get it new—but I felt opportunity time even shorter than in Bolton—I can work against time for myself like I cannot work for a commission. Archeologists have an iron interest back 5,000 years. In the yard where iron has lain shedding scale and scrap—punchings—scraps from shearing—I found parts of my nature not over seventy years old in the first inch—but this flat beside a stream near the sea may farther down hold museum iron. I brought back to Bolton handfuls of findings for no greater reason than they fit with my miscellany and complement the manhole cover from Brooklyn which hangs on my wall. The archeologist may go as far as Louis S. B. Leakey and fill many halls, but my vision is in dreaming the host of events destroyed in their time. It is possible the museums are too short on truth to form historianisms. Cubis and Voltris

Cubi IX was shown in the lower part of Spoleto in front of a fourteenth-century church built with Roman blocks and seventeenth-century restorations—might seem odd in description but looked OK. Professor Carandente had an innate feeling for mounting and choosing sites. The most diverse sculpture related—as if it belonged in any style of architecture. Cubi IX was made in Bolton and shipped to Spoleto before I had agreed to go there. Its height of 107 3/8 inches was elevated on a six-foot pillar of tufa blocks bound in iron bands, giving an overall height of about fifteen feet. Its stainless cubes in a different way held with the soft variables of the church wall stones. Voltri I came desperately—the first piece to unify after gathering plates—pieces— trimmings from the big mill and moving all—to the solitude of the Voltri factories. It was the first, it began to move—then other works until two three four were in progress. It and Voltri II finished May 26 and shipped to Spoleto June 6 with Chadwick’s big black and yellow structures. This piece probably carried in my consciousness from Bolton since I had made cube unities since 1955 and [been] working on them until I departed. I had gone to Genoa expecting to make stainless steel pieces but Italsider had not yet put into operation its new stainless mill in the south. There were Italsider mills thru out Italy and I had my choice.—The next question to Menotti after agreeing to go—which of the cities do you like best—his answer of Genoa—decided me—it was the best work period I’ve had. Voltri I was mounted in a park opposite Menotti’s house.2 Voltri II, IV, V, IX, XI, XIV, XVII all have an element in their structure, which I’ll call a chopped cloud—used in different relationships the visual response varies. When a billet rolls out to sheet—no two ends are the same—as in the edges of clouds. There is great wonder and a beauty of natural growth in these variations—I cut off many

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18. (Left to right) Voltri XVII, Voltri IV, and Voltri V, installed in the Anfiteatro Romano, Spoleto, Italy, June 1962.

ends and flew them many ways—I could make a hundred more sculptures before I tired of this element—I have never before seen or possessed chopped iron cloud ends. There are ends on a table—an end on a full cloud—ends caught on a tower—ends in a tower—pennant ends on circles. And ends making a whole. Living in the mountains, clouds are in my daily unconsciousness—before I’ve only looked. Voltri III was called the little old lady by one of my workmen—It was placed high on the last tier of the reconstructed part of the Roman theater of Spoleto. There had been no plans to use the theater this year—it was an emergency measure by Director Carandente—in a desire to use all my work and a most fortunate event for my work. A more beautiful setting I could not conceive. In Bolton I put my work in the fields. That was an emergency—lacking storage space. Both emergencies produced ideals. Voltri VI is a tong with wheels and two end clouds. One cloud rests in the spoon— each cloud end goes up from the tongue unsupported. Forgings too big for hand—

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worked by drop hammers—were transported from ovens to hammer by a spoon ram on two wheels pushed by men. Three chariot spoons remained which I remade for carrying—and being a part of—in Voltri VI, Voltri VII and Voltri XIII. Circles have long been a preoccupation—more primary than squares. Wheels are circles with mobility—from the first wheel of man—to wheels on Indian stone temples—to a target on a pyramid I painted in 1934 to all the suns and poetic imagery of movement to the practical fact that my sculpture is getting too big to move without built-in mobility. Voltri VII is a chariot ram with 5 bar forgings—they are not personages—forgings are their reality. Voltri VIII When sheets runs back and forth under the rolls before they shoot thru quench and to the next rolling reduction—a rarity can happen—a plate can snub, instead of running, fold up like a great stick of gum. I saw it happen, sent it to Voltri— watched it in many positions until I found the relationship it demanded. Voltri X was painted with red lead but all the rest were cured with phosphoric acid, washed and lacquered. Voltri XI started from a tong head demanding a thick oval curved supplicated hood held up by a vertical. It started in the fly ash of the floor—it never changed from the first few minutes of seeing—I had others underway. The final day I piled parts and all the tongs I wanted—(the safety signs which now are on the walls in Bolton)—and asked for the lot to be shipped to the U.S. Voltri XIII is a circus wheel chariot with the spoon turned over—a solid guitar forging with a punched hole—with cloud parts below and above its tongue— horizon. Voltri XX was the only piece finished of what I thought would be a series of ten or twelve using tongs. The shipment of tongs have figured in twenty-two pieces made here. The series still continues. Voltri XXI, a chair—the damnedest chair I’ve ever seen—made of angle irons and scrap—the hardest most unfunctional, overweight chair possible—was upended in a corner of the second floor of the spring shop. I saw it the first day at Voltri—I took it and looked at it every day—I made parts—and rejected them—I sat pieces and ideas on it—we worried each other thru out my other work—when close to my final day unused parts from finished works—extras—pieces—parts unused—came up and placed themselves—but the chair that could have held up elephants lost its identity and finished up, so challenging that there will be other chair sculptures. Dream

A dream is a dream never lost. I’ve had it inside a 4–8-4 [and] on the top of a diesel engine.3 Where cost determines small dreams, there are equal grand ones. I found an old flatcar asked for, and was given it. Had I used the flatcar for the base and made a sculpture on the top the dream would have been closer to size.

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I could have loaded a flatcar with vertical sheets and planes, uprights with holes, horizontals supported. I could have made a flatcar with a hundred anvils of varying sizes and character which I found at forge stations. I could have made a flatcar with painted skeletal wooden patterns. I could have made a flatcar with cloud ends, gigantic washer circles and chopped clouds. In a year I could have made a train. The flatcar is now melted in the open hearth and rolled into sheets. The beauty of the ballet of a white to red to black sheet in a fast-rolling mill at different speeds running back and forth billowing steam with the quenches is a memory for me of automation fed by my flatcar. The trucks were too old for the tracks—it was quite ancient—despite the offer to put this flat on a modern flat for transport to Spoleto—the tunnels along the coast ruled out height for the work. The closest to realization came when Mulas4 chose to put finished work on the flat for his photos. So many dreams have been lost to lack of material, workspace, storage, etc., that one more becomes another lost wish. Notes 1.  David Smith: Paintings and Drawings, presented at French & Co., New York City, exhibited the artist’s recent series of large-scale paintings in which aerosolized paint was sprayed over forms laid on the surface of the canvas. When the forms were removed, they left behind white voids. 2.  Smith created twenty-seven sculptures during his stay in Voltri: Voltris I–XXII (K558–K579), Compass Circle (Voltri) (K581), Large Circle (Voltri) (K582), Untitled (Voltri) (K583), and Untitled (Voltri) (For Gian Carlo) (K584), as well as Voltri Doll (K580), which was not exhibited at Spoleto. 3.  The numbers “4–8-4” refer to the wheel arrangement of a type of steam locomotive, first built by the American Locomotive Company in 1927. 4.  The Italian photographer Ugo Mulas documented Smith making the sculptures in his studio in Voltri and later documented the sculptures as they were installed in Spoleto.

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A BIN FULL OF BALL S c . 196 3

A bin full of balls green large velvet-covered balls not round or melon shaped nor water-filled—liquid emitted from their atmosphere—black edged into the depths of voids—arranged in vacuum yet pressed—like olives in a bottle—not like balls in the race—growing like balloons with the weight of with the darkness of columbarium. I walk between with fear—I’ve no acquaintance with such things—I’d rather have them in my power like gooseberries—I can touch and know.

Handwritten, c. 1963, Sketchbook 48: 27. This cryptic text perhaps refers to catacombs Smith may have visited in Paris or Italy.

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S K E T C H B O O K N O T E S: C U B E I I I ; D R AW I N G S A R E A C H A N G E; O N C E I N A L I F E T I M E YO U M E E T A N I R O N W O R K S; YO U R U L E YO U R O W N W O R L D 196 2 – 6 3

Cube III 11–10–19611 polished—like I feel if I made square clouds

drawings are a change—without the expectations of standing presence and gravity I view them like a running strip—the ground run for a takeoff—like pieces of a highway from above I grease my mediums with egg yolks—it puts paint on balls—translucens the opaques—the act is clean and quiet, except for recorded music—which makes it an occasion—at the same time permits pipe or cigars so many years good paper was a 1–2-sheet purchase—a think twice—a this but do without that—the purchase of a drawing goes back into paper and with thousands of sheets—there is ease in use—no memory of cost—no deprivation—but a dare comes in—that awards despoiling—and therein requires introduces error to the norm—lets the door open a crack to see the view of a new landscape drawings are like incomplete memories—the immediacy of feeling flashes back when I go thru the drawers—the years the days—the memory of past time—the inadequacies calling for new effort—in depth—vision—unorthodoxy occasionally a self compliment occasionally a run of sculpture parts—or sculptures that cannot be realized—occasionally a whole direction—too many directions—life and work is short and long— but always here are pieces of courage—and if self-consciousness can be overcome and performance expectancy subdued—and they can be bad enough then all the more rationale for courage—

Four handwritten texts, late 1962–63, Sketchbook 49: 59, 197, 268–69, and 275. Regarding Smith's use of "tobe" [sic], see "Sometimes a Drawing Gets Too Complete," p. 182.

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19. Sketchbook page, 1962–63.

the thot arises that the life must be lived before the non-performance drawing can take place—or it may be the last solace—after the artist’s physical powers retreat at least I’ve never seen greater Cézannes than the last pencil color sheets or greater Matisses than the cutouts genuine primed canvas and genuine oil paint the square carries a traditionalist expectancy of performance—to attempt to deal with origins—with the traditional tools is extra effort as would be the atmosphere for me of trying to work in a first class hotel or in a contemporary modernist skyscraper— the casualness of drawing tools is like the effortlessness of the last years—museum performance expectancy—with a total identity, and the all personal vision—total introspection I project no pretence—I imply nothing to my own case—it’s axiomatic tobe one’s own critic—secure from intruders outside—but so often from da Vinci on do I find examples of drawings better than the grand performance

once in a lifetime you meet an ironworks once in a lifetime you are married to Dorothy & you walk out the State Street overpass and she says you ought to be there instead of the house2 once in a lifetime you meet two Irishmen named Blackburn & Buckhorn to whom you present yourself with one set of equipment and practically no money & no WPA yet and they say OK move in and it runs—and you are in—not only there but on the whole waterfront and you pay off by contract and on tramp steamers on the bay and shore—this is ’34 and they each drive their ’28 Auburn till they drop

you rule your own world no fantasy is beyond realization no conflict so great that it doesn’t become subject Notes 1.  Cubi III (Cube III) is dated, on the sculpture, November 10, 1961 (K651). 2.  Smith and Dorothy Dehner used their apartment on State Street, Brooklyn, New York, as their studios until 1934, when Smith rented workshop space in the Terminal Iron Works, a commercial blacksmith and metal fabricator on the Brooklyn waterfront.

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JIM AND MINNIE BALL c . 196 3

Jim and Minnie Ball He waded in mud with his trousers rolled up and an umbrella in his right hand. My Baptist mother scared hell out of me because I missed a robin with my slingshot and hit her pantry window. I was the ornery kid who shot at robins—I threw stones at bigger kids and could run faster—I once threw bricks at Payday Elyy’s door until his mother came out I now know why Jim Ball waded in spring mud—his feet hurt—I’ve a couple broken inside bones and mine do now—Jim Ball must have lifted a lot, as I have and as the doctor told me—“and if I did operate I can’t guarantee it and you would be off your feet for nine months so why take a chance, besides you are an old father—the X-rays show arthritic settlement in your joints—why don’t you keep working and die with it?” Jim Ball’s wife Minnie had a jar tree—it has been in my mind every year of my life. Jim Ball had a mulberry tree—it was full of birds and we kids were full of his yard. Minnie kept complaining “all I want for myself is a few pies.” Mulberries make lousy pies if they are purple—if red they are tart, but this damn tree was so high that Jim couldn’t climb it—little Minnie couldn’t shake it—and none of us kids could climb or shake so we had to take drops. Jim and Minnie both smoked strong tobacco in clay pipes. They had wainscoting in the kitchen—Jim had a spittoon. He was an old character—older than I am now.

Handwritten, c. 1963, on four sheets of paper. In 1921, Smith moved with his family from Decatur, Indiana, to Paulding, Ohio. He first recorded his memory of the glass jar tree in the mid-1940s (see “One of the Early Impressions,” 64). Writing on a small piece of notepad paper, he revisited his childhood impression a third time, distilling it to a single phrase: “the post with limbs nailed to the four sides upon which mason jars were hung to sun dry, the glass jar trees of Indiana backyards.”

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Or so it seemed. I don’t know how he lived. I don’t remember him working except in the garden and chasing us. I lived across the street—I had to run the other way so he would think I was a Ruppert. The Ruppert boys were mechanics and like all the other mechanics in those days invented automobiles. I never knew Jim and Minnie until I read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man—as a young dog—as a Ulysses or a Finnegan. I never knew why Jim and Minnie burned channel coal. They ate frugally. They smoked together. They were different than anyone else on our street—for Irishmen. They were Republicans—and we were stinking Democrats. I think of Jim and Minnie—the mulberry tree—my work has the glass jar tree in it very often—I wonder what happened to Jim and Minnie—I moved away—or went to school or they moved away—when I was in school. I don’t know where they are or when they died but I always know them—and Becca and Dida this is a story for you and I really never met them until I found them in Joyce. Like you ask me for when you are here—and I cannot think of one—but when you are far away I think of one.

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I L I K E T O E AT c . 196 4

I like to eat I like to see people eat I don’t like the presence of women to eat (in Restaurants) they pick the portions are smaller the attitude is less lusty of any place outside Italy I like Locke-Ober’s mens bar at noon best1 the single men diners who sit on wing stools in front of the weighted salver covers get fast service and really eat—intent upon that— when hungry it is a man’s experience of course the cigars are bad because of hypocrisy— Kennedy smoked Havanas—so does Johnson—I see names in Dunhill’s I can or have eaten 25¢ meatloaf with free salad and rolls—with gin and a small beer chaser for 10¢ I’ve made my work that way too—no less—always before love or food (now not before daughters) but from a yacking greedy old wife this allusion gets complex— but today Nov 30, in Locke-Ober’s on a swinging stool it’s lobster bisque baked oysters winter place bay scallops and bacon— to hell with greens and you stick the ¼ lemon under the hot pan to give odor black bread with frosty edges sweet butter things I don’t get in the mountains. I know no place in NYC like or equal having come from the province or cowtown of Wash DC back to the sod I could have done better in Columbus Ohio— the stools are as comfortable as the seat in my Dodge truck but eating is more complete than looking

Handwritten, c. 1964, on Ritz-Carlton Hotel notepaper.

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weighted hoods of roast covers 12 o’clock eaters Lillian Russell cantaloupe with lemon sherbert blueberry pie is New Jersey light bulbs in laundry starch that is any place but in the north native Note 1.  Locke-Ober Café, located at 3–4 Winter Place, was one of Boston’s oldest restaurants.

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INTERVIE W BY THOMA S B. HESS 196 4

hess: Let’s look at these photographs. Is this new? smith: It was just wheeled out of the shop. hess: It sort of relates to the sculptures at Spoleto. smith: Kind of, but these are Wagons. You see that wheel over there? hess: That big wheel? Yeah. smith: See, it takes a neat trick to make one big wheel and one little wheel—the axis goes way up above.1 That wheel weighs about 625 to 637 pounds. I never weighed it, but that’s what I figure. I had to make that wheel. hess: I have an idea that I want to ask you. Are they found objects? smith: I made this wheel. The other three wheels I bought by ordering them from Bethlehem Steel Company. They weigh 275 pounds apiece. They are blank forgings by Bethlehem Steel, made for a 100-ton trolley—overhead trolleys. Now, you might say they are found objects. I found them in the catalog and I chose them because they needed a particular need. Are triangles, circles or spheres found? They have always been there. hess: But sometimes you have used tanks— smith: Tank ends, I buy. I have them made for me. hess: In the Spoleto work, you used old utensils or tools. smith: Because they were there, because I was given five factories. Those five factories, those were the old ILVA factories that used to make carriages, all kinds of things, locomotive truck beds. And it’s funny that I’d walk into a place in Italy and go into another locomotive shop, after having spent some of my time in locomotive factories before. It was coincidental, I didn’t know where in hell I was going. I had my choice of about five different parts of Italy to go to. I had said I wouldn’t go. I had said, “What the hell do I want to go to Italy for? I have a better ironworks here

Typewritten transcript, 1964, of a tape recording made by the art historian and former editor of Art News, Thomas B. Hess, at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut, on June 16, 1964. The full text has been lightly edited for clarity and to omit redundancies and occasional digressions from the topic of Smith’s art. “Interview by Thomas B. Hess, 1964,” used by permission of the estate of Thomas B. Hess. A shorter version of the interview was published with the title “The Secret Letter” in the catalogue for the exhibition David Smith, presented at Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York City, October 1964.

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20. Wagon II, 1964.

than they have in Italy,” when Beverly Pepper called me. Then Menotti called me. He said, “Meet me the next time you are in New York and we’ll talk it over.” So I met him—we met in a bar—and I knew him and I guess he knew me, because we both walked right up to each other and we sat and had a few drinks. He said, “Well, I think we need you there, won’t you go?” I don’t know what we got to talking about, and I was talking about his music, and he said, “I’ll dedicate a children’s opera to your daughters.” I said, “OK, I’ll go.”   I had the choice of five places to go in Italy. I could have gone to Piombino, I could have gone to the south of Italy, I could have gone to Genoa, I think Milan. This steel company had factories all over the goddamn place. But I said, “Where do you like in Italy best? I don’t really know enough about Italy. If you were me, where would you work?” He said, “I would go to Genoa, I think it’s a lovely old town. I think it’s very nice.” I said, “All right, I’ll go to Genoa.” I decided over a couple of

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drinks in the Ritz bar, on Madison and 60th Street, where I met him. It was right near to where his home is. It was all decided right there that I would go to Genoa. There I met Chadwick.2   Well, I got there a day ahead of time. They had [planned to have] someone to meet me at the Milan airport. I didn’t know this until the day after and I walked into the Excelsior Columbia and I asked the cabdriver what the best hotel in Genoa was, and he said the Columbia. I walked up to the—what’s the name of the fellow who does all the work for you in a hotel? Not the clerk. hess: The concierge. smith: The concierge, with the long tailcoat. Well, I walked up to the concierge and I said, “My name is David Smith, has anybody made any inquiry for me?” He said, “Oh, yes, Mr. Smith, you are expected. We have a room for you.” Now before I knew it the room was already arranged in the hotel. I just by chance walked into it. The next day, the people who were to meet me in Milan, I met at the hotel. They called. I had already been there a day. And I never resented not having gone to Genoa. I went to work in the factory at Cornigliano, where Chadwick was, but it seemed crowded and noisy for me so I asked if there weren’t any old buildings they weren’t using, or something else. The office man said, “Oh, I don’t think you would like this,” so I went out to these factories, five beautiful, old lonesome factories, just the way they were left the day they walked out at the beginning of the twentiethcentury, to a mid-twentieth century fast-running steel mill. Now, I was told that the steel mills don’t run that fast or that efficiently except in Japan or in Italy. Both were bought from the U.S., but we have the older style plants and we have too goddamn much steel with the old ones, so why should we bring new ones in. These mills run just like a bat out of hell, the prettiest things I ever saw in my life. The way the steel goes zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom and is caught between rollers and the spray of the water is coordinated with the way the steel goes back and forth and rolls out. Finally it rolls out into real thin sheets, like the ones you make tin cans out of, for small parts of steel, you know, utensils. Somehow the word was out and what I wanted I got. I went through that whole factory, I picked out all kinds of things. I took scrap off of scrap cars, I took ends, I found plates that had been failures in the rolls—you know, rolled up. hess: Yes. smith: And I picked them up and marked my name on them and had them cut off and I had a chauffeur to call for me at 6:30 every morning and at the plant at 6:30 at night to take me back. I went back, took a bath, had a drink and went to the Berlitz School and tried to study Italian a little bit, and went out to dinner at 10:30. Went back and poured myself into bed at 11:30 and got knocked out of bed by the bells on a church tower right next door to the hotel, at 5:30 up and was off to work at 6:30, after having my breakfast in my room. I did that seven days a week. I was happy. hess: Did you ever go across the street from the hotel?

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smith: No, never went in there. The goddamned church bells woke me up and every time the bells rang the birds sailed around and they sailed past my room. Every time the church bells rang, the birds flew out of the belfry. hess: It was pretty noisy. smith: I was in the back on a side street. Right behind me was the whore street, and Chadwick and I would . . . walk the full length of that street to find a restaurant. We had a few favorite restaurants. We used to walk up and down that street and buy cigarettes and everything, drink. It was also a black market street. hess: Getting back to the idea of a found object—you have found tools, other things around the countryside, old trace chains, and you used them in sculpture. smith: Of course, all the sculptures I made in 1933 were all found objects. They were in the last traveling show I had with the Modern Museum. I showed three heads and I made them out of old found scrap iron.3 hess: Well, what is the idea of a found object, as far as you are concerned? From the point of view of the Surrealists it makes a kind of metaphysical jump between the idea of the object and the idea of the work of art. smith: Tom, I don’t know what the work of art is. It changes in my life and it changes in my regard. I have no respect for it particularly. First of all, these things were basic geometric form already found. I find many things but I only choose certain ones because they happen to fit in a niche in my mind, in a relationship I need, and that relationship is somewhat of a geometric nature. Damn, they are meant to be related to the art, but there is a certain romantic relationship in my mind to these old handmade objects that have ceased to function, and now I find them amusing. Painters don’t come upon subjects for still life, the Impressionists didn’t come upon subjects—they found their trees, they chose their apples. Those are all found objects—flowers, everything. hess: I understand collage—[one] picks up an old subway ticket and puts it in a picture, that’s one thing. But the way you use old discarded implements—you have always picked up things that are useful, as against useless things. smith: Well, I don’t know what useless things are. hess: You see a lot of ornamental stamps, iron. smith: I couldn’t use what was ornament. hess: Everything I’ve seen you use has either been a tool or a functional object which has passed its period of usefulness. But it retains a kind of beauty in terms of its whole functional structure, like a bone. smith: Lots of bones, sure. hess: But then there is the geometry of nostalgia. smith: I don’t know. I don’t like that word. Maybe I’m not beyond nostalgia or sentiment or any of the lower things but Tom, don’t forget, when one chooses a couple

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of old iron rings off of a hub of a wagon, those are circles, those are suns, those have the same radius, they all perform the same Euclidian relationship. They also have the romance of past function and new use, they have sentiment and they also have the geometry. There is no one thing. You could ask me a question and I could give you an answer, but there is no simple answer to anything. A hundred contributing factors that make a person answer a question—that represents a choice. hess: For instance, González used a lot of found objects but they were all of a very specific nature. He used nails and tacks and sort of strips of metal, which you probably would. smith: I can tell you a little bit about González. You remember that article I wrote for you?4 hess: Yes. smith: Between that and asking Xceron questions—he knew him well, he was the first guy to write about González in the United States, I think. And without knowing what González did—only I saw this in his work, after his retrospective in this country—I know why he used certain things. You can call them found objects if you like, that is an ethical statement. It was goddamned scrap when he picked it up and it performed certain drawing lines that he put together, the same as I did when I found mine down in Brooklyn, at approximately the same time that he was finding things at wherever he lived outside of Paris. He used to frequent the outsides of a lorry factory, and there were all kinds of trimmings and stuff probably thrown out from the lorry factory, the same as I collected on the waterfront in Brooklyn. hess: But González’s things were not so geometric as yours, and more like things a painter would pick up—as you say, more the wheel, the cylinder, the chain, if I remember. Did you ever use chain? smith: Sure, on one of the first heads in 1933, I used chain. hess: But you do think of a found object as likening to a sculpture and having a life previous to your sculpture—and the ambiguity remains in the work? smith: I think of it also as an individual part relating to another part, and those parts make a whole. When they are in the sculpture they are in a whole and not parts any more, but I respect their parts as members. hess: But the idea of finding, you consider pretty important. I remember you told me once that Clem Greenberg visited you and found a discarded piece of sculpture. How did you describe it—like an artichoke? And he said that it was marvelous and you said, “Well, I threw it away, but if you think it’s good then you’ve made it.” smith: Something like that. I have since taken that back from Clem and withdrawn it and gave him or I gave his daughter—a sculpture.5 And he in turn gave me back that piece because I wished it. hess: The Artichoke.

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smith: Well, I don’t know, it was actually the pre-Agricola I. This was the one before Agricola I, made out of the part of a cast iron piano—you know, part of the casting of the piano that holds the strings.6 hess: Yeah. smith: And it was made out of a plowshare and a part of a piano, which were the main functions in this particular form. Certain warpages took place in the welding of it and it dismayed me and I tried to break it up with a sledgehammer and Clem said, “That’s good, leave it alone.” So I said, “If you think it’s good, take it.” Or he said, “Can I have it. . . . ” Hell, I don’t remember. This goes back. hess: The point I was making was that you said to me that you thought it was no good, so you had thrown it out. smith: I discarded it, yes. hess: You said to Clem, “You are the creator, you have schemed it.” smith: I said, “If it has any merit, it’s yours. You made it, I didn’t. I discarded it.” hess: I’m going to say that you seem to feel that in the recognition of something is a very important creative decision. For instance, if the artist sees a wheel, or he sees a chain or sees a boiler, or looks through the catalog and he sees a brand new wheel— this is a very important action. smith: That’s only in common with the concept of art from the beginning of time, Tom. Apples weren’t born in the garden of Eden, apples were born with Cézanne. hess: I think there is a difference because I think certain forms are developed inevitably, one from the other, like Cézanne’s apples come out of Van Eyck’s apples. Whereas this thing of finding a chain, picking it up, taking it to a studio, putting it into a sculpture is a different process because it is seeing something for what it is not. It’s seeing an object as a possible part of a work of art. smith: Well, Tom, you don’t conceive of it as a work of art, you conceive of it as a shape which is based on a functional geometric form. hess: Yes, but the geometry is in the art and not in its previous function. smith: Oh, that’s true, it wasn’t in the function. The function was an entirely different purpose. hess: Your function is the nostalgia, I think it’s a nice word in this case because you always respect these found things, you don’t make fun of them. smith: No, I don’t. I have complete reverence. . . . Generally speaking, I’m not irreverent to the concept that I’m working on at any time. hess: You’ve used art as a form of attack on certain political and social content, like the Medals for Dishonor.7 smith: That was kind of different. That was my effort to make propaganda and that was as close as I ever could come.

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hess: You could have reverence in attack, too. smith: Sure, I attack all the time. Maybe you don’t see it. Every day I attack all the things that I think are unjust or unfair or that menace my world. Tell me about nostalgia again. I don’t admire it, you see. hess: You think it a part of sentimentality. smith: Oh, of course I’m full of it. I was born a Calvinist. Do you think a Calvinist ever comes out without being sentimental? hess: I was going to go into your Calvinism. smith: At the same time, there is sentiment in it but there is also a certain kind of purism in it. hess: You mean in Calvinism? smith: Yes. hess: And how, the purity of hell fire. smith: Well, I could never beat Pop. hess: By nostalgia, I mean when you pick up a casting of the thorax of a piano or something, in your work, you always respect its integrity as a form. smith: Yes. hess: As against Duchamp, who mocks in the urinal or the hat rack: isn’t it a silly piece of capitalistic mass production. You look on objects as very beautiful, utilitarian things—as plowshares and wagon wheels. smith: Well, let’s remember what my heritage was. When I was a kid, I had a pretty profound regard for railroads. I thought railroads were great. I used to sit down on the edge of town and watch trains go through. I used to hop trains, ride on trains, ride on the tops of boxcars like brakemen did, run on the tops of boxcars. And when they came to a building, run on the building and jump back on the boxcar again. We used to play on trains. I used to play around factories. I played on them just like I played in nature, on hills and little creeks and the elements of nature. They were just a part of nature to me. hess: And the machinery? smith: Well, it’s a wonderful thing. I remember when I first sat in my father’s lap and steered a car. In fact, I had a high regard for machinery. It’s never been an alien element. It’s been in my nature. hess: One of the most nostalgic images in American poetry, I suppose, is the railroad. It comes and takes people away, and the noise it makes. smith: Oh, yes. I’ve never talked to friends about that. Don’t forget, I worked in locomotive plants that made railroad engines. I’ve sat on those goddam 4–8-4s welding them up, hoping that I could someday make sculptures as big as that.8 And I will someday, I think.

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hess: Also, the surface of the sculpture, which is oxidized iron rust. smith: I kind of like rust iron. hess: The nostalgia of it. I wish I could use a better word that wouldn’t bug you. smith: Maybe I’m kind of touchy—maybe the word’s all right but I’m just touchy. hess: No, the word is wrong. I’m thinking of some kind of bittersweet quality. smith: Well, it’s memory. Don’t forget my father. Some of the earliest things I played with were telephones. I took them apart and used the magnets and used all kinds of parts of telephones. hess: What was your father? smith: My father was the manager of a telephone company—Independent Telephone. And I was kinda born into that. My father was an inventor. He invented electric kinds of things, you know, electric coin boxes so you couldn’t fill them with slugs, and things like that. He invented the electric Victrola, before they were ever on the market. We had an electric Victrola. When I was a kid, everyone from the whole town was an inventor. There must have been fifteen automobiles made in Decatur, Indiana, and they were all put together in parts by all kinds of people. Just two blocks from where I lived there were guys building automobiles in an old barn. Invention was the fertile thing then. Invention was the great thing. I remember airplanes flying over Decatur, Indiana, when I was a small kid. There was a plane that’s now in the Smithsonian, called the Vin Fiz. Vin Fiz was a kind of grape drink. They advertised this drink with the plane flying over town. hess: The whole idea of an inventor, as I’ve known it from my own uncle and the big American example of Edison, was anti-art. smith: There never was any art involved. hess: It was against culture, I think. It was a very hard-boiled American point of view, with a nutty kind of American idealism. smith: I would say that the only kind of culture, at the same time this invention was going on in Decatur, was that if there was a painting in the town it was in the library and it had sheep in it. That was the only culture in town. hess: But the inventors were pursuing an American idea of art, I think. smith: Well, it was making something that hadn’t existed before. . . . The inventors in Decatur were the heroes. hess: And then of course, know-how is very important. The inventors knew how to put things together. smith: They made it themselves. hess: And the ambition was limitless because they could change the world with an invention. smith: Yeah, inventing an automobile—a new style and better function was the point. 380

hess: Well, my uncle’s inventions were going to revolutionize the whole setup. smith: I think all inventors do that. Don’t you think that artists always kind of have that in view? hess: I think some do and some don’t. Some artists want to continue. smith: You mean perfect within a given scope? hess: Yeah. smith: No, but they don’t. That’s another branch. They are not the ones who make it. The ones that invent, they are the ones who make it. hess: The difference between, say, Braque and Picasso. smith: Yes, there’s an obvious difference. Personally, I’ve always had the highest admiration for Picasso because I’ve always considered Picasso an inventor. hess: The problem with the inventor, though, is the danger of becoming a hick, a provincial. smith: Why? hess: Well, it’s the American ideal. smith: In the old days inventors were always great men. Inventors aren’t so great anymore. They’re usually paid mercenaries that belong to a large organization and their lives aren’t their own. You know that the inventors now, when they work for a big corporation, the sponsor’s invention is a group effort. Whatever these men make, they are vassals. Whatever they make at home in the cellar in their off hours belongs to the company. It’s all signed and sealed and it has to be delivered. hess: Clyfford Still, let’s say, with his ugly bad provincial American ideas—he would do the whole thing over again. The big weakness of Still is his nutty, limited range. Whereas an artist like Pollock, who was aware of where he was going, didn’t have that provincial bug. Do you see? smith: I will say that one of the ideas an artist has, even though he is sophisticated and he knows the whole history of art—he has to have a kind of gnawing sense of innocence and he has to work all the time. He has to work with everything he’s got. He has to direct everything to one end—all his energies go toward one direction, with the innocence that art never existed before he existed. hess: With innocence he has to presume a tremendous amount of sophistication or insight. smith: It’s also arrogance. You know you don’t have the innocence of a six, seven, eight-year-old child, but you have to—with your age and culture and history—have that attitude. I grant all artists the right to believe that they are the only artists in the world and also that they are the greatest ones. hess: I think you have to presume that every important artist is a tremendously cultured man. You were interested in German sixteenth or seventeenth-century medalists and—

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smith: Yeah, I saw a lot of lovely metals from Nuremberg. hess: Yes, and Greek art and Sumerian seals. smith: As far as I’m concerned all art is the same. hess: And you want to get a huge library of art books. smith: Sure, I love to read art books. I want to know everything that has ever been known by any man. hess: To drag this point back to its beginning—you are not the least bit provincial about art. smith: No artist I know of is provincial about art—maybe Grandma Moses was provincial about art. hess: I think there was an American idea that Americans can start from scratch and just make it out in the Rocky Mountains or out on Long Island Sound. I think that was the typical American idea until your generation of artists, which came up in the 1940s. smith: 1930s. hess: You were one of the first around. smith: Don’t forget there were Bolotowsky and Diller and Ad Reinhardt, Gorky, John Graham. hess: You will admit that something happened in the forties. smith: I don’t know—the war was going on. hess: 1945, ’46, ’47, ’48. smith: There was a certain upsurge after ’46, when we all realized the war had ended and we all had friends that died and we realized we hadn’t died. hess: I remember walking with you down Madison Avenue. You were going to the Willard Gallery. You were about to have a show and you were talking to me about your catalog and you said, “I’m having Motherwell write the foreword. And I said, “Why take Robert?” And you said, “He writes books.” The word I want to emphasize is we. At this point I felt you were part of a group with a we in it. smith: Robert was erudite, verbally, and I still think he is. hess: Yes, but he wasn’t part of Bolotowsky’s [group]. smith: No, no. hess: You did very much feel that kinship with Gorky and with Jackson and that whole emerging group in the 1940s. smith: I don’t think I met Jackson until the forties. hess: You were well known in the thirties and you became a man of the forties, fifties, sixties, eighties and nineties. smith: Don’t forget 2000. I’ve accepted an invitation from Helen Frankenthaler to a party near 2000. . . . 382

hess: Well, don’t drive too fast. smith: . . . which I have every intention of keeping. hess: I think it’s just that certain artists felt, in and around New York in the late 1940s, that they were part of a group. You had been very well known before then. smith: Not well known, no, goodness no. hess: I’ve never seen your shows before the war. I remember reading about you. I knew you. I think that’s about it. I should have known Nakian, but he had a big gap there. smith: There was a gap in Nakian’s life there where I don’t know his work, from our student days. There was a whole great big time I didn’t know Nakian. hess: And John Graham, who changed his style radically. smith: John Graham was a catalyst in those early days. John Graham introduced me to Bill [de Kooning] and said he was the most talented American painter. I was a painter then. In Graham’s book, which he wrote in the late 1930s, he refers to me as a painter and he mentions Bill, and Gorky and Stuart Davis and a whole lot of people. hess: There were two themes which are connected—the 1930s and the W.P.A. Project. smith: That was the mid-thirties. Before the mid-thirties there was a little nucleus that was the Romany Marie group.9 We always met at Romany Marie’s—Stuart, Bill and Gorky, Graham, [Vilhjalmur] Stefansson, occasionally [Joseph] Stella, Gjon Mili, the photographer—people like that, and we sort of sat around Romany-Marie’s. . . . hess: In the thirties, most of them unknown, and then that scene changes to the late 1940s, early 1950s, and at that point you very much felt yourself a part of the avantgarde art world in New York, with Motherwell. smith: Well, yes. Don’t forget, Motherwell and Ad [Reinhardt] edited that magazine for Wittenborn called possibilities. hess: I don’t think your style changed much. smith: I don’t think my style changed with that at all. hess: The other artists had a radical change in style. smith: I don’t know about Bill. hess: Rothko, for instance. smith: Oh, Rothko changed radically, and Adolph [Gottlieb]. They changed and their changes were later shown at Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery. hess: What do you mean? smith: . . . I didn’t belong to that because I had nothing to change to. And then I was out of town, don’t forget. I wasn’t living in New York.

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hess: I’m trying to develop an idea of your idea of avant-garde art. I think you did have an idea . . . but I don’t know if you do now. But you did then. I’m sure you did. You had a certain sense of enthusiasm. smith: I think that’s true, Tom. We had no group identity in the 1930s. In the 1940s it developed when Pollock and Motherwell and Rothko—that group of men— were showing. And it seemed to become a kind of group identity for us which we did not have when it was just Stuart and Gorky and Bill and Edgar Levy, and a few others—the Romany Marie people. We were all individuals. We were all sort of expatriates in the United States and in New York. The dominant style was Social Realism and we were always voted down. You rarely saw our work in Art Front, though we all marched in May Day parades and we all supported all the causes that the Social Realists supported, all the humane causes. We were all on the Loyalist side in Spain. We were all the same as the other people politically, just as revolutionary as they were in concept and we felt more so in our concept. It was only afterwards, when Motherwell and those men started to develop, that there seemed to be any abstract group concept. There was a magazine published in the late 1940s, The Tiger’s Eye. . . . I didn’t know Barney was a painter in the 1930s. We always talked in rather a formal way, but in The Tiger’s Eye, I remember Barney [Barnett Newman] was the first one I ever read that made any particular cause about Monet. Now, I remember when Monet died I was a student at the Art Students League. I thought, that’s the last one of the great men from there. I guess it was, too. hess: . . . the idea of an avant-garde, which seemed so exhilarating then, now seems pretty repulsive because in those days there was no chance of selling anything. smith: The chance then was not the selling. The chance was only the privilege to exhibit—that was the point of attainment. Nobody I knew in those days made a living selling his work. In those days artists showed their work to other artists. I don’t think very many collectors came, and if collectors came, I don’t think many of them bought because I don’t think any of us sold enough out of any of our shows to pay for anything. hess: But today this whole enthusiasm has become regimented—unpleasant. smith: Well, I don’t think it’s necessarily the artists that make it so. It’s the collectors that make it, by their collections. hess: . . . I really was getting around to the point of necessity. Is there something you have to do at a certain time? Could you make a figurative work? For instance, you did a bunch of roosters for— smith: I made one—after I had made it, I made another. . . . One I made in my workshop, and after I had made it I looked in my workbook and I found that I hadn’t made it the way I had originally conceived it. It was still strong enough in the original conception to make another. I think the first one is in the St. Louis Museum and the second one, called Cockfight-Variation, is in the Whitney. Now it just

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happens they were both sold much later than when they were made.10 I had requests to make more but since I didn’t have a conception about a third one, I never did it. But each one was different. The one in St. Louis was much more realistic than the one in the Whitney. hess: But you did feel that at some point you couldn’t go back? smith: I don’t believe in the concept of anything. I believe in the conviction of the artist. The strength of the work is more dependent upon the conviction of the artist than it is on a concept. I don’t rule out reality or anything as it is depicted. I think it is a conviction. I don’t rule out Pop, if it’s their conviction—I feel it and I accept it. I don’t rule out anything as long as it’s the conviction of the man that makes it, and how strong it is and how deep a conviction it is. Sincerity is nothing if it is wrongly conceived. . . . I don’t want to see repetitions. Now men may be totally convinced of Impressionism and paint beautiful Impressionism reconceived, but it’s an amplification within a given and found order. Whatever man has a new order to make in his work, he has to make totally new orders that never existed before. hess: Yes, but he could re-invent. smith: No, I don’t think he re-invents. I think he just amplifies in a circle at a given time. And still, I can’t rule anything out because it depends upon the conviction of the man. hess: Sure, if you have a man like Gorky, who could, you know, adapt the whole new thing in the adaptation. smith: I’ll tell you one thing. Bill, during Gorky’s lifetime—I thought Bill painted rings around Gorky. . . . Gorky is a greater artist because he died than if he had lived. hess: Are these your photographs? smith: Sure, what do you think—I can hire photographers? If it’s a good photograph it’s an error. Me and my little Rolleiflex. Now, there is a sculpture I like. That’s the first Wagon I made.11 Each of those little wheels weighs 275 pounds. hess: What are they made of? smith: Steel. I had them made by Bethlehem Steel. They are forgings and I took them over to the machine shop. Those are Primo Pianos. All action takes place on the first floor, or the second—I didn’t know a better word. I just called them Primo Piano I, Primo Piano II.12 hess: Piano Dobeles, we call them here. smith: All right. I’ll need you to give me my titles then. I don’t go any further than Primo Piano I, Primo Piano II and things like that. Oh, there’s nostalgia, there’s sentiment there. Much as I’ve objected to your word, there’s some of that there, the way I name things. Well Tom, I’ll tell you this has been fun tonight. I liked the ride down on the train. I’ve never been in Greenwich before. It’s real nice. I hope I can

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see your geese and ducks in the morning. I didn’t know that or I might have brought a shotgun with me. The last things I shot before I left home were two robins. . . . It was either my strawberries or the robins. I told them to get the hell out. I hung up aluminum pans and shiny things and those bags that come on clothes from the cleaners. They didn’t bother to pay no attention or nothing. There was only one answer. Knock ’em, so I shot two of them. hess: Robin killer! smith: I haven’t killed as many robins as the State of New York has killed by spraying. I’ve never shot an eagle, hawk, thrush—I shoot robins and starlings once in a while. hess: How about ducks? smith: I shoot ducks to eat. I think a wild duck is great. hess: . . . David, I wanted to talk to you about the idea of the totem. It’s a recurring word and also you do have a certain idea about sculpture and tribal spirit or basic human experience, as against folklore. It seems to be an idea of yours. smith: A totem is a yes and a taboo is a no. A totem is a yes statement of a common occurring denominator. hess: That’s new information. smith: That’s the way I interpret it. Just plain Freudian references. hess: But nevertheless both words refer to some kind of tribal society. smith: Well, it does in Malinowski and it does in Freud. hess: All your work seems to appeal to below the veneer of civilization. In other words, you could phrase a question: “Mr. Smith, are you making ritual objects for a new religion?” smith: Actually, no. Because I don’t believe in anybody’s religion. I don’t believe in any religion. The bug is all these social implications in the use of your words, as they transform. I mean, anything considered primitive in society is totems and taboos. There are totems and taboos in our society—in your behavior at the Museum of Modern Art opening, or your behavior at dinner. Now when I got to the opening of the Modern Museum, there’s four hundred people and . . . I was sitting next to Louise Nevelson. . . . hess: Were you there for the cocktails, too? smith: Well, I didn’t get there early. I got there for one drink before dinner started. . . . it was kinda fun to see all the artists’ names. hess: You were saying there was a certain right and wrong way to act at an opening. . . . In your sculpture don’t you have some idea of a content which involves a basic social relationship with the work of art and the spectator? . . . Every artist today does his art only for other artists and a few people who might dig it. But there

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is also the possibility of working for a non-existent imaginary audience who, under certain circumstances, might have certain reactions. Don’t you have an idea of your sculpture in that way? It could be a totem in an ideal society. smith: I don’t conceive of it that way. Romantically, I wish it could be that way—an idealized utopian, socialist society. I don’t see it being accepted in my present capitalist society, nor do I see it being accepted in a contemporary socialist society. I just conceive that the only reward that I get in the way of a compliment is from other artists. It’s always been the way I’ve lived and it seems that way now. . . . It hasn’t changed, Tom, ever since I had my first show. hess: You are doing enormous sculpture now. Many of them are bigger than can possibly be exhibited, except in your own backyard. smith: That’s part of my work. I’m going to make them so big that they can’t even be moved. hess: A lot of artists, like you, your work can’t be shown. For instance, I was talking to Adolph Gottlieb the other night—he’s now at the Marlborough Galleries—and they have, what, eleven foot ceilings? smith: No sir, it is two inches off of ten feet. That’s why I had to cut out two pieces.13 hess: So Adolph said, “I’m doing a series of fourteen-foot-high pictures.” It’s typical of the American artists, of what I like so much, this action—but I do think— smith: It just is a defiant position that if you can make a living selling your work you are not going to bow to the sales angle of it. You are going to make things to your own nature. I would say that Adolph has a natural built-in, indigenous desire to paint them big. Because I know Adolph. Both I and Milton Avery and the whole bunch of us in the 1930s, the only time we ever showed someplace we had to be able to take it on the subway and deliver it ourselves and go get it and take it back. And we were just showing, we weren’t selling. hess: There is also the possibility that this art is done for an imaginary non-existent audience. . . . And what is so subversive and revolutionary about the artist’s position is his freedom. When you work you don’t work for other artists, you work for yourself. smith: Oh, that’s true, but your audience is other artists. There are always a few, very few, critics. hess: My point is, I think your work, as distinguished from many other modern works, has the kind of socialization for a non-existent society. smith: I think I’m an idealist. hess: Yes, but what is the ideal? Wouldn’t it be that these were totems in a— smith: My ideal is a true socialist society. Now, I don’t know any ideology that meets what my theoretic ideal is. That goes for religious ideals or any contemporary social ideals. In other words, there is nobody I belong to or belong with.

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hess: Well, you had an idea as a young kid in Indiana. There was a certain social setup there and you had certain ideas about machinery and materials and you set up these enormous structures, useless structures, which to me have a certain effect—like a symbol, like a book, a kind of secret language. smith: The secret language, Tom, is very simple. I am building the biggest, the best goddamned sculptures I can make within the present limits that I have conceptually and financially. If I were building sculptures within my conception—you remember several years ago when I lost six drawings to a magazine? hess: Yeah, I lost them. smith: You didn’t lose them. It was the editor who lost them. Those were all made to be built twenty-five to thirty feet high. I couldn’t afford to make them. I made one, which is twenty-one feet high, not related to those drawings.14 They were an entirely different thing, because time has passed and you don’t have the same concept. I can’t continue a concept of some years ago if I didn’t build it. Now the greatest part of American art was never built in the 1930s and 1940s and even in the 1950s, because the artists, who were making whatever they made at that time, didn’t have enough money to make them bigger and better and greater. That’s where the best part of American art lies, in the lack of realization because of financial inability to buy what it took to just make it. Now maybe that’s the same for the young artists of today. Maybe that’s the same for all artists of all times. I do not know. But that’s where the greatest art lies—in the fact that artists have never had enough money to make it with, as far as I know, in my life. hess: Well, from a certain point of view, art would be an absurd kind of occupation. Here he is, working and producing this work, which nobody appreciates, and then if they do appreciate it he gets enough money to make it even larger, even more difficult. . . . In other words, it doesn’t seem an absurd occupation. It seems like a fruitful social relationship is involved here. smith: Well, it’s the most noble occupation because it doesn’t exploit anybody and it’s for anybody to see—it’s a free thing. It doesn’t have to be sold, nobody has to pay to look at it, nobody has to buy anything. It’s shown for them to look at. They can reject or accept but at least it is an effort of one man in a creative way, and how much of the rest of culture has got that? Personally, nobody ever made music that I didn’t understand. Or even if I didn’t like it, I was most grateful to the composer for making it, for composing it. I am most grateful to Brecht and Genet and all these men whose plays I read at night and in the morning. I enjoy them, even if I don’t like them I enjoy them. I thank them and I think it’s wonderful that they did it. hess: If you are an artist . . . don’t you feel that you want to get to a larger group, to effect a larger social impact? smith: I do not know. I profess an interest in ideal socialism and yet I cannot stand community living. I cannot live in New York. I cannot live in communities like

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[cities] and associate with other people. I want to live alone and far away. I want to live in nature and when I live in nature I have the most idealized concept possible. hess: Now and then you turn on the radio and get a New York station. smith: Yes, WQXR.15 hess: You like New York. smith: Sure I like New York. hess: You’re the most New Yorker of all—you were as of last year. You sorta stayed away more this year, but you used to be [here] more. smith: I know the waterfront of Brooklyn. I know the waterfront of the east side, the west side. I’ve driven taxicabs here. I’ve worked on ships out in the harbor. I’ve lived here. But to think, to conceive, I need to live in nature so that I am a part of nature. You know what I like to see? I saw the most beautiful sight. I saw an eagle the other day. The eagle was apparently trying to rob a hawk nest. I saw the hawk dart down under the eagle, fly over his head and hit at him, so the hawk drove the eagle miles out of sight. Flying very high, both of them. I saw a hawk dive on a squirrel one day, right down my walnut tree. The hawk finally grabbed the squirrel by the tail and skinned that poor little old squirrel’s tail right bare. The goddamned tail was just sticking out as raw as could be. Finally, the squirrel got away, but the hawk had nothing but fur in his talons. I like that. I like trees, I like the mountains, I like the winds, I like 40 below zero, in blizzards whirling past my windows, I feel like I’m living. I think better—I need to live in nature. The Brooklyn waterfront was a nature of a different kind. hess: . . . I wanted to ask you something else—remember the piece Elaine de Kooning wrote about your sculpture called the Cathedral? . . .16 She described how the finished work was done. There was one form—an altar shape—and on that form a figure shape and then the figure shape was pierced by some kind of prong coming down— smith: An ecclesiastical prong— hess: And you added considerably to the figure shape. I remember you said it was kind of a chastity, adding silver metal to the figure. It occurred to me that this is a detail that no one would possibly see, or read from the title. smith: Yes, every once in a while when I make a big old rusty iron thing I bore a hole in it and add some gold, just for the hell of it. I don’t think anybody ever saw it. That tickles me a little bit. hess: The detail of your work is very important and you give it all sorts of thought and possible meanings, private meanings, which are there anyway. smith: It’s public when I show it and private when I make it. All good art that I know about is private when artists make it. I look for the private meaning in Renaissance art; I look for private meanings the first thing. That was a better theme, socially, than those medallions I made. I change, my concepts change. Once I make

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one of those things that’s kinda out of my system. And when it requires a series of work, I make a series of works. hess: Do you still invest detail with that kind of work? smith: Some sculptures yes and some no. Some sculptures you look at 500 feet away, and some sculptures are small and intimate and have very intimate little details in them. hess: I remember seeing in your place last summer a sort of landscape—a table with some kind of uprights.17 You could look at it a full amount of time in endless detail. smith: Well, Tom, I find it very hard to explain what I stand for, what my identity is. My identity is not over, because every work of art is part of my identity and it changes, and once I identity myself in a given direction I no longer identify there. I move to another. hess: . . . I was wondering if you want to talk about this kind of subject matter in the sculpture. smith: Sure, I’ll talk about it. The only thing is, I don’t exactly understand what the question is. Let’s take last night. When I went to sleep last night I was making a sculpture. I woke up twice and made drawings. I woke up this morning thinking of it, you know, and I presume that I was able during the night to keep on working and making and I was thinking when I woke up this morning. I have no wives anymore to pester me when I go to sleep or to say anything to me in the morning. At the same time I don’t have any wives to screw in the morning, either. But I live as far as I can live totally and completely in my work. Sometimes I work with details and sometimes I work with broad statements. I don’t have any conviction about one over the other. I just let my interest take me according to what my conviction is during the time. hess: Well, the point of the silver in the sculpture—was it representing chastity? Is it the kind of symbolism which you do for yourself and then throw away because no one else is going to see it unless you tell somebody about it? smith: I don’t think it’s necessary to tell anybody. hess: Yeah, but do you do it? smith: I think that the knowledge of vision, the perception of my vision is so far greater than any statement using words that nothing an artist can do passes beyond the vision of the beholder. hess: In this case, in the silver, it would. smith: Well, the other stuff will rust up and the silver won’t. hess: It might be lead, it might be zinc. smith: Well, I don’t care then. . . . You know the Little Red Hen that scratched up a letter? Well I’m always scratching up letters and that’s one of the nice things about Joyce . . . and this is Bloomsday [June 16]. There’s part of Joyce in me all my life.

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I read Work in Progress in Transition—Finnegans Wake was one of the openings. It was like when I first saw Cubism or Constructivism or De Stijl, or any of the things that I saw that I didn’t know about. I love things I see and don’t know about. I don’t understand why other people don’t like things they see and don’t know about. It always astounds me that I can make something that somebody doesn’t understand or somebody doesn’t see. I see everything in writing that other people write, I listen and I understand everything in music. I like John Cage and Morty Feldman and Varèse and Stravinsky. By the way, who is Carl Ruggles? What kind of music does Carl Ruggles write? . . . He’s eighty-seven years old, lives in Vermont and he had the Brandeis Award the same time [I did].18 I don’t know Carl Ruggles’s music and I’m sorry about it. I wish I knew it. . . . hess: In your earlier work there’s a great definite, positive subject matter. smith: What earlier work? My work in 1938 and 1939 was almost all abstract. hess: But there’s a scenario involved. smith: . . . Tom, scenario is a word to me. It’s more like the theatre, which maybe I’m apathetic to. hess: Do you think pure art’s good? smith: No, it’s no better than realistic art. It depends on the conviction and the ability of the man who presents it. hess: . . . I would say impure art is better than pure art, because it’s probably richer. smith: Outside of Mondrian. . . . There is no such thing as purity and there’s no such thing as abstraction. All abstract things are built on a theme. I like theme better than scenario. hess: Content is the word, actually. There is a poem subject matter in content. . . . In other words, the content of the sacrifice was a certain kind of relationship between metals in space and the subject matter involved a certain idea of theology. smith: It was an ecclesiastical suppression. hess: Yeah, and that would be a subject matter. Like the subject matter of a James Joyce story might be a boarder in a house and the content might be a formal structure in language and of course they would have to fuse. smith: Not always am I that close to it. Of course there always is an underlying set of relationships, which are the cause of a result. And sometimes the underlying theme I’m not conscious of except in a set of geometric relationships. . . . hess: How unconscious is that? smith: I don’t think it’s unconscious at all. I think it has a relationship to time and the culture and the atmosphere that I’m living in. . . . My identity is to work. I try not to be a critic when I work. I make it according to feeling. Now sometimes I revert and sometimes I’m forward. . . .

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hess: . . . It’s kind of marvelous that you contradict yourself. . . . smith: I think I’m full of contradictions. I make so fuckin’ many that it doesn’t matter. I make them with equal conviction. Sculpture is harder work and it takes a continuous and a long time if you don’t have a conviction about it. It’s very hard to keep on with a lot of labor, you know. You have to have, or I have to have conviction about it in order to do it. Because sometimes I have to wait for money to buy certain things, to realize any[thing]. And sometimes you can’t make these things so quick, [it’s a] slow process very often. hess: This looks like a rusty—[he and Smith look at photographs of Smith’s work]. smith: That is a rusty one. It’s big heavy metal. . . . hess: The surface becomes very dramatic in terms of reds, golds, and— smith: Yeah, just plain old rusty stuff, and black. It’s a pretty rugged thing. hess: . . . we will call that one type of work. Now here is a work which is two dimensional—a thin plate, two circles, forms cut out from the sides. smith: The top one is painted yellow and the bottom one is painted blue. . . .19 In the two circle things with the cut forms in the middle, back and front are practically the same. hess: The cutout forms in the center look to me like birds. smith: Well, it’s probably two crows or something like that. . . . That’s a Primo Piano. Then there are the Cubis. All the Cubis are stainless steel. They are not exactly cubical but they are full-formed bodies. Each segment is a full-formed cubic shape. . . . The three you are looking at have been made since you’ve been to Bolton. Those are in the show this year.20 hess: Now there, up against the other two kinds of sculpture, the material is modern twentieth century, 1960, and the forms are three-dimensional. The sculpture urges you to walk around it because each aspect suggests a change. This is a kind of dynamic, kinetic situation. smith: I always think of things as turning. hess: So that’s a third type of work. smith: There are at least five different aspects. hess: . . . now this one is painted. smith: They are all painted. It’s black with a red center. Big white-blue ring around it. Sort of like a little cart with wheels on it. . . .21 There are thirty coats of paint on that before I paint my color on it, so that it stands out outdoors and in the field. The metal is unimportant. hess: That’s a fourth type of work. What do you want for the fifth? smith: There are some flat stainless steel pieces. hess: You mean the Primo Piano?

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smith: No, that wasn’t stainless. You see the Tower? 22 hess: Well, the Tower—I would relate to the other stainless steel. smith: Except there is no solid bodies in it. It is all lines and indicated form. It’s all drawn in lines, no solid bodies in there, except in the flat. hess: This is more like a figure than anything else. smith: Yes, except it isn’t. I made it right from scratch without a figure being involved. Maybe everything a person makes is a figure. That’s twenty-one feet high. . . . When I say it’s flat, it’s not exactly flat. Every dimension of depth—a quarter of an inch or one eighth or one sixteenth of any of those dimensions—has an indicated depth to it. And when you look at it from a distance the planes take a position, back and forward. Anytime any shape is behind another shape it has depth and dimension. And then, depth and dimension are great things by themselves. A drawing or painting doesn’t have depth or dimension—they are only indicated. And a lot of paintings are thicker than some Chinese relief sculptures . . . the depths are not as great in measurement as the depths and thicknesses in some of Cézanne’s paintings. Not the late ones, the earlier ones. hess: Talk to me about this sculpture. smith: That’s a Primo Piano that takes place mostly on the second floor.23 There is no known relationship in any of that. Yet I know there is, but I can’t find anything in it related to any one subject I know, which is one of the real nice, mysterious things about working sometimes. Most of the action takes place on the second floor. Part of the necessity in those Primo Pianos is structural. . . . Just simple elementary support. hess: The two simple features on the top with holes in the center are just like targets. smith: Well, they are just circles with other circles in them. hess: Then to the left is a diamond. To the right is a sliced cylinder, on the top is a kind of a column. The suggestion, of course, is three figures. smith: I never had that in mind, Tom. . . . in the first place, they are too big. On the other hand, even the geometrics that a person dreams about—the abstract things that you link together, by the mere fact that you are who you are—have a personal relationship, after all. . . . I may like a rhinoceros and make drawings of a rhinoceros but when I make sculpture like that I’m not thinking of a rhino, even way under four different submerged levels. . . . hess: A lot of artists use photographs. smith: I just made 130 or 140 canvases this year. So far, I have not made one of them from a photograph. . . . These are all nude models. I don’t use drapery. When there’s pussy, I put pussy in and when there’s a crack—on some of these girls who are so young you can’t even see a definition in the division of certain parts of the physiognomy. So I put it in because I think it will be there sooner or later.

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hess: You’re just a stylist. smith: I am a sensualist. hess: Well, certain guys are reluctant to say, “I use a photograph instead of sketching,” because they think that’s wrong. smith: Well, I don’t use a sketch when I make sculpture, ordinarily. hess: You make chalk drawings on the floor. smith: Oh, that’s when I’m in trouble. . . . And sometimes I think I’m stronger and there are more open possibilities for invention if I don’t use the sketch. I draw a lot to increase my mind or my vision, but when I work I try to let the work make its own vision. While I have a history of knowing behind it. hess: That’s the most sophisticated kind of sketching. You make a thousand sketches. smith: I do. I make three, four, five hundred a year. hess: You also draw on the floor sometimes. smith: Yes. hess: You also correct endlessly as you work. smith: I correct pieces often. Throw bad pieces away and sometimes I even have to order new metal and wait for three or four weeks until it’s delivered before I can continue. hess: So whatever spontaneity that you succeed in capturing has been filtered through the most rigorous intellectual discipline. smith: I never considered it that way. hess: . . . you’re free at every point of the process. You are completely free. smith: I don’t know. hess: You’re looking at everything you do. smith: I also dream it and I live it all the time. . . . I make it just as goddamned good as I can make it. I use any process, any known factor, that’s within my knowing. If I needed to X-ray it, I would. If I could, I would. hess: . . . so the working process is one of constant— smith: Scrutiny. I live it. I live it and the pieces that are problems to me I look at and think about three, four times a day, while I’m working on another one. hess: You claim, and rightly, that this is the paradox of spontaneity. smith: I don’t think I did say that. . . . hess: I think you used the word spontaneous— smith: You’re not confusing me with Abstract Expressionism, are you? hess: No, but you take the position of Abstract Expressionism, which isn’t really yours.

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smith: I didn’t say it was. hess: I think you are a classical sculptor. Quite conservative and very classical. smith: Oh Tom, that dismays me. I don’t mind being an old-line heroic sculptor, but well, I admit it, I use every method or approach that I need to realize the work. Now sometimes it is spontaneous and sometimes it is studied, thought, bought, and takes a long time. Some sculptures take a couple of years before they get realized. hess: You bring everything you can to bear upon the work that you can and that’s how the art comes out. smith: It comes out different ways most of the time. hess: Did you ever write a sentence, and you spoke it to yourself beforehand, but by the time you got to the predicate it had changed completely for better or worse— that doesn’t mean it’s not supervised. smith: Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Or sometimes I fight two or three years or several years before I even start. I don’t mean that it’s unpremeditated. There is a kind of vision, usually, which is a meditated vision. But I would rather have it be a continuation, and sometimes I need total contradiction to the kind of work I’m doing now to work on the next thing. Sometimes I work in what people call lines or drawing, sometimes I need these big strong cubic shapes, sometimes I need total disrespect for material and paint it as if it were a building structure, so that all you see is just— hess: I was talking to an artist who was talking about sometimes wanting to feel blank in front of the work and sometimes wanting to feel dominant and work it. These seemed to be two different attitudes and I was surprised that you could do both. smith: There is no distinction between the two. They are complementary. hess: . . . You put in color. smith: I’m still working on that. I’ve only made two sculptures in tune properly between color and shape, but I have been painting sculpture all my life. As a matter of fact, the reason I was a sculptor was because I was a painter. hess: What’s the problem with color? Why do you always use bright colors? smith: Because they are more difficult. hess: Wouldn’t it be easier to start with gray? smith: Yeah, it would be easier to state color in a gentle, monochrome manner except that doesn’t speak to me as strongly. Whites and blacks I could work with more easily, I think. That show with Gerson with the circles—24 hess: The bright colors, they seem very difficult. smith: They are. I think I’ll have to work twenty years before I can paint circles like that and succeed, but the minute I succeed I will be done; that will be ended. The

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struggle shows for more merit than the success does. The success ends your life. That was as good as I could do, what I was doing at the time. I have made a few since that are more completely realized—the forms in relationship to the color are more completely realized. The unity is more complete, and yet when you do get to the unity it’s got to end something. It ends your battle. hess: I think you’re a long way from ending that battle. smith: I do too. hess: I don’t see the point of the battle. smith: The point of work is a struggle. hess: Yeah, but I don’t see the point of whole bunch of artists today trying to do polychrome sculpture. smith: Now that’s a dirty word, polychrome. What’s the difference between sculpture using color and painting using color? . . . Painting and sculpture both; beats either one singularly. hess: But color is the one unhistorical thing that you’re doing. Well, only the painters and the aficionados take that position. I’m thinking of Castelli taking all that orange paint off. He knew he was wrong.25 smith: He might have been right. It’s my privilege to be wrong. . . . I bought it back and I painted it the way it was before—not that I was that convinced you see, but nobody has got a right to change it. . . . hess: Well, Chamberlain had an idea of color. He took the color of an old car.26 smith: Well, he’s right. That’s why Chamberlain’s color always looks good. It’s pretty. It is right, you see. The thing is, Bill Rubin was up yesterday and the day before, and he said, “Now the color on the sculptures looks pretty good. They are really getting there.”27 I said I meant to change them. He said, “I think you shouldn’t change them.” It was beginning to look good to him because he forgot that he had seen it three times. Bill is a discerning guy. He is a nice guy. But people have to see things over and over. And the way Chamberlain has used colors people have seen those colors. All those colors are in their consciousness. hess: Well, your colors are known. smith: There are no colors that aren’t known, Tom. hess: I think your color works. But I don’t think it’s as good as painting. smith: I didn’t say that it was that. You are speaking of a hypothetical thing and I was talking about a hypothetical future. hess: Do you think painting is the dominant mode? I suppose you do. smith: I think the reaction and response of the general public and the historians are all built on painting. . . . Nine out of ten people talking about art mean painting and they say painting. If they don’t, they say sculpture and painting.

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hess: That’s been true, I would say, since the seventeenth century. smith: Practically since the Renaissance. hess: Michelangelo, figures like that, and after that sculpture is, despite Rodin, upset by architecture. smith: That is true, and sculpture was kind of commercialized. It was commissioned before it was made. Now in the twentieth century sculpture has departed. Well, maybe earlier than that, but the liberation was more complete in the twentieth century. hess: In the seventeenth century or the late sixteenth, the painter and the sculptor are living in the same kind of stable together, so there is no real social distinction. They are both paid help. . . . smith: Tom, sculpture has been a whore for many ages. Because it was expensive, it had to be a commissioned thing. Sculpture was not sculpture until it was cast in bronze. Before it was cast in bronze, the man who paid for it had certain reservations and designations as to subject matter. Sculptors in the Renaissance made very little sculpture on their own. hess: . . . your generation of sculptors comes out of painting like a flower comes out of the ground. smith: We come out of Cubism. hess: And the great thing is that Picasso and Matisse— smith: They are also some of the people who made some of their greatest inventions through their concept of sculpture. But another thing in the whole concept of sculpture is that it is a reproductive process. You can see Rodins all over the U.S. You can see Picassos all over the U.S. You don’t have to travel to see them. You travel to the Modern Museum to see the Three Musicians and Demoiselles d’Avignon because they are great paintings. But to see a Cubist head, made two years after that, which is a real piece of work—it’s all over the goddamned world. And now Picasso turns them over and lets them be cast. They become common denominators and that reduces the interest. You don’t even know how good Modigliani was because Modigliani’s few stone carvings are now cast in cast stone. The world is full of reproductions of sculpture. That is one of the defiling things about it. No, it’s only good when it comes from the eye and the hand of the artist. Otherwise it’s reproduction. hess: You have beautiful bronzes cast by Jimmy Rosati cast seven times and they are good. He supervises them and they are— smith: That’s different than what I am talking about. Museums, dealers make casts of the heads I’m talking about. Not in the case of Picasso, but with Modigliani. Do you think Daumier made bronze castings? Daumier never had enough money to have a bronze made.

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hess: I don’t feel that this is a big issue. smith: Well, this is an important issue. I think this is an artifact issue. When you see sculptures by Daumier and sculptures by Gauguin, you see mostly artifacts. Who owns the original little terracotta or the original little plaster? You see reproductions of them and they are artifacts. Why don’t you recast all the great sculptures in the world and put one in every museum? Why don’t you make bronze from marbles? hess: That’s what the Romans did. smith: The Romans did some, mostly now dealers do it. hess: I think one of the things that has handicapped sculpture. . . . smith: One of the handicaps is . . . the fakes and the reproductions. hess: Also the handcraft has been handicapped . . . another beaten copper flying horse. . . . and merry go round horses. smith: You know what’s funny. What knocked the shit out of merry go round horses was the duplications of the classic. I saw sitting around in the mountains, duplication of merry go round horses for kids on springs. You buy them out of mail order catalogues. They are just about as pretty as the old merry go round horses. . . . I would like to have a few boys around the house, too. I love devotedly my girls, but I sure would like a few boys. I haven’t met any woman I’d like to have any boys with, though. hess: How come you and Dorothy [Dehner] never had. . . . smith: Well, that was physiological. hess: She’s a very nice sculptress. smith: She’s a very noble gal and . . . she’s a lady . . . We’re friends. Concepts, Tom. hess: Content—Clem, in his preface to you in the Philadelphia show, said he does not understand your content. . . . I don’t see why content has to be difficult.28 smith: Those Philadelphia pieces were all pretty much built on human physiognomy. In most cases there was human relationship there. hess: That would be the subject matter. smith: No, the subject matter was me and what I could make and invent. . . . I would say that most of those in the Voltri-Bolton series were personages.29 As such, a personage is built in a figure relationship. Not at all times, not all the time. There was no rule in them, but generally they were personages. I made one in that Voltri series which is a personage. I started on a lot of others but I didn’t have half of them finished. My parts and wrenches, tongs—all sorts of things that I had conceived of in a personage relationship—I had about a ton of steel and I piled it up on the floor and put my shoes on top. And I said ship them back to me, and they did, and I made them after I got them back. Not immediately, because it took me time to find my

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alignment. It took about six months getting them here. They had to come by boat and then be shipped to Bolton. And then I had to pick them up and lay them out, and then think. Oh hell, I’m not done with them yet. There are parts up there not done yet, that I’m still working on. hess: Well, it seems a very traditional way of going about it, doesn’t it? smith: Tom, I don’t know what is traditional. hess: I mean, complementary. First of all, did you have to build yourself an environment in Italy? Not as an artist, since you came from Decatur to work as a painter. smith: The first sculpture I ever saw was Hiram Powers’s The Greek Slave, in the Smithsonian. hess: Then you came to New York and you became a painter. Tell me about the hard times—you had to make a living, so the next thing you know you dealt in metals, welding. Now, did you have to create your own environment? smith: No, I think it was a combination of Russian Constructivism, Cubism . . . without knowing what they meant. They came to me just by looking at magazines, without reading them. hess: Yes, but it must have been more complicated. smith: It’s very complicated. You don’t just accept things that aren’t natural to what your potential is. I had a potential to realize that. I would say that the particular change came one day on 57th Street. Jean Xceron said, “Why don’t you just make sculpture and not paint now,” after he opened the show at the Garland Gallery, which existed only for his opening and closed after that.30 Then I went to Europe in 1935 and ’36. After I had gone around Europe, I realized that whatever I did it had to be done here. This was when expatriatism was the thing to do. hess: Yeah, but the worst thing was American nationalism. You’re lucky you didn’t turn into Thomas Benton.31 smith: I didn’t have it in me. hess: As it turns out, chauvinism was a deadly poison. smith: I don’t know whether it was any worse than Social. . . . I mean, you had your choices of those two things. My first liking was for Cubism. I had a kind of innate liking for Audubon, as an early American artist . . . not that early because my first liking was for Cubism. The guy I studied with was Jan Matulka, at the League. That was one year or two years before Hofmann came. If I had been two years younger, I might have studied with Hofmann and then Harry Holtzman. . . .32 hess: . . . you’re not very involved with your welding technique are you? smith: I don’t think I make it a point. I tell you, once you’ve laid flat welds for eight cents a foot—you had to make 120 to 160 feet a night to make your wages—you’re not so impressed about welding. Three thousand other steel workers do the same

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thing you do. I mean that is a romantic kind of bullshit. Every garage mechanic does it. I never made a point about it. If it was written about it wasn’t my accent, somebody else’s. . . . hess: . . . art in the 1930s was socialist. smith: Wait a minute, I was studying abstract art a little bit before the thirties. hess: . . . given your orientation you became heir to a whole period of radical assumptions. smith: No, my radical assumptions were manifest before I ever went to art school. When I was a sophomore in high school, I wrote a thesis on Darwin’s Descent of Man. There were many things that because of my social position in the town were denied to me, so I took the opposite view. hess: You were a rebel. smith: Yes, Tom, the choice of abstract art . . . may not have been from the rebellious part but it was an attitude, my attitude about a whole lot of other problems. hess: So your pledge of allegiance to abstract art in the late twenties involved also an allegiance to a whole bundle of political, economical and emotional causes. smith: When I first came to New York [in 1926], I stayed at the Great Northern Hotel. I walked up the street on a Sunday night and came to Carnegie Hall. I had no idea what Carnegie Hall was. When I worked in the Studebaker factory in South Bend, I went to concerts—Skiba, Kirche, the Marmain Sisters, things like that, strictly provincial kind of things. There was a concert on, I think it was the New York Philharmonic, and Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite was being played that night. Well, I liked it right off. Nothing has ever surprised me since. So I went to the Art Students League, studied with Richard Lahey, which was more or less figure study, and the next year I studied painting with John Sloan, who was only radical in talk. We talked about cubes and things like that, but he didn’t explain anything about Cubism. . . . Then Sloan, and Glackens, and Shinn and Henri, they were kind of [the] Ash Can [group]. hess: They were around when you were there? smith: Yeah. But Sloan was teaching there and I heard about it and I developed prejudices against academic art through Sloan. And I developed a continued kind of revolt from Sloan but I wasn’t sure what the revolt was. hess: You thought it might be a social revolutionary idea. smith: It was just revolt against the given factors and that was leaning to my way of choice. . . . If I had been a natural conservative, I wouldn’t have accepted it. hess: Then you were dumped into the serious thirties. smith: Dumped into the thirties along with This Q uarter, Transition. I read the Surrealist issue of This Q uarter, published in 1932. It was a whole kind of literature rev-

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olution, the whole goddamned thing was revolution, and that’s what I stood for. I still believe in it. Not just those things then, I’m for it now, I think. I am for social revolution even ahead of communism as it exists or is shown to be now. Don’t forget Transition, the very early work of Joyce. . . . But I was a hick from Indiana. hess: Yeah, who has outgrown his status and assumes an artist’s role. smith: I was for the cause of art before all things else and I don’t know why. I’m not sure why, because when I lived in Decatur, Indiana, I didn’t know what an artist was and what he did. Maybe then I thought an artist was a guy who painted signs or made cartoons. It took a long time for me to find out who an artist was. I’m not so sure right now. The only thing is, I’m a little more knowing now, in that direction, than I was then. hess: Well, do you think that the assumption of a radical position had anything to do with the assumption of a radical stylistic position? smith: It might have had, because in those days Kandinsky and of course Constructivism were somewhat related to the Soviet Union. Not as it exists now—they were later to renounce that it had some relationship. hess: In the 1930s, when all those hotshots who read Marx were around, did you feel inferior to them? smith: It changed. It was never natural. hess: You never read Marx, did you? smith: I read Carl Schurz, Marx, Engels— hess: You never had an interest in the theoretical parts? smith: I had an interest in theoretical politics, but my reading may have been different than yours. I remember that in 1933, I read a book by an English socialist, R. Palm-Dutt,33 and it was his forecast of World War and the total demise of culture and civilization that made me want to go to Europe before it was totally demolished. . . . As it happens, I returned to the U.S. a few months before the Spanish revolution. I was in Italy long enough to see Mussolini’s efforts, to see the infiltration of German fascism in Greece. I was in Russia, England, France. As a matter of fact, I marched in the June celebration of Bastille Day in Paris and I remember meeting Louis Aragon there. I didn’t speak French; I think John Graham was the interpreter there. John Graham took me to see González—this was in 1935, after I had learned about González and after Xceron had told me about González aiding Picasso in his sculptures. But González had moved out to an outlying district next to an old automobile factory, where he had a studio. I never got to meet him. But I’d known González’s work before; Graham had lived in Bolton Landing. He had a place there. hess: Well, Graham had this nutty revolutionary policy about abstract art. smith: Yes, it’s true—much of my world I got from Graham later, but it wasn’t until after I studied with Matulka and already had a kind of conviction about

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abstract Cubism and Constructivism and so forth. Graham also was kind of a catalyst to Bill [de Kooning]. hess: Well, how do you reconcile the problem of the radical artist who is working for revolution and privately for his own satisfaction? smith: Both of us are against the rest of the world. I probably, ideologically, hope that I’m against the rest of the world until I die. hess: But your work is adaptable to capitalistic enterprise. smith: So was Shakespeare. hess: Ideologically, you are an optimist. smith: . . . yeah, and ideologically I’m working my ability to the greatest possible end that I can make for something or for some society. hess: I still would like to talk about some of the crises in modern art. smith: Balls. I’ve been through many crises. I can’t do other people’s work for them and they can’t help me. I work my own way. hess: You don’t think that the constant of modern art is the crisis of Western Civilization? smith: I am exactly neutral on that subject. I’ve been my own survival and have been pushing my own limitations to farther-out borders. hess: Have you ever felt in peril in terms of your own survival? smith: Yeah. Oh, I have so many ideas; I’m not dry. I’m living ten years beyond my time. hess: I mean physically. smith: Physically, I’m scared something is going to happen. That I’m not going to have enough to eat. hess: Really? smith: In the back of the impelling, mixed in, the impelling forces of my nature. Once you’ve lived through a Depression, Thomas, I don’t think you outgrow it. hess: . . . but your father had money and you were raised— smith: My father was a working man. hess: You were raised with food. So there was no problem. smith: I was raised with food, but I came from pioneer people—grandmothers and grandfathers, great-grandmother, my great-great grandmother. All of those people I talked to were early settlers. Salt and flour and sugar, things like that, they were deprived of for periods of time. I never got over that because I came directly from pioneer people that were scared about survival and I came sort of into consciousness in a Depression. hess: To you, waste is a sin.

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smith: Right! I don’t like to throw away bread, or to throw away food. hess: You told me back somewhere that this is was a great disadvantage to you—this Protestant background. smith: It is a disadvantage. There’s no—in art or creativeness—no advantage for anything because any artist uses what he’s got and builds with it. hess: I mean in terms of your life, in which you said you felt handicapped by your background. smith: . . . well, it was a hell of a background, but you’ve got to make it with what you’ve got. There are no rights and wrongs. The more you meet a challenge, the more your potential may become. The one rule is that there may be no rules! The only thing you are accountable for is what you do and what you make with it and the good things sometimes are a hazard and the bad things attributes. It’s the person and the individual and what they do with themselves. I think the minute I see a rule or a direction or a method or an introduction to success in some direction, I’m quick to leave it or I desire to leave it. hess: It’s a marvelous trait in an artist, but it must be an unsatisfactory way to work. smith: The idea of satisfaction is a little like the idea of happiness. It’s the great American illusion. hess: . . . you always want to fail, in a sense? smith: Yeah, because that’s where the greatest challenge is. . . . I said that I had the concept of a painter. I also said contributions to sculpture in the twentieth century were predominantly introduced by painters. The concepts of paintings have been partly because painters always painted new pictures they never made. Sculptors have always been wasting their time making copies of their own sculptures, not only copies for reproductions but copies like ten of one kind of something. Giacometti wants to make ten. . . . All right. I always did my own casting and finishing. hess:. . . . well, when you’re dead they are going to make all sorts of casts. smith: My daughters won’t make them. I have given explicit instructions to my daughters not to make them. Tom, you’ll be around. You could write an editorial that would say so, that I told you, that I had told them. You’d get them raked over the coals, if they marry bums who need money, and they are forced into it. You have my privilege to remind them. It’s not their right to do that. They are destroying part of me when they do what. hess: . . . you talk about guilt, you’re uncritical in terms of work. You don’t destroy much work, do you? smith: Not too much, no. It comes out and there it is. I’m a human being and I’m not aiming for perfection and I’m part of it. And what I kind of think is found, what I think is origin, another part doesn’t have. I say the hell with it.

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hess: Adolph distinguishes between good and bad. He absolutely distinguishes between his good and his bad work. I think it shows intellectual rigor. smith: All right, I don’t have that. I don’t think so. If I think it’s bad I cut it up or withdraw it, or don’t even show it. I said there have to be origins in it. Not that it has to be totally perfect. . . . There are things I’ve made that look ugly, you know, and I’ve made better. I destroy some. I told you I made 130 drawings this year on canvas. For Christ’s sake, there is bad drawing in a lot of them. Along with bad drawing, there is fluency and a kind of freedom to take place in order for me to get what I have got. . . it’s human but I think perfection is a false idea. I think perfection is only a thing that’s inflicted on artists. . . . I’m not a perfect person, and on the other hand neither is Picasso. When somebody shows me a picture that’s not up to Picasso’s standard, it’s still got a brilliance in it. The innate talent of man is in it. And sometimes I like the imperfect things better than the perfect things. hess: Do you feel yourself two different people, one the artist at work and one who— smith: That’s kind of a new question. I hadn’t thought of it just that way. I consider myself one person. I have only one identity. hess: Well, consider yourself two people. One is the artist. The other comes in and says, “Come on, David Smith, we’re going to destroy that one.” And the first one says, “Leave it.” smith: It depends. I draw my own lines, Tom. hess: Stepping back from working and looking, which must be different. smith: The looking is never while the work is being done. The looking comes on another day. With another dawn, and then mostly I say, “Well, so it’s not as good as some of the others.” But then a human being doesn’t do his best at all times. So I let it ride. hess: If I understand you, in the actual process. smith: We are talking about two different tangents here, about drawings I make momentarily and in a sculpture there is a period of time involved, where you have a much longer judgment on it. I did twenty-six in thirty days [in Voltri]. None of them bad. I’ll stand judgment. hess: My point there was that it was a pretty fast process. smith: Don’t forget all I had to do was work. I had a chauffeur call for me in the morning at 6:30 and I had the chauffeur call for me at 6:30 at night. I worked full days, seven days a week. I worked so fast that I couldn’t think about it. hess: You go against your instincts. That’s standard operating procedure. smith: I think all artists work that way. I’ll cut out favorite passages, those are the ones I cut off. And if you think a little goes over there, make it more severe. I’m always contradicting the known factors. That’s a conscious attitude that I try to develop.

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hess: And that’s fighting a style, isn’t it? smith: I would say so. A fight against my own style, my own yes. hess: Reaching a kind of reality. smith: I wait to know what I don’t know, not what I know. hess: The trouble with this kind of discussion is that I cast myself in the role of a heavy. smith: . . . most artists only have themselves to face, contrary to what John Canaday once said about artists.34 There is a lot of fakery in the world. . . . I’ll still be making work after the newspaper critics have gone and so I stand on my work, I don’t stand on criticism. Edward Alden Jewell, when he was writing, said something about my work: “I see no earthly reason for its existence.”35 OK, it’s his point of view. But obviously I saw an earthly reason from mine and it didn’t dismay me at all. hess: This is the area I was trying to get away from, the public attitude of the artists. The newspapers, The New York Times, The Herald Tribune. smith: Which I read daily. The Times two or three times weekly. . . . . I have guests upon occasion, but not near enough and there is no woman at this particular point in my life that I love and adore. Maybe I’m kind of worn out on the response, I don’t know. Maybe . . . I don’t have the price to pay what it takes to have it. . . . I’m not sure I have loved. . . . hess: Have you done any terra cotta stuff? smith: I’ve made about forty or fifty . . . I draw directly from the model . . . some of them come out looking awful Greek, real pretty.36 Now . . . each one unique, drawn from life, and very often there is a change. hess: What are you going to do with all your plates? smith: Be fucked if I know what I’m going to do. How are you going to give that to your daughters? hess: . . . God will say someday, Smith, you are ninety-seven years old. Your time has come. smith: I’m not a goddam bit afraid of God. I’m more afraid of the IRS coming around and they say, “You deduct all the cost of this material and we want to get a value on it and we want to tax it,” or something or other. . . . I just sent my tax in two days ago. You know, I had to borrow money from the bank to get it. I own stock in the bank, but not very much. Most of the stock I own I already have put in trust for my daughters. hess: The bank must be delighted to lend you money. . . . There’s a spread in Life magazine. smith: . . . and Time, and being on television one morning for NBC.37 I’m in debt, besides the loans I owe the bank. I’m in debt $67,000 to a dealer. If I want to walk

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out on that dealer, I may have to give money back to him. . . . I know that if I’m too deep in debt to any dealer that I can give him cash or pull out. . . . hess: How did you live? You must have had nothing for years. . . . You never sold. smith: Well, in the early days I was never offered anything. . . . I told you I was born of Calvinist puritanical stock. I sell retail, I don’t sell wholesale. . . . I teach, I lecture, I serve on juries, I work in factories, I do any goddamn thing I have to do. hess: But you don’t like your old work very much. smith: Well, I don’t sell it. hess: But you keep it in the basement. smith: Well, all right, but it is just stored. hess: The new work is beautifully displayed outdoors. smith: That’s because the new work is too big to put in the basement. hess: Yeah, but you don’t have the old work around the house. smith: I do so. In the kitchen I have three pictures from 1932. hess: . . . you have all that beautiful work in the basement. smith: They are not supposed to go outdoors, those early ones. Why do you think I started this whole series of Cubis? There are twenty Cubis all made out of stainless steel because I wanted outdoor work, and I had no room to store them inside. I like outdoor sculpture and the most practical thing for outdoor sculpture is to make them out of stainless steel. I made them and I polished them in such a way that on a dull day they take on the dull blue color of the sky and in the late afternoon sun the glow—golden like the rays, the colors of nature—comes in, and in a particular sense I have utilized atmosphere in a reflective way on the surfaces. They are colored by sky and surroundings, the green or blue of water. Some are down by the water and some are with mountain greenery. They are designed for outdoors. They are not designed for Philip Johnson’s building. Philip Johnson doesn’t need me and I don’t need him. . . . Those boys in England dug it right away. . . . someone who wrote a review in an English magazine said something about the one I had there in the park.38 That it changes according to clouds, sky and the way the sun shines and so forth. I was conscious of my needs and what my problem was. I’ve got the basement all stacked full. I can fill three warehouses and still not have enough room to put my work in. The white thing you were talking about with the circles on it. It was supposed to be painted. I just haven’t gotten to it yet. hess: What’s the idea in terms of sculpture? You have a very simple base. smith: And then I have a floor and then most of the action takes place on the first floor. hess: By action, you mean relationship. smith: Yeah, the relationship usually above the first floor. Oh, Primo Piano was a secondary thought. It wasn’t an origin. It was an apropos title. . . . My Italian is quite limited. I can’t say “under the table, over the table, go through the door.”

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hess: . . . the heart of the idea is this vertical horizontal empty space. Horizontal action. . . . Getting something up. I mean to get the action up above your head. smith: Yeah. hess: . . . how did the idea of this vertical horizontal empty space . . . come up? smith: That is the main floor where the concierge and the desk clerk are. . . . Most of the action is on the second floor. hess: What was your idea to begin with? smith: I didn’t have it in thought before I started it. . . . hess: . . . Tell me about— smith: The Wagons? . . . I’ve got three on wheels practically done. Two are done, the third Wagon is ready to roll out.39 I need some more linear . . . the segments are isolated and . . . it’s kind of drawn. Forged objects . . . drawn and it’s broad—it’s long, not too high. It’s not a heavy one. It’s kind of an iron chariot on four wheels, with open linear elements. Each section of drawing is totally unrelated, and they don’t fall together. They just sit there, broken. hess: So the chariot becomes a kind of cubical field. smith: Longitudinal field. hess: . . . and you got the idea of . . . smith: Actually I bought these wheels from a guy who was making two cannons for me, cannons that shoot. This one cannon I got is a Revolutionary War cannon, and you know the cans that you get frozen orange juice, lemonade and stuff—it shoots those cans. I save all those cans and fill them with cement and then I shoot them. hess: Fire them? smith: Fire them with black powder. You load them, you jam wet newspaper down from the muzzle, then you put a fuse to the touch hole and you shoot this loaded orange juice can. hess: . . . how far does it go? smith: Oh, you can shoot it a mile with three ounces, which will shoot it 700 to 1,000 feet. I got a bronze cannon which I put the girls’ names on. hess: One of those yacht signal things that start the races? smith: Only it’s bigger than that. This was one that was found in the lake. It was originally cast in Scotland. It was brought over during the French and Indian Wars and when they pulled up to dock they found seven old cannons shoved in underneath to hold up the railway carriage that carried boats out in the lake. One of them was in pretty good shape. A friend of mine had his brother make a pattern of it and I pasted strawberry, maple, chestnut leaves on it and cut out the girls’ names and pasted them on the cannon before he cast it for me. I had a few hundred pounds of pig bronze lying around, so they made me a bronze cannon, and bronze cannon wheels. I used on this last wagon three of the bronze wheels that are made 407

for cannons of this size and this time. It’s an iron sculpture and has bronze wheels on it. hess: So you have this horizontal cubical space with drawings on it. smith: Big forgings. I drew to order a number of forgings. About forty-five forgings that I sent to Pittsburgh at the American Steel Forge and the guy I know who owns the place forged them for me. hess: Out of steel? smith: Yes. hess: It becomes a kind of classical cart. smith: Yes. So you can pull them around and set them out in the field. They are too heavy for people to handle so I put wheels on them. Same as I did in Italy. And it follows through on the Italian theme with wheels on it. Of course I made wheels before that. I use wheels a lot. But the wheel idea, I presume, as far as I know in my consciousness, comes from ancient Hindu temples. hess: Those spheres of life? smith: They cut them out of stone and put them on the temples. It simulates the processional where they carry copies of temples down the streets on wagons with wheels. Later on, when they built temples, they cut the wheels right out of stone. And that always tickled me you know, carved stone wheels. . . . The wheel is a fascinating idea. What tickles me the most was way back, when I used to live in New York, I went to the Museum of Science and Industry in Rockefeller Center, where they had square wheels. Square wheels meshed and it is possible to run square wheels. hess: They conk. smith: Yeah. Two of them will do it. They’ll run with complete and accurate revolutions for particular purposes. hess: . . . Tell me about the two-dimensional sculpture. I remember a piece years ago, there was a pedestal—beautiful steel—and there was a plane that was divided into three sections. And on those sections there were series of drawn forms. smith: That was The Letter 40 that relates to the Little Red Hen that scratched . . . it was about three-quarters of the way through Finnegans Wake—the little red hen that scratched the letter out . . . and that’s the letter. hess: A steel letter? smith: There are all kinds of unGreek Greek letters . . . they are Greek because Greek is something you don’t understand. . . . And the letter says, “You sent for me.” Something like a very simple little cryptic message . . . sent for me. All letters say you sent for me as far as I’m concerned. hess: You have a happy life.

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smith: Well, some of them are bills, Tom, but I. . . . hess: And you have a whole series of sculptures involving H’s and Y’s. In fact, you’ve been involved with letters . . . Greek letters. smith: Only there are no H’s or Y’s in the Greek alphabet. . . . That’s why it’s Greek. . . . My Y’s are tridents. The lower case H is like a Russian H only it’s not H. Remember those medallions I made? I started them in 1937 and went to 1939, 1940. All the Greek lettering on those was made for me. It’s all popular Greek. It’s written in the same kind of language as Rizospastis. You know Rizospastis? It’s a communist newspaper in Athens. Xceron used to be a writer on the square with a sign up over the building. Anyhow, when I wanted to say cookies or death by bacteria, he wrote it for me in popular language. I use his writing. He is having a show at the Guggenheim. . . . Xceron filled me in on certain histories. John Graham also told Gorky and de Kooning what was in Paris. I remember John Graham came back and he was talking about the edge of paint. You know that was a big thing. I’ve seen Gorky paint a picture over until it was six feet deep trying to get the ridge edge of paint. Gorky was a great and gifted man. But he never freed himself from his inhibitions and his foreign pretentions. hess: You did some big linear sculptures, which were not letters. smith: Yeah. Hudson River Landscape, Australia. Australia I sold to Bill Rubin before I went with Marlborough.41 hess: There were so many ideas . . . it was a matter of writing. smith: Tom, I’d say it was a matter of drawing. hess: You think of drawing in terms of writing? smith: Some drawing is. I don’t differentiate between writing and drawing. Not since I read that part of Joyce. . . . The little hen scratched up a secret message. hess: “I sent for you.” smith: “You sent for me”—that’s different. I said that’s what the secret letter said. I don’t think anybody knows what the secret letter said. hess: In the big towers— smith: They are just rising from the earth. Ideological. hess: They are also drawings pulled up. smith: Yeah, and it’s also a challenge in engineering to make them 100 feet high. But mine don’t perform quite correctly. Mine don’t look like they’ll stand up. They aren’t any different than light towers. They don’t look like they’ll make it. Because I make them aesthetically, first. Once in a while I like to throw in a constructive line for strength. I try to make the strength incorporated in the aesthetics. hess: The only problem that’s left is, why color? smith: I mean, this is a foreign kind of introduction but why not?

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hess: Yeah, but you have this beautiful material. smith: Oh balls! hess: I mean it really is . . . steel and bronze . . . smith: I make them color. They are just part of the steel so they have to be protected so if you have to protect them with a paint coat make it color. Color is a challenge. Sometimes you deny it. You deny the steel in the structure. And sometimes you make it look, with all its force, power, in whatever shape it is. No rules. hess: You can go much further, I suppose. But Jesus Christ, I don’t know how. smith: Well, if you want to contradict me, that’s all right with me, Mr. William Rubin. . . . You want to stay with the eminent authority Mr. Greenberg? That color doesn’t function, Mr. Rubin, after two days ago saying, “yep, it’s working”?   . . . You know I tell you who I am and what I stand for. I have no allegiance, but I sure stand and I know what the challenge is and I’m challenging everything and everybody and I think that is what every artist has to do. The minute you show a work, out on the scene, you challenge every other artist and that’s a real big order. . . . We don’t have the introduction that French artists have, foreign artists have. We’re challenging the world. You’re not just a nice guy, just a nice New Yorker or American. You’re not a Sunday painter, you’re not an amateur—you’re challenging the entire world. I’m gonna work to the best of my ability to the day I die, challenging what’s given to me. hess: . . . You know, David, fifteen years ago you were working as hard as you are now and you weren’t challenging anybody; you were working. smith: . . . By 1950, I knew what it was all about. Notes 1.  Wagon II, dated April 16, 1964 (K639). 2.  The English sculptor Lynn Chadwick. 3.  David Smith, a traveling exhibition organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, November 1961–March 1963, included Agricola Head (K17), Chain Head (K18), and Saw Head (K21). 4.  “González: First Master of the Torch,” Art News (February 1956): 34–37, 64–65; see “González,” p. 259. 5.  VB XXIII, 1963 (K607). 6.  Untitled (Study for Agricola I), 1951 (K265). 7.  See Medals for Dishonor, p. 46. 8.  The numbers “4–8-4” refer to a class of steam locomotives. 9.  Romany Marie’s, the Greenwich Village artists’ café. 10.  Cockfight, 1945 (K173), and Cockfight-Variation, 1945 (K174); both were purchased in 1946. 11.  Wagon I, 1963–64 (K638). 12.  K552 and K553, as well as Primo Piano III (K554), were made in 1962. 13.  David Smith, Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York City, October–November 1964. 14.  Tower I, 1963 (K625). 15.  WQXR was a classical music radio station then owned by the New York Times.

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16.  “David Smith Makes a Sculpture: Cathedral,” Art News 50 (September 1951); see “Notes for Elaine de Kooning,” p. 127. 17.  Volton XX, 1963 (K604). 18.  Smith and Ruggles had received Brandeis University’s Creative Arts Award in March 1964, in recognition of the enduring excellence of their artistic achievements. 19.  The sculpture 2 Circle IV, 1962 (K551). 20.  Cubi IX, 1961 (K657), Cubi I, 1963 (K649), and Cubi XIV, 1963 (K662), were shown at Documenta III, in Kassel, Germany, June–October 1964. 21.  Zig VIII, 1964 (K641). 22.  Tower I, 1963 (K625). 23.  Primo Piano I, 1962 (K552). 24.  David Smith: Recent Sculpture, Otto Gerson Gallery, New York City, October 1961, included Circles and Arcs, 1961 (K509), HIREBECCA, 1961 (K516), and Circles Intercepted, 1961 (K510). 25.  The sculpture 17 h’s, 1950 (K263). See “A Protest Against Vandalism,” p. 338. 26.  John Chamberlain gained wide attention in the 1960s for his abstract sculptures made from commercially painted, discarded automobile parts and other industrially fabricated components. 27.  William Rubin was an art historian and critic who taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York; in 1967 he joined the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, as a curator, later becoming chief curator and director of the museum’s department of painting and sculpture. In the early 1960s, he purchased Australia, 1951 (K245), from Smith as an intended gift to MoMA; the sculpture entered the museum’s collection in 1968. 28.  David Smith: Sculpture and Drawings, presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, February–March 1964, included sixteen sculptures from Smith’s 1962–63 Voltri-Bolton series. Clement Greenberg wrote the foreword to the exhibition catalogue. 29.  The Voltri-Bolton series numbered twenty-five sculptures (K585–K609). 30.  See “Autobiographical Notes,” p. 98. 31.  Thomas Hart Benton, a painter and muralist and one of the leaders of the American regionalist art movement in the 1930s and 1940s. 32.  Hans Hofmann was a German-born abstract painter whose teachings at the Art Students League in New York City and at his own school in New York City and Provincetown, Massachusetts, exerted a formative influence on many of the artists associated with abstract expressionism. Holtzman, whose abstract paintings were deeply indebted to the work of Piet Mondrian, helped found the American Abstract Artists group in 1937. 33.  Fascism and Social Revolution (New York: International Publishers, [1934]). 34.  John Canaday was an art historian and art critic for the New York Times from 1959 to 1974. 35.  Regarding Jewell’s quote, see “Autobiographical Notes,” note 11, p. 107. 36.  In May 1964, Smith worked at Bennington Potters, in Vermont, creating a series of unique, hand-painted glazed and fired stoneware plates depicting female nudes. 37.  “David Smith’s Steel Goliaths,” Life 54 (July 20, 1962); “A Town Full of Squares,” Time 80 (August 24, 1962). No television appearance by Smith on NBC has been identified; the transcriber may have misheard “WNDT,” and Smith was looking ahead to his televised interview with Frank O’Hara (see “Interview by Frank O’Hara,” p. 422). 38.  Cubi IX, 1961 (K657), was exhibited in the summer of 1963 in Sculpture in the Open Air: Exhibition of Contemporary British and American Works, organized by the London County Council, Battersea Park. 39.  Wagon III, 1964 (K640). 40.  In 1950 (K232). 41.  (K257) and (K245), both dated 1951.

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THE SUBJECT IS ME c . 196 4

The subject is me the hero is eye function the image doesn’t lead the morality is above the word, or below but never with.

Handwritten, c. 1964, on a sheet of Hotel Corporation of America notepad paper; HCA owned the Plaza Hotel, where Smith often stayed in the 1960s when he visited New York City. The second line may allude to Smith’s painted steel sculpture The Hero (Eyehead of a Hero), 1951–52 (K256).

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I N T E R V I E W B Y M A R I A N H O R O S KO 196 4

horosko: Mr. Smith, will you tell us how many pieces that you have here at the Marlborough-Gerson Gallery to show? smith: About twenty-nine pieces. But of the big stainless pieces we only have the small ones, which must come under ten feet—which is somewhat the height of the ceiling. Even some of those sort of push the ceiling. But the others were so big that we couldn’t even stand them up. But even so, the ten form a nice unit. horosko: But there are more than ten here. I believe that there are about twenty-nine? smith: Well, there are twenty-nine works here. But I was speaking about the stainless ones that are sort of stacked out in a row there—there are twenty-two in that series.1 If we could have gotten them all in, we would have put twenty-two in that group.2 horosko: That’s your Cubi series? Is that what you call it? smith: Yes, Cubi. horosko: And what are some of the other pieces that are here. What do you call those? smith: There are three big pieces, they’re painted.3 Each one weighs over a ton— somewhere around a ton and a half—I have no way of checking their weights. But those are painted and that is absolutely the maximum for hoisting and for getting in through the window. horosko: Yes, would you tell us how it all arrived? smith: Most all of these were too much for the elevators. They had to come up the front of the building. horosko: We’re here on the sixth floor, I should say. smith: Yes. Well, it was quite a time getting them up. Of course, I had nothing to do with it. Santini’s did all the rigging. They have real pro movers and riggers and shifters, and they get it all in.

Interview by Marian Horosko, October 25, 1964, for the radio program “Profiles,” WNCN-FM. This publication is edited from an audiotape and transcript in the artist’s archives. Following a brief overview of Smith’s career (omitted here), Horosko noted that the interview was being conducted at Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, on West 57th Street, New York City, where an exhibition of his recent sculptures had opened on October 15.

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21. David Smith watching as Zig VIII, 1964, is hoisted through the window of Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York City.

horosko: I would have loved to see your sculpture come down Madison Avenue on the big trucks and then be hoisted up. That must have been quite a sight. smith: The trucks are covered but they have to take them out of the covered trucks, but they did all go up—thirteen, at least, went up the front of the building and in through the window. horosko: For the most part, your sculpture is made, or at least as you conceive it, probably, to be shown outdoors. Is that not true? smith: Not necessarily. But the big stainless ones and the ones I call Zigs—the ones that weigh a ton and a half or so—those are meant to be outdoors. They’re certainly not for anybody’s apartment. They’re a little high and the Zigs are wide and heavy; they would probably go through the floor. And there are wheels built on them so they can be shifted. But I build nothing for anybody to use, in any particular sense. I build as big as I can afford, and I build as good as I can think, and I have left you all. I have worked so long that I don’t belong to anybody. And so many years I have worked and had no audience, or nobody to buy, that I certainly am not going to change and start working for an audience. The audience comes to the artist, rather than the artist goes to the audience. horosko: But it still represents a physical problem if we want to own one of your sculptures. We’ve got to think of how to place it and where to put it, and it is a big piece. All of your things are big pieces. smith: It’s all right. They work very well out of doors. There is a lot of out of doors in the world, though you may not see it living in New York—you may forget that there is an outside world. But they can sit in Central Park or they can sit in anybody’s park, and there’s certainly a lot more open land one mile out of town. horosko: And what about the relationship of the outdoors and the atmosphere to your sculpture? I would imagine you like that? smith: I don’t think of that. I am part of that and I live outdoors and I live in open country but that doesn’t occur in my work, I don’t think. It’s so much my life and my atmosphere and where I work, that I don’t think it has any immediate repetition in the work. horosko: You live in a place called Bolton, is that correct? smith: Bolton Landing. horosko: In New York? smith: It’s a hamlet on Lake George and it’s not even an incorporated village. There are six hundred or seven hundred people there, most of the year around. In the summer it’s a tourist resort and nobody knows how many thousands are there then. horosko: Tell us about the objects you use, the so-called “found” objects that are part of your constructions—sculptures, excuse me. smith: Well, “constructions” is all right. I don’t think there’s very much found work in this exhibition. It occurred earlier, and in many of my works it occurs upon 415

occasion. In this particular group, there is not very much found work. In a series I have called Menand (M-e-n-a-n-d)—4 horosko: Yes, I looked it up and I couldn’t find out what it meant. Does it have a real meaning? smith: Oh, well, you didn’t—where did you look? horosko: Just in a dictionary. smith: Oh, well, you have to use a map. It’s a little village north of Albany, on the Hudson River. That’s where I bought the steel. Menands is a little manufacturing suburb of Albany—Albany and Troy—and there are steel mills there and manufacturing, and I just happened to buy the steel there. And somehow the only association I have with the objective world in those sculptures is because I bought the steel in Menands. They are not heads or people or—they’re constructions—but they’re constructed with steel cut in sort of wedge squares, and different geometric shapes. And they’re solid and the steel is maybe 2 ½ inches, 3 inches, 1 inch, 1 ½ inches thick. And all the parts of them are solid, contrary to the big stainless steel Cubis which are made—they’re rather cubic, too, but they’re hollow. Each of those cubes—they’re not truly cubes and they’re not perfect cubes, they just have the same amount of sides—but they take many other forms in the stretching of the stainless steel. Those are all hollow and all made, and then assembled. But the small ones that are only about two feet high, that may weigh seventy-five pounds or so, are made out of solid steel. Those I just call Menands for want of a better name. Two years ago I made some works that were called Albany I, II, III, IV, V, and so forth. That was just because the steel came from Albany. There was no tangible, visual relationship to the concept of that work; it was abstract. The only tangible was the fact that I bought the steel in Albany. Now the same steel can come from Syracuse or Buffalo, and it probably was made in Pittsburgh or McKees Rocks or some place outside of Pittsburgh or Chicago, but that’s just where I happened to buy it. And that’s the only relationship I have with it, in a descriptive way. horosko: Is there anything in your past or your childhood that relates particularly to steel or railroads and wheels? Is that why you have such a romantic feeling for them? Is that why you use them? smith: I didn’t know it was romantic. I think it’s a matter of atmospheric environment. I’ve worked in steel factories, and as a kid in Indiana the most fascinating things in my whole world were railroad engines and trains—and also the things that I was most warned to stay away from. So consequently I used to hop freights and run on the top of the boxcars the same as the brakemen did, whenever I could get away with it. But I’ve always liked them. horosko: But it’s a problem to handle these big heavy things. How do you manage that? smith: It’s no problem at all.

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horosko: Of course you’re a big man; I should describe you— smith: Oh, no, I’m a union man; I don’t lift over thirty pounds. I use electric hoists or whatever is necessary to handle it. All things have the equipment needed to lift them. The actual individual physical labor is not so great. I mean, lifting is not the problem in a locomotive factory. You have equipment and machines to move things that are over human nature to lift. Union rules control those things now. Both the company and the rules control those. You know there are no Hercules in the C.I.O., we’re all just human beings. horosko: But from the standpoint of an artist, you do have to experiment, you do have to move things around—do you do sketches first, or drawings? Do you know pretty well what you want to do? smith: No, I don’t. That’s why I like it. I use an electric chain hoist to put things in position, and I have two men that work for me. Between the three of us, we lift things and put them around and place them when they’re too heavy or when they can’t be used on a chain hoist. I have several electric chain hoists. I believe in them very much. I don’t do too much of the lifting. horosko: Do you like your work to be seen at a distance—from three hundred or four hundred feet or one hundred feet? Or do you want people to come up close? Are you a sculptor who likes people to touch his work? smith: This idea of touching is another illusion about sculpture. I think sculpture, along with any art, is strictly a visual response. It’s interesting to have blind people touch because that is their only contact with it. But the touching, as far as I’m concerned, was a matter of physical labor on my part. And I don’t touch; I touch with the eye. I think the sensitivity mostly is from the eye. You touch girls, but you look at sculpture. horosko: There’s no sensual enjoyment then, you think, from going up to a sculpture and touching it, for anyone but the artist who is making it? smith: Go up and pat the backside of one of my stainless steel sculptures and see what sensual enjoyment you get out of it. It’s just a big hunk of steel! You could get more fun patting the door or the fender of an automobile than you could on that sculpture. horosko: What about painting the things, as you do? smith: Well, painting is color. I evolved in sculpture as a painter and I’ve always painted sculpture as long as I’ve made it. I think that maybe these three, in this show, have come closer to getting a color relationship to the form which is different than if the form was alone, or different than if the color was in a picture. I’ve come closer to arriving at the proper relationship between the two things, recently, than I ever have before, I think. horosko: You were a painter, were you not, Mr. Smith?

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smith: I was originally a painter. And I have no particular reason for it. I guess it’s just a carryover from early appreciation of color, and color is a very—well, it is a thing that never is out of my mind. It’s part of the world. horosko: You use very bright colors when you paint your constructions. smith: I try to use rough colors, colors whose association does not have a previous acceptance. I try to use colors that somehow are different. Oh, it would be very easy to paint a sculpture one color. It you want a red sculpture or a black sculpture, that’s very easy, that’s very nice. Or to use soft colors or to use monochromes—the balance would be much easier because you balance on a known history. But I think it is more difficult to use raw colors. horosko: Are you going to be doing this more and more in the future? Will you be painting your sculptures more, do you think? smith: I will always paint, but those painted sculptures are concurrent with the stainless steel sculptures, with the Menands, which are the heavy, small-block steel ones. And then there are bronzes in this group, too, which all run along with the big ones.5 Sometimes I work on the bronze things at night, by myself. And when I need help on the big ones and my men are there in the daytime, I work on the big ones. Nights, Saturdays, and Sundays, I work on the small bronzes, as sort of relaxation, and because it is an untiring thing. Sometimes the big work is somewhat tiring—you get a little tired at the end of the day. And I do the others as relief, the same as I paint at night, too. horosko: It sounds like a day of continual work. You are all alone most of the time? You work all alone? You live alone? smith: I live alone. In the evenings I often have models in and I paint models, I make drawings. horosko: But it is all work, all day, isn’t it, for you? smith: Well, who doesn’t? Doesn’t everybody? horosko: Yes, I guess. smith: And what else have I got to do? In my village, you go downtown at night—at eleven o’clock at night, I go down and take mail to go out on the seven o’clock mail in the morning—and there are only two bright lights in town. Even the saloons have closed up. There are two wet wash laundries—two coin laundries—whose lights are still on. There’s not another damn thing open in town. horosko: Do you miss other artists, talking to them? People? Contact with people? Is that the way you want it, David Smith? smith: Well I don’t miss other artists. I can come to town [New York City] and see other artists. But, as I told you, if there are only two wet washes in town, there sure as hell aren’t any dancing girls around. horosko: Now getting back to the 1930s and ’40s, you were saying a few minutes ago that you don’t do your work for people, that you have lost contact with people to a 418

great extent, and your sculptures are not meant for people to buy and take home. Certainly they are in private collections all over the world and people want them, now. But there was a portion of the wonderful catalogue here at the MarlboroughGerson Gallery about you that I remember. It mentioned a time when you used to take things under your arm on the subway and show them at various galleries and used to talk to other artists and you used to work for the approval of other artists. Now, how has that all changed? smith: I don’t mean that I have lost contact with people. No humane person loses contact, or no sane person ever loses contact with other people or with other people’s world. I meant it in the popular sense. I have no contact with what is the popularly supposed ideal that the artist ought to be in relation to people. An artist has to work to the best of his ability, whether people are there or not. So must all people—I mean all people that are beyond a modest or middle class mind—must work to the best of their ability. horosko: But you don’t work for the approval of other artists? You’re not looking for a place for yourself anymore? smith: Well, no. No artist would work for the approval of other artists. But it just so happens that I am an artist and live in the world of artists. There isn’t anything one of us knows that the other doesn’t know. When somebody succeeds in an unusual arrival, other artists know it. horosko: You don’t need to be in the atmosphere of New York, around other artists all the time? smith: I’d lived here so long, in such grubby circumstances—in thirty, forty dollar apartments, and in a rather poor way—I’d gone through the Depression here, so that somehow my desire was always to get out. And you can live outside without nice things, without restaurants, without concerts. But when you walk down the street here and there are restaurants and there are concerts and you can’t go to them—you can’t afford them—then you feel it. You can live on the same amount of money out some place and not resent it, not feel it or not resent it. horosko: Well, you have your whole world within yourself, too. And all you do is live within it and work within it, and it’s so vast and flexible, you don’t really need this outside stimulation, do you? smith: So does any artist in New York have his own world in himself, too. But he also is always aware that there are shows, there are concerts, there are plays, all sorts of things. There are good meals on certain tables that he can’t afford. If you’re out, you don’t need it. When you’re in New York and it’s in your atmosphere, you’d like a piece of it. But when you’re out in the mountains—at least it’s clean out there! horosko: One last question I have for you, David Smith, and that is: what you would say is the place of sculpture, artistically speaking, today and what is it going to be in the future? 419

smith: Well, it is certainly way beyond what it was thirty years ago or twenty years ago. It’s beyond where it was in the beginning of the twentieth century. There are amazing amounts of young sculptors, all the way from the West Coast to the East Coast. There are thousands of sculptors now, where there used to be tens of sculptors thirty years ago. horosko: And the public is responding, do you think, to this? smith: Artists exist and work irrespective of the public’s response. There’s no relationship to public response from artists particularly. Artists are kind of devoted people that don’t want anything else than their particular creative world. horosko: What would you say is the reason for the increase in the number of sculptors, then? smith: There is no reason. You can’t give a reason. There are a hundred reasons. And the reasons are all different for each man. But during the WPA, art was somewhat sponsored. A lot of us that might have sunk in those days survived. There were appreciation classes. There has been a change in the universities; the universities teach art now. There are more galleries, and of course there are more people buying. There are more museums now than then. It’s a social thing; part of it is social. There’s a five-day week. There will be a four-day week. And now I think people who have an awful lot of money are on the defensive. They’re the ones that feel ill at ease in the society and it’s no longer wonderful to be a rich man. I don’t even know whether it’s possible, honestly possible, under the present tax structure to be a rich man. But it’s certainly not a noble thing anymore. The noble thing now, ideally, is a creative life, a contributing life to society, and a developing of the person’s own capacity, rather than a collective social development. It contradicts the way the social structure is going now. The development of the person—just plain abstract intellectualism—is a great ideal. And intellectualism without creation is a rather dry thing, so it has to be creatively expanded. It’s recognized, it’s taught that way in colleges, and it’s felt that way even among the middle class. It’s accepted in high school teaching, now. And we over-produce. We don’t need rich people. And nobody needs money. We have a much more safe world to live in than we used to have. I don’t think there is the tremendous pressure about survival. Of course, it’s in me, but I don’t think my kids will have that. I don’t think they’ll feel the menace of survival like I did. And I don’t think the kids coming up do now, either. Because they’re much more protected by our society now. So what else is there? It’s not noble to have money. You can’t spend it. Real rich people can’t spend it, they don’t know how. horosko: That’s true. smith: And that’s why we have more collectors, people that have a certain conscience and an expanded appreciation become collectors. horosko: Yes, that’s very true. Well, I must ask you to come back again, David Smith, because you’ve raised lots of new questions that I want to ask you about at

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some future time. But suffice to say for now that your exhibit will be at the Marlborough-Gerson Gallery until November 14, and I urgently request our audience to come and see it. Thank you so much, David. smith: Thank you. Notes 1.  At the time of Smith’s death, the Cubi series (1961–65) numbered twenty-eight sculptures. 2.  The exhibition could accommodate only ten works from the Cubi series: IX, 1961 (K657); IV (K652), V (K653), VII (K655), XII (K660), and XVII (K665), from 1963; and XVIII (K666), XIX (K667), XX (K668), and XXII (K670), from 1964. 3.  Zig IV, 1961 (K534); Zig VII, 1963 (K627); and Zig VIII, 1964 (K641). 4.  Smith presented the eight works that constitute the Menand series, 1963 (K615–K622), in his Marlborough-Gerson Gallery exhibition. 5.  The Marlborough-Gerson Gallery exhibition also included the five sculptures in Smith’s recently completed Bronze Planes series, 1964 (K630–K634).

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INTERVIE W BY FR ANK O’HAR A 196 4

o’har a: Now, David, when I was up at your studio at Bolton Landing a month ago or so, you told me that you felt that the painting of the steel sculptures was really intrinsic to your conception of sculpture in general, itself. Does that mean that you consider the color of metal of paramount importance, whether painted or not painted? That is, stainless steel, bronze, or something that is painted with as many coats as you do the large Ziggurats? smith: The Ziggurats are painted with primer coats, because they are stored outdoors, and they’re painted very much like an automobile is. They finish up with automobile enamels. I feel that when the conception demands it, color is demanded in certain sculptures. After all, it was my history to think that way. That is certainly the history of all sculpture. The history of sculpture is all painted. It’s only part of the history of sculpture that’s not painted. o’har a: Do you mean from the Greeks, or do you mean— smith: From the Egyptians, from very early times. And certainly, my own history— my knowledge of art—started with cubism. And, in the very great days of cubism, of early cubism, there was no difference in the concept between the sculptural form and the painting of it. They were about equal. You know, it wasn’t painted sculpture, and it wasn’t sculpture painted. It was just a natural alliance. An aesthetic. o’har a: Starting as a painter, for instance—with Jan Matulka and Sloan—you felt that the surface should suddenly come out of the painting, that is, it should no longer remain flat, which is an anticubist idea. Because the cubists did feel that the surface should be two-dimensional, rather than three, right? smith: I have never found out what the cubists felt. (O’Hara laughs.) Because each cubist always was different, and no two cubists felt the same way. Maybe Braque and Picasso did, by their pictures in 1911 or ’12—somewhere in there—but it was always different. And some of Picasso’s painted sculpture of those early days—and

Transcribed and edited for this publication from an interview filmed on November 6 and televised on November 11, 1964, titled “Sculpting Master of Bolton Landing,” directed by Bruce Minnix and Ina Korek for the series Art: New York, Channel 13/WNDT-TV. ©  Frank O’Hara, used by permission of Maureen O’Hara Granville-Smith, executor. At the time of the interview, the poet Frank O’Hara was an assistant curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City. He was responsible for two major exhibitions of Smith’s works for MoMA: one of drawings, which traveled nationally from 1963 through 1966, and a large sculpture retrospective that circulated internationally from 1966 through 1967.

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Laurens’s painted sculpture and certainly the constructivists of another time— those were very equally made and painted. o’har a: You mean The Absinthe Glass, of Picasso, from 1910 or 1912—something like that? smith: It was very early. But then, there were whole great bodies of works that were painted. The montage sculptures were painted—or had painted parts or colored pieces—and they were all very natural. And that was conceptually equal. o’har a: So you feel it’s very natural for you to just paint a sculpture, if you want to. smith: Sculpture developed from my study of my work because it started growing off the canvas into applied parts, and new levels applied to the canvas. And it became sculpture without a canvas on the bottom, but there’s usually a base where the canvas used to be. I think there’s a relationship in my work in that sense. o’har a: Well, you think of your sculptures then: if there is going to be a canvas, the canvas is on the bottom. That is, it’s the base, and the sculpture’s growing up, this way, rather than out, that way. smith: That’s the way it was originally. I hope I’ve departed a little bit differently then—like in my Wagons. o’har a: There’s no canvas under your Wagons. (Laughs.) smith: No. No, that one Wagon that we photographed—each wheel weighed 275 pounds.1 And I don’t know where it’s going—I don’t think it’ll ever go to New York, it’ll never be seen here—but it gives me a certain pleasure to have it out in the field there. o’har a: Is it true that you’re making a big tractor-locomotive piece now? smith: They’re not going to be locomotives. They’re going to be, probably, flying tractors—or flying road machinery, or something like that. I mean, spiritually flying. But, I think color adds another challenge to me. And if you used a monochrome color, it would be very easy to just paint it. It would be easier for me to paint it red, yellow, or black—or white—and leave it sit there. But the surfaces, planes, have their own properties in form as well as in color, and then color adds another challenge. And I don’t like pretty colors—I like kind of raw colors. And I have just now got some real nice, rough, raw colors once in a while, but not as good as I will get. Now, if you saw Albers’s show 2, you’d know that some of the pictures in there are real beauts. You know, raw as can be—acid green and raspberry—and that pleases me highly. That’s some of the very good painting. o’har a: And you’re not at all interested, really, in, say, the impressionists’ idea of . . . I don’t mean the impressionist idea of nature, but the impressionist idea of the painting itself—which then becomes extremely tasteful, close, and beautiful. That is not your idea of color. Let’s say Bonnard has some acid, but let’s think of Renoir. That is not your idea of color, in a certain way. Or what interests you in that?

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smith: That’s my idea of color for him. o’har a: Yes. smith: My idea of color for me—it is real gutty and acid. And yet, I don’t know where to equate—it’s not being absurd, necessarily, but I say it was personal, and it’s things that I don’t know that I have to try and find. And I like the color to produce a challenge. It adds another challenge, dimensional challenge, in the concept of the work. o’har a: When you have these works around Bolton Landing—for instance, in the fields and so on—in a primary state, that is—you’ve just brought them out to look at—let’s say you have put a primary coat of white on something. Now does the ultimate painting of the piece have to do with your meditating on seeing the piece in the open air—in the sunlight and so on—or a stainless steel piece, let’s say? smith: The atmosphere has more to do with the stainless steel than with the painted sculptures. I started stainless steel in 1956, and I really didn’t have the money to go into it very deep then. It’s a very expensive thing. o’har a: I imagine. smith: Oh, every pound costs a dollar, you know—something like that—and then you have waste, and transportation, and all kinds of problems. It welds beautifully. It welds just the same as armor plate, and has practically the same analysis. o’har a: But if, say, you make something out of steel and you decide to paint it, then you have a conception, originally, and that is stuck to? Or does it change as you’re looking at the piece day after day? And you decide to paint different planes different colors, let’s say—or do you not? I mean, do you already have the idea? smith: No, Frank. I try not to have too-developed an idea when I go in. There are pieces that I make that are steel, and I say they’re to be painted. Then they take so many primer coats, and then one or two white coats, to give it a white ground. Because white under color maintains the color naturally. o’har a: It keeps the color lively. smith: Yes. And I like it white, and then I paint it in colors. And sometimes a painted piece takes two or three years to get. Now, in that show— o’har a: That Marlborough show, yes.3 smith: You know, those ton-and-a-half pieces there that are painted. There are three, and two that have the best painting on them. The one that’s red, black, and white. And then the one that’s acid green and persimmon red, and on a blue back, and things like that. Those all have wheels so you can move them. o’har a: Move them in. But then you make the color on the stainless steel through the rubbing and drawing on the plane surfaces? Or do you think of that as a different thing?

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smith: Thatrubbing,Frank,isn’tveryimportant.That’sjustthewayamechanicalgrinder— o’har a: But it varies the surface a lot. smith: Well, sure. I’ve used a mechanical grinder to roughen the ends, to take out blemishes. And it just shows the way it was finished up—to show a brightness—so that that brightness reflects the sky and the afternoon—the golden of an afternoon sun, or the hard blue of a noon sky, or the hard blue of bright sun, and sometimes the green of mountains gets in. It has a very gentle, reflective power. Now, that’s the first time I’ve ever been able to do that in sculpture, and I definitely made those for outside pieces. Though they look pretty good inside with artificial light, I think. o’har a: Yes, they do. smith: The Whitney had one, and the Modern Museum has three out on their balcony.4 o’har a: Yes—they look terrific. smith: And I think they look good—in artificial light, and the other. But the stainless is made to have a reflective . . . I intended the reflective surface to be part of the concept. But the polishing is not so important—any more than the brushstroking is important in a picture. It’s the concept of the form or the concept of the content. o’har a: Well, then, you know, conceiving of form. Let’s say, when you look at these things and study them—I mean, you study them since you’ve created them; I study them and you look at them. But do you feel like they’re people around your house? Are they aesthetic things? What are they? I mean, you must feel that they’re all these strange objects surrounding your whole studio and on the lawn. smith: Well, they’re all girls, Frank.5 o’har a: They’re all girls? smith: Yeah, they’re all female sculptures. o’har a: (Laughs.) Oh, they are— smith: I’m sure. o’har a: —very angular girls. smith: I don’t make boy sculptures. (Laughter.) But they become kind of personages. And sometimes they point out to me that I should have been better or bigger. And, mostly, they tell me that I should have done that ten years before—or twenty years before. o’har a: Well, don’t they ever tell you that they’re very glad you did them? smith: I like their presence—yes. And when we made the field tapes, or the movie part of the sculpture in the field—they have since been moved in, and they’re on exhibition now. But I’ve had to move other ones in their place—just because I didn’t like those empty cement bases sitting there. I had to take sculpture out of the cellar, and move it out and set it up.

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o’har a: They do seem like friends who came to New York, I must say. Having seen them at your house and then seen them in town, in the gallery. smith: Well, they had a nice ride up the front of the building, after all. There were thirteen of them that had to go up the front of the building—they were too big for the elevators. o’har a: And they’re probably very relieved not to be in midair anymore. (Laughs.) smith: Oh, I thought they looked good there. I would like to hang a couple . . . (laughter) . . . if it were possible. But they have to go up and come down the same way—out the front of the building. But I’m glad that that didn’t become a problem in exhibiting. o’har a: You mean the physical— smith: Yes. I mean, I’m glad that the gallery accepted the fact that something had to be done, so they did it. And Santini had enough rope to pull them up. o’har a: (Laughs.) And enough manpower. smith: Yeah, well, they used trucks to raise them with—on pulleys, on winches. o’har a: Now you’re working on very big pieces? smith: I’m going bigger all the time. Except that sometimes in the evening I work on smaller pieces. And then I have concepts that demand a unity in about this size. (He places his hands about two feet apart.) You see? I get tired working on those big ones, sometimes—you get physically tired. o’har a: And the scale of the small ones is actually enormous, sometimes, too. smith: The scale of the small ones is intimate. It’s an intimate relationship. I have preferences for both. I like relationships of all sizes, actually. I don’t want to limit myself to one. I wouldn’t want to make monumental sculpture all my life, nor make small ones. It’s challenging to make different sizes. Your ratios are different. o’har a: I’m dying to get back there and see what else you’re doing. In the meanwhile, it was really very kind of you to come down from Bolton Landing and abandon the work in order to be here this evening. smith: Oh, I’ve had fun in New York. o’har a: Well, I hope so. (Laughs.) smith: I’ve heard some nice music, and seen dancing girls, and things like that, you know. o’har a: Well, thank you very much. And I hope to see you in Bolton Landing, very soon. smith: Come back. o’har a: It’s the nature of sculpture to be there. If you don’t like it, you wish it would get out of the way, because it occupies space, which your body could occupy. David Smith’s sculptures are—big or small, figurative or abstract—very complete, very

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attentive to your presence. They’re generous; they have no boring views. Circle them as you may, they are never napping. They present a total attention, and they are telling you that that is the way to be: on guard. In a sense, they are benign, because they offer themselves for your pleasure. But beneath that kindness is a warning: don’t be bored, don’t be lazy, don’t be trivial, and don’t be proud. The slightest loss of attention leads to death. The primary passion in these sculptures is to avert catastrophe, or to sink beneath it in a grand way. So, as with the Greeks, Smith’s is a tragic art. Notes 1.  Wagon I, 1963–64 (K638). 2.  Probably the Josef Albers exhibition at Sidney Janis Gallery, New York City, September– October 1964. 3.  David Smith, Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York City, October 15–November 16, 1964. In Smith’s following remarks, he refers to Zig VIII, 1964 (K641), Zig V, 1961 (K543) and to Zig VII, 1964 (K627). 4.  Lectern Sentinel, 1961 (K518), in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City. Cubi III, 1961 (K651); Cubi X, 1963 (K658); and Cubi XVI, 1963 (K664), were displayed in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art, New York City. 5.  David J. Getsy provides a careful and insightful analysis of the O’Hara-Smith interview and the influence of Smith’s comment that he made only “girl” sculptures on subsequent interpretations of his work in chapter 2, “On Not Making Boys: David Smith, Frank O’Hara, and Gender Assignment,” in Abstract Bodies: Sixties Sculpture in the Expanded Field of Gender (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015).

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S O M E L AT E W O R D S F R O M D AV I D S M I T H 196 5

I did write something out, but it’s too hard to read, and it’s really personal. So I’ll show you slides. [Slide] This is stainless steel, out of a series I call Cubi—just a made-up name—and the forms are made up in very simple cubic or cylinder shapes. That’s another view of the same one. This is the other side of one in a series; I think I am at about number twentyeight now, in this group I call Cubi. Every time I do four or five I think I’ve exhausted my thinking in that way, but then I buy more stainless steel and make more sculptures. But I hope it finishes off pretty soon. Well, see I take my own photographs and this is a nice one. (Laughter.) [Slide] That’s in a series of flat pieces. It doesn’t relate to any sculptures; it’s just individuals, and made very much like a drawing is. [Slide, figure 22] I’ve made three sculptures in the form of gates, and this is the next to the last one. There’s a lot of background there, but you’ll have to separate that. It’s kind of big and heavy, and I couldn’t move it out to a better location, but I guess you can see the stainless steel form of just an arch. I have no ideology in this form—nothing very important—except the way things are going. I have no concept behind it other than myself, and most of these don’t vary from just squares, rectangles, and cylinder forms. [Slide] That’s another view of that same sculpture. [Slide] That’s called Cubi something, but I don’t remember the number. I thought that was an artistic photograph. (Laughter.) That’s why I threw that one in. Lecture to art students and friends, May 12, 1965, Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont. Smith illustrated his comments with slides of his own photographs, taken at Bolton Landing, New York, unless noted otherwise in the Illustration Credits. When a sculpture shown in a slide is not directly named by Smith but can be identified, its title or a figure reference is provided in brackets. These illustrations correlate to the sculpture discussed in Smith’s remarks but may not always reproduce the specific slide Smith projected during his Bennington talk. Excerpts from the lecture were published with an introduction by Gene Baro, ed., as “Some Late Words from David Smith,” Art International (October 20, 1965): 47–51. The expanded transcription presented here was made from the original audiotape of the lecture, which does not include the question and answer section; the latter is republished from Baro.

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22. Cubi XXVII (Gate II), 1965.

[Slide: Cubi XXVIII (Gate III), 1965 (K676)] That’s in the same series. It comes down to here, and then there’s a space like that on the bottom. So this is the only time—in these stainless steel pieces—the only time I’ve ever been able to utilize light, and I depend a great deal on the reflective power of light. In this case, it’s late afternoon, and there’s sort of a golden color—it’s reflected by the late afternoon sun in the winter, and it reflects a rather golden color. And when the sky is blue, there is a blue cast to it. It does have a semimirror reflection, and I like it in that sense, because no other material in sculpture can do that. The middle part sort of floats. It rests on the two ends. The center cross is off the ground—with the snowdrifts that you see, and therefore I took the picture. [Slide] And that’s looking at it from the other side, from a different direction. You see, under this is this, and this column comes straight down and then it sits on the base. The main structure of this is on a slope, leaning against a vertical. [Slide] That shows the actual position of it a little better. It just leans over. That’s about nine feet high. I should have swept the snow off on the base. It’s made out of thin metal, a little more than one-eighth of an inch thick, and then welded up. And the stainless steel is finished by an electric buffing machine, like everybody in garages uses—a revolving carborundum disc. I have to go over the metal because it gets contaminated by hammers and even shipping on a truck. When the metal is dragged off a truck, it gets scratched with natural iron, and then rust streaks come up on it so it has to be all dressed off. I like to leave it out of doors for a while to see if there are any contaminative rust spots on it, and then grind them off later. It’s hollow and not so heavy, and the figurations of polishing have no particular meaning—that’s just a manual working—anymore than in this day and age the stroke of a paintbrush has particular meaning. It used to, but I don’t think anybody pays too much attention to how the paint is applied. Well, that’s just the same way with polish. It’s polished to get a certain

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23. Cubi XXIV (Gate I), 1964.

reflective power, and a certain scratch on it so it’s not too bright, but just the right amount to reflect the light. [Slide, figure 23] That is another arch. I think that’s the first one I made. Is this an arch or a gate? That’s looking at it frontally. A little bit is submerged in the snow, but there’s no base on that. It rests on its two bottom forms. [Slide] That’s the same sculpture in an end view. That shows more it. That shows the way it sits. That’s the only base it has. There’s no heavy underpart on it. But I have it tied down because the winds are kind of high, up there in the wintertime. Both of these sculptures are stainless steel and they’re made of flats. There’s no cubic relation, just the use of planes. And the planes tilt and change and it’s the illusion of cubage. [Slide, Untitled, 1964 (K644)] This is made of flats, with one ring on the top there. It’s just an assembly of planes, and through the change of light in the day they all change and reflect in different ways. From a distance it sometimes looks as if they are heavy and not just made of sheets that only change in their general plane. The changes there are only from one-quarter to three-eighths of an inch—sometimes half an inch—and one plane overlaps another plane. Just the illusion from a distance, it seems bigger. [Slide] Well, the sun was brighter that day. (Laughter.) And then I think the whole print is more orange. You see the green of the trees and the fields look more orange. That’s more or less a late afternoon light. And most of that is built on one plane, but the recession of planes, again, are only one-quarter to three-eighths of an inch and it’s opposed by one or two elements opposite to the main plane. [Slide] That’s the same sculpture with a different daylight. You can see the planes a little more distinctly. That’s the way it is installed in the fields. This was a group for no

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24. Untitled (Candida), 1965.

particular reason. I seem to be making more work and need more space, and I had to start grouping the works together. [Slide, Becca, 1965 (K646)] That is one of the last ones I’ve made. I think it weighs about a ton. It’s made of quite heavy stainless steel plates. It is ten feet high, I think, and a little longer than it is high. But it’s essentially a rectangle, made of four or five planes. In this case, the planes are about five-eighths of an inch in distance—from this to this, this from there—from five-eighths here and five-eighths there. It gives the illusion of space more than the space actually exists. [Slide] That’s the opposite side, I think. Or at least it’s a different photograph, anyway, of the same piece. [Slide, figure 24] This one was done almost at the same time, and is about the same size, and made out of the same sort of stainless steel plates. It runs from three-eighths to a half-inch thick. Sometimes a few pieces are five-eights of an inch thick. And if I were a better photographer, the trees wouldn’t be so much in focus and that road grader that’s behind it—that rusted piece of iron—wouldn’t be so much in focus, but the sculpture would be. [Slide] This is a painted sculpture in a group that I call Zig—just an affectionate term for Ziggurat. Ziggurat is too big a word. Zig seems more intimate, and it doesn’t have to be as high as the tower of Babylon. But it’s a vertical structure of more than one level. And that is on small wheels—which are functional—they pull that way. (Laughter.) The paint here is not artist’s paint, it’s Dulux auto enamel. I mix it, and it’s much better than artist’s paint for outdoors. First the iron is ground down so that it’s raw, then it’s primed with about fifteen coats of epoxy primer, and then a few coats of zinc chromate, and then a few coats of white, and then the color is put on after that—so it

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25. Zig VII, 1963.

26. Doorway on Wheels, 1960.

runs about twenty-five, thirty coats. That’s about three times the paint coat on a Mercedes or about thirty times the paint coat on a Ford or a Chevrolet. (Laughter.) And if it doesn’t get bumped or scratched or hammered, I think the paint coat will last longer than I do. [Slide, figure 25] There’s nothing better for outside paint than auto enamel, as far as I know. This is inside the studio—or the workshop—and the colors are different here. I’ve changed the color. This is more red; I’ve made it more orange. This is the back of the sculpture here. [Slide, Zig IV, 1961 (K534)] This is another Zig, which sits out in the field. This is still on an inclined plane—the plane is about a ninety-degree-angle plane, and all these forms take off of that. [Slide, figure 26] And that’s a door on a small base, with little sort of caster wheels on it. It weighs about a ton, and it’s much more functional to move when the wheels are built right into it. [Slide, Zig IV, 1961 (K534) Well, here is the finish—a preliminary finish. Then I put a green alo-enamel, mixed with aluminum paint, on top of this red. So that there’s a yellow metallic green on top of this coral-orange. These are all auto paints. And this is a side view of it during the time I was working on it. I’m going to show this one in my exhibition in Los Angeles this summer. But I since have become dissatisfied with that green paint on it, and I’m going out the day before it opens and paint it red again. [Slide] Here is a sculpture—this group is called Primo Piano—only because on the first floor nothing happens much, whatever takes place is on the second floor. This has

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27. Zig III, 1961.

been primed and it’s painted white, and I put it out two years ago. I should have painted it with color before this, but I’ve been doing other things, and I hope to finish this summer. [Slide, Primo Piano III, 1962 (K554)] That’s over ten feet high, and it weighs over a ton. And there are some old tractors sitting over there that a former professor at Bennington bought for me in Buskirk [New York]—he had a couple of neighbors that had old steel tractors to sell, so I bought them. I need a few more and I’m going to make them into sculptures—I’m going to make the sculptures on top of them so that I can drive the tractors. (Laughter.) Sometimes, if you say what your secrets are, you may not do it. It doesn’t matter, I’ll use them one way or another, even if I don’t do it that way. I like to buy things first and make them come into use. I have piles of iron and stacks of stainless steel and stacks of bronze and paper. I like to buy it, stack it, and make it work on me. I hate to have an idea and be deprived of immediately making it or following it through, waiting for materials to come. [Slide, Oval Node, 1963 (K623)] That’s a sculpture that’s waiting to be painted. It’s a broken oval form, just right there on a vertical, the very simplest thing in the world— an oval on a vertical. I don’t have any wonderful aesthetic ideas about painting. Sometimes, if I made an error in mixing some paint some place—the wrong paint one place turns out to be the right paint that goes on this one. Or else, you pour a few cans together, and it comes out real nice, so you convince yourself that that’s the right color for this one. [Slide, figure 27] That is kind of a big, black sculpture. (Laughter.) But underneath each one of those sections are painted colors, and there is an orange, and sometimes a tan, sometimes a red and blue, that kind of comes through the black overcoat on it.

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28. 2 Circle IV, 1962.

That will be in the exhibition at the Rodin museum this summer. I suppose you read in the papers that our country and the French government are kind of at odds and ends but Mr. Malraux doesn’t take it to heart, because he has invited a lot of American sculptors to be exhibited in Paris this summer. There seems to be no odds, particularly in recent work, with the aesthetic world; I think it’s mostly political. [Slide, figure 28] Well, that’s a sculpture painted a kind of a metallic blue. This part here—it gets too much light in the camera—it’s this color metallic blue. It’s sort of a translucent blue—a candy-apple blue, to be specific. It’s blue paint that’s transparent, mixed with varnish, and then there is aluminum powder in it, which gives it a subsurface reflection. You couldn’t possibly have it in artist’s color. When I made the sculpture and I cut these parts out here, they looked all right, so I made another sculpture with them. I saved those cutout parts and made another sculpture with them. I didn’t change them a bit. [Slide, Gondola II, 1964 (K636)] That is the last painted sculpture I made. This is black, and this is purple, and that is sort of a yellow ochre-tan; the center pole is white. That’s close to ten feet high and around eight feet long. [Slide, Circle I, Circle II, Circle III, all 1962 (K547, K548, and K549)] Those are three sculptures I made about three years ago. You see the underpainting on that top circle coming through, which is a brown—with a blue on top of the brown. The other one is a coral with a metallic green—black-green. At the time I made those, I was interested in that sort of vibration you can get from the surface by overpainting. But this year it’s simpler, just plain, black, glossy car paint. These usually were artist’s pigments mixed with varnish—cobalt blue, mixed with car varnish to get the finish on it.

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29. Bec-Dida Day, 1963.

30. Tanktotem X, 1960.

I’m not quite finished with that. It’s somewhere near what it will be. But I think I want a little modulation on the red, in some way. The base needs to be painted gray; I forgot to do that. I have to paint them raw and look at them and sometimes vary all the formalities, or even change the colors—but it takes a little time. And it’s funny where you draw the line. Sometimes you have to change the whole thing and sometimes it is kind of raw, and after you look at it awhile, your laziness convinces you that you don’t have to paint it again. I don’t know where you draw the line. I guess you work on averages. It’s very simple: red and green. And the base will be sort of slate gray, towards black. [Slide, figure 29] The same metallic blue on the inside of that, as I had on another sculpture. It was on a 1959 Buick sports car, that’s the way it’s listed in the book. Sometimes I mix some color in it to change it off a little bit. The next is a standard form that they make for big oil tanks—the big disc part—and I had it made. There are companies that make those things—they forge them up, but they have to be done with big dies. It is just a convex-concave shape, which is standard in the steel business. A piece of I beam on the top, and it sort of stands, or looks like it will roll down, on another I beam that it rests on. This is work from 1962, I think—when all the work then was painted; everything in the show was painted.1 Some of them weren’t so successful, but I make a lot of sculptures, so it doesn’t matter. [Slide, figure 30] I depended upon the flowers and the tomatoes to carry that one. (Laughter.) But it’s a painted sculpture. I actually think that the garden had something to do with—you know, unconsciously—I wasn’t trying to use any colors that were in the garden, but I actually think that the colors I saw influenced the painting of the sculpture.

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31. Welded and painted steel sculptures and two cast-bronze sculptures, completed 1960–61.

[Slide, Primo Piano I, 1962 (K552)] That is another Primo Piano that’s waiting to be painted. It’s about nine feet high and eleven feet long. And the feet of that are planted on a concrete base and bolted on. I have to bolt everything down up there because the winds get kind of high. I don’t think they get higher than they do in Bennington. I could take a long time on that, but I just kind of stopped. [Slide] That’s a close-up of the same one. [Slide] That’s another one, through the center of it. [Slide] That is a group shot of the same year—1961 or ’62. [Slide] That was in the same group of painted pieces. I’ve always painted work every year. I made no declaration, having been a painter before I turned to sculpture, I made no declaration as to when the time was, or how much was which. [Slide, Circles and Arcs, 1961 (K509)] That’s another sculpture built on—the center part of this, here, going around here—is a found element. That’s an old wagon wheel— the steel tire on a heavy wagon. I ground the rust off and used it as a circle. The rest of it is all made form, but that was a found form. And yet, I could buy a form like that. But it was finding that first iron ring that made everything else happen. [Slide, figure 31] That is the work of one year [1961] . . . I don’t remember exactly now. I put this out in the field and then got on top of my house and photographed down. Because practically all the sculpture was painted. There are one, two bronzes, there, and two iron sculptures just painted black.

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[Slide] That’s another photograph. One I had of sunset that night . . . maybe it doesn’t look that good when you see it, but the silhouette and the sky effect are complementary. [Slide] That’s bigger than life. That’s out of a series I called Albany, for the simple reason that I bought the steel in Albany. I just called them Albany I, II, III, IV, probably up to XI and XII.2 Later on, I’ll show you some sculptures called Menand—the steel came from Menands. Wanting a point of identification, and not having any particular realist relationship, I just called it from the town I got it from. [Slide] That’s just steel, painted black. [Slide, Hi Candida, 1965 (K647)] These are some heavy iron sculptures I built this year. A section like that is one inch, that’s just about the distance as it is here. And that will be four inches wide, and an inch thick. This is an old wrench I brought from Italy, a couple of years ago, when I worked in a mill there. question: What’s the height of that one? smith: That’s over six feet, about seven feet high. That piece, there, is an inch and a half thick—see the space here is an inch and a half. These are very tough pieces of steel, and they’re to be left out to rust. These are rusty sculptures. [Slide, Becca, 1964 (K629), or Construction December II, 1964 (K643)] That is another one of the rusty group. This is a solid chunk of steel, here—a round, a cylinder—that’s five inches; this is three inches. It’s about life size, only a little bigger. [Slide] That’s the opposite side. I have four in this group. I don’t know whether they’ll ever be exhibited or not.3 [Slide] I don’t know whether we’ve seen that before or not, but anyhow, if we have it’s another view. Well, I’ve lost track. Anyhow, there were four or five in the next group. [Slide] And this one you haven’t seen, I’m sure. After it was done, the elements in this sculpture reminded me, kind of, of the elements of a still life. Only it’s a little over six feet high and the metal is very heavy, relatively. [Slide] This is one of the series I called Menand. It has a sort of a white finish, which comes by oxidation using acid which eats rust. [Slide, Menand III, 1963 (K617)] That’s Menand III—and much bigger than life-size. That’s only about two feet high.

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32. Menand II, 1963.

[Slide, figure 32] That’s Menand II. That’s steel, but when the rust was eaten off, it was sort of a white deposit and I put lacquer on it and held it, so that it is a sort of white iron. [Slide, Menand IV, 1963 (K618)] That’s another one of the Menands, but it’s only about twenty inches high, and about twenty-four, twenty-six inches long. It gives you the wrong scale there. It’s in the same group. And that iron is sort of rusty iron, rust with steel wool and then a coat of lacquer put on it. [Slide] Same series. None of these are preconceived. None of them are drawn. I take iron and an acetylene torch—which runs on a track and is motor driven, and you put the tip into the right cutting thickness—and I cut shapes out. Then I throw them on the floor and pile up a big pile of shapes. And then I stumble over them and sooner or later relationships take place, and then if they’re not complete, I complete them and put them together. That’s about two feet high. There are no drawings, there is no preliminary for it. [Slide, Menand I, 1963 (K615)] Same with that. And that one’s only two feet high. But if I were an architect, I would make architecture a little more like that, than like glass houses. That is a fall picture. [Slide] That’s another view. That’s the back view of the same one. [Slide] Those are drawings. I believe a lot in drawing, and these are drawings done in a very free way—you know, with no thought, no plans. There are two of them, and they go the other way. But it doesn’t matter, because sometimes I work on sculpture and when I turn it over to weld on the bottom and it looks better upside down, I leave it.

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33. Untitled (Tower I), 1955.

And that is sort of the way I found the gates or the archways. I had made a long sculpture, and while I was working on it I had it on a chain hoist and turned it upright and it sat like an arch. So I put another form underneath it and made an arch out of it. And now I am very convinced on arches. I want to do some more. I’ve made three, and I will make another half dozen before I exhaust the arch point of view. I just wanted to put in a word to you for drawing, because I think drawing has all the immediacy and the flexibility and a very quicker realization than anything else you can do. I wanted to show you these drawings, because from those my work comes. Not specifically, because if I know all about it in drawings then I don’t have to use a drawing to make sculptures. And then I have at least the privilege of continuing to invent or do unexpected things or to recognize the unexpected things. [Slide, figure 33] Now these drawings were made because I wanted straight lines. I was thinking about drawings twenty feet high made out of rods, or bars. So I took a stick and whittled it down until it had a narrow edge, and then I put paint on the edge and placed the stick down and made marks with it, as if I were setting twenty-foot bars up in the air. And that’s the way I made those drawings. The squares are done the same way. I sort of devised a realization on paper, in a small way, to match what my possibility was in making these twenty-foot sculptures. When I made that drawing, I couldn’t afford the stainless steel to make them. And when I got so that I could get the steel to make them, I never made anything that looks like that. But I had to think that way first before, five or six years later, I could make the sculpture. question: When did you make the drawings?

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34. Sentinel III, 1957.

35. Forging V, 1955.

smith: 1955 or 1956—about ten years ago. I didn’t get to make a stainless steel tower until two or three years ago, and then it was totally different for me. I can’t go back and make those now, but I make other things. You know, there’s a change in time and a change in age, development, environment, and they’re different. Maybe when I get old I can go back and use these, but right now it is too immediate and I can’t. [Slide, figure 34] That is an iron sculpture of 1956. And that’s the waterfront on the village that I live in, in upper New York State, on Lake George. This wheel turns and these are stable. But you can sort of pick up the back end and shove it—(laughter)—it does help it go that way. [Slide, figure 35] That’s a sculpture about eight, nine feet high, and it is just one single bar, forged. But I don’t think I could have ever made a sculpture like that without making three hundred or four hundred drawings a year. I think it had to develop that way. The interest in making a vertical, a simple vertical, was a development of a drawing concept. I was wondering about a line. You see, here’s the center part of it. And this form in here—I cut a hole and stuck a piece of metal in there and welded it, and then hammered it down until it sent the sides out. The pressure of this center body of metal sent these sides out. Now, this wasn’t done by hand. I had to work in a shop where they had a power forge, and it takes two men to run one of those. All I did was press my foot on a pedal to hold it in the right place. You press your foot on the pedal and then the power makes a big hammer come plunk, and smashes it out.

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36. Personage of May, 1957.

37. Detroit Queen, 1957.

tony caro: What’s it stand on, Dave? smith: What did I stand on? (Laughter.) Tony, I didn’t hear you. question: What’s the base of that sculpture? smith: A round form. Just a plate, a flat plate—the same as with this one. At this stage, it’s bar metal, one inch thick, two inches wide, and I just arbitrarily made dies and put them under the hammer and held them in there—of course, the metal has to be hot. I think this is a five-ton power forge, and I just hammered in, to the lines, in this case—from the outside. And it’s a drawing line, really. I would never have done that if I hadn’t been interested in drawing lines. I think that’s about nine feet high and a very skinny one. But it sits on a plate—a flat piece of steel, about as big as a dinner plate. And of course it’s welded to the base. [Slide, figure 36] This is a bronze. I can’t tell you very much about it except that it is partly made of found forms. The winged section is made out of automobile fenders, which I built up and cast in bronze. That mythic head on the top of it is made out of a shovel, with a couple of reinforcing lines in it. This was originally—the form comes from the housing on the drive shaft of a truck—the square, bronze shape. Those parts were all cast—built up and cast—and then I welded them together. [Slide, figure 37] That is essentially made up—that’s a bronze, it’s between eight and nine feet high. And it’s essentially made up of forms that come out of automobiles. Some are car fenders. This part here is a cast door lock. This part, here, comes out of the inside of the door of a car; it’s the mechanism where the frame runs and the joint within the confines of the door leads to the hole in the window, and you roll it up.

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38. Sitting Printer, 1954.

39. Untitled, 1961–62.

Mostly that’s made up of automobile things. I’m talking to you as we’re all in the same trade. I haven’t mentioned anything aesthetic yet, that’s why I’ve been talking about technical terms. I rarely think of aesthetic things anymore. You have an art history teacher who tells you all these aesthetic things and you have professors who tell you the aesthetic things. So I’ve been talking technical terms. [Slide, figure 38] This is a bronze. A few years ago, when I taught at Indiana University, I had to take another sculptor’s studio. My residence was in a studio that he had had before he left. It was a hell of a mess when I walked in there, and I didn’t know what to do. So I started picking up things that he had left behind. This is the top of a broken stool—here’s the stool. I cast those things, I had to change them a little bit to cast them. This is an old pipe box from a print shop. This is the center part of a chair—a straight-back professor’s chair, a classroom chair. The first thing I did was to take those things and make a sculpture out of them—sent them out and had them cast and brought them back and welded up a sculpture. That’s all the aesthetics involved in that, outside of personal choice. But it was the first pile of junk I walked into when I came there, before I cleaned the studio up. [Slide, figure 39] That’s still not much bigger. That’s only thirty-one inches high, I think. It’s a lost wax bronze. That’s different—I take wax, pour it in pizza pans, take it out—pour it in square pizza pans or round pizza pans. Then take a hot knife and just cut pieces. This whole thing is made out of cooked wax that I poured in pizza pans. They seemed the easiest forms and the simplest things to get wax out of—you grease them a little bit, pour wax in, put them in the ice box, the wax contracts . . . and then take any old knife, keep it in a flame, get it hot. Then you cut it, and then put it together with a soldering iron, and then it’s cast.

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[Slide] That is another lost wax bronze, made the same way. Sometimes I pour the wax in cardboard cartons, or anything that will hold wax, any paper thing that will hold wax, and then peel the paper off and throw it away. It’s just a way of getting planes of wax that you can work with. [Slide, VB XXIII, 1963 (K607)] These are sort of elements on a table. They followed a period of work I started in Italy in 1962, and I made these in ’63 and ’64. These are only about seven feet high. In these, there’s usually one piece from the things that I brought back from Italy, when I was working in an abandoned railroad manufacturing building. I brought wrenches and certain forms, certain things I had started to work with— a lot of tongs—and there were a ton or more of things that I hadn’t finished that I liked, so I had them shipped back. When I got them back to Bolton I used certain elements in things that I had of my own—that were in my own shop—I started combining. And this is one of those. [Slide] That is another one, from the same period. I have twenty-four in this group. This part here, this is a part that came from Italy. [Slide, Wagon II, 1964 (K639)] That’s different. That’s a wagon. These wheels weigh two hundred and seventy pounds—this weighs six hundred and seventy-five pounds— and the axis for this wheel is higher than the axis for that one—and the big center thing is solid. I don’t know what it weighs—we have to use a derrick to move it. question: When you do a colored sculpture, do you think of the color before you put it together, or do you do the color and shape together in your mind? smith: It goes deep sometimes, and sometimes it is as simple as the blue on the seal of Bull Durham cigarettes—you know, the kind you roll yourself—and there’s a little string on it, on a blue seal, and a blue tax stamp. Sometimes it is those two colors that determine something else. Sometimes I look at things for a year before I know what the color is. I like to think that I can find a correlation between that shape and its proper color and, of course, somewhere way back is an association in mind from an object. If I knew what the object was—but usually I don’t want to know what the object was. And I try to get a relationship of colors that I don’t know about. And then, sometimes, it seems too close, and I have to be perverse and violate that relationship. If they are too pretty or too easy or too easily obtained, then I have to violate it and go a little more raw or a little more toward ugly. There is no answer really, and there is nothing very deep-seated about it. It is just the way things come. Sometimes you cut a melon in two; you see some colors in there that determine the way the sculpture should be painted. And yet it is not as simple as that, either. That is just something you found in a niche that was prepared long ago for you. In making that selection you follow your hunches, and you don’t

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care how far back they go or how deep they are—that is not important. What is important is just making it. And nobody can say it is wrong—at least after you leave school. question: Do you spray, brush, or both? smith: I usually brush become I don’t like spray—it gets my skylights dirty, and it is bad for your health. And then all that spray goes all over everything, and the spray drips over all the other sculptures. I like brushing better, and when you use auto paint—that’s made for spraying, actually—sometimes you have to thin it a little more, and put on more coats and thin it—but usually automobile paint goes on so smoothly that outside of a car, it is not necessary to spray. But just from the health hazard, I don’t like spraying. There is a certain physical thing of putting paint on a particular shape, and sometimes that determines a change in the color of something. You just use every kind of response you can get to make it the best way you can make it. Or to make it so that it pleases you, or so that work becomes not work, but becomes pleasure. question: I wonder if you would talk at all on the profound significance of your work, touching on its contents, its significance and relevance for the emotional needs of contemporary man? smith: I don’t have any emotional needs that other men of goodwill don’t have. As far as contemporary goes, I cannot be uncontemporary. I am cast in a contemporary position. As far as the needs of man go, very few men need [art]. Most of all, I need it before they. When I worked in the factory, out of about three hundred guys in my shop—in my steelworkers’ union—I think I was the only one that needed it. They needed baseball and bowling and things like that, which I didn’t need. I don’t know what the needs are socially. Suppose we accept that art were needed socially; some people need realistic art, some need expressionist art, and a few can take abstract art. question: I really would like to know what you feel the significance and influence of your work is? smith: I do not know and I do not care. I am selfishly working to the best of my ability, which, as far as I know, is okay. Not everybody does work to the extent of his ability, and not everybody has the privilege—but anything one man does will always have some response by other people. That is enough. question: What is it you are working for? smith: For them to see it, and to respond to it— to recognize something in an abstract way. I want them to have the same response visually as I often get from music. A lot of music makes images for me—makes sculptural images and color images. And as long as it induces a man to dream or think, it is all right—as far as I am concerned—but I presume no other reason. I presume . . . exercising my own ability. I think that you can determine that after the welfare is met for man, that

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there is time—there is free time, when the mind must dream or think. You don’t need sculpture for it; you can do it with music, poetry, or reading—or just introspection. But since I am interested in the creative acts of all other men, I hope my contribution somewhere takes place with other creative people. Outside of that, as far as a broad social basis goes, I do not know. There are a lot of things yet to be done. Nothing is closed—everything is open. Notes 1.  Smith created more than one hundred steel, stainless steel, and bronze sculptures in 1961 and 1962, of which twenty-five of those completed in 1961 and twelve in 1962 were painted. The “show” he mentions was probably his one-man exhibition presented at the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, in conjunction with the 1961 Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, October 27, 1961–January 7, 1962; the exhibition presented eight painted steel and three stainless steel sculptures, all dating from 1961. 2.  The Albany series, 1959–61, comprised thirteen works. 3.  Dida Becca Merry X, 1964 (K635), was probably the other work in the group. It has never been publicly exhibited; the others were not exhibited during Smith’s life.

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C H R O N O L O GY 1906–11

 oland David Smith is born on March 9, 1906, in Decatur, Indiana, to Harvey R (Harve) M. Smith, a manager and part owner of Citizen’s Telephone Company, and Golda Smith (née Stoler), a schoolteacher. One sister, Catherine, is born on April 7, 1911. The Smith and Stoler families, of English, Dutch, and French extraction, are primarily farmers. David’s paternal great-grandfather was reputed to have worked as a blacksmith. His mother is a member of the Methodist Church. She will later describe David as a willful and independent child with a keen interest in drawing and exploring in the woods near his home. She will also recall reading to him at bedtime from an illustrated book of Greek sculpture and showing him a bas-relief plaque of Bertel Thorvaldsen’s Night and Day (1815) that he tried to copy in modeling clay. Harve Smith is a part-time inventor with a home workshop. According to his son, he invents an electric Victrola before it is on the market (“Interview by Thomas B. Hess,” p. 373).

1921

 he family moves to Paulding, Ohio, when Harve Smith sells his interest in T the Decatur telephone company and in a second company in Monroe, Indiana, to become co-owner and manager of the Paulding Telephone Company.

1923–24

 avid enrolls in a correspondence course in cartooning through the D Cleveland Art School. He acts in class plays his junior and senior years at Paulding High School. As editor of his senior class yearbook, he contributes two caricature sketches, signed with his nickname, “Bud.” He graduates from high school in May 1924.

1924–25

 mith enrolls in the College of Education, Ohio University, in Athens (fall S 1924–spring 1925), where he takes courses in art structure, freehand drawing, French, mechanical drawing, English composition, and general psychology. He receives failing or near-failing grades in all but his art structure courses. During the summer, he works as a riveter and spot welder at the Studebaker automobile factory, in South Bend, Indiana, and then enrolls at the University of Notre Dame in the fall but quits after a few weeks and returns to Studebaker to work for its finance department.

1926

 mith moves to Washington, DC, where he works for Morris Plan Bank while S taking poetry classes at George Washington University at night (his library from this period contained books by Shelley and Keats). In early fall, he moves to New York City to work for the Industrial Acceptance Corporation, a Morris Plan Bank subsidiary. He meets Dorothy Dehner, who lives in the same apartment building, on West 118th Street. She encourages him to enroll in the Art Students League (ASL), where she is studying painting. He registers for Richard Lahey’s drawing class in November and December.

1927–28

 mith attends ASL full-time until 1932: he studies drawing with Lahey S (January–April) and woodcuts with Allen Lewis (in March), and he attends Homer Boss’s lectures on human anatomy and sculptural modeling. That summer, he returns to South Bend to work again at Studebaker in a finance position; he is fired and returns to New York City. In fall 1927, he enrolls in John Sloan’s painting course. Smith and Dehner marry on December 24; they move to 15 Abingdon Square, in Greenwich Village.

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  In spring 1928, Smith registers for Kimon Nicolaides’s life drawing, painting, and composition course and again studies drawing with Lahey. In late spring, Smith ships out from Philadelphia as a seaman on an oil tanker sailing to San Pedro, California, through the Panama Canal. That summer, he and Dehner visit her aunt in Pasadena, California. During 1927–28, he paints watercolor landscape and city scenes, several of which he signs David R. Smith. In the fall, he attends John Sloan’s lectures and takes his painting course. In early 1928, he applies unsuccessfully for a Tiffany art fellowship and a Guggenheim Foundation grant in the hope that he and Dehner can travel and paint in Europe. That fall, they move to an apartment in Brooklyn.

1929

 rom January to May, Smith works for the A. G. Spalding Bros. sporting F goods store. He briefly drives a taxi at night and continues in Nicolaides’s drawing course. In summer 1928, Smith and Dehner spend a month at the home of Thomas and Weber Furlong (ASL treasurer and executive secretary, respectively) in Bolton Landing, New York. In August, Smith and Dehner buy Old Fox Farm on Tick Ridge, in Bolton Landing, for $3,000. They will make installment payments on the property (renamed by Dehner “Red Moon Farm”), which comprises 86 acres and a dilapidated house and barn, until May 1932. Over the next seven years, the couple summer there while living primarily in New York City. Smith returns to work at A. G. Spalding until October 1931. In September, he studies with the Czech modernist painter Jan Matulka, who has recently begun to teach at ASL. Smith and Dehner’s friends and fellow Matulka students include Burgoyne Diller and I. Rice Pereira.

1930–32

 mith continues to study with Matulka at ASL. He also works as an art editor S of Tennis magazine, supervising layout, typography, and photography, and contributes illustrations for articles. Through the Furlongs, he and Dehner meet the Ukrainian-born painter John Graham (born Ivan Dombrowski), a refugee from czarist Russia. Graham, who buys a home in Bolton Landing the following year, will play a major role over the next several years in introducing Smith to African art and to modernist European and American art and artists.   In spring 1931, Smith inquires about joining an aerial photography expedition to Central America organized by the University of Pennsylvania; he proposes electrical and radio apparatuses for use in locating Mayan sites. In October, Smith and Dehner move to St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands; they also visit Road Town, Tortola, and Trinidad. During their stay in the Virgin Islands, Smith executes his first sculptures, a painted female torso and a male head, carved from coral, and also paints and experiments with multiple-exposure photographs of tableaux constructed from coral and other natural and human-made found objects.   In May 1932, the couple moves back to New York City. Smith makes landscape and still life paintings and drawings on Virgin Island themes and photographs constructions of wood, metal, canvas, seashells, and coral that he erects in the fields on their property. Several of Smith’s small painted wood, wire, and coral sculptures are attached to wood bases painted to suggest canvases. He sees three small sculptures by Julio González, recently purchased by John Graham. Graham introduces Smith and Dehner to the painters Stuart Davis, Jean Xceron, Arshile Gorky, and Willem de





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Kooning and shows Smith illustrations of Picasso’s iron wire sculptures welded by González, published in Cahiers d’Art in 1929. Smith and Dehner’s close friends during the early 1930s also include the painters Edgar Levy and his wife, Lucille Corcos, Adolph Gottlieb, Milton Avery, and Mark Rothko. 1933–34

 raham arranges for Smith to make wood bases for a collection of African G sculpture owned by Vanity Fair editor Frank Crowninshield. Smith continues to make constructions using coral elements and carves figurative works in wood. He buys a welding suit and an oxyacetylene torch and makes his first welded-iron sculptures: four heads and a reclining figure. Smith and Levy explore setting up a business to make and sell their own paints. Smith also resumes working at A. G. Spalding.   By 1934, Smith has moved his welding equipment out of his and Dehner’s Brooklyn apartment and rented space in a small commercial blacksmith and forge shop, Terminal Iron Works, located at 1 Atlantic Avenue, inside the Brooklyn Ferry Terminal; this will be his main studio until 1940. He sees Pablo Gargallo’s welded-metal sculpture at Brummer Gallery, New York City, in February, and in March he begins to work as an artist for the Civil Works Administration, an early government-sponsored jobs creation program; he is later promoted to assistant project supervisor for murals for New York State’s Temporary Emergency Relief Administration, where he works until July 1935. Graham gives Smith a small metal relief Head by González. 1935–36

I n March 1935, Xceron urges Smith to stop painting and concentrate on making sculpture (“Autobiographical Notes,” p. 98). In August, Smith creates a summer studio by installing a forge and anvil in a small woodshed on his Bolton Landing property. On October 9, Smith and Dehner sail for Europe, where they will remain for nine months. They live for two months in Paris, where Smith makes etchings at Stanley Hayter’s studio, sees Picasso’s 1935 paintings, and visits Jacques Lipchitz’s studio; he and Dehner also visit Brussels. In December, they depart for Greece, via Marseilles. They remain in Greece until April 1936; while there, Smith makes two bronze sculptures that he rejects due to poor casting. In May, he and Dehner return to Paris and then spend June in Leningrad and Moscow, where they see paintings by Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso at the State Museum of Modern Western Art, before returning to Paris. From Paris, they travel to London, where Smith studies Sumerian seals and World War I German medals at the British Museum. During their time abroad, Smith and Dehner observe and participate in socialist political demonstrations and keep abreast of political news in the United States. Smith makes twenty-seven figure and landscape paintings, sketches extensively, and compiles technical notes on old master paintings and classical Greek sculptures. On July 4, he and Dehner embark for New York City, arriving on July 9, 1936.

1937–39

I n February, Smith is assigned to the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project as an artist in the sculpture division, where he works until August 1939. He joins the newly organized American Abstract Artists group and the Artists Union (later the United American Artists Local 60 of the Congress of Industrial Organizations), which advocates on behalf of federal support for the arts. He begins to make extensive sketches and preparations for his cast metal Medals for Dishonor series (1939–40).

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  Smith has his first one-man exhibition in January 1938 at Marian Willard’s East River Gallery, New York City (later Marian Willard Gallery): seventeen welded and painted iron sculptures (1935–38), as well as drawings. None sell, but the show receives numerous reviews. He makes his first arc-welded sculptures. In March 1939, he participates in a WPA exhibition at the Federal Art Gallery, New York City, and shows Blue Construction, 1938 (K79) in the contemporary American art exhibition at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Harve Smith dies on August 4 (David designs a bronze memorial nameplate for his father’s grave). That November, he declines an offer from László Moholy-Nagy to teach at his new School of Art and Design, in Chicago.

1940–41

I n February, Smith gives his first public lecture, at the Labor Stage theater, New York City (“Abstract Art in America,” p. 33). That spring, concerned that their leftist politics have attracted government surveillance, he and Dehner move permanently to Bolton Landing. Smith names his new workshop Terminal Iron Works, Bolton Landing, in tribute to his workshop in Brooklyn, and because he had established credit under the T.I.W. name. He has a one-man show of recent sculptures at Neumann-Willard Gallery, New York City, in March. In November, Medals for Dishonor by David Smith opens at Willard Gallery (fourteen cast bronze and one cast silver bas-relief plaques); the catalogue includes his caption texts for the illustrations (Medals for Dishonor, p. 46) and essays by the novelists William Blake and Christina Stead. The exhibition elicits no sales despite wide and largely positive attention in the press. In late fall, Smith works on new, small, bronze figurative sculptures to be cast in the spring.   In January 1941, Smith’s work is included for the first time in the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, Annual exhibition. (He will participate in the Annuals in 1942, 1943, each year from 1945 to 1956, and in 1958, 1960, 1962, and 1964.) He shows drawings and sculptures in two traveling exhibitions organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York City (MoMA): Fifteen American Sculptors (twelve U.S. venues, October 1941–April 1943) and Twentieth Century Sculpture and Constructions (five U.S. venues and Honolulu, October 1941–February 1943).



1942–44

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I n January 1942, Smith exhibits seventeen sculptures at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York. He expands his studio in Bolton Landing and brings electricity to his property; in May, he accepts a job as an industrial welder at the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) in Schenectady (where he and Dehner will live until 1944, while occasionally spending time at Bolton Landing). Smith works the overnight shift at ALCO, six days a week, assembling locomotives and M7 destroyer tanks. He becomes a member of the United Steelworkers of America Local 2054 and is rated a first-class armor-plate welder by army ordinance. While working at ALCO, he makes a number of small sculptures in bronze, aluminum, and steel, a series of densely worked ink drawings on antifascist themes, and a group of jewelry pins in cast silver that he hopes will have commercial appeal. In his free time, he learns to carve marble and takes life-drawing classes in Saratoga, and he tries, unsuccessfully, to interest U.S. government agencies in commissioning him to design medals for meritorious war workers. In December, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, includes his steel

sculpture Ad Mare, 1938 (K112) and one of his Medals for Dishonor casts in its Artists for Victory exhibition.   Smith shows two sculptures in a group show at Buchholz Gallery, New York, and Willard Gallery, in January 1943. Clement Greenberg, writing in The Nation, predicts that Smith “has a chance of becoming one of the greatest of all American sculptors.” In February, Smith is notified that his draft classification has been changed to 1A (available for service). His wartime employment is featured in a press release issued by the New York public relations firm Earl Newsome & Co: “Noted Sculptor Welds Tank-Killers for American Locomotive Company.” In June, Smith receives a commission from China Defense Supplies (CDS), a corporation of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Chinese government, to design a medal honoring Americans who have provided significant service to China; he makes multiple sketch proposals, but a year later CDS abandons the project. Smith is increasingly anxious about the prospect of having to serve in the military and frustrated by lack of time to do his own work.   In February 1944, Smith is reclassified as “physically unfit” for military service due to chronic sinus problems. He continues to work at ALCO during the spring; during temporary layoffs, he travels to Bolton Landing and visits his family in Paulding. By June, he has quit his job at ALCO, and he and Dehner resume full-time residency in Bolton Landing. That fall, he completes his studio and begins the war-related Spectre series (seven bronze and steel sculptures, 1944–53). 1945

I n January, Smith declines an invitation from Josef Albers to teach at Black Mountain College, in Black Mountain, North Carolina. He and Dehner are reading James Joyce. By summer, he significantly increases his sculptural output, making over the course of the year forty-three welded-steel and cast-bronze sculptures, many of which explore war-related and autobiographical themes. He continues to feel financial pressure from increased expenses for materials and equipment and lack of sales. On July 2, he suffers bruised ribs, though no broken bones, when he is hit by two cars; he is forced to postpone his next show at Willard Gallery until the following year. In late summer or early fall, Dehner leaves Smith and moves to New York City; they will live separately for several months.

1946

I n January, Buchholz and Willard Galleries, in New York City, present a joint retrospective of Smith’s sculptures from 1936 through 1945. Dehner and Smith live together in New York City. In April, they return to Bolton Landing and begin to build a new house on their property (construction continues into 1949). In April, the American Association of University Women sponsors an exhibition on Smith’s sculpture composed mainly of large photographic reproductions and a small number of objects. (The exhibition will travel to fifteen colleges and libraries across the country until 1952.) Smith sells Cockfight, 1945 (K173), to the Saint Louis Art Museum and Cockfight-Variation, 1945 (K174), to the Whitney Museum of American Art, and he continues to explore war-related and landscape themes in his sculptures and in related paintings and drawings. In September, Joseph Hirshhorn visits Willard Gallery and buys three Medals for Dishonor and a small bronze, Woman in Subway, 1945 (K195); these are the first of more than thirty works by Smith

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that Hirshhorn will purchase by the mid-1960s and later give to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC. 1947–48

I n February, Smith lectures at Skidmore College, in conjunction with an exhibition of his sculptures and drawings (“Lecture, Skidmore College,” p. 65). In March, he joins the Board of Governors of the Artists Equity Association. He has a one-man exhibition of 1946–47 sculptures at Willard Gallery, in April. In his review for The Nation, Clement Greenberg describes Smith as “already one of the great sculptors of the twentieth century. . . . deserving to stand next to Brancusi, Lipchitz, Giacometti, González, not to mention Laurens and Moore.” In May, Smith is rejected for a Prix de Rome fellowship at the American Academy in Rome and a grant from the James F. Lincoln Arc Welding Foundation (“Design for Progress—Cockfight,” p. 71). In June, he exhibits thirty-seven sculptures and six drawings at the John Woodman Higgins Armory, Worcester, Massachusetts, and lectures at the First Woodstock Conference of Artists, New York, sponsored by Artists Equity (“The Sculptor’s Relationship to the Museum, Dealer, and Public,” p. 74). Mounting expenses required by the construction of the new house in Bolton Landing force him to take short-term commercial welding jobs. His frustration at having little time for his own work (he completes only six new sculptures, few drawings, and no paintings in 1947–48) leads to increasing tension between him and Dehner.   In fall 1948, Smith takes his first teaching position, at Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York (part-time, through spring 1950; “Report for Interim Week,” p. 85, and “Notes on Books,” p. 91). 1949–50

I n summer 1949, Art News commissions Smith to create a small double-sided medal, to be awarded to the winners of the National Amateur Painters Competition. That fall, he meets Jean Freas, who is a student at Sarah Lawrence College. He runs unsuccessfully for justice of the peace in Bolton Landing. That winter, he is again rejected for a Prix de Rome fellowship.   In April 1950, Smith is awarded a one-year John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (renewed for a second year in 1951). This grant allows him to purchase large quantities of steel and other materials for sculpture and drawing, as well as cameras and photographic equipment that he uses to document his work outdoors, installed on the terrace of his house and in the adjacent fields. He has a one-man show of 1947–50 sculptures, at Willard Gallery, in June; the painter Robert Motherwell writes the catalogue essay. In July, Smith’s steel sculpture Cello Player, 1946 (K199), is shown in the International Open Air Exhibition in Parc Middelheim, Antwerp, the first time his sculpture is exhibited in Europe. Smith meets the young painter Helen Frankenthaler through Clement Greenberg, and he becomes increasingly close to Motherwell and the painter Herman Cherry. The year 1950 is Smith’s most artistically productive since 1946: he completes more than a dozen increasingly large, abstract welded-steel sculptures, primarily on themes related to the natural landscape, writing, and letter forms. In November, he and Dehner separate; they will divorce in December 1952. 1951

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I n March, Smith exhibits sculptures completed in 1950, at Willard Gallery; the exhibition is cited by Art News (January 1952) as one of the best one-man

shows of the year. In order to increase his income and promote his work to a wider audience, he seeks opportunities to lecture at museums and universities and to serve on exhibition juries. He lectures at the Corcoran Gallery in January (“Foreword—[Apology of a Juryman],” p. 116) and at Williams College in December (“Lecture, Williams College,” p. 137). In September 1951, Elaine de Kooning’s profile, “David Smith Makes a Sculpture: Cathedral,” is published in Art News (see “Notes for Elaine de Kooning,” p. 127). Smith begins the Agricola series (eighteen sculptures, 1951–59), the first of the extended sequences of formally diverse but conceptually related and numbered sculptures that will characterize much of his production over the following fifteen years. He meets the painter Ken Noland. In October, Smith has a sculpture in the U.S. representation at the First Biennial at the Museu de Arte Moderne, São Paulo, Brazil. He exhibits works from the 1930s through 1951 at Margaret Brown Gallery, Boston, in October and at Bennington College, Vermont, in November. 1952

 rom January to September, Smith gives nine lectures, at various museums F and conferences (“Problems of the Contemporary Sculptor,” p. 140; “The New Sculpture,” p. 148; “The Modern Sculptor and His Materials,” p. 156; “Lecture, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture,” p. 162; and “Lecture, Fourth Annual Woodstock Art Conference,” p. 167). He also publishes two essays derived from lectures (“The Language Is Image,” p. 145, and “Who Is the Artist?,” p. 175). His exhibition of sculptures and drawings, presented jointly at Willard and Kleeman Galleries, New York City, in April is listed as among the best one-man shows of the year (Art News, January 1953). In September, his sculptures are featured in Life magazine. In October, he gives a talk for broadcast by WNYC-New York radio (“Statement, WNYC Radio,” p. 172) and begins the Tanktotem series (ten sculptures, 1952–60, which incorporate altered and painted commercially manufactured tank ends). Over the course of the year, he also completes more than two hundred abstract black egg ink and colored ink drawings.

1953

 isappointed by Marian Willard’s efforts to generate sales, Smith presents a D one-man show of recent work at Kootz Gallery, New York City, and participates in group shows at the Saidenberg and Stable galleries, in New York City, and Margaret Brown Gallery, in Boston. Six of his sculptures are included in Twelve Modern American Contemporary Painters and Sculptors, organized by the MoMA, which opens in Paris in April and travels to five European and Scandinavian museums (until 1954). During the spring semester of 1953, he teaches as a visiting professor at the University of Arkansas, in Fayetteville. On April 6, he and Jean Freas marry in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. While teaching at the university, he also gives lectures in Oregon, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Corning, New York (“Lecture, Portland Art Museum,” p. 183; “The Artist and Art in America,” p. 192; “Thoughts on Sculpture,” p. 196; and “Second Thoughts on Sculpture,” p. 209). Over the course of the year, he makes some 150 ink drawings and several sculptures on the theme of drawing, as well as two suspended sculptures composed of moving parts. He and Jean spend the summer in Bolton Landing. In 1953, he sells sculptures to the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the University Gallery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

1954

I n January, Smith has a one-man show of sculptures from the previous year at Willard Gallery. On April 4, his and Jean’s first daughter, Rebecca, is born.

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During the spring semester, he again teaches at the University of Arkansas. A retrospective of his sculptures, drawings, and graphics opens at the Cincinnati Modern Art Society in May and then travels to three venues in Wisconsin and Indiana. In June, Hudson River Landscape, 1951 (K257), is shown in the U.S. Pavilion, organized by the MoMA’s International Council of the for the XXVII Venice Biennale. Smith returns to Bolton Landing with his family for the summer and in the fall accepts a oneyear appointment at Indiana University, in Bloomington (fall 1954– spring 1955). He publishes two articles titled “Thoughts on Sculpture” in the College Art Journal (winter and spring issues; “Thoughts on Sculpture,” p. 196, and “Second Thoughts on Sculpture,” p. 209) and gives three lectures, in April and August (“The Artist, the Critic, and the Scholar,” p. 213; “Tradition,” p. 216; and “Lecture, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture,” p. 218). In September, while teaching in Indiana, Smith travels to Paris, Milan, and then to Venice, where he serves as a delegate to UNESCO’s First International Congress of Plastic Arts. Over the course of the year, he completes eighteen large standing steel and bronze figures, two sculptures in silver, and nearly two hundred drawings in ink and colored tempera. 1955

I n March, while on temporary leave from the University of Indiana, Smith teaches at the University of Mississippi, Oxford, and lectures at the Memphis Academy of Arts and at H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, Tulane University, New Orleans (“The Artist in Society,” p. 245, and “Drawing,” p. 254). In May, he is a juror for a mural and sculpture competition for the new United Nations building in New York City. He shows nine sculptures and drawings in a three-man traveling exhibition (with Reg Butler and Berto Lardera) that opens at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in May, the first time Smith’s work is prominently featured at West Coast venues. He spends the summer in Bolton Landing and begins construction to again expand his workshop. On August 12, his and Jean’s second daughter, Candida, is born. Smith makes fifty sculptures during 1955, including large works in steel, painted steel, and cast bronze, and smaller works in bronze, steel, and clay. He begins two new series in steel and painted steel, the Forgings (1955–56) and Ravens (1955–60), and he completes nearly two hundred abstract expressionist ink and ink-and-colored-gouache drawings, as well as a group of minimalist ink drawings, composed of parallel vertical or horizontal lines, which relate to the Forgings.

1956

 he February 1956 issue of Art News publishes Smith’s essay on Julio T González (“González: First Master of the Torch,” p. 259). David Smith: Sculpture—Drawing, 1954–56, opens in March, at Willard Gallery. Increasingly unhappy with Willard’s lack of success selling his works and angered by the disappearance of a sculpture, Ark 53, 1954 (K320), that he had left in her care, he ends his relationship with the gallery in June. From then on, he consigns or sells works to various galleries but refuses exclusive representation. During this year, he begins the steel and stainless steel Sentinel series (1956–61) and continues to make ink drawings. After several years of making almost no paintings, he creates thirty small abstract, gestural compositions in oil on board and canvas. He becomes increasingly close to Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Franz Kline, Lee Krasner, Morris Louis, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, and Ken Noland.

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1957

I n May, Smith publishes an essay on sculpture and architecture (“Sculpture and Architecture,” p. 290). In September, MoMA presents an exhibition of Smith’s sculptures from 1938 through 1957, the first retrospective exhibition given to a living abstract artist of his generation (catalogue by Sam Hunter). He has one-man shows at the Fine Arts Associates (Otto Gerson), and Widdifield galleries, in New York City (September and October). In November, he gives a lecture sponsored by the Alcoa Foundation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York (“Contemporary Sculpture and Architecture,” p. 299). He continues to paint and draw; casts more than twenty abstract bronze bas-relief plaques; and makes large sculptures (five and a half to eleven feet tall) in steel, painted steel, and cast bronze, as well as smaller works in silver, steel, and bronze. He also accepts a commission from the Pittsburgh collector G. David Thompson to make sculptures to be placed in architectural settings in and outside Thompson’s home. He sells twenty-five sculptures to dealers, museums, and private collectors, including his first work to Lois Orswell, who will acquire more than sixty sculptures, drawings, paintings, and photos (now in the collections of the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts).

1958–59

I n May, Smith again starts construction to expand his studio. In June, sixteen of his sculptures are presented as part of the U.S. representation organized by MoMA’s International Council for the XXIX Venice Biennale. That same month, Jean moves out of the Bolton Landing house with their daughters  and seeks a legal separation; they will divorce in 1961. From then on,  Smith spends time with his daughters primarily at Christmas and during  the summer, as well as on visits to Washington, DC, where they live with Jean.   Smith lectures at Bennington College, Vermont, in March and April 1959 (see “Drawing,” p. 254) and at Ohio State University in April 1959 (“Lecture, Ohio State University,” p. 307). He exhibits three sculptures at Documenta II, in Kassel, Germany, in July, and twenty-five sculptures at the V São Paulo Bienal, in September. During these years he makes large (eight to twelve feet tall) stainless steel sculptures composed of multiple flat planes, begins the painted steel Albany series (thirteen works, 1959–62), and creates more than three hundred gestural ink drawings. He also begins painting a series of eight-foot and taller canvases and smaller works on paper by spraying multicolored layers of commercial aerosolized enamel over found objects and stenciled forms that when removed leave white voids in the surrounding painted fields. In September 1959, Smith exhibits twenty-one spray paintings at French & Company, New York City; the reviews of these works are largely negative.



1960–61

I n 1960 Smith has a one-man show of recent sculptures at French & Company, in February. That month, Arts Magazine devotes a special issue to his work that includes a substantial essay by Hilton Kramer and photographs and notes by Smith (“Notes on My Work,” p. 313). Smith is interviewed by the English art critic David Sylvester for BBC radio, in March (“Interview by David Sylvester,” p. 316). Smith presents his last formal lecture, “Memories to Myself” (p. 330), at MoMA and has his first one-man exhibition on the West Coast, which consists of sculptures and drawings from 1957 through 1960, at Everett Ellin Gallery, Los Angeles, in November.

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  In October 1961, Smith exhibits new, boldly painted Tanktotems and other steel sculptures at Otto Gerson Gallery, New York City, and eleven sculptures, including six painted steel works from his Zig series (1961–64), at the Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, presented by the Carnegie Institute. The Carnegie jurors award Zig IV (K534) the third prize for sculpture; Smith’s public rejection of the award and its $1,000 prize (“Letter to the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Institute,” p. 341) receives widespread attention in the national press. In November, MoMA organizes a major retrospective of Smith’s sculptures from 1933 through 1960; it opens in Rochester, New York, in November, and then travels to seven other U.S. cities (until March 1963).   In 1960–61, Smith does no painting but continues to make many drawings. He begins an untitled series of approximately two-foot-tall unique, abstract, patinated bronze casts and begins his burnished stainless steel Cubi series (thirty works, 1961–65), while also becoming increasingly focused on the challenge of incorporating bold colors in his painted steel sculptures.

1962

I n the spring, Smith participates in a series of informal seminars with students as a visiting critic at the University of Pennsylvania (he will do so again that fall and in spring 1963). He makes a handful of large spray paintings and more than two hundred spray-and-ink drawings and continues to work in stainless steel and bronze. His last published essay appears in the Whitney Review (“Sculpture Today,” p. 348). In May, Smith is invited to participate in Sculpture in the City, an open-air group exhibition organized by the Italian curator Giovanni Carandente in conjunction with the Festival of Two Worlds, in Spoleto, Italy. Smith spends May 18 to June 19 making twenty-six welded-steel sculptures at a decommissioned steel factory in Voltri, near Genoa; they are presented in June as a one-man show in Spoleto’s Roman amphitheater and in the streets of the city. While in Europe, he visits Milan, Rome, and Venice (for the opening of the biennial), goes to Paris, and then departs for New York in late June. Upon his return, Smith’s interview with Katharine Kuh, conducted in 1961 (“Interview by Katharine Kuh,” p. 343), is published. That fall, he begins three new numbered painted steel sculpture series: Circles (three works, 1961–63); Primo Pianos (three works, 1962); and Voltri-Boltons and Voltons (twenty-five works, 1962–63); the latter are constructed from steel and old tools that he had shipped to Bolton Landing from Italy. In November, eleven of his sculptures are included in an exhibition of the collection of Joseph Hirshhorn at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City. Toward the end of 1962 or in early 1963, Smith begins to work on his “Report on Voltri” (p. 356).

1963

I n May, Smith has a one-man show of drawings from 1953 through 1963 at Balin/Traube Gallery, New York City. That summer, he agrees to let Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York City, be his primary agent. In the fall, he teaches and organizes a welding program at Bennington College. In December, fifty of Smith’s drawings from the 1950s are presented in a show circulated by MoMA that opens at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh, and travels to thirteen U.S. venues. During this year, he makes many small spray paintings, drawings, and abstract ink drawings. Returning to a subject he had rarely depicted since the late 1940s, Smith takes more than one hundred photographs of nude female models posed in domestic settings

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and outdoors, in Bolton Landing, and begins a series of ink drawings on the same subject. He also creates the Menand series (eight small geometric forms, composed of thick blocks of solid steel), begins the Wagons (three forged and welded steel sculptures, 1963–64), and makes what will be his tallest work, the stainless steel Tower I (K625), which measures twenty-three feet high. 1964

 ver the course of this year, Smith makes nearly three hundred black and O colored-enamel paintings of nude female models; their poses derive from his earlier photographs. He also creates a series of painted and glazed ceramic plates on the same subject, working with David Gil and Bennington Potters. In February, a one-man show of Smith’s sculptures and drawings from 1960 to 1963, including sixteen works from his new Voltri-Bolton and Volton series, opens at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia. In March, Smith is awarded Brandeis University’s annual Creative Arts Award (along with the theatrical producer Cheryl Crawford, writer Vladimir Nabokov, and composer Carl Ruggles). In June, sculptures from Smith’s Voltri-Bolton and Volton series, along with drawings and several Menand sculptures, are exhibited at the Hyde Collection, in Glens Falls, New York. Also in June, two of Smith’s Cubi sculptures are shown in a group exhibition at the Tate Gallery, London; in July, three Cubis are presented at Documenta III, in Kassel, Germany. In October, ICA and University of Pennsylvania Press publish Voltron, with an essay by Giovanni Carandente, Smith’s “Letter to David Sylvester” (p. 353), and photographs by Ugo Mulas of the 1962 Voltri sculptures. The same month, Marlborough-Gerson Gallery shows recent Cubis, Zigs, and Menands and four works from Smith’s 1964 Bronze Planes series; an edited version of his interview with Thomas Hess is published in the catalogue (“Interview by Thomas B. Hess,” p. 373); and Smith gives a radio interview on WNCN-New York (“Interview by Marian Horosko,” p. 413). In November, Smith’s filmed interview with Frank O’Hara is televised on Channel 13 / WNDT-TV (“Interview by Frank O’Hara,” p. 422).

1965–66

 mith completes seven sculptures in steel and stainless steel, including S two large planar stainless steel sculptures, and four Cubis. He works with curators at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and MoMA to prepare two major exhibitions of his work. In February, Smith is appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to the first National Council on the Arts; he attends meetings in Washington, DC, in April.   On May 23, Smith is mortally injured in a car accident near Bennington, Vermont; he dies later that night. His funeral is held on May 27, in Bolton Landing. Robert Motherwell, James Rosati, and Stanley Young, a spokesperson for the National Council on the Arts, speak. Smith’s will named his lawyer Ira M. Lowe, Robert Motherwell, and Clement Greenberg executors of his estate. Portions of his final lecture, given at Bennington College on May 12, are published in October (“Some Late Words from David Smith,” p. 428).   David Smith: A Memorial Exhibition opens in Los Angeles in November 1965. "David Smith 1906–1965," organized by MoMA's International Council travels to five European venues from May 1966 to May 1967.

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I L L U S T R AT I O N C R E D I T S All documents and works of art, including photographs of sculpture, by David Smith, collection of the Estate of David Smith, New York City, © Estate of David Smith/Licensed by VAGA, New York City, unless otherwise noted. Smith’s sculptures were photographed at Bolton Landing, New York, unless another location is specified.

1. Dorothy Dehner and David Smith, before embarking for Europe, October 1935. Photographer unknown .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 2. Bombing Civilian Populations, 1939 (K103), cast bronze, 10 × 10 × 7 8 in. (25.4 × 25.4 × 2.2 cm). Photograph by David Heald. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 3. Sketchbook page, c. 1945, graphite on paper, 10 1 4 × 8 in. (26.7 × 20.3 cm) . . . . . . . 56 4. Sketchbook page, 1946–47, graphite on paper, 9 × 6 in. (22.9 × 15.2 cm) . . . . . . . . . . 61 5. Insect, 1948 (K218), steel and silver, welded and painted, 21 ½ × 20 × 4 in. (54.6 × 50.8 × 10.2 cm). Private collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 6. Study for Structure of a Small Concept Possessing Big Power, 1950, graphite and colored pencil on paper, 11 7 8 × 8 ¾ in. (30.2 × 22.2 cm) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 7. Sketchbook page, 1950, graphite and colored pencil on paper, 11 × 8 ¼ in. (27.9 × 21 cm) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 8. David Smith in his studio at Terminal Iron Works, Brooklyn, NY, c. 1937. Photographer unknown. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 9. Sketchbook page, 1951, ink on paper, 6 3 8 × 4 in. (16.2 × 10.2 cm) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 10. David Smith, printed exhibition brochure (New York: Willard Gallery, 1951) . . . . . . 120 11. Hudson River Landscape, 1951 (K257), steel and stainless steel, welded and painted, 48 ¾ × 72 1 8 x 17 3 8 in. (123.8 × 183.2 × 44.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Purchase (54.14). .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 12. Page removed from a sketchbook, 1952, ink on paper, 10 × 8 in. (25.4 × 20.3 cm) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 13. Sketchbook page, 1952, graphite on paper, 10 × 8 in. (25.4 × 20.3 cm) . . . . . . . . . . 170 14. David Smith in his workshop, Bolton Landing, NY, c. 1953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 15. Sketchbook page, 1955, ink on paper, 5 ½ × 3 ½ in. (14 × 8.9 cm) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 16. Untitled, 1955, egg ink on paper, 20 5 16 × 15 5 8 in. (51.6 × 39.7 cm) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 17. Double-page spread, Arts Magazine, February 1960 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 18. V  oltri XVII, 1962 (K574), Bluff Collection 2 LP; Voltri IV, 1962 (K561), Collection Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, the Netherlands; and Voltri V, 1962 (K562), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn (66.4641), installed in the Anfiteatro Romano, Spoleto, Italy, June 1962 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362

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19. Sketchbook page, 1962–63, crayon and ink on paper, 8 ½ × 5 ½ in. (21.6 × 14 cm) .367 20. Wagon II, 1964 (K639), steel, welded, 82 ¼ × 112 ¼ × 47 5 8 in. (208.9 × 285.1 × 121 cm). Tate Gallery, London. Purchased with assistance from the American Fund for the Tate Gallery, the National Art Collections Fund, and the Friends of the Tate Gallery, 1999. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374 21. D  avid Smith watching as Zig VIII, 1964, is hoisted into Marlborough-Gerson Gallery window, New York City. Photograph by Fred W. McDarrah/Licensed by Getty Images. Zig VIII, 1964, steel, welded and painted, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Centennial Purchase Fund (68.279). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414 22. Cubi XXVII (Gate II), 1965 (K675), stainless steel, welded and polished, 111 3 8 × 87 ¾ × 34 in. (282.9 × 222.9 × 86.4 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City. By exchange (67.1862). .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429 2 3. Cubi XXIV (Gate I), 1964 (K672), stainless steel, welded and polished, 114 ¼ × 83 ¼ × 32 in. (290.2 × 211.5 × 81.3 cm). Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Howard Heinz Endowment Fund (67.6). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430 24. Untitled (Candida), 1965 (K648), stainless steel, welded and polished, 103 × 120 × 31 in. (261.6 × 304.8 × 78.7 cm). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 25. Zig VII, 1963 (K627), steel, welded and painted, 96 ¼ × 99 ½ × 85 ¼ in. (244.5 × 252.7 × 216.5 cm). Museum of Modern Art, New York City. Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund (by exchange) and gift of Candida and Rebecca Smith (119.1984). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432 26. Doorway on Wheels, 1960 (K487), steel, welded and painted, 92 × 38 × 21 ¼ in. (233.7 × 96.5 × 54 cm). Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA. Gift of Lois Orswell (1994.16). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432 27. Zig III, 1961 (K533), steel, welded and painted, 93 × 124 × 60 in. (236.2 × 315 × 152.4 cm). Private collection, courtesy Estate of David Smith, New York City. . . . . 433 2 8. 2 Circle IV, 1962 (K551), steel, welded and painted, 119 × 65 × 28 in. (302.3 × 165.1 × 71.1 cm). Toledo Museum of Art, OH. Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummon Libbey (2001.3). . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434 2 9. Bec-Dida Day, 1963 (K610), steel, welded and painted, 89 × 65 × 18 in. (226.1 × 165.1 × 45.7 cm). Yale University Art Gallery. Charles B. Benenson, B.A. 1933, Collection (2006.52.68). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435 30. Tanktotem X, 1960 (K497), steel, welded and painted, 61 ¾ × 45 ¼ × 24 in. (156.8 × 114.9 × 61 cm). Private collection.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435 31. W  elded and painted steel sculptures and two cast-bronze sculptures, completed 1960–61. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436 32. Menand II, 1963 (K616), steel, welded, applied patina, 25 ¼ × 16 ¾ × 6 ¼ in. (64.1 × 42.5 × 15.9 cm). Private collection, courtesy Estate of David Smith, New York City. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438 3 3. Untitled (Tower I), 1955, ink on paper, 23 × 18 in. (58.4 × 45.7 cm). Photograph by Robert McKeever. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439

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3 4. Sentinel III, 1957 (K431), steel, welded and painted, 83 ¾ × 27 × 16 ¼ in. (212.7 × 68.6 × 41.3 cm). Private collection. Photographed at Bolton Landing dock, Lake George, NY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440 35. Forging V, 1955 (K337), steel, forged and varnished, 74 × 8 ½ × 8 ½ in. (188 × 21.6 × 21.6 cm). Private collection, courtesy Estate of David Smith, New York City. Photographed at Bolton Landing dock, Lake George, NY. . . . . . . . 440 36. Personage of May, 1957 (K425), cast bronze, applied patina, 71 5 8 × 31 ½ × 18 ½ in. (181.9 × 80 × 47 cm). Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY. Gift of the Ralph E. Ogden Foundation (1967.6). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441 37. Detroit Queen, 1957 (K417), cast bronze, applied patina, 71 × 25 × 25 ½ in. (180.3 × 63.5 × 64.8 cm). Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA. Gift of Lois Orswell (1994.15). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441 3 8. Sitting Printer, 1954 (K328), cast bronze, applied patina, 87 × 15 ¾ × 17 in. (221 × 40 × 43.2 cm). Photographed at Bolton Landing dock, Lake George, NY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442 39. Untitled, 1961–62 (K540), cast bronze, applied patina, 21 ¼ × 12 × 12 ½ in. (54 × 30.5 × 31.8 cm). Private collection, Minneapolis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442

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INDE X

Italicized fig indicates illustrations. Footnotes are referenced with “n” and endnotes with “n” followed by the endnote number. Page numbers followed by endnote references in parentheses support text discussions. Works are by David Smith unless otherwise attributed. Exhibitions of David Smith’s works are indexed at hosting institutions. Exhibitions excluding David Smith’s works are indexed under exhibition titles. Abandoned Foundation (Landscape), 6 ability (artistic skill), 74, 194, 215, 242, 281, 332 abstract art: art style descriptions, 6, 26, 35, 66, 321; criticism of, 5, 32n2, 34, 331; critiques on exhibitions of, 3–4, 21–22; development of, 384; exhibitions promoting, early, 203; lectures on, 5, 33–36, 65n, 450; in nature, 163, 224, 321 “Abstract Art in America,” 14n29, 33–36, 65n, 450 Abstract Expressionism, 152, 153n4, 184, 246–47, 285, 327 Abstract Painting in America (exhibition), 3–4, 21–22 A.C.A. Gallery, 101, 104 “Acres of Wall Space” (Jewell), 19n Ad Mare, 451 aesthetics: of aesthetician/philosopher, 167–68, 173, 197, 237, 258; of artist, 164–65, 167–68, 173; creative process views, 167–68, 197, 211, 238; opposition to, 212; tradition of, 217 “Aesthetics and the Artist” (conference), 167n African art, 34, 101, 184, 187–88, 234, 448, 449 African Folktales and Sculpture (Radin and Sweeney), 187–88 African Sculpture Speaks (Segy), 187–88 after-images. See eidetic images Agricola III, 220, 221 Agricola IV, 228n2 Agricola V, 220–21 Agricola VIII, 221–22 Agricola XIII, 226 Agricola Head, 376(410n3) Agricola series: composition descriptions, 220–22, 226; concept and meaning, 186n2, 222; early works in, 346, 377–78; production, 165, 184, 220, 222, 346, 453; title selection, 165, 220 A. G. Spalding Bros., 99, 100, 448, 449 Albany Institute of Art, 121 Albany series: production, 13, 445n2, 455; surface descriptions, 344; title selection, 10, 344, 416, 437 Albers, Josef, 299, 423, 451 Albright Art Gallery (now Albright-Knox Art Gallery), 213n Alcoa (Aluminum Company of America) Foundation, 299, 455 aloneness, 193, 214, 388–89, 418 aluminum, 25, 42–43, 43 America, machinery analogies, 23 American Abstract Artists Group, 411n32, 449 American Academy, Rome, 452 American art: artistic heritage of, 24, 324; growth and development, 35, 66, 164, 174, 213, 246–47; museum displays of, criticism, 303 “American Art at the Met,” 303 American Arts Festival, 172n American Association of University Women, 121–22(124n11), 451 American Federation of Arts Forty-Fourth Annual Convention, 192n, 195n American folk art, 345 American Institute of Architects, 144n1 American Locomotive Company (ALCO), 5, 6, 52, 105–6, 379, 450, 451 American Numismatic Society, 41n3 American Sculpture 1951 (exhibition), 140(144n1)

American University, 123 anatomy, medieval, 39–40 Anatomy of My Universe (Masson), 93–94 Anchorhead, 224 Ancient Household, The, 107 “And Drawings before the Etchings or the Print,” 257 “And So This Being the Happiest–Is Disappointing,” 8, 125–26 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Sculpture, 117, 119 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 93, 212, 263 “Approaches to Art” (Kris), 65 Archipenko, Alexander, 233, 246 architects: artist collaborations, 4, 8–9, 27–28, 287, 316–17; personality descriptions, 287, 288, 291–92, 316 “Architect Should Be Able to Judge, The,” 4, 27–28 architecture: Bauhaus philosophy on art collaboration with, 8, 299; community and environment, 286, 288, 290; materials and techniques, 30, 42–45, 72; sculpture relationship and criticism of, 7–8, 141, 290–92, 299–301, 316; sculpture relationship and function, 4, 27–32, 42, 287, 301; view of, 306; welding fellowship application, 71n Archives of American Art (AAA), xiii arc-welded sculpture, 71–72, 158, 450, 452 Arends, Jack, 160n, 213n Arensberg Collection, 329 Ark 53, 224, 253n5, 454 Armory Show (exhibition), 21, 203, 217, 246 Arp, Jean (Hans), 78n, 85, 262, 287–88 Art: New York (television series), 422n art, overview: artist’s analysis and explanation of, 67, 247, 253, 390; artist’s relationship to work, 65, 74, 137, 143, 149–50, 168, 198; characteristics as virtues of, 335; character of, 137, 143; as contemporary continuum of transformation, 8, 156; as entertainment, 228; fun­­ ction of, 67, 76, 85–86, 111–12, 141, 396; influences on, 66, 304–5; media classified as, 306, 332, 396; origins, 156; owner modifications to, 338–39, 396; pricing, 75, 280, 294, 300; purpose of, 44, 388; standards of excellence, 252; understanding, requirements for, 138, 142, 145, 151, 164–65, 172, 198, 226 “Art and Artists: Woodstock Conference Considers Relationship of Art to Aesthetics” (Genauer), 167n “Art and Religion,” 200–201 art books, 67n2, 91–94, 212n2, 382, 383 Art Digest (magazine), 187–88, 200n art education: as artistic influence, 52, 148, 293; cartooning, 447; descriptions and quality of, 233, 330–31; drawing, 447; employment during, 25, 52; galleries for, 332; instructor experience as require­­ ments for, 332; life-drawing classes, 99, 448, 450; painting, Lahey, 98, 344, 400, 447, 448; painting, Matulka, 99, 184, 232, 314, 324, 344, 399, 422, 448; painting, Sloan, 98, 314, 447, 448; purpose of, 230; sculpture, 232, 343; woodcut, 98, 447. See also teaching; teaching positions Art for the Millions (O’Connor, ed.), 29–32, 29n Art Front (magazine), 3, 4, 19–20, 384 art history: architecture-sculpture relationship in, 290, 291, 299; art education in, 332; as artistic influence,

463

art history (continued) 178–79, 304–5; challenging, 269; evaluation, con­ sequences of, 308; of iron sculpture, 150, 185; modern sculpture and lack of, 24, 324; painting and sculpture relationship, 140–41, 183; of sculpture and loss of popularity, 141; sculpture origins and tradi­­ tions, 183, 209; views of, 164, 168, 178–79, 197–98, 211, 304, 305, 332. See also heritage; tradition Art in Our Time (exhibition), 45n1 Art Institute of Chicago, 36n1, 288n2, 343n, 453 Art International, 428n “Artist, the Critic, and the Scholar,” 213–15 “Artist and Art in America,” 9, 192–94, 195n, 453 “Artist and His World, The,” 74–77 Artist and the Museum, The (Morse, ed.), 341n “Artist in Society, The,” 245–53, 454 artists: architect collaborations with, 4, 8–9, 27–28, 287, 316–17; artist’s identity developed through contact with, 193, 214; as best judges of work, 214; as elements of nature, 156–57, 184, 198, 208, 210, 219, 224, 245, 275, 277, 308, 317, 321; equality of, 294, 335; expectancies and attainment goals of, 284; goals of, 59; image of, 203–6; inspiration to become, 284; legal protections for, 338–39; New York lifestyles, 419; obligations of, art analyses and explanations, 67, 247, 253, 390; obligations of, to self, 228, 253, 268, 271, 294; obligations of, work quality, 60, 62–63, 87, 110, 228, 253, 272, 283, 284, 288, 321, 346, 347, 394, 444; as products of own time, 8, 76, 86, 109–10, 116, 142, 210, 226, 269; relationship to artwork, 65, 74, 137, 143, 149–50, 168, 198; relationship with audience, 5, 76, 104, 228, 253, 271, 272–73, 283, 386–87, 415, 419, 420, 444–45; relationship with critics, 160–61, 163, 167, 192, 194, 197, 211, 212n1, 213–14, 215; relationship with dealers/galleries, 74–75, 76, 103, 251, 332; relationship with government, 8, 76, 273, 294, 318, 319; relationship with museums, 4, 8, 75, 274; social class of, 357. See also artist’s identity Artists Equity Association, 452 Artists for Victory (exhibition), 451 Artist’s Hour, The (radio program), 124n12 artist’s identity: artistic skill and ability related to, 194, 215; authority of, 193; creative process as, 9–10, 137, 141, 142, 143, 149–50, 173, 179, 185, 192–93, 197, 211, 213, 217, 221, 239, 254, 308–9, 331, 334; criticism of, 192; definition and descriptions, 9, 327, 381; develop­­ ment of, 9, 55, 67, 193, 209–10, 213–14, 215, 228, 229, 301; evaluations on, 280; evolution of, 390; influences on, 52, 140, 146, 192, 195, 203, 209–10, 213, 246; maintaining, 130, 179, 185; self-acceptance and recognition of, 195, 246; Smith’s self-concept, 9–10, 13, 52, 137, 149–50, 173, 179, 193, 215, 226–27, 228–29, 280; society’s perception of, 192, 203, 318; truth as, 197, 211, 239, 254; as writing theme, 9. See also work stream “Artist’s Image, The,” 203–6 Artists on Art (Goldwater and Treves), 2, 94 Artists Union (United American Artists Local 60 of the Congress of Industrial Organizations), 3, 33n, 102, 449 Artist’s Voice, The (Kuh), 343n Art News (magazine): art history articles, 304–5; artist profile articles by E. de Kooning, 98n, 119, 127n, 389, 453; book reviews, 293n; double-sided medal commissions, 452; exhibition reviews, 103, 122, 124n13, 452–53; González articles, 8, 259–64, 454; interview disclaimers, 293n, 297–98; vandalism protest letters, 338–39 Arts and Architecture (magazine), 145n, 196n Arts Magazine: artist-featured articles, 313–15, 315fig, 455; interview disclaimers, 293n, 297; museum display criticism, 303; sculpture and architecture editorials, 290–92; vandalism protest letters, 338

464

Art Students League (ASL): art conferences at, 74n, 167n; art instructors at, Hofmann, 399; art instructors at, Lahey, 98, 344, 400, 447, 448; art instructors at, Matulka, 99, 184, 232, 314, 324, 344, 399, 422, 448; art instructors at, Sloan, 98, 314, 400, 447, 448; as artistic influence, 148, 293; employ­ ment vs. education choices, 52; students at, 81, 324 Ash Can School, 153, 400 Asian ink drawing, 8 associations: artistic development and projection of, 91, 109; more important than object, 246; viewers’ individual interpretations based on, 138; writing style as stream-of-consciousness verbalizing, 5, 46n Assyrian art, 64, 121, 184, 211 “Atmosphere of Early ’30s,” 152 “Attitude Toward Tradition of the Contemporary Artist, The,” 216n audience: artist relationship with, 5, 76, 104, 228, 253, 271, 272–73, 283, 386–87, 415, 419, 420, 444–45; commercialism and skepticism of, 137; description of, 87; expectations of artist, 157, 198; individual perception and art interpretation, 138, 146, 168, 196; kinetic compositions and engagement of, 45; nature perspective of, 176; other artists as, 193, 214; responses of, 58, 66, 76, 111, 138, 142, 147, 148, 198, 221, 230, 249; responsibility of, 75, 76, 110–11, 272–73; sculpture size and response of, 289; touching sculpture, 417 Australia, 346, 409, 411n27 “Autobiographical Notes,” 98–107, 449 automobile accidents, 451, 457 automobile parts, as found objects, 441–42 avant-garde art, 285, 291, 300, 383, 384 Avery, Milton, 387 awards: artistic achievement, 411n18, 457; exhibition prizes, opposition to, 75, 341, 456; fellowships and grants, 119, 121–24, 452 Babbitt, Irving, 32 bad art (failures): artist’s identity and, 194, 215, 221; destruction of, 403–4; rules and judgment of, 230; value of, 181, 377, 378, 404 balance vs. imbalance, 252 Balin/Traube Gallery, 456 Ball, Jim and Minnie, 1, 13, 369–70 Banquet, The, 124n16 Barr, Alfred H., Jr.: art acquisition negotiations, 296n2; art education conference presentations, 330n; González art acquisitions, 262; interviews criticizing, 293n, 294, 297; Picasso quotes from books of, 179; recommended books by, 92–93, 212n2 Bathers, 4(14n27), 42n Baudelaire, Charles, 14n33 Bauhaus, 8, 235, 299 Baziotes, William, 281 BBC Radio, 316–28 beauty: artistic nature as, 207; as metaphor of imagination, 211; nature and, 198; perception of, 5, 34–35, 65–66, 76, 111; term usage and limitation, 213 Becca, 13, 431, 437 Bec-Dida Day, 435, 435fig Beckett, Samuel, 346 Bellows, George, 234 Bennington College, 145n, 254n, 428–45, 453, 455, 456 Bennington College Alumnae Quarterly, 145n Bennington Potters, 411n36, 457 Benton, Thomas Hart, 399 Berenson, Bernard, 286 Bible, 263, 304 Biddle, George, 303n Billiard Player, The, 119(124n6), 123, 124n6 Billings, Henry, 22 “Bin Full of Balls, A,” 365

Bi-Polar Structure, 107n13 Bishop, Isabel, 265n, 269, 279, 281 black, aesthetics and perception of, 168, 197 Blackburn (Terminal Iron Works landlord), 100–101, 368 Black Mountain College, 451 Black on White (Haskell), 242 Blake, Christina (Stead), 46n, 104, 450 Blake, William, 46n, 104, 450 Blanch, Arnold, 341 Blocher, John and Elizabeth, 236n2 Blue Construction, 103, 107n12, 450 Boas, Franz, 66, 76, 109, 110, 167n, 168 Bolotowsky, Ilya, 153n4, 319, 382 Bolton Landing residence, New York: descriptions, 10–11, 129–30; garden pests, 386; house construction and renovations, 105, 106, 450, 451; hunting, 386; lifestyle descriptions, 418; names of, 448; permanent move to, 450; politics, 250, 253n3, 452; purchase of, 6, 448; snow shoveling, 250; studio/workshop at (see Terminal Iron Works, Bolton Landing studio) Bombing Civilian Populations, 49, 49fig book reviews: African folktales and sculpture, 4, 187–88; art books, 91–94; artist materials, 3, 19–20; Rodman criticism, 293n “Books: African Classics for the Modern,” 187–88 books, art, 67n2, 91–94, 212n2, 382 Bosch, Hieronymus, 40, 92 Boss, Homer, 447 Bouché, Louis, 22 Bouché, René Robert, 295 Bouquet of Concaves, 329, 337n3 Bouquet of Concaves II, 329n bourgeois (middle-class) standards, 30, 146, 175, 280, 284–85, 359 Bracelli, Giovanni Battista: aesthetics and quality comparisons, 164, 211; artistic influence of, 232; biographical information, 236n4; Bizzarie di varie Figure, 166n2, 236n4 Brancusi, Constantin: as artistic influence, 8, 158, 247, 260–61; art style descriptions, 45, 251; Miracle, The (retitled The Seal), 45 Brandeis University, 411n18, 457 Braque, Georges: as artistic influence, 247, 381; art style descriptions, 34, 327; exhibitions of, 85; recommended books on, 92; sculptor/painter role, 232–33, 422 brass, 25, 43, 158, 178, 293 bronze: casting process, 38–39, 43; catalog monuments in, 54; color ranges of, 43; creative process, 313; found objects casted in, 441–42; historical studies of, 449; limitations of, 127; lost wax process, 103, 122, 123, 129, 325, 442–43; production chronology, 450, 454, 455, 456; production costs, 149; production descriptions and work schedule for, 418; protective coatings for, 43; reproductions of, 336, 342. See also medals Bronze Planes series, 13, 421n5, 457 Brooklyn Museum, 86n3 Broun, Heywood Hale, 74n Brown, Milton, 104, 122 Bruegel, Pieter, elder, 41 Brummer Gallery, 315, 449 Brussels, 23n, 449 brutality, as steel characteristic, 129, 150–51, 185 Buchholz Gallery: group exhibitions (1943) with Willard Gallery, 451; solo exhibitions (1946) with Willard Gallery, 106, 108n22, 119, 451 Buckhorn, Bob, 100–101, 105, 368 Bulls of El-Ubaid, 263 Cage, John, 391 Cahiers d’Art (journal): as artistic influence, early, 152, 314, 319, 322; notes and illustrations on back cover

of, 181n; Picasso-González sculptures featured in, 99, 100, 148, 184, 231, 233, 260, 323, 344, 449; Picasso sculptures featured in, 181n Cahill, Holger, 29n Calder, Alexander: abstract art exhibitions excluding, 22; articles with illustrations featuring, 42n; as artistic influence, 324; interview disclaimers on, 297; physical movement utilization, 45; UN building commission, 287–88 California trips, 448 Calvinism, 379 Camus, Albert, 334 Canaday, John, 405 cannons, 407–8 Carandente, Giovanni: European exhibition plans, 356; open-air group exhibitions curated by, 11, 15n68, 354, 356n, 361, 456; Smith works owned by, 360; solo exhibitions curated by, 362; Voltri production books by, 11, 15n66, 353, 353n, 457 Carnegie Museum of Art, 341, 456 Caro, Tony, 441 Carvers, Modelers, Welders: A Selection of Recent American Sculpture (exhibition), 124n6 Castelli, Leo, and gallery, 338n, 396 casting: aluminum, 43; bronze, 5, 38–39, 43, 441–42, 454; commercial foundries and craftsmanship decline, 39; craftsmanship and quality, 39; glass, 45; lead, 25; process descriptions, 38–39; sculpture reproductions, 397–98, 403; silver, 46n, 127, 450, 455; steel, 43, 150 Cathedral, The: art journals featuring, 98n, 119, 389, 453; art process descriptions, 130; design elements, 389; exhibitions of, 124n3; photograph notes on, 117 Cello Player, 452 censorship, 137, 138, 142, 146, 168, 196, 228 Cercle et Carré (magazine), 262 Cézanne, Paul: art education introduction to, 98; as artistic influence, artist’s identity, 178, 194, 215; as artistic influence, construction, 158; as artistic influence, heritage, 8, 34, 210, 227, 277; artists’ purchasing works of, 283; critical views of, 34, 197, 211; dimensionality of paintings, 210; European travels and paintings of, 449; letters and writings of, 231; object identity and distance, 210 Chadwick, Lynn, 353, 357, 361, 375, 376 Chagall, Marc, 247 Chain Head, 347n4, 410n3 Chambellan, Rene Paul: Atlas, with Lawrie, 316n Chamberlain, John, 396 Chauvenet, Beatrice, 124n12 Cherry, Herman, 293n, 315, 452 Chevreul, Michel Eugène, 35, 66 childhood: as artistic influence, overview, 283–84; drawing and inhibition development, 254, 255, 282, 284, 285; perceptual response during, 142, 228 childhood of David Smith: art access during, 233, 401; art experiences of, 254, 266, 282, 283, 285; education, 98, 447; perception of artists during, 284; recollections and influences from: glass jar tree, 1, 7, 13, 64, 369, 370; inventors and inventions, 380–81; machinery, 379–80; poetry on, 369–70; trains/railroads, 379, 416 China Defense Supplies (CDS), 53n, 106, 451 Chinanpin (Shen Nanpin), 149 Chinese art: character writing and script, 121, 145, 149, 184, 211; sculpture/painting unity, 140, 186, 207, 393 Christianity, 200–201 Cincinnati Modern Art Society, 454 Circle I, 434–35 Circle II, 434–35 Circle III, 434–35 Circles and Arcs, 411n24, 436 Circles Intercepted, 411n24

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Circles series, 13, 434–35, 456 City of Art Museum of St. Louis, 72, 106, 451 Civil Works Administration, 19n, 449 Clark, Kenneth, 166n2 clay, 307, 405, 447, 454, 457 Cleveland Art School, 447 clouds: as sculptural design element, 361–62; as viewer engagement analogy, 149; as visual imagery, 1, 7, 61, 61fig, 135 coarseness, 335. See also vulgarity Cockfight, 71–72, 73n1, 106–7, 384–85, 451 Cockfight-Variation, 73n2, 106, 107, 384–85, 451 “Collective Concept,” 342 collective ideologies: architecture and, 286, 287, 290, 301; for artist group identity, 203, 209, 318; artistic independence within movements, 327; governmentsponsored art and, 273, 318, 342; personal expression vs., 2, 157, 165, 227, 239, 272, 286; propaganda and exploitation of, 157, 164 collectors: art acquisitions of, 75, 273–74; dealers’ role as, 74; future of sculpture and increase in, 420; government programs stimulating interest of, 319; personal feelings toward, 104 College Art Association, 3, 240n College Art Journal, 196n, 209n color: bronze-sheet alloys for, 43; moral association and judgment of, 114; psychology of, 60; steel sculpture treatments for, 44–45; theoretical influences on, 157n. See also painted sculptures Columbia University, 160–61, 213n commercialism, 137, 239 communicability of art, 271, 283 Compass Circle (Voltri), 364n2 concept: development of, 329, 336, 378; development of (ideas), 185, 233, 249, 285, 313, 322, 331, 377; drawing for development of, 9–10, 127, 130, 143–44, 156n, 394, 438, 440; individuality of, 74; material interaction with, 4–5, 42, 65, 72, 235; nature and, 157; as primary focus, 25–26, 42, 235, 342; projection of, 85, 195, 239, 305; time limitations on, 12, 288 “Concept Is Primary, The,” 4, 25–26 Concerning the Spiritual in Art and Painting Particular, 1912 (Kandinsky), 212n2 concrete, 45 confidence: arrogance of attitude, 381; artist’s identity and development of, 9, 193, 209–10, 213–14, 215; in drawing, 255 conflict: as art education lesson, 333; struggle, 6, 76, 146, 334–35, 396 conformity, 33, 35, 66, 216, 254 Construction December II, 437 Constructivism, 141, 184, 246, 263, 305, 322, 324, 345 Contemporary American Painting and Sculpture (exhibition), 199n2 “Contemporary Artist’s Image” (forum), 203n “Contemporary Sculptor’s Concept,” 123 “Contemporary Sculpture and Architecture,” 299–301, 455 “Contribution by the Aesthetician,” 237 Conversations with Artists (Rodman), 293n conviction: American art development due to, 246–147; art education and drive development, 229, 333; artistic strength dependency on, 385, 391; artist’s identity and development of, 9, 67, 175, 193, 214, 229, 335; art style evolution due to, 253; as creative process component, 173, 197, 198, 209, 211, 221, 229, 331, 392; criticism and persistence of, 197; for meaningfulness, 289 Cooperation of the Clergy, 48 copying art, 305, 385. See also reproductions coral, 99, 158, 178, 448, 449 Corbusier, Le (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret), 301, 302n1

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Corcoran Gallery, 116, 453; Fifth Annual Area Exhibition at, 116n Corcos, Lucile, 100, 449 Cornigliano, 357, 360, 375 corrosion resistance treatments, 44 courage: art education teaching, 332; as artistic virtue, 335; of conviction, 67, 175, 217, 335, 366; freedom requiring, 255, 331 craft/craftsmanship, 39, 163, 295 Cramer, Konrad, 22 Crawford, Cheryl, 457 Creative Arts Award (Brandeis University), 411n18, 457 creative irrational, 2, 142, 210, 277–78, 308 creative process: action vs. words, 3, 85, 86, 109, 145, 208, 235; aesthetic-philosophic view of, 167–68, 197, 211, 238; aloneness of, 193, 214, 389, 418; artist as authority, 221; artistic techniques for, 60; as artist’s identity, 9–10, 137, 141, 142, 143, 149–50, 173, 179, 185, 197, 211, 213, 217, 221, 239, 254, 308–9, 331, 334; art style development requirements, 251; art under­­ standing based on, 138, 142, 151; as challenge to society, 410; conviction as requirement for, 197, 198, 209, 211, 229, 331; descriptions of, 3, 247, 248, 294, 308, 350–51, 394, 395, 438; emotional expression in, 66; emotional satisfaction of, 221, 226; and environ­­ ment, 290, 415; as human nature, 209; motivation for, 209; and nature, 156–57, 172, 176, 208; obstacles to, 67, 258, 388; of painting, descriptions, 307; phil­­ osophic-aesthetic view of, 167, 197, 211; plateau of, and solutions, 130, 249; Plato on inspiration of, 65, 111; power and flow of, 2, 142, 277–78, 308; principles and character of, 1; reality influencing, 138, 146; realization (completion), 12, 137, 143, 173, 185, 269–70, 308, 388; repetition avoidance, 251; of sculp­ture, descriptions, 127, 141–45, 147, 149, 166, 173, 179, 185, 256, 285, 307, 313, 331, 377, 392; self-criticism during, 391, 394; struggle and conflict in, 334–35; tools and equipment for, 150, 158; truth of, 94, 111, 137, 141, 142. See also concept; working conditions Creeft, José de: Don Quixote, 263; Sagrada Familia plasterer’s assistant, 260 Crete, 23n critics and criticism: on abstract art, 5, 32n2, 34, 331; artist’s identity expectations of, 192; artist’s relationship with, 163, 212n1, 215; art sales to, 104, 411n27; creative process views of, 167, 197, 211, 238; influence of, 258, 280, 282, 289, 308; judgment based on rules, 164; nature propaganda, 245, 275–76; response to, 160–61, 193, 194, 197, 213–14; selfcriticism during creative process, 12, 333, 391, 394 Crowninshield, Frank, 101, 102, 449 Cube III. See under Cubi series Cubi series: composition descriptions, 392, 416, 456; exhibitions of, 15n68, 351, 356n, 361, 411n20, 411n38, 413, 421n2, 457; moving and transportation, 413, 415; museum acquisitions, 427n4; outdoor displays of, 406, 429fig, 430fig; production, 13, 456, 457; production statistics, 421n1, 428; sketchbook notes and illustrations for, 366, 367fig; title selection, 428; Cubi I, 411n20; Cubi III (Cube III) (sketchbook note and illustration), 366, 367fig; Cubi III (sculpture), 427n4; Cubi IV, 421n2; Cubi V, 421n2; Cubi VII, 421n2; Cubi IX, 15n68, 356n, 361, 411n20, 411n38, 421n2; Cubi X, 427n4; Cubi XI, 15n68; Cubi XII, 421n2; Cubi XIV, 411n20; Cubi XVI, 427n4; Cubi XVII, 421n2; Cubi XVIII, 421n2; Cubi XIX, 421n2; Cubi XX, 421n2; Cubi XXII, 421n2; Cubi XXIV (Gate I), 429–30, 430fig; Cubi XXV, 15n70; Cubi XXVII (Gate II), 428, 429fig Cubism: as abstract art, 21, 33, 163, 246; American practitioners of, 21–22; as artistic influence, art education, 96, 99, 121, 148, 232, 305, 324, 344, 345, 391, 399, 422; as artistic influence, color usage, 44, 343; as artistic influence, freedom, 111, 141, 172, 183,

217, 275; as artistic influence, heritage, 194, 246–47, 248, 305, 319, 422; as artistic influence, painting and construction, 158, 314, 322; as artistic revolt, 86, 141, 211; art style descriptions, 35, 66, 210, 248, 251, 327; critical views of, 192, 197, 211, 248; influences on, 215, 232; movement descriptions, 35, 66, 246; recommended books on, 93, 94; sculpture by painters, 184, 218, 232–33, 247, 263, 275, 278–79, 397 Cubist Painters, The (Apollinaire), 93 culture, 29, 306, 335 “Culture and the Ideal of Perfection,” 306 Cuniform, 64, 70, 121, 145 “Current Exhibitions: Abstract Painting in America,“ 3–4, 21–22, 152n3 cylinder seals, 37, 40, 103, 321, 344, 449 Daguerre, Louis, 35, 66 Daniel, Howard, 92 Darwin, Charles, 35, 66 Daumier, Honoré, 326, 336, 397, 398 David Smith (McCoy, ed.), xiii, 138n1, 253n1 “David Smith, Excerpts from Lecture,” 162n David Smith by David Smith (Gray, ed.), xiii, 107n1 “David Smith Makes a Sculpture: Cathedral“ (de Kooning, E.), 98n, 119, 127n, 389, 453 “David Smith’s Abstract Sculpture in Metals” (McCausland), 103, 107n14 “David Smith’s Steel Goliaths” (Life magazine), 411n37 Davidson, Martha, 103 Davis, Stuart: art career descriptions 1930s, 152; artist associates, 21n, 102, 314, 383, 384, 448; as artistic influence, 319, 344; exhibitions, 21; lecture series panel participation, 33n; museum display criticism, 303n dealers: artists’ relationships with, 74–75, 76, 103, 251; art sales to, 104, 107, 306n; media and value determinations, 280, 282. See also specific galleries Death by Bacteria, 49–50 Death by Gas, 48 Deerfield Academy, 167n defeatism, 213, 216, 229, 335 “Define Technique,” 238 Degas, Edgar, 92, 283, 326, 335 degeneration, 29, 141, 150–51 Dehner, Dorothy: art career, 81n; art education, 81n, 344; artist associates, 449; books on Smith annotated by, 107n1; California visits, 448; European travels, 23fig, 23n, 449; exhibition brochure texts describing, 81; on exhibition catalogue text, 46n; exhibitions and awards, 81n; marriage and divorce, 8, 81n, 98, 125n, 447, 451, 452; meeting, 447; Playground for Princes, 81n; post-marriage relationship with, 398; residences of, 105, 107n5, 447, 448, 450 (see also Bolton Landing residence); studios of, 368n2 de Kooning, Elaine: artist profile articles written by, 98n, 119, 127n, 389, 453; notes for, 7, 127–30, 453 de Kooning, Willem: artist associate, 102, 152, 314, 383, 448, 454; artistic influences on, 323; art style descriptions, 251, 253, 285, 319, 385 Delacroix, Eugène, 8, 194 Demuth, Charles, 22 Depression, 101, 203, 402 Derain, André, 34 designers, 8, 300 “Design for Progress–Cockfight,“ 71–72, 452 De Stijl, 322 determination, 3, 163, 334 Detroit Institute of Arts, 140n Detroit Museum, 72 Detroit Queen, 441–42, 441fig De Van Eyck à Breughel (exhibition), 305n1 Devree, Howard, 41n5, 74n Dickinson, Edwin, 22

Dida Becca Merry X, 445n3 die making/stamping, 37, 38, 39 Diller, Burgoyne, 319, 344, 382, 448 dimensionality, 166, 186, 210, 392, 393 Diplomats: Fascist and Fascist Tending, 47 disappointment, 125–26 Documenta II and III, 411n20, 455, 457 Dodge, Joseph J., 53 Doerner, Max, 3, 19–20 Dombrowski, Ivan. See Graham, John Doorway on Wheels, 337n1, 432fig Dove, Arthur, 21, 22 “Do We Dare to Do Bad Works,” 181 “Drawing,” 245n, 254–56, 454, 455 Drawing 3/12/53, 224–25 drawing(s): advantages of medium, 166, 256, 439; art education in, 99, 331, 447, 448, 450; artistic influences on, 304; artist’s identity development through, 10; as art theme, 453; art value of, 256, 268, 280–81, 285; atmospheric enhancements for, 333; based on aerial views of space and patterns, 174n1; challenges of, 255; character of, 182, 254–55; definition of, 333; deviations and inaccuracies of, 255; for etchings or prints, 257; exhibitions of, 101, 156n, 202n, 360, 364n1, 411n28, 422n, 455, 456, 457; fellowship production plan including, 122; media and technical descriptions, xiv, 7, 185, 453, 454, 456; with metal/sculpture, 224–25, 226; of nude female models, 457; process descriptions, 9–10, 143–44, 243–44; production and work schedule for, 418; production chronology, 453, 454, 456; production statistics, annual, 185, 394; productivity goals, daily, 165; purpose, 394; as requirement, 252; reverse engraving/carving comparisons, 37, 41; for sculptural inspiration and design, 9–10, 127, 130, 143–44, 185, 198, 346, 394, 438, 440; sculpture as eidetic image of, 346; skills development methods, 333; as teaching tool, 333; views of, 366, 368; writing compared to, 6, 254 dreams, 35, 65, 308, 350–51, 363 Drummer, 338 Dubuffet, Jean, 85 Duchamp, Marcel, 247, 379 Duchamp-Villon, Raymond, 218, 233 Dutchman’s bar, 152 East River Gallery, 102–3, 121, 148, 159n2, 184, 450 eating, 371–72 “Editions, Duplication,” 239 education: artistic identity development impacted by, 52; childhood, 447; university/college, 52, 98, 107n2, 324, 344, 347n2, 447. See also art education Egyptian art, 183, 222, 304, 422 eidetic images (after-images, exchange images): definitions and descriptions of, 9, 165, 343; importance of, 246; object associations as, 137–38, 143–44, 145–47, 183; sculptural works as, 346 Eight, The (exhibition), 153n4 8 Planes, 345(347n3) 8/6/53, 225 18 h’s. See 17 h’s Eighteenth Annual Conference of the National Committee on Art Education, 330–36 Einstein, Albert, 35, 66, 162, 210 Elements Which Cause Prostitution, 50 Elisofon, Eliot, 104 Eluard, Paul, 92, 212, 212n2 embellishments: addition of, 269–70, 389–90; architectural use of sculpture as, 290; movement suggested by, 335. See also wheels emotional expression, 24, 66, 87n employment: advertising agency, 99; as artistic influence, 324; artist’s identity development impacted by, 52; base constructions for sculpture collection, 101, 449;

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employment (continued) early, for income, 406; finance and banking, 98, 344, 447; freelance art work, 99; government-sponsored work relief programs, 14n20, 19n, 101, 449; magazine art editor, 99, 448; purpose of, 173; seaman, 99, 101, 448; sporting goods store, 99, 100, 448, 449; taxi driving, 99; Treasury Department post office murals, 102; union memberships, 3, 52, 102, 449, 450; welding, armaments, 5, 6, 105–6, 379, 450, 451; welding, automobile plant, 25, 52, 98, 344, 347n2, 400, 447; welding, industrial, 1, 452 England, 101–2, 320, 411n38 enslavement, 59 Entenza, John, 145n environment: for audience response, 314; home, 351; sculptor lives within, 290, 415; sculptural vs. architectural, 287, 288, 289, 290, 300; sculpture producing, 58; workshop and working conditions, 127–30, 129, 183, 325, 358–59 equality, 87, 216, 304, 335, 342, 349 Estate of David Smith, xiii etchings, 37, 122, 257, 449 European art, 213, 304, 320. See also specific movements: Cubism, Italian Renaissance, Constructivism, etc. European trips, 23fig, 23n, 304, 314, 320, 399, 449, 456. See also Voltri, Italy Everett Ellin Gallery, 342n, 455 Everyday Art Quarterly, 175n exchange images, 343. See also eidetic images exhibition brochures and catalogues: illustrations published in, 7, 46n, 120fig, 450, 452; interviews published in, 373n, 457; poetry published in, 5–6, 68–70; texts written for, 15n66, 81, 104, 411n28 exhibition critiques, 3–4, 21–22 exhibition reviews of David Smith: complimentary, 19n, 103, 104, 122, 452–53; critical, 103, 405, 455 exhibitions and exhibition policies: acquisition requirements for, 332; importance of, 74; participation costs, 74, 75; participation protests, 21n, 152; prize system and awards, 75, 341, 456. See also specific galleries, museums, and institutions “Exhibitions and Juries” (panel), 123, 341n expression, artistic: as artistic goal, 228; emotional, 24, 66, 87n; influences on, 255; of nature, 157; struggle, 76; as truth, 94, 111, 137, 141, 142 “Expression of Emotion That Cannot Be Put into Words, An,” 24 failure, 8, 125–26. See also bad art False Peace Spectre, 131n2 “False Statements and Editor’s Letters,” 293n, 297 family: art impacting psychological harmony of, 28; heritage as, 217, 226, 234, 246, 276, 343 fascism, 29, 102, 450 Fauvism, 141, 184, 246, 285 Federal Art Gallery, 450 Federal Art Project, 4, 29–32, 29n, 449 Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, Inc., 144n1 Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art (Langer), 212n2 Feldman, Morty, 391 fellowships and grants, 71–72, 119, 121–24, 448, 452 Ferargil Galleries, 101 Ferber, Herbert, 78n, 148n, 203n Festival of Two Worlds (Spoleto, Italy): group exhibitions (1962), 11, 15n68, 354, 356n, 361, 456; sculpture production for (see Voltri, Italy; Voltri series); solo exhibitions (1962), 15n68, 354, 356n, 362, 362fig, 456 figurative art, 45, 384–85, 393, 449, 450 Figure Composition, 21 finances: art creation vs. living wage, 74, 223; cost-income ratios, 74–75, 127, 130, 173; dealer

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debts, 405–6; exhibition participation and costs, 74, 453; exhibition prize money, 75; museum donations, 75, 76; museum price deductions, 75; pricing, 75, 274, 280, 300; production costs, 74–75, 127, 130, 133, 141, 149, 150, 173, 273, 285; realization limited by, 388; taxes, 405. See also employment; income; sales Fine Arts Associates, 455 Finnegans Wake (Joyce), 5, 109, 118, 391 First2: An Occasional Magazine, 313n First International Congress of Plastic Arts, 454 First Woodstock Conference, The (Morse, ed.), 74n First Woodstock Conference of Artists, 74–77, 452 Fish, The: art process descriptions, 127, 130; descriptions, 127; exhibitions of, 117n, 119; nature as art, 163; poetry on, 117; themes of, 121 “Five Evenings of Art with the Metropolitan Art Association” (lecture series), 140n Fleurs du Mal, Les (Baudelaire), 14n33 “Flight Paths of Birds Moths Insects, The,” 6, 113 Focillon, Henri, 212 “foo,” 47 food, 371–72 Food Trust, 50 Force, Juliana R., 74n, 77 Forest, The, 117, 118, 121, 122, 124nn2–3 “Foreword—(Apology of a Juryman),” 116 “Foreword, Dorothy Dehner: Drawings, Paintings,“ 81 forging, 360, 440–41 Forging series, 454 Forging V, 440–41, 440fig form, 114, 162, 172 “For Whom Do You Make Sculpture,” 116n, 123 Foster, Robert, 42n found objects: from catalogs, 373; for creative process inspiration, 165; philosophies on use of, 376–77, 378; as sculptural materials, 165, 222, 346, 376, 441–42; sketchbook notes on, 352 Four Seasons Bookstore, 91 Four Soldiers (February), 165 Fourth Annual Woodstock Art Conference, 167–68, 172n, 453 Fourth Estate, The, 46–47 France: art market descriptions, 294; machinery analogies, 23; travels to, 23n, 101–2, 314, 320, 449, 454, 456 Frankenthaler, Helen, 330, 382, 452, 454 Freas, Jean, 8, 452, 453, 455 freedom, artistic: as art education/teaching goal, 333; artist’s identity supported by, 301; consequences of, 8, 273; enslavement, avoiding, 59; fascism and lack of, 29; financial success and, 328; government and, 273; influences on, 111, 141, 172, 183, 217, 275; as most precious possession, 294, 317; from tradition, 111, 162, 172, 186, 217, 271–72, 275, 307. See also rules French & Company: solo exhibitions (1959), 360(364n1), 455; solo exhibitions (1960), 455 Freud, Sigmund, 35, 65, 66, 111, 386 Freyssinet, Eugène, 45 Fry, Roger, 93 “Function of Sculpture in a Democratic Society” (retitled “Modern Sculpture and Society”), 29–32 Furlong, Thomas and Weber, 448 Gabo, Naum, 247, 320, 334 Gallagher, Edward J., 338n Gallatin, A. B., 262 galleries: artist’s relationship with, 74–75, 76, 103, 251, 332; interim week assignments and visits to, 85; Smith representation, 72, 294, 342n, 454, 456 Gargallo, Pablo, 26, 42n, 99, 263, 315, 449 Gaudí, Antoni: Sagrada Familia, 260 Gauguin, Paul, 99, 299, 322, 336, 398 Genauer, Emily, 87n, 116n, 117n, 167n

Genet, Jean, 346, 388 George Kernan’s Saloon, 101 George Washington University, 98, 344, 447 Gericault, Théodore, 326 German medals, 321, 381–82, 449 Gerson, Otto, 395, 455, 456 Getsy, David J., 427n5 Giacometti, Alberto: as artistic influence, 5; art style evolution of, 253; exhibition awards for Walking Man I, 341n; magazine contributions, 78n; painter/ sculptor duality, 326; reproductions, 403 Giedeon-Welcker, Carola, 94 Gil, David, 457 Glackens, William, 153n4, 400 Glarner, Fritz, 319 glass casting, 45 glass jar trees, 1, 7, 13, 64, 369, 370 Glens Falls Post-Star, 53n Gods and Goddesses in Art and Legend (Wechsler, ed.), 91 Goetz, Henri, 262, 315 gold, as embellishment, 389 “Golden Eagle–A Recital,” 6, 78–79 Golden Gate International Exposition, 27(28n1) Gold Section, 262 Goldwater, Robert, 13n8, 94 Gondola II, 434 “González: First Master of the Torch,” 8, 259–64, 454 González, Julio: American sales, first, 262; articles on, 8, 259–64, 454; artist associates, 259, 262, 263, 401; as artistic influence, 8, 99, 148, 158, 315, 322, 448, 449; artistic influences on, 260–61, 263; artist’s identity development, 260–61; art style descriptions, 261, 262, 264; biographical information, 259–60, 263; death and memorial, 259; descriptions of, 262; exhibitions, 218, 259, 260, 377; media and materials, 26, 377; on modernism, 260; Picasso partnership, 99, 100, 183–84, 218, 247, 259, 260–61, 263, 315, 323–24, 344; on sculpture ideals, 261; Smith ownership of art by, 314, 449; studio visit, 314–15, 401; welding techniques, 263–64; workshop and tools, 263; Don Quixote, 261; Head, 449; Montserrats series, 261; Standing Personage, 261; Woman Combing Her Hair, 261 Goodrich, Lloyd, 172n Gorky, Arshile: artist associates, 21n, 102, 152, 314, 382, 383, 384, 448; artistic influences on, 152, 323; art style descriptions, 385, 409; exhibitions, 21 Gothic art, 226, 248, 334 Gottlieb, Adolph, 100, 153n4, 383, 387, 449 government: architectural projects of, 31–32; artist’s relationship with, 8, 76, 273, 294, 318, 319. See also Works Progress Administration (WPA) Goya, Francisco de, 257, 281 Graaff, Jan de, 104 grace, 336 Graham, John (Ivan Dombrowski): art books by, 314, 383; artist associates, 102, 262, 314, 383, 401, 448; artist group memberships, 21n, 152, 153n4, 382; as artistic influence, 319, 344, 383, 401–2, 409; artistic influences on, 152; art style evolution, 383; employment through, 101, 449; in Europe, 102; exhibitions, 21; González art acquisitions, 262; González artworks given to Smith, 314, 449; González association, 262, 401; memorial exhibitions catalogue texts, 340 Grant, William Parks, 248 grants. See fellowships and grants Gray, Cleve, xiii, 107n1 Greece, 23, 23n, 101, 314, 320, 449 Greek art, 40, 140, 141, 183, 304, 422 Greek letter sculptures: exhibition brochures featuring sketchbook notes on, 120fig; exhibitions of, 124n3; Guggenheim fellowship production, 121, 122; owner

modifications to, 338–39, 411n25; photography notes on, 118; series descriptions, 7, 409 Greek mythology, 39 Greenberg, Clement: art as revolt, 111–12; artist introductions through, 452; discarded sculptures found by, 377–78; exhibition catalogues with texts by, 15n66, 411n28; exhibition reviews, 103, 122, 451, 452; philosophic-aesthetics opposition, 212; sculptures gifted to, 377; as Smith estate executor, 457; symposium presentations, 213n; writings of, as resources, 212n2 Greenstein, Benjamin “Benno,” 314 Guernica: Pablo Picasso (Larrea and Barr), 212n2 Guggenheim Foundation. See John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship Gwathmey, Robert, 167n, 203n H. Sophie Newcomb College, 10, 245n, 254n, 454 Halpert, Samuel, 246 happiness, 11, 125–26, 221, 226, 403 Harari, Hananiah, 102–3 Hardenberg, Friederich von, 92 Harris, Lou, 100, 153n4 Harris, Ruth Green, 41 Harrison, Wallace K., 71n, 290, 301, 302n1 Hartley, Marsden, 21, 246 Hartung, Hans, 262 Harvard Art Museums, 455 Haskell, Arnold Lionel, 242 hawks, 11, 191, 389 Hayes, Bartlett H., Jr., 94 Hayter, Stanley, 101, 449 Hazan, Fernand, 92 Head, 103, 294(296nn1–2) “Head Is a Drawing, A,” 154, 155fig Helmholtz, Hermann von, 35, 66, 116 Henri, Robert, 153n4, 400 Henri Matisse (Fry), 93 Henry, Robert, 101 heritage: American art and lack of, 24, 213; as artistic influence as, 217, 234, 322, 334; as artist’s identity influence, 140, 146, 192, 195, 203, 209–10, 213, 246; Cubism as artistic influence and, 194, 246–47, 248, 305, 319, 422; family analogies of, 217, 226, 234, 246, 276, 343; government-sponsored projects as, 318; and visual memory, 234 Hero (Eyehead of a Hero), The, 412n Hess, Thomas B., 11, 259n, 339n1, 373–410, 457 Hi Candida, 437 Hieronymus Bosch (Daniel), 92 Higgins, John W., 72, 452 Hillyer, Robert S., 137 Hinkle, Beatrice M., 186n1 HIREBECCA, 411n24 Hirshhorn, Joseph (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden), 104, 451–52, 452, 456 History of Impressionism, The (Rewald), 174n2 Hofmann, Hans, 399 honesty, 116, 207, 254, 330 Hope, Henry R., 196n, 203n Horizon (magazine), 122 Hotel Corporation of America, 412n “How Far Away from Imitation of Reality,” 171 “How Little I Know,” 202 Hudson River Landscape: composition descriptions, 143fig, 409; creative process descriptions, 9–10, 143–44, 147, 198, 346; exhibitions of, 199, 454 “Hudson River Landscape,” 145n Hunter, Sam, 455 Hyde Collection, 457 Iberian sculpture, 184 ideals, consciousness of, 313, 327

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“I Have Erected a Solid,” 55, 56fig “I Have Never Looked at A Landscape,” 68n “I Have Seen Some Critics,” 160–61 “I Like to Eat,” 371–72 imitation, 171, 216, 299 Impressionism: as artistic influence, 183, 232, 246, 285, 304, 305; as artistic revolt, 86; Pissarro’s working principles, 172; science and, 35, 66 “In America You Feel,” 23 income: cost-income ratios, 74–75, 130, 173, 273; financial success and expenditures, 327–28; non-art sources of, 122, 406, 453 Indiana University, 237n, 442, 454 individuality, 74, 86, 276–77, 327 Industrial Acceptance Corporation, 98, 447 ineffectualness, 289 Initial Exhibition, Summer 1953, 199n2 Inner Life of Pablo Picasso, The (Eluard), 212n2 innovation, 217, 263, 308, 343 Insect, 6, 78n, 80fig inspiration: drawing for conceptual, 9–10, 127, 130, 143–44, 185, 198, 346, 394, 438, 440; Plato on creative, 65, 111; work stream for, 130 Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), 15n66, 411n28, 457 intaglio (reverse carving process), 37–38, 41, 103, 321, 344 integrity, 305, 335, 336 International Council of the Museum of Modern Art, 454, 455 International Open Air Exhibition, Antwerp, 452 “Interview by David Sylvester,” 316–28, 455 “Interview by Frank O’Hara,” 10, 411n37, 422–27, 457 “Interview by Katharine Kuh,” 343–47, 456 “Interview by Marian Horosko,” 413, 415–21, 457 “Interview by Thomas B. Hess,” 11, 373–410, 457 interviews, overview: book publications of, 293–98, 343–47, 456; descriptions and style, 10; exhibition catalogues with, 373n, 457; false statements disclaimers, 297–98; goals of, 3; radio, 316–28, 413, 415–21, 455, 457; tape recorded, 373–410; televised, 411n37, 422–27, 457 inventiveness, 8, 245, 380–81, 394 iron: Cubist sculpture material, 263; early works, 99, 103, 158, 449; exhibitions, 103; history and origins, 263; Italian finds, 361; labor associations, 260; material properties and descriptions, 150; technical processes, 438. See also rust; stainless steel; steel “I Sat Near My Window,” 195 “Is Today’s Artist With or Against the Past,” 304–5 Italian Masters (exhibition), 36n2 Italian Renaissance art: artistic freedom during, 272; as artistic influence, 8, 164; as art standard, 33; dominant media in, 183; exhibitions of, 36n2; popularity of, 34; religious partnership myth, 200–201; sculpture in, 397 Italsider factory, 357, 360–61, 373 Italy: art market descriptions, 294; exhibitions in, group, 11, 15n68, 354, 356n, 361, 454, 455, 456; exhibitions in, solo, 15n68, 356n, 362, 362fig, 456; sculpture production in (see Voltri, Italy); travels to, 101 “It Has Got to Make Big,” 240, 241fig Jackson, Martha, 306n Jacobson, Sten, 42n James F. Lincoln Arc Welding Foundation, 71n, 452 Japanese art, 149, 211, 304–5, 329n Jeanneret, Charles-Édouard (Le Corbusier), 301, 302n1 Jewell, Edward Alden, 19n, 103, 405 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship: fellowship grants, 119n, 448, 452; letters of reference for, 293n; materials inventory during, 128; progress reports and application for renewals, 119, 121–24; sculpture inscriptions during, 119n Johnson, Lyndon B., 457

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John Woodman Higgins Armory, 72, 452 “Joint Is Foul with Smoke, The,” 132 Joyce, James, 5, 109, 210, 346, 390–91, 401 Julien Levy Gallery, 101 junk, 189–90 Jurassic Bird, 107 juries: judging standards and responsibilities of, 116, 116n; panel discussions on, 123, 341n; participation on, 116, 123, 290, 453, 454; participation purpose, 453; selection process criticism, 116n, 144n1, 290n Kahnweiler, Daniel-Henry, 93, 232 Kandinsky, Wassily: as artistic influence, 8, 148, 158, 279, 314; books by, 212n2, 231; communicability of works, 283; object identity and distance, 210; philosophic-aesthetics opposition, 212 Kanemitsu, Matsumi (Mike), 329, 336 Kantor, Morris, 22 Karfiol, Bernard, 246 kineticism. See movement Klee, Paul, 22, 85, 92, 212, 212n2, 247 Kleeman, Henry, 107 Kleeman Gallery, 124n1, 453 Kline, Franz, 454 Knaths, Karl, 21, 85 Kootz Gallery, 225(236n3), 453 Kramer, Hilton, 455 Krasne, Belle, 187n Krasner, Lee, 454 Krauss, Rosalind E., xvn Kris, Ernst, 65, 76, 111 Kuh, Katharine, 343–47, 456 KVSF (radio station), 122 Labor Stage theater, New York, 5, 33n, 450 Lachaise, Gaston, 234, 246, 291 Lahey, Richard: as artistic influence, 7, 96, 314; as Smith’s art instructor, 98, 344, 400, 447, 448 Land Coaster, 337n1 “Landscape; Spectres Are; Sculpture Is,” 5–6, 68–70 “Landscape Fish Clouds,” 61, 61fig Langer, Suzanne, 91, 212, 212n2 “Language Is Image, The,” 3, 145–47, 453 Large Circle (Voltri), 364n2 Larrea, Juan, 92–93, 212, 212n2 Laurens, Henri: architectural collaboration and neglect of, 291; Composition, 263; critical views of, 452; sculptural production, 233, 322, 423 Laurent, Robert, 109n, 144n1, 246 Lawrie, Lee: Atlas, with Chambellan, 316n Layman’s Guide to Modern Art, The (Rathbun and Hayes), 94 lead, 25, 158, 178 Le Bail, Louis, 174n2 Lectern Sentinel, 348n, 427n4 “Lecture, Fourth Annual Woodstock Art Conference,” 167–68, 172n, 453 “Lecture, Ohio State University,” 307–9, 455 “Lecture, Portland Art Museum,” 182n, 183–86, 453 “Lecture, Skidmore College,” 65–67, 452 “Lecture, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture”: lecture (1952), 162–66, 453; lecture (1954), 218–36, 454; lecture (1956), 265–88; lecture style descriptions, 2 “Lecture, Williams College,” 137–38, 145n, 453 legal actions, 293n legal protections for artists, 338–39 Léger, Fernand: American residency, 247; architectural designs featuring, 300; art style descriptions, 22; Contrast of Forms, as museum donation, 329n Leningrad, Russia, 23n, 102, 449 Leonardo da Vinci, 86, 94, 164 Letter, The, 7, 118, 121, 124n3, 124n16, 408

letterforms. See Greek letter sculptures “Letters” (Art News), 338–39 “Letters: American Art at the Met” (Arts), 303n Letter to Australia (Australian Letter), 7, 124n16 “Letter to David Sylvester,” 15n66, 353–55, 457 “Letter to the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Institute,” 341, 456 Levy, Edgar, 1, 21n, 100, 152, 314, 384, 449 Levy, Julian, 101 Lewis, Allen, 98, 447 Life magazine, 405, 453 Life of Forms in Art (Focillon), 212n2 Lipchitz, Jacques: architectural collaboration and neglect of, 299; articles featuring illustrations of, 42n; critical views of, 452; magazine contributions, 78n, 200n; sculptor/painter duality, 291, 326; studio visits, 449 Lipman, Howard W., xiii, 348n Lippold, Richard, 78n, 87n, 148, 348n Lives of the Artists (Vasari), 94 Living Arts (magazine), 316n Locke-Ober Café, 371 Logan, Frank G., 36n1 Logan Sanity in Art movement, 5, 32n2, 34 London County Council, Battersea Park, 411n38 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 457 lost wax process, 103, 122, 123, 129, 325, 442–43 Louis, Morris, 454 Louis Carré Gallery, 85 Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, The, 329n Lowe, Ira M., 457 Lowenthal, Milton, 74n Lubetkin, Berthold, 30 Magazine of Art, 122 Maillart, Robert, 45 Maldarelli, Oronzio, 303n Malevich, Kasimir, 158, 324 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 386 Malraux, André, 212, 434 marble, 129, 248, 450 Marchand, Marie, 153n2 Margaret Brown Gallery, 453 Marlborough-Gerson Gallery: artist representation, 456; David Smith exhibition at (1964): exhibition catalogue texts, 373n; interviews at, 413n; size and transportation methods, 413–15, 414fig, 417, 426; size limitations, 387; works featured in, 413, 421nn2–5, 424, 457 Martins, Maria, 103 Marx, Karl (Marxism), 6, 35, 66, 192, 293n, 295, 401 mass-form, 185–86, 187–88, 214–15, 235 Masson, André, 5, 93–94, 247 Masterpieces of Art (The Pocket Book of Old Masters) (Wechsler, ed.), 91 Masters in Art Miniatures (book), 92 materials and media: aesthetics and use of, 60; architecture and sculpture relationship through shared, 30, 42, 72; as artistic influence, 7–8, 141; artist’s relationship development with, 313; art pricing and relationship to, 280; book reviews on safety and labeling standards, 3, 19–20; concept interaction with, 4–5, 42, 65, 72, 235; function as priority, 128, 158; production costs, 74–75, 127, 130, 133, 141, 149, 150, 173, 273, 285; for sculpture, 185, 235, 248, 325; secondary to concept, 25, 42, 235; technical data studies on, 3, 19n; value of, 280–81. See also tools; specific types of media: steel, bronze, clay, silver, paint, photography Materials of the Artist, The (Doerner), 3, 19–20 mathematicians, 332 Matisse, Henri: as artistic influence, 8, 158, 232; on artistic influences, 278; artistic influences on, 214;

art style descriptions, 34, 213n; Cézanne art acqui­­ sitions, 283; European travels and paintings of, 449; exhibitions, 159n3; Jeannette, 325–26; recommended books on, 92, 93; sculptor/painter duality, 140, 183–84, 247, 274–75, 325–26; Tiari, 183, 232 Matisse, Pierre, gallery, 85, 102 Matulka, Jan: art career of, 152; as artistic influence, 96, 99, 314, 344; conceptual descriptions, 22; students of, 99, 184, 232, 314, 324, 344, 399, 422, 448 Maurer, Alfred Henry, 21, 246 McCausland, Elizabeth, 33n, 37–41, 103 McCoy, Garnett, xiii, 253n1 McDougal book store, 91 McNeil, George, 85, 344 McSorley’s Ale House, 152, 314 medals: art process descriptions and steps, 38–39; commissions, 36n1, 53n, 106, 450, 451, 452; function of, 38. See also Medals for Dishonor series “Medals for Dishonor, Responses to Questions from Elizabeth McCausland,” 37–41 Medals for Dishonor series: art process and steps, 38–39; concept origins and influences on, 37, 40–41, 103, 321, 344–45; descriptions, 5, 39, 49fig; exhibitions of, 5, 46n, 104, 450, 451; function of, 38; gifts and trades, 104; plate texts for, 46–51; production of, 103–4, 449; questions about, 37–41; sales, 104, 108n20, 451; studies for, 107n17; themes and imagery symbolism, 5, 39–40, 46n, 104, 378 media (communications): propaganda and cultural control, 66–67; television programs, 411n37, 422n, 457. See also exhibition reviews; radio; specific names of newspapers and journals “Media: The Materials of the Artist, by Max Doerner,” 3, 19–20 medieval history, 39–40, 46n “Memories to Myself,” 329n, 330–36, 455 memory: as artistic influence, 7, 12, 222–23; artist’s aesthetics as, 167, 173; childhood recollections, 1, 7, 13, 64, 369–70, 379–80; drawing and, 255; nostalgia and sentimentality of, 376, 378–80; perception and visual, 234 Memphis Academy of Art, 245n, 454 Menand I, 438 Menand II, 438, 438fig Menand III, 437 Menand IV, 438 Menand series: composition descriptions, 437, 457; exhibitions of, 421n4, 457; production descriptions, 13, 416, 457; title selection, 10, 416, 437 Menotti, Gian Carlo: factories founded by, 356, 356n; Italian trip preparation, 353, 354, 355, 357, 361, 374; Smith works gifted to, 360 Mesopotamian art, 234 Metropolitan Museum of Art: art acquisitions, 453; consolidation plans, 72, 73n2; exhibition controversies, 144n1, 303; exhibitions at, 140, 257n, 450–51; jury selection criticism, 116n, 144n1; visits as artistic influence, 304; visits as student assignments, 85 Meyer, Jack, 340n Michelangelo Buonarotti, 30, 85, 86n, 129, 183 middle-class (bourgeois) standards, 30, 146, 175, 280, 284–85, 359 Middle Eastern cultures, 5, 6, 64, 68–70, 121 Midwestern College Art Conference, 109–12, 123 Milan, Italy, 454, 456 Milgram, J. E., 108n20 Mili, Gjon, 383 Millman, Edward, 203 Miracle, The (Brancusi), 45 Miró, Joan, 22, 214, 247, 287–88 mobility: design elements for, 10, 335, 353, 363, 408, 415, 440; transportation challenges, 12, 413–25, 414fig, 416–17, 426. See also movement

471

modern art: and absence of rules, 34, 230, 236, 252, 343; art education in, 332; artists as products of own time, 8, 76, 86, 109–10, 116, 142, 210, 226, 269; criticism of, 5, 32n2, 34, 144n1; freedom of, 1–2, 111, 162, 172, 183, 186, 217, 271–72. See also heritage Modern Plastic Art (Giedeon-Welcker), 94 “Modern Sculptor and His Materials, The,” 133n, 154n, 155fig, 156–58, 160n, 453 “Modern Sculpture and Society” (formerly titled “The Function of Sculpture in a Democratic Society”), 29–32 Modigliani, Amedeo, 397 Moholy-Nagy, László, 450 Mondrian, Piet: architectural collaboration and neglect of, 299; artist associates, 262; as artistic influence, 8, 148, 158, 247, 279, 314, 320, 345; art style descrip­­ tions, 22, 295; books and art expressed in words, 231; communicability of works, 283; interview disclaimer on, 297; object identity and distance, 210 Monet, Claude, 384 Montross Galleries, 153n4 monuments, war, 53–54 Moore, Henry, 200, 247, 272, 322, 326, 452 Morang, Alfred, 124n12 Moreau, Gustave, 214 Morris, George L. K., 103, 303n Morris Plan Bank, 98, 344, 447 Morse, John D., 74n, 341n Moscow, Russia, 23n, 102, 449 Moses and Monotheism (Freud), 111n2 Motherwell, Robert: art book introductions by, 93; art conference panels with, 167n; associate, 452, 454; books admired by, 14n33; exhibition catalogue essays by, 382, 452; journals of, 68n, 383; lecture writing advice, 330; poetry publications, 68n; as Smith estate executor, 457; Smith funeral attendance, 457; student forums with, 86 movement (kineticism): design elements for mobility, 10, 335, 363, 408, 415, 440; design elements implying, 335; dimensionality inviting, 392; sculptural design for, 45, 129; suspended (hanging) sculptures, 223–24, 251, 253n5, 453 Mozart, Amadeus, 313 “Mr. Smith Comes to Town” (Time magazine), 104 Mulas, Ugo, 364, 457 Mundelein, Cardinal George, 32n1 Munition Makers, 47, 104 Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute School of Art, 65n, 121 Musée de l’Orangerie, 305n1 Museum of Art, University of Michigan, 156 Museum of Art of Ogunquit, Maine, 199 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 186n3 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA): art acquisitions, 72, 103, 262, 294, 296n3, 427n4; art donations to, 411n27; art education conferences sponsored by, 330n; exhibitions, group, 124n6, 218, 450, 453; exhibitions, tenth-anniversary, 45; González exhibitions, 218(236n1), 259n; interviews criticizing, 293n, 294; Italian Renaissance exhibitions, 36n2; lectures at, 455; lecture series sponsored by, 148n; Matisse exhibitions, 159n3; modern art support proclamations, 144n1; Smith art sales through, 123, 124n6; Smith solo exhibitions (1957), 455; Smith solo exhibitions (1961–63), 376, 456; Smith solo exhibitions (1963), 456; Smith solo exhibitions (1963–1966), 422n; Smith solo exhibitions (1965), 457; Smith solo exhibitions (1966–1967), 422n; student assignments as visits to, 85 museums, overview: art access and knowledge through, 323; art acquisition policies, 75, 104, 274; artist relationship with, 4, 8, 75, 273–74; artist’s identity and role of, 194; donations to, 75; private

472

collector sales compared to, 75, 273–74; prize system, 75, 341, 456; student assignments as visits to, 85. See also specific names of museums music: for art education, 333; artistic creation comparisons, 110; art titles compared to titles of, 248–49; commercialism of, criticism, 137, 139n2; for creative process, 130; creative process analogies, 135, 313, 388; perception and, 391, 444–45; style evolution and revolution, 86; visual metaphors for, 1, 114 mythology, 5–6, 39, 40, 46n, 91 N. W. Ayer and Sons, 99 Nabokov, Vladimir, 457 Nanpin, Shen (Chinanpin), 149 Nation, The (journal), 103, 107n15, 122, 452 National Amateur Painters Competition, 452 National Committee on Art Education, 10, 330n National Council on the Arts, 457 nationalism, satin, 33, 34, 36n1 nature: abstract art in, 163, 275; artist as element of, 156–57, 184, 198, 208, 210, 219, 224, 245, 275, 277, 308, 317, 321; as art subject, criticism, 245; art without references to, 275; propaganda of, 275, 283; and religion, 200; as sculptural component, 172, 176, 208; sketchbook notes on, 207–8 Neal, Reginald H., 254n Nelson Blocher Mausoleum (Torrey), 219 neologisms, xiv, 7, 47, 182n, 189n, 202 Neuberger, Roy R., 123, 124n6 Neumann-Willard Gallery, 103, 107n13, 139, 450 Newman, Barnett, 384 “New Sculpture, The,” 148–51, 453 New York Herald Tribune, 87, 117n, 167n New York Times, 19n, 103, 144n1, 192n New York World’s Fair (1939): architectural sculpture designs for, 4, 31; art and architecture collaborations, 28n1; articles with illustrations featuring, 42n; exhibition installations at, 450; kinetic sculpture at, 45; sculpture designs for, 4, 450 nickel, 43, 127 Nicolaides, Kimon, 81n, 98, 448 Noguchi, Isamu, 78n, 286, 287–88 Noland, Ken, 453, 454 Non-Objectivism, 305, 319, 321 nostalgia, 376, 378–80 “Notes for Elaine de Kooning,” 7–8, 127–30, 453 “Notes from a Sketchbook Titled ‘Nature’,” 207–8 “Notes–Improvised Upon,” 242 “Notes on Books,” 91–94, 452 “Notes on Details–Technical,” 180 “Notes on My Work,” 10, 313–15, 455 “Notes on Seven Sculptures,” 117–18 “Notes–Watch a Torn Sheet,” 114 “Notes While Driving,” 191 Novices of Sais, The (Novalis/Hardenberg), 92 nude female models, as art subject, 393–94, 456–57 object(s), 246, 269–70. See also found objects; object identity object identity: childhood drawings and evaluations, 282; perception and, 121, 138, 146, 165, 196, 224, 233–34, 249, 278; recognition for concept, 378; view point and distance, 129, 135–36, 210–11; as visual memory, 234 O’Casey, Sean, 228, 333, 334 Oceanic art, 234 O’Connor, Francis V., 29n O’Hara, Frank, 10, 411n37, 422–27, 457 Ohio State University, 307–9, 455 Ohio University, 98, 447 O’Keeffe, Georgia, 22 Olivet College, 121 “On Drawing,” 254n

“One of the Early Impressions,” 64 On Modern Art (Klee), 92 Origins of Modern Sculpture (Valentiner), 94 Orozco, José, 26 Orswell, Lois, 455 Otto Gerson Gallery: solo exhibitions (1957), 455; solo exhibitions (1961), 395(411n24), 456 Oval Node, 433 oxides and oxide finishes, 43, 44, 133, 150 Pablo Picasso (Eluard), 92 Pach, Walter, 22 paint, 19–20, 431. See also painted sculptures; painting(s) Painted Landscape (The Love Letter), 15n70 painted sculptures: color selection, 10, 44, 395, 417, 418, 423–24, 443–44, 456; in history, 44, 140–41, 422–23; media unity of, 140–41, 148; mixing methods, 433; outdoor displays of, 436–37, 436fig; paint type, 431; production, 456; production descriptions, 343–44, 395, 417; purpose, 392, 410, 422; technical process descriptions, 424, 431–32, 434, 435, 444 painting(s): architectural collaborations, 291–92; art education in: Lahey, 7, 96, 98, 314, 344, 400, 447, 448; Matulka, 99, 184, 232, 314, 324, 344, 399, 422, 448; Sloan, 98, 314, 447, 448; artistic influence and, 26, 313–14, 396; with collage elements, 191n; creative process of, 307; Leonardo da Vinci’s treaties on women subjects, 86; media definition and descriptions, 26; perception of, 260, 307; production chronology, 25, 99, 101, 393–94, 448, 449, 451, 454, 455, 457; sculpture comparisons, 35, 110, 116, 140, 148; sculpture redirection from, 101, 260, 314, 323–24, 399, 449; sculpture unity with, 140–41, 163, 176, 183–84, 232–33, 247, 274–75, 325–26, 403, 422; spray, 360, 455, 456; value of, media comparisons, 280–81; wall, expertise on, 19n Paintings and Water Colors (Klee), 92 Palm-Dutt, R., 401 Parallel 42, 223–24, 253n5 Paris, France, 23n, 101–2, 314, 449, 454, 456 Parnassus (journal), 3, 4, 104 Pepi I from Heirakonpolis, 262 Pepper, Beverly, 353, 374 Pepper, Jori, 360 Pepper, Mike, 360 perception, visual: action and, 205; of art and audience response, 249; art education using, 332; art interpretation and individuality of, 138, 196, 251, 391; associative power of, 91, 109, 138; censorship and lack of, 137, 138, 142, 146, 168, 196–97, 228; character of, 277–78; conceptual development using, 313; influences on, 251–52; process of, 146–47; understanding art and requirements of, 138, 142, 145, 151, 164–65, 172, 198, 226, 309. See also reality “Perception and Reality” (Williams College lecture), 137–38, 138n1, 145n Pereira, Irene Rice, 33n, 344, 448 perfection, 216, 306, 307, 308, 403–4 Personage of May, 441, 441fig Philadelphia Museum of Art, 329n Philosophy of Modern Art, The (Read), 212n1 photography: as artistic influence, 35, 183; early experimentation with, 99, 448; nude females in domestic scenes, 456; painting process using, 393–94; passenger plane aerial views and pattern themes, 174n1; views of, 306 Picasso: Forty Years of His Art (Barr), 93, 179 Picasso, Pablo: as artistic influence, 8, 148, 231–32, 233, 278, 279, 322, 381; art style descriptions, 21–22, 26, 34, 251, 322; on creative process as artist’s identity, 179; exhibitions catalogues on, 93, 179n1; exhibitions of, 85, 99, 449; González death and memorial, 259;

González partnership, 99, 100, 183–84, 218, 247, 259, 260–61, 263, 315, 323–24, 344; Guernica, 92, 93, 209, 279; Man with a Lamb, 278–79; philosophic-aesthetics opposition, 212; recommended books by, 92–93, 212n2; reproductions of works by, 397; sculptor/ painter duality, 140, 183–84, 232–33, 247, 274–75, 325–26, 422–23; UN building commission, 287–88 Pickens, Alton, 295 Pierre Matisse Gallery, 85, 102 Pillar of Sunday, 15n70 Pissarro, Camille, 172 Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, 341, 445n1, 456 Pittsburgh Landscape, 346(347n7) Plato, 65, 111 Plotinus, 212, 334 Pocket Book of Old Masters, The (Wechsler, ed.), 94n1 politics, 250, 253n3, 452. See also social consciousness Pollock, Jackson: artist associates, 317, 382, 384, 454; as artistic influence, 343; art style descriptions, 251, 285, 381 Poor, Henry Varnum, 235, 265n, 268, 276–77, 286, 303n Pope-Hennessy, John, 2, 272 Portland Art Museum, 182n, 183–86, 453 Portrait of Don Quixote, 181n possibilities (magazine), 14n33, 68n, 383 Post-Impressionism, 246, 285 Powers, Hiram: Greek Slave, The, 399 Preston, Stuart, 192n Prestopino, Gregorio, 100 prices, art, 75, 274, 280, 300 Primitive Art (Boaz), 66 primitive cultures: aesthetic appreciation of, 66, 76; African art, 34, 101, 184, 187–88, 234, 448, 449; art expression and eidetic images, 138, 145–46, 183; art function in, 157; art media of, 140–41, 183; economy and art production, 110; nature in, perspectives of, 156–57 Primo Piano I, 393, 436 Primo Piano III, 433 Primo Pianos series: composition descriptions, 392, 393, 433, 436; production, 13, 385, 456; title selection, 385, 432 Private Law and Order Leagues, 47 Prix de Rome fellowship (American Academy, Rome), 452 “Problems of the Contemporary Sculptor,” 140–44, 453 production costs, 74–75, 127, 130, 133, 141, 149, 173, 273, 285 productive madness, 65, 111 “Profiles” (radio program), 413n “Progress of Art in America, The” (panel), 192n “Progress Report and Application for Renewal of Guggenheim Fellowship,” 119, 121–24 propaganda, 26, 66–67, 164, 192, 275, 283 Propaganda for War, 46, 107n17 “Protest Against Vandalism, A,” 338–39 provincialism, 335, 381, 382 psychology, 35, 60, 65, 66, 109, 111 publicity, 209, 273–74 Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), 19n, 101, 107n6 Purism, 184, 391, 397 Puritan Landscape, 6 “Question: What Are Your Influences, The,” 7, 95fig, 96–97 “Question–What Is Your Hope, The,” 62–63 Race for Survival (Spectre of Profit), 6, 87n, 131n2, 146(147n1) Radin, Paul, 187–88 radio: commercialism of, 137; interviews on, 124n12, 316–28, 413n, 457; statements on, 172–74, 453; station preferences, 130

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Rape, The, 293n Rathbun, Mary Chalmers, 94 Rattner, Abraham, 85 Ray, Man, 45 Reaction in Medicine, 50, 108n20 Read, Herbert, 209, 212, 212n2 reading, 133–34. See also words, language of realism: abstract art vs., 22, 33; art movements revolting against, 86; constraints of, 3; criticism of, 146; definition, 33; medal designs and, 37; traditional attitudes and perception of, 30 reality: artistic perceptions of, 138–39, 143–47, 178–79, 196, 207–8, 245–46; creative process as, 85, 205, 206; imitation of, 171; memory as, 86; psychology and subconscious super-, 35, 66, 111; relational character of, 225 reasoning, 212 Reclining Figure (1933), 449 Reclining Figure (1935), 107n9 Reclining Figure (1936), 102, 107n9 Re-creating of the Individual, The (Hinkle), 186n1 “Recurrences of Totemism, The,” 52 Redmond, Roland L., 116n Redon, Odilon, 242 Reed College, 183n Reinhardt, Ad, 167n, 304n, 319, 382, 383 Rei Sho, 149, 184, 211 “Relative to Tanktotem I (Pouring),“ 169, 170fig religion, 48, 271, 272, 386 Rembrandt van Rijn, 275, 279 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 8, 299n, 455 repetition, 12, 239, 251, 385 “Report for Interim Week,” 85–86, 452 “Report on Voltri,” 11–12, 346n, 356–64, 456 reproductions: art knowledge through, 91, 304, 307, 324, 344; art popularity through, 283; opposition to, as non-art, 268; opposition to, concept development vs. repetition, 239; opposition to, integrity issues, 301, 335, 336, 349, 397–98; opposition to, quality reduction, 287, 325, 397–98; painters and, 349, 403; sculpture and practice of, 397–98, 403 “Rescue Operation” (Arts), 338–39 resentments, 330 residences, 98, 99, 105, 447, 448, 450. See also Bolton Landing residence, New York reverse carving process (intaglio), 37–38, 41, 103, 321, 344 revolt: artist’s identity and purpose, 137, 175, 180, 193, 211, 214, 410; against past, 67, 76, 85–86, 87, 110, 111–12, 141; against tradition, 89, 128, 226, 260. See also social consciousness Rewald, John, 2, 174n2 Reznikoff, Misha, 21n, 102, 152, 314 Rickey, George W., 212n3, 254n, 295, 297 Rilke, Rainier Maria, 229, 231 Rise of Cubism, The (Kahnweiler), 93 Ritchie, Andrew Carnduff, 140, 148n, 297 Rivera, Diego, 319 “River Mts, A,” 57 Rizospastis (newspaper), 409 “Robinhood’s Barn,” 6, 78n, 79 Rodchenko, Alexander, 324 Rodin, Auguste, 183, 213n, 291, 299, 322, 397 Rodman, Selden, 293–98 Roesch, Kurt, 85 Roman art, 31, 183, 398 Romany Marie café, 21n, 152, 314, 325, 383, 384 Rosati, James, 397, 457 Rosenberg, James N., 85, 303n Roszak, Theodore: art style descriptions, 22; Spectre of Kitty Hawk, 85; symposium presentations by, 148 Rothko, Marc: artist associates, 153n4, 384, 449; art style descriptions, 251, 285, 327, 383

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Rubin, William, 396, 409, 410, 411n27 Ruggles, Carl, 391, 457 rules: art and absence of, 34, 230, 236, 252, 343; purpose of, 164, 197; views of, 9, 11, 166, 403 Russia, 23n, 102, 314, 320, 449 rust: properties and symbolism of, 133, 380; rustproofing, 25, 44; sculpture series with, 437, 438; simulation techniques, 224; surface descriptions, 392; technical process as visual inspiration, 180n Ryder, Albert Pinkham, 234 Sacrifice, The, 118, 119(124n3) Saidenberg Gallery, 453 Saint Louis Art Museum (formerly City Art Museum of Saint Louis), 72, 106, 451 sales: to artists, 104, 122; avant-guarde art and lack of, 384; to collectors, 104, 108n20, 338n, 451; to critics, 104, 411n27; cultural propaganda control of, 66–67; dealer relationship for, 74–75; to dealers, 104, 107, 306n; early, lack of, 406; first, 103, 107n13; galleries and acquisition policies for, 332; museum acqui­­ sitions, 72, 73, 73n1, 75, 103, 104, 106, 123, 156, 294, 451, 453; museum discounts on, 75, 228n2, 274, 288n2; policies on, 294; production costs vs. income from, 74–75, 127, 130, 173, 273; as sculpture chal­­ lenge, 127, 130, 173; through galleries, 103, 452, 453, 454; as unimportant, 327–28, 388; to writers, 107, 293 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 454 Sanity in Art (Logan, J. H.), 32n2 São Paulo Biennial, 453, 455 Sarah Lawrence College: student handouts, 85–86, 91–94, 212n2, 452; students at, 452; teaching assign­­ ments, 85n, 122, 250, 452; teaching income, 122 Saw Head, 347n4, 410n3 Schary, Saul, 21, 22 Schoenberg, Arnold, 86, 110, 137, 210 School of Art and Design, Chicago, 450 Schurz, Carl, 401 science: art relationship to, 29, 30, 31, 35, 66, 162; as art theme, 50, 51; painting compared to, 26; psychology, 35, 60, 65, 66, 109, 111; technical processes as, 25, 60 Scientific Body Disposal, 51 “Sculpting Master of Bolton Landing,” 422n “Sculptor and His Problems, The,” 172n “Sculptor Opposes Tradition as Perfection of Others,” 216n “Sculptor’s Concept, A,” 123 “Sculptor’s Point of View, A,” 196n, 209n “Sculptor’s Relationship to the Museum, Dealer, and Public,” 74–77, 452 “Sculpture: Art Forms in Architecture–New Techniques Affect Both,” 4–5, 42–45, 71n, 452 sculpture, overview: architecture relationship with, 4, 7–8, 27–32, 30, 42–45, 72, 141, 286, 287, 288, 290–92, 299–301, 301, 316; art education in, 232, 343; assis­ tants, use of, 268, 325; categories of, 30; challenges of, 74, 130, 140, 141, 173; conceptual development, 127, 130, 166, 185, 256; contributions to, 348–49; creative process descriptions, 128–29, 141–42, 158, 172, 173, 179, 185, 186, 307, 313, 331; details and embellishments, 269–70, 289–390, 335; discarded/ destroyed, 377–78; as energy statement, 185–86; environment and, 58, 288, 290, 314; exhibition chal­ lenges, 74, 75, 130; functionality, 415; function of, 4, 27–32, 173; future of, 420; gender of, 425; getting started, 347; history and origins of, 183, 209; hopes and goals for, 62–63; labor associations, 260; limita­ tions on, 346; linear vs. volume, 148, 184–85, 235, 248; materials for, 129, 185, 235, 248, 324–25; as media specialty, 101, 260, 314, 323–24, 399, 449; painting comparisons, 35, 110, 116, 140, 148; painting unity

with, 140–41, 163, 176, 183–84, 232–33, 247, 274–75, 325–26, 403, 422; production challenges, financial limitations, 141, 149, 173; production challenges, lack of heritage, 140, 141; production challenges, work conditions, 129, 130, 183, 325, 347, 358–59, 392, 418, 426; production chronology, 13, 99, 102, 103, 106, 148, 158, 184–85, 314, 317, 448, 449, 451, 452, 454, 455, 456, 457; production costs, 74–75, 127, 130, 133, 141, 149, 150, 173, 273, 285; production statistics, 149; purpose, 30, 87, 88–89, 173; significance and influ­ence of, 444; storage challenges, 130, 362; tallest work, 457; technical processes for, 42–45, 71–72, 128, 158, 165, 172–73, 424–25, 438, 440–41; touching, 417 “Sculpture and Architecture,” 290–92, 455 “Sculpture Hopes to Be,” 88–89 “Sculpture in Michelangelo’s Time and Today,” 86n3 Sculpture of the Twentieth Century (exhibition), 218(236n1) “Sculpture Produces an Environment, The,” 58 Sculpture Society, 144n1 Sculptures of David Smith, The (Krauss), xvn “Sculpture Today,” 10, 348–49, 456 “Second Thoughts on Sculpture,” 196n, 209–12, 453 secret languages, 10, 388 “Secret Letter, The,” 373n Segy, Ladislas, 187–88 “Selden Rodman, Conversation with David Smith,” 293–98 self-criticism, 12, 333, 391, 394 Sentinel III, 337n1, 440, 440fig Sentinel IV, 337n1 Sentinel series: composition descriptions, 314(315n3); design elements in, 337n1, 440, 440fig; museum acquisitions, 427n4; production chronology, 454; statements illustrated with, 348n 7 Bars, 345(347n3) 17 h’s: composition descriptions, 7, 409; exhibitions of, 124n3; Guggenheim fellowship production, 121, 122; photography notes on, 118; vandalism of, 338–39, 411n25 Seymour, Charles, 94 Shahn, Ben: Pacific Landscape, 294–95 Shanker, Lou, 100 Shinn, Everett, 400 silver, 46n, 127, 389, 390, 450, 455 Simon, Sidney, 265n, 270, 274, 286–88 Sinking Hospital and Civilian Refugee Ships, 49 Siporin, Mitchell, 74n Sitting Printer, 442, 442fig size (scale): display limitations, 406, 415; and financial success, 328; labor intensity, 418, 426; large scale production as defiance, 387; large scale production chronology, 314, 317, 455; mobility limitations of, 286, 295, 314, 317, 387, 409, 455; small scale, benefits of, 331, 387, 426; transportation challenges, 225, 387, 413–15, 414fig, 416–17, 426; variety of, as challenge, 426; and viewer response, 289; work schedule impacted by, 418 “Sketchbook Notes: Cube III; Drawings Are a Change; Once in a Lifetime You Meet an Ironworks; You Rule Your Own World,” 366–69, 367fig “Sketchbook Notes: From the Textures; The Part to the Whole; There Is Something Rather Noble about Junk,” 189–90 “Sketchbook Notes: He May Be Intuitive Enough to Make It; Nothing Put Down with Force and Conviction is Meaningless,” 289 “Sketchbook Notes: Music; The Cloud; Space; And in the Best of Squares” (sketchbook notes), 135–36 “Sketchbook Notes: The Found Object; Isn’t It Good,” 352 “Sketchbook Notes: The Great Decision; To Think–To Dream; I Do Not Care for the Home Environment,” 350–51

“Sketchbook Notes: The Red of Rust; The Metaphor of a Symbol; The Position for Vision; Reading,” 133–34 “Sketch–Oil Painting–The Influence–The Historian,” 258 Skidmore College, 65–67, 121, 450, 452 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. See “Lec­ture, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture” Sloan, John: art group memberships and exhibitions, 153n4; as artistic influence, 7, 96, 98, 234, 314; as Smith’s art instructor, 98, 314, 400, 447, 448 Slusser, Jean Paul, 156n Smith, Candida, 1, 339, 341n, 403, 454 Smith, Catherine, 447 Smith, David, biographical information: artist group memberships, 21n, 152, 449, 452; art style descriptions, 6, 137, 383; automobile accidents, 451, 457; awards, 119, 121–24, 411n18, 452, 457; death and funeral, 457; education, 98, 447; European embar­ kation with Dehner, 23fig; happiest period of career, 11; lifestyle preferences, 130, 388–89; at Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, 414fig; marriage and divorce, first, 8, 81n, 98, 125n, 447, 451, 452; marriage and divorce, second, 8, 453, 455; military draft classi­ fication, 106, 451; national arts council presidential appointments, 457; personality descriptions, child­ hood, 447; political involvement, 250, 253n3, 449, 452; residences, 98, 99, 105, 447, 448, 450 (see also Bolton Landing); studios/workshops of, 103, 368n2 (see also Terminal Iron Works); will and estate, 457. See also childhood of David Smith Smith, Golda (Stoler), 447 Smith, Harve M., 379, 380, 447, 450 Smith, Rebecca, 1, 339, 341n, 357, 403, 453 Snyder, Barney, 99 social class: of artists, 357; middle-class (bourgeois) standards, 30, 146, 175, 280, 284–85, 359 social consciousness: abstract art as, 26; in art, 378–79; cultural revolution, 399–402; exhibition protests, 21n, 152; revolutionary action, 345; socialist political demonstrations, 449; war-related themes, 5, 46–51, 104, 321, 378, 451 socialism, 387, 388–89, 449 Social Realism, 319, 384 society: artist’s identity accepted by, 203, 317–18; artist’s obligations to, 110, 268–69; artist’s relationship with, 245–53; artist’s vs. architect’s responsibility to, comparisons, 286; function of art in, 27–28, 410 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 294, 302n2, 456 “Some Late Words from David Smith,” 428–45, 457 Song of the Landscape, 117, 121, 124n3 Southwestern College Art Conference, 196n, 209n space, as art element: characterizations of, 287, 346; composition and form, 142, 148–49, 162, 172, 184, 185–86; composition and object distance, 129, 135–36, 210–11; composition and vertical horizontal empty, 406–7; and drawing, 149, 243–44; monuments and, 53; -time relativity theories, 31, 35, 66. See also environment Spanish War auction benefit, 102 Spectre, 131n2, 146(147n1), 149(151n2) Spectre of Mother, 6, 131n2 Spectre Riding a Headless Horse, 131n2, 151n2 Spectre Riding the Golden Ass, 131n2 Spectre series: material properties and descriptions, 129; production descriptions, 451; themes, 146, 149, 451; works of, 131n2 Spoleto, Italy. See Festival of Two Worlds “Spoleto Experiment, The” (Sylvester), 353n spontaneity, 308, 394, 395 spray paintings, 360, 455, 456 Stable Gallery, 453 stainless steel: for architecture and industry, 43; material costs, 127, 424; rust and, 180n; sculptural

475

stainless steel (continued) production, chronology, 13, 314, 317, 345, 392, 406, 454, 455, 456, 457; technical process descriptions, 43, 424–25. See also painted sculptures Stanislavsky, Konstantin, 184 Star Cage, 122, 124n3 State Art Bill (New York), 77 “Statement, Herald Tribune Forum,” 87 “Statement, WNYC Radio,” 172–74, 453 State University of New York, 456 Stead (Blake), Christina, 104, 450 steel: art history of, 185; art style descriptions, 26; creative process descriptions, 150; material properties and descriptions, 4, 25–26, 127, 150, 185; as media preference, 185, 248; production costs, 150; sculptural production, chronology, 103, 122, 123, 148, 184–85, 452, 454, 455, 456, 457; technical process descriptions, 42–44, 128, 150, 158, 172–73, 185, 346. See also painted sculptures; stainless steel Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, 383 Stella, Joseph, 152, 314, 383 stenciling, 455 Stephan, John, 78n Stephan, Ruth, 78n Stewart’s Cafeteria, 96, 152 Stieglitz Gallery, 246 Still, Clyfford, 285, 381 stone, 25 Strauss, Jerry, 98 Stravinsky, Igor, 86, 99, 334, 391, 400 Structure of a Small Concept Possessing Big Power, 88n, 90fig struggle, 6, 76, 146, 334–35, 396 Studebaker automobile factory, 25, 52, 98, 344, 400, 447 Studio 35, 2 studios/workshops, 103, 368n2. See also Terminal Iron Works Study for Propaganda for War, 107n17 “Subject Is Me, The,” 412 subjectivity, 252 Sugarman, George: Six Forms in Pine, 341n Sumerian art, 304, 321, 449 Surrealism: as artistic influence, 184, 246, 285, 322, 345; art style classification, 26, 35; found object symbolism in, 376 survival: as artistic challenge, 110. 215. 223, 146, 193, 306, 358; of humanity, 72, 87; as personal challenge, 402–3, 420; as theme, 6, 70. 204, 146 suspended (hanging) sculptures, 223–24, 251, 253n5, 453 Sweeney, James Johnson, 187–88, 294, 297 Sylvester, David, 15n66, 316–28, 353–55, 455 symbols: for artistic communicability, 54, 147, 271, 283; interpretation of past, 279; metaphor of, 133; in sculptural works, 39–40, 121, 138, 144, 343. See also eidetic images; words, language of “Symposium: Art and Religion” (Art Digest), 200n Syrian art, 263 System and Dialectics of Art (Graham), 314, 383 taboos, 60, 200, 386 Taeuber-Arp, Sophie, 85 Tahstvaat, 156n Tanktotem I (Tanktotem I Pouring), 169, 170fig, 222 Tanktotem II (Tanktotem II Sounding), 222, 303n Tanktotem III, 225, 306n Tanktotem IV, 181n, 225, 306 Tanktotem X, 435, 435fig Tanktotem XII, 345 Tanktotem series: artistic influences on, 222; color selection, 435; composition descriptions, 222, 225, 345, 453; exhibitions of, 330n, 456; production, 345, 453; sales of, 306n; sketchbook notes and

476

illustrations, 169, 170fig; title selection, 225; views of works, 435fig Tate Gallery, 457 Tatlin, Vladimir, 263, 324 Taylor, Francis Henry, 341 Taylor, Jack, 254n teachers: Lahey, 7, 96, 98, 314, 344, 400, 447, 448; Lewis, 98, 447; Matulka, 96, 99, 184, 232, 314, 324, 344, 399, 422, 448; Nicolaides, 98, 448; Sloan, 7, 96, 98, 234, 314, 400, 447, 448 teaching: advice on, 330–33; descriptions and responsibilities of, 250; discipline methods, 333; grading methods, 250; job requirements, 333–34; purpose of, 273, 331; sculpture theory and methodology, 109–12; student handouts, 85–86, 91–94, 452; student learning goals, 33, 250, 333, 334; university wages for, 75. See also teaching positions “Teaching of Sculpture, The” (panel discussion), 109n teaching positions: Bennington College, 456; Indiana University, 237n, 442, 454; Jewish Settlement house, 101; offers declined, 450, 451; Sarah Lawrence College, 85n, 122, 250, 452; University of Arkansas, 191, 453, 454; University of Mississippi, 242n, 243n, 454 Teague, Walter Dorwin: articles with illustrations featuring, 42n; “Cycle of Production,” 45 technical manuals data reports, 3, 19n technique, 72, 110, 158, 238. See also creative process “Technique, Brushstrokes, Chisel Marks, The,” 60 television, 411n37, 422n, 457 Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA), 19n, 101, 449 Ten, the, 152(153n4) Tennis (magazine), 99, 448 Terminal Iron Works, Bolton Landing studio: construction of, 105, 106, 449; descriptions of, 7–8, 127–28, 129–30; expansion of, 450, 454, 455; memories, 12; name selection, 104, 129, 450; poetry on, 368; sculpture production at, 99, 102, 103; Smith at, 177fig; storage challenges, 362; work day schedule, 129 Terminal Iron Works, Brooklyn workshop: descriptions and location, 100–101, 105, 129, 130, 148, 449; production at, 102, 103; Smith at, 100fig Third Woodstock Art Conference, 123, 341n 36 Bird Heads, 121, 124n3 This Quarter (magazine), 5, 400–401 Thompson, G. David, 346–47, 455 Thomson, Virgil, 137 Thorvaldsen, Bertel: Night and Day, 447 “Thoughts on Sculpture,” 196–98, 453 “Thoughts Travel and Come Unexpectedly,” 329 Tiffany fellowship applications, 448 Tiger’s Eye (magazine), 6, 78–79, 384 time: art and quality of, 156; artist as product of own, 8, 76, 86, 109–10, 116, 142, 210, 226, 269; between conception and realization, 12, 388; lack of, 249, 347; stopping, 57 Time magazine, 104, 405 titles: purpose of, 222, 248; selection methods, 10, 165, 220, 222, 344, 416, 437; sentimentality of, 144, 198, 385 tobe (to be), xiv, 182n, 189n “To Keep from Becoming Enslaved,” 59 “To Make a Mark,” 243–44 tools: architecture and sculpture relationship through shared, 30, 42, 72; as artistic influence, 7–8, 141; creative process with, 128, 150, 158; function as priority, 128, 158; quality of, 128; science and art relationship and shared, 66; as sculptural materials, 363, 373, 376–77, 456 Torres-García, Joaquín, 262

Torrey, Frank: Nelson Blocher Mausoleum sculptures, 219 totemism, 52, 386 touching, 417 Tower I, 388(410n14), 393, 457 tractor sculptures, 423, 433 tradition: educational resentments and teaching of, 332; independence from, 111, 128, 186, 216, 217, 226, 271–72, 275; lectures on, 216–17; limitations of, 116, 128, 141, 162, 216, 226–27, 307–8; value of media determined by, 280, 282; visual memory based on, 234 Tradition and Experiment in Modern Sculpture (Seymour), 94 trains: childhood influences, 379, 416; factory employment, 5, 6, 52, 105–6, 379, 450, 451; as sculpture parts, 12, 357, 363–64 Transition (journal), 5, 314, 319, 391, 400, 401 Treasury Department post office murals, 102 Treatise on Painting (Leonardo da Vinci), 86 Treves, Marco, 13n8, 94 truth: as artistic expression, 94, 111, 137, 141, 142, 211; of drawing, 254; as identity, 197, 211, 239, 254; visual perceptions of (see reality) Tulane University (H. Sophie Newcomb College), 10, 245n, 254n, 454 Tutankhamen (Egyptian pharaoh), 263 TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority), 4, 31 Twelve Modern American Contemporary Painters and Sculptors (exhibition), 453 Twentieth Century Sculpture and Constructions (exhibition), 450 25 Planes, 345(347n3) Twenty-Four Greek Y’s, 7, 121, 122, 124n3 21 Greek Y’s, 121 2 Circle IV, 392(411n19), 434, 434fig Uccello, Paolo, 271, 286 union memberships, 3, 52, 102, 449, 450 United American Artists Local 60 of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (formerly Artists Union), 3, 33n, 102, 449 United Nations Headquarters, 71n, 287–88, 290, 302n1, 454 United Steelworkers of America, 52, 450 unity (unities), as artistic principle: for architecturesculpture esthetics, 42, 43; as creative process description, 1, 7, 43, 72, 76, 96, 141, 143–44, 149, 172–73, 185, 186n2, 189, 225, 313, 329, 331, 377; drawing analogies as, 243; González art style descriptions, 260; of monuments in space, 53; object relationships for, 65–66, 191, 396; verbal, 7, 182n, 202n University Gallery, University of Minnesota, 121, 453 University of Arizona Museum of Art, 338n University of Arkansas, 191n, 196n, 453, 454 University of Illinois, Urbana, 199n2 University of Louisville, 109n University of Michigan, 2, 8, 154n, 156, 156n University of Mississippi, 242n, 243n, 245n, 254n, 454 University of Notre Dame, 52, 107n2, 324, 347n2, 447 University of Oklahoma, 196n, 209n University of Oregon, 183–86 University of Pennsylvania, 15n66, 448, 456, 457 University of Pennsylvania Press, 11, 15n66, 457 Untitled (1955), 244fig Untitled (1957), 15n70 Untitled (1961–62), 442, 442fig Untitled (1964), 430–31 Untitled (Candida), 13, 431fig Untitled (Hanging Sculpture), 253n5 Untitled (Preliminary Version for Study for Propaganda for War), 107n17

Untitled (Study for Agricola I), 377–78(410n6) Untitled (Tower I), 439–40, 439fig Untitled (Voltri), 364n2 Untitled (Voltri) (For Gian Carlo), 364n2 U.S. Office of Education, 53n Valentin, Curt (Buchholz Gallery): group exhibitions (1943) with Willard Gallery, 451; publications published by, 91, 92, 93; Smith sculpture sales by, 107; solo exhibitions (1946) with Willard Gallery, 106, 108n22, 119, 451 Valentiner, William, 94, 106 vandalism, 338–39, 396 van Gogh, Vincent: communicability and popularity, 283; critical views of, 34, 197, 211, 231; dimensionality of paintings, 186, 210 Vasari, Giorgio, 94, 286, 297 VB XXIII, 377(410n5), 443 Venice Biennale, 353, 454, 455, 456 Venus of Villendorf, 211 Vertical Structure (Vertical Construction), 42n Virgin Islands, 99, 448 “Visual Arts, The,” 53–54 Volton series, 390(411n17), 456, 457 Volton XX, 390(411n17) Voltri, Italy: challenges and distractions, 11–12, 356, 358–59; factory descriptions, 353, 356, 360–61, 373; lifestyle descriptions, 354, 357, 358, 375–76, 404; location selection, 374–75; materials and supplies, 357, 375; materials shipped to USA, 354, 359, 398, 399, 443; production descriptions, 353–55, 357–58, 359–60; publications on, 11, 15n66, 353n, 457; sculpture descriptions (see Voltri series); trip preparation, 354, 373–74 Voltri I, 12, 361 Voltri II, 361–62 Voltri III, 362, 364n2 Voltri IV, 361–62, 362fig Voltri V, 362fig, 364n2 Voltri VI, 362–63, 364n2 Voltri VII, 363, 364n2 Voltri VIII, 363, 364n2 Voltri IX, 361–62, 364n2 Voltri X, 363, 364n2 Voltri XI, 361–62, 363, 364n2 Voltri XII, 364n2 Voltri XIII, 363, 364n2 Voltri XIV, 361–62, 364n2 Voltri XV, 364n2 Voltri XVI, 364n2 Voltri XVII, 361–62, 362fig Voltri XVIII, 364n2 Voltri XIX, 364n2 Voltri XX, 363, 364n2 Voltri XXI, 363, 364n2 Voltri XXII, 364n2 Voltri-Bolton series: content descriptions, 398; exhibitions of, 15n66, 411n28, 457; production descriptions, 11, 359, 398–99, 443, 456; production statistics, 443; publications featuring, 15n66; trades and gifts, 377(410n5); writings about, 15n66 Voltri Doll, 15n68, 364n2 Voltri series: composition and design elements, 361–64, 406–7; exhibitions of, group, 11, 15n68, 256, 356n, 456; exhibitions of, solo, 15n68, 356n, 362, 362fig, 456, 457; production descriptions, 11, 12, 13, 353–55, 357–60; production statistics, 364n2, 456; publications on, 11, 353n, 457 Voltron (Carandente), 11, 15n66, 353, 353n, 457 vulgarity: as art quality, 150, 185, 187, 207, 267, 285, 301, 350; curios as example of, 191; philosophic-aesthetic view of creative process, 167, 197, 211

477

Wagon I, 385(410n11), 423(427n1) Wagon II, 373(410n1), 374fig, 443 Wagon III, 407(411n39) Wagons series: composition descriptions, 407–8, 423, 457; production, 13, 457; wheel construction and weight, 373, 374fig, 385, 423, 443 Walker, Hudson D., 74n Walker Art Center, 175n War Exempt Sons of the Rich, 48 war-related themes: antiwar, 5, 46–51, 104, 321, 378, 451; memorial monuments, 53–54 War Spectre, 131n2 wealth, 327–28, 420 Weber, Hugo, 109n Weber, Max, 21, 85, 246 Wechsler, Herman J., 91, 94n1 welding: college programs and teaching assignments, 456; early sculptural, 99, 100–101, 449; employment, armaments, 5, 6, 105–6, 379, 450, 451; employment, automobile plant, 25, 52, 98, 344, 347n2, 400, 447; employment, industrial, 1, 452; fellowship and grant applications for arc, 71–72, 452; sculpture technical processes, 42–44, 71–72, 158, 450, 452; stainless steel and, 424; writing style compared to, 12–13. See also iron; stainless steel; steel “What Happens to Barnyard Grass,” 115, 115fig “What I Believe about the Teaching of Sculpture,” 109–12 What is Modern Painting (Barr), 93 “What Is the Triumph,” 340 wheels (design element): construction and weight of, 373, 374fig, 385, 423, 443; as embellishment, 436; history and symbolism, 335, 363; for mobility, 10, 353, 363, 408, 415, 440; sculpture works with, 337n1 Whitney Museum of American Art: art acquisitions, 72, 73n1, 106, 348n, 384, 427n4, 451; art symposiums organized by, 172n; consolidation plans, 72, 73n2; exhibition critiques on, 3–4, 21–22; exhibition protests, 21n, 152; exhibitions, 117n, 119, 450; modern art support proclamations, 144n1; visits to, as student assignment, 85 Whitney Review, 348n, 456 “Who Is the Artist?”, 175–79, 453 Widdifield Gallery, 455 Wilde, Johannes, 92 Willard, Marion: art acquisitions of, 104; East River Gallery, 102–3, 121, 148, 159n2, 184, 450; Neumann-Willard Gallery, 103, 107n13, 139, 450. See also Willard Gallery Willard Gallery: artist representation, 72, 294, 454; art sales through, 103, 451, 453, 454; art theft, 454; group exhibitions (1943) with Buchholz Gallery, 451; solo exhibitions (1940), 5, 37n, 46n, 103, 104, 450; solo exhibitions (1943), 451; solo exhibitions (1946) with Buchholz Gallery, 106, 108n22, 119, 451; solo exhibitions (1947), 3, 5–6, 68–70, 452; solo exhibitions (1950), 452; solo exhibitions (1951), 7, 117n, 120fig, 452–53; solo exhibitions (1952), 199n2; solo exhibitions (1952) with Kleeman Gallery, 124n1, 453; solo exhibitions (1953), 202n; solo exhibitions (1953) with Kootz Gallery, 225(236n3), 453; solo exhibitions (1956), 454 Willard-Neumann Gallery, 103, 107n13, 139, 450 Williams College, 137–38, 145n, 453 Wittenborn and Schultz, 91 WNCN-New York (radio station), 413n, 457 WNYC-New York (radio station), 130, 172–74, 453 Wolfson, Victor, 107 Woman in Subway, 451 Woman Music, 107

478

Womrath’s, 91 wood, 129, 235, 345, 448, 449 Woodstock Artists Association, 216n Woodstock Press, 216n WOR (radio station), 130 words, language of: aesthetic-philosophic use of, 167, 223, 237, 258; art education use of, 235, 332; art expression and limitations of, 229, 308, 346; art understanding and limitation of, 65, 142, 145, 146, 147, 164, 173, 196, 216; creative process and absence of, 3, 85, 86, 109, 145, 173, 196, 309; history of, 121, 223; nature propaganda, 275, 283; tradition dependency on, 216 working conditions: aloneness and privacy, 193, 214, 418; artist’s identity maintenance through work stream, 130; daily schedule, 129, 130, 248, 325, 390, 418, 426; environment descriptions, 127–28, 129, 183, 325, 358–59; labor intensity, 130, 347, 392, 418, 426; morning routines, 356; number of sculptures at a time, 130, 248 Work in Progress (Finnegans Wake) (Joyce), 5, 109, 118, 391 Works Progress Administration (WPA): anthology submissions, 4, 29–32, 29n; architecture and art partnership, 31; article illustrations featuring work commissioned by, 42n; artist’s identity supported by, 203, 318; employment with, 14n20, 19n, 101, 449; gallery exhibitions of, 450; income, 318, 331; influences of, 318–19; projects of, descriptions, 107n6 work stream: for artistic inspiration, 130; artist’s identity developed through, 9, 179, 185; of creative process, 3; for inventiveness, 381; for skills development, 332 World War I, 53–54, 321, 381–82, 449 World War II, 5, 46–51, 104, 382 WQXR (radio station), 130, 389 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 301, 302n2 writings, overview: anthologies of, xiii; archives of, xiii; art related to, 109; drawing compared to, 6, 254, 409; early, 3–4; editing restrictions, 68n, 74n, 78n, 145n, 348n; with illustrations, xiv; influences on, 5; Motherwell’s advice on, 330; process descriptions, xiv, 5, 9, 45n, 46n, 330, 356; purpose of, 2; style descriptions, xiv–xv, 7, 12–13, 47, 182n, 189n, 202, 202n; subject matter and themes, 2–5 Wyeth, Andrew, 303n Xceron, Jean: art career descriptions, early, 152; artist associates, 101, 262, 314, 315n2, 448; as artistic influence, 101, 314, 319, 323–24, 344, 399, 449; biographical information, 107n7, 315n2, 323–24; exhibitions excluding, 22; exhibitions of, 22, 101, 107n7, 314, 315n2, 399; González art reviews, 262, 377; Greek letter language, 409; Picasso-González partnership, 263 Yellow Vertical (Construction in Three Elements), 240n Young, Stanley, 457 Zadkine, Ossip, 78n, 329, 336 Zig II, 432fig Zig III, 433–34, 433fig Zig IV, 341n, 421n3, 432 Zig VII, 421n3, 432fig Zig VIII, 411n21, 413(421n3), 414fig Ziggurats (Zigs) series: composition descriptions, 392, 413, 415, 422, 431; display options, 415; exhibitions of, 341, 413, 456, 457; moving and transportation challenges, 413–15, 414fig, 417; painting process, 431–32; production, 13, 345; title selection, 345, 431 Zorach, William, 22, 87n, 303n