拍品專文
Puritan Landscape is one of fourteen sculptures made by David Smith in 1946, during a highly productive period in the mid-1940s. The work of the middle of this decade showed a dramatic development of images that had been emerging in the work since his European trip of the mid-1930s and his growing knowledge of the welded sculpture of Picasso and Gonzales. The principal influence was European Surrealism, specifically the sculpture of Giacometti, but it was mediated by a strong interest in expressive art of all periods, by European literature (in particular, Joyce) and by his understanding of the theory of psychoanalysis. Freud was, as he explained, an overwhelming influence on him and his generation.
David Smith was born in Decatur, Indiana in 1906 and was trained briefly in the midwest at Ohio University and Notre Dame. His family had been pioneers and he retained throughout his life a strong sense of the puritan work ethic and a strict moral stance. Added to this was both the strong influence of his Calvinist background and in particular, his mother. When Thomas Hess asked him in 1964 about a geometry of nostalgia in his work, Smith responded, "I was born a Calvinist. Do you think a Calvinist ever comes on without being sentimental?"
The sculptures of the mid-1940s were often tableaux, with the most dramatic depicting woman as its central character, often dealing in sexually violent situations. The forms are reminiscent of both human and insect figures, including the female praying mantis which is known to devour her male counterpart. Executed at the close of World War II, these sculptures are intensely humanistic, disquieting and aggressive. In Puritan Landscape, however, these figures appear to interact in less menacing way. Smith created this work by welding steel and elements cast from bronze and iron, giving the sculpture an added dimension of interest.
As Edward Fry characterized this work:
These pivotal works of the mid-1940s are among the least known of Smith's achievements, but they are masterpieces. For here the artist performed a multivalent rite of passage, in which he shifted from the external, stylistic mimicry of European models to their translation and redeployment for subjective, American, and Romantic cathartic ends, in which the making of art became a life-saving necessity rather than the embellishment of an already rich, venerable and distant tradition. (E. Fry and M. McClintic, David Smith, Painter, Sculptor, Draftsman, Washington D.C. 1982, p.13)
David Smith was born in Decatur, Indiana in 1906 and was trained briefly in the midwest at Ohio University and Notre Dame. His family had been pioneers and he retained throughout his life a strong sense of the puritan work ethic and a strict moral stance. Added to this was both the strong influence of his Calvinist background and in particular, his mother. When Thomas Hess asked him in 1964 about a geometry of nostalgia in his work, Smith responded, "I was born a Calvinist. Do you think a Calvinist ever comes on without being sentimental?"
The sculptures of the mid-1940s were often tableaux, with the most dramatic depicting woman as its central character, often dealing in sexually violent situations. The forms are reminiscent of both human and insect figures, including the female praying mantis which is known to devour her male counterpart. Executed at the close of World War II, these sculptures are intensely humanistic, disquieting and aggressive. In Puritan Landscape, however, these figures appear to interact in less menacing way. Smith created this work by welding steel and elements cast from bronze and iron, giving the sculpture an added dimension of interest.
As Edward Fry characterized this work:
These pivotal works of the mid-1940s are among the least known of Smith's achievements, but they are masterpieces. For here the artist performed a multivalent rite of passage, in which he shifted from the external, stylistic mimicry of European models to their translation and redeployment for subjective, American, and Romantic cathartic ends, in which the making of art became a life-saving necessity rather than the embellishment of an already rich, venerable and distant tradition. (E. Fry and M. McClintic, David Smith, Painter, Sculptor, Draftsman, Washington D.C. 1982, p.13)