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Lot Essay
“I believe that my time is the most important in the world. That the art of my time is the most important art… Art is not divorced from life. It is dialectic. It is ever changing and in revolt to the past... I believe that art is yet to be born and that freedom and equality are yet to be born”—David Smith (D. Smith, David Smith, New York, 1972, p. 132.)
While David Smith is most known for his monumental abstract sculptures, the works he produced in the earliest years of his sculptural explorations overthrew the prevailing stereotypes of the genre. Smith made most of his early sculptures on a small scale, and often portrayed human figures as his subjects. The sculptures Smith created between 1935 and 1936 provide visual evidence of the artist’s shifting interest from painting to sculpture as his primary medium, as well as his transition between working predominantly in the Cubist and Surrealist styles to creating fully abstract works.
Smith’s Billiard Player Construction is comprised of two planes of iron which resemble a billiard player leaning in to place a shot with his cue. The frontal plane, depicting the billiard player’s shoulders and elbows, is coated with red and blue oil paint, instilling the sculpture with a spirit of playfulness. Smith’s application of paint to the surface marks his refusal to give up painting even when focusing on sculpting: “I’ve been painting sculpture all my life. As a matter of fact, the reason I became a sculptor is that I was a first a painter” (D. Smith, David Smith, New York, 1972, p. 132). Behind the solid metal mass of the player’s upper body, Smith shaped the player’s head from a thinner vertical piece of steel. Winding in and around of the holes in the steel are pieces of twisted metal, which suggest the features of a human face in an abstract manner. The winding wire recalls the Surrealist act of creating automatic line drawings. Smith would have been familiar with Surrealism by exhibiting some early sculptures at the Julian Levy Gallery in 1934 and his general involvement with the New York artistic milieu during that time. The sharp angles of the billiard player’s body and Smith’s fragmenting of his subject’s body into separate sections also incorporates elements of Cubism; Smith credits Jan Matulka, under whom he studied, with introducing him to the possibilities of “cones and cubes and Cézanne” (Ibid., p. 24).
David Smith moved to New York from Indiana in the early 1930s to pursue a career as an artist. His previous work experience at an automobile manufacturing plant, would greatly inform his new career path. “Riveting, drilling, stamping etc. [sic] all fell into my duties but my interest was the $45 to $50 per week which would enable me to study in New York” (ibid., 53). Smith began studying painting at the famous Art Students’ League under such instructors as John Sloan and Jan Matulka, and would continue to paint throughout his life. Eventually, however, he would focus most intently on creating the three-dimensional metal sculpture for which he is now best remembered.
Critics and art historians often assert that Smith was the pioneer of ‘drawing in space’ in America, challenging the traditional idea that sculpture was about solid mass rather than the interaction between material and space. Smith was welding together disparate metal parts in his sculptures at a time when the act of sculpting largely consisted of carving away materials from a single source, like a block of marble, or casting a preliminary plaster cast into bronze. Smith drew inspiration from Giacometti’s early Surrealist sculptures as well as the metal sculptures on which Pablo Picasso and Julio González collaborated between 1928 and 1929. A clear influence on Smith’s later style is Picasso’s and González’s Project for a Monument for Guillaume Apollinaire (1962 enlarged version after a 1928 maquette, Museum of Modern Art, New York.) Picasso sketched his design for a monument dedicated to the French poet with simple lines on paper, and enlisted his friend, Spanish sculptor González, to realize his vision in three dimensions. Like Smith, González experimented with welding in his works, and was interested in exploring the possibilities of line and space in his works. In The Palace at 4 a. m. (1932, Museum of Modern art, New York) Giacometti used thin wooden rods to construct a skeletal house frame. The interior of the house is populated with Surrealist figures made of wood, glass, wire, and string. Yet Giacometti’s sculpture is as much about the empty space around his construction as the construction itself, and the empty spaces between his materials are what imbue his sculpture with a haunting, Surrealist air.
While Smith drew inspiration from these works, his works are uniquely his own. Smith had a deep understanding of the history of welding metal sculpture, which extended back thousands of years to ancient civilizations in Egypt and Mesopotamia. However, his works contain references that are uniquely personal as well as representative of American society in his time. Smith noted about his choice of materials, “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” (Ibid., p. 25). Smith’s preferred working materials, iron and steel, bring to mind capitalist industry, the military-industrial complex, mass production on factory assembly lines, and advances in industrial technology that continued to change the lives of people during the twentieth century. Smith’s use of steel also reflects the economic circumstances of America in the 1930s. Using a relatively cheap and common material for his sculptures, Smith engaged with the Depression-era mindset of resourcefulness and thriftiness. In spite of the influence of early twentieth century artistic trends like Cubism and Surrealism in his early work, Smith’s use of industrial metals prefigured the Minimalist artists who would later work with such materials by decades.
Early Smith sculptures like Billiard Player Construction expose the artist at the most important part of his career. Transitioning from drawing and painting, Smith began working with welded and twisted metals, yet the linear and colorful aspects of works like Billiard Player Construction reveal that he never truly left the earliest form of art-making he learned behind. Building off ideas put forth by a small group of earlier ground-breaking sculptures, Smith was integral in changing the face of American sculpture and the potential of metal, line, and open space in sculpture.
While David Smith is most known for his monumental abstract sculptures, the works he produced in the earliest years of his sculptural explorations overthrew the prevailing stereotypes of the genre. Smith made most of his early sculptures on a small scale, and often portrayed human figures as his subjects. The sculptures Smith created between 1935 and 1936 provide visual evidence of the artist’s shifting interest from painting to sculpture as his primary medium, as well as his transition between working predominantly in the Cubist and Surrealist styles to creating fully abstract works.
Smith’s Billiard Player Construction is comprised of two planes of iron which resemble a billiard player leaning in to place a shot with his cue. The frontal plane, depicting the billiard player’s shoulders and elbows, is coated with red and blue oil paint, instilling the sculpture with a spirit of playfulness. Smith’s application of paint to the surface marks his refusal to give up painting even when focusing on sculpting: “I’ve been painting sculpture all my life. As a matter of fact, the reason I became a sculptor is that I was a first a painter” (D. Smith, David Smith, New York, 1972, p. 132). Behind the solid metal mass of the player’s upper body, Smith shaped the player’s head from a thinner vertical piece of steel. Winding in and around of the holes in the steel are pieces of twisted metal, which suggest the features of a human face in an abstract manner. The winding wire recalls the Surrealist act of creating automatic line drawings. Smith would have been familiar with Surrealism by exhibiting some early sculptures at the Julian Levy Gallery in 1934 and his general involvement with the New York artistic milieu during that time. The sharp angles of the billiard player’s body and Smith’s fragmenting of his subject’s body into separate sections also incorporates elements of Cubism; Smith credits Jan Matulka, under whom he studied, with introducing him to the possibilities of “cones and cubes and Cézanne” (Ibid., p. 24).
David Smith moved to New York from Indiana in the early 1930s to pursue a career as an artist. His previous work experience at an automobile manufacturing plant, would greatly inform his new career path. “Riveting, drilling, stamping etc. [sic] all fell into my duties but my interest was the $45 to $50 per week which would enable me to study in New York” (ibid., 53). Smith began studying painting at the famous Art Students’ League under such instructors as John Sloan and Jan Matulka, and would continue to paint throughout his life. Eventually, however, he would focus most intently on creating the three-dimensional metal sculpture for which he is now best remembered.
Critics and art historians often assert that Smith was the pioneer of ‘drawing in space’ in America, challenging the traditional idea that sculpture was about solid mass rather than the interaction between material and space. Smith was welding together disparate metal parts in his sculptures at a time when the act of sculpting largely consisted of carving away materials from a single source, like a block of marble, or casting a preliminary plaster cast into bronze. Smith drew inspiration from Giacometti’s early Surrealist sculptures as well as the metal sculptures on which Pablo Picasso and Julio González collaborated between 1928 and 1929. A clear influence on Smith’s later style is Picasso’s and González’s Project for a Monument for Guillaume Apollinaire (1962 enlarged version after a 1928 maquette, Museum of Modern Art, New York.) Picasso sketched his design for a monument dedicated to the French poet with simple lines on paper, and enlisted his friend, Spanish sculptor González, to realize his vision in three dimensions. Like Smith, González experimented with welding in his works, and was interested in exploring the possibilities of line and space in his works. In The Palace at 4 a. m. (1932, Museum of Modern art, New York) Giacometti used thin wooden rods to construct a skeletal house frame. The interior of the house is populated with Surrealist figures made of wood, glass, wire, and string. Yet Giacometti’s sculpture is as much about the empty space around his construction as the construction itself, and the empty spaces between his materials are what imbue his sculpture with a haunting, Surrealist air.
While Smith drew inspiration from these works, his works are uniquely his own. Smith had a deep understanding of the history of welding metal sculpture, which extended back thousands of years to ancient civilizations in Egypt and Mesopotamia. However, his works contain references that are uniquely personal as well as representative of American society in his time. Smith noted about his choice of materials, “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” (Ibid., p. 25). Smith’s preferred working materials, iron and steel, bring to mind capitalist industry, the military-industrial complex, mass production on factory assembly lines, and advances in industrial technology that continued to change the lives of people during the twentieth century. Smith’s use of steel also reflects the economic circumstances of America in the 1930s. Using a relatively cheap and common material for his sculptures, Smith engaged with the Depression-era mindset of resourcefulness and thriftiness. In spite of the influence of early twentieth century artistic trends like Cubism and Surrealism in his early work, Smith’s use of industrial metals prefigured the Minimalist artists who would later work with such materials by decades.
Early Smith sculptures like Billiard Player Construction expose the artist at the most important part of his career. Transitioning from drawing and painting, Smith began working with welded and twisted metals, yet the linear and colorful aspects of works like Billiard Player Construction reveal that he never truly left the earliest form of art-making he learned behind. Building off ideas put forth by a small group of earlier ground-breaking sculptures, Smith was integral in changing the face of American sculpture and the potential of metal, line, and open space in sculpture.