Lot Essay
David Smith was a key figure among the American Abstract Expressionists, the only sculptor of the group whose works clearly rank with those of Pollock and de Kooning both in terms of their quality and their influence. By 1951, the year in which Smith created Canopic Head, he had worked through the profound early influences of Surrealism, Picasso and Gonzalez and moved beyond the figurative imagery that had characterized his work of the late 1930s and 1940s. In fact, the year 1951 would yield some of his most important works of that decade.
Although its title seems specific and descriptive, in fact Canopic Head is quite abstract and far more associative than literal. Egyptian culture was one of the many sources that fascinated Smith and references recur in a number of works from the 1950s, indicating that the ancient culture seized his imagination on many levels.
Most specifically, he had seen examples of Egyptian burial jars in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the 1940s and made sketches of them. Smith's sketchbooks, preserved in the Archives of American Art, contain his notation, "canopic jar of princes...placed near sarcophagus to contain viscera in process of mummification." In addition, one drawing shows that he originally conceived a sculpture that more clearly resembled one of these jars, with a head on its top (E. Fry, David Smith, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1969, p. 75).
The final sculpture, however, is far more abstract and although the major vantage point is clearly a frontal one, it presents a radically different silhouette when viewed from either end. Smith's particular sensitivity to the frontality of much of his sculpture, like this one, was related in his mind to the precedent of Egyptian wall carving. "'Sculpture by line,' he wrote, 'has been an early form from the cavemen through Egyptian conceptions of incised stone. Line drawing can make possible the illusion of depth and volume without destroying the architectural form whether it is in metal erected apart from the building or incised on the stone of its face'" (R. Krauss, 1977, op. cit., p. 51).
Smith's treatment of the surface of Canopic Head serves as another device to associate this work with ancient culture. Both the varied density and coloration of the patina he applied to the steel are reminiscent of ancient metal sculpture. Throughout his career, Smith explored a great variety of patinas as well as burnished and painted surfaces as an integral aspect of his sculptural vocabulary.
The subject of a canopic jar also continued from Smith's interest in the theme of sacrifice as well as the idea of presenting parts of the human body as a table-top still life (ibid, pp. 26-27). In addition, as Rosalind Krauss explained, Smith was extremely conscious of the fact that his work belonged to a continuum of Western culture, extending back through ancient cultures and their literature, including the Egyptian Book of the Dead (ibid, p. 46).
Although its title seems specific and descriptive, in fact Canopic Head is quite abstract and far more associative than literal. Egyptian culture was one of the many sources that fascinated Smith and references recur in a number of works from the 1950s, indicating that the ancient culture seized his imagination on many levels.
Most specifically, he had seen examples of Egyptian burial jars in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the 1940s and made sketches of them. Smith's sketchbooks, preserved in the Archives of American Art, contain his notation, "canopic jar of princes...placed near sarcophagus to contain viscera in process of mummification." In addition, one drawing shows that he originally conceived a sculpture that more clearly resembled one of these jars, with a head on its top (E. Fry, David Smith, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1969, p. 75).
The final sculpture, however, is far more abstract and although the major vantage point is clearly a frontal one, it presents a radically different silhouette when viewed from either end. Smith's particular sensitivity to the frontality of much of his sculpture, like this one, was related in his mind to the precedent of Egyptian wall carving. "'Sculpture by line,' he wrote, 'has been an early form from the cavemen through Egyptian conceptions of incised stone. Line drawing can make possible the illusion of depth and volume without destroying the architectural form whether it is in metal erected apart from the building or incised on the stone of its face'" (R. Krauss, 1977, op. cit., p. 51).
Smith's treatment of the surface of Canopic Head serves as another device to associate this work with ancient culture. Both the varied density and coloration of the patina he applied to the steel are reminiscent of ancient metal sculpture. Throughout his career, Smith explored a great variety of patinas as well as burnished and painted surfaces as an integral aspect of his sculptural vocabulary.
The subject of a canopic jar also continued from Smith's interest in the theme of sacrifice as well as the idea of presenting parts of the human body as a table-top still life (ibid, pp. 26-27). In addition, as Rosalind Krauss explained, Smith was extremely conscious of the fact that his work belonged to a continuum of Western culture, extending back through ancient cultures and their literature, including the Egyptian Book of the Dead (ibid, p. 46).