David Smith: Cubes and Anarchy

Wexner Center presents touring exhibition of
renowned American sculptor

The Wexner Center is pleased to present David Smith: Cubes and Anarchy, the first major thematic exhibition devoted to the work of the renowned 20th-century American sculptor. It will be on view January 28–April 15, 2012 at the Wexner Center. Organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (where it was on view in the spring of 2011), the exhibition brings together approximately 80 works from throughout Smith’s career.

Cubes and Anarchy, for the first time, places David Smith’s late geometric masterpieces in context with his earlier works. The show reveals Smith (1906–'65) as a sculptor whose identification with the working class motivated him to adopt the geometric forms of the constructivist avant-garde (modernist artists who used hard-edged geometries to express utopian optimism) from the very first years of his career in the 1930s until his untimely death at age 59. Cubes and Anarchy includes some of Smith's best-known sculptures, as well as paintings and works on paper—many provided by the Estate of David Smith, which lent not only significant sculptures but also sketchbooks, drawings, and photographs, only a few of which have been exhibited previously.

Notes Wexner Center Director Sherri Geldin, “Though David Smith has long been recognized as a seminal force in 20th-century American sculpture, there’ve been no significant museum exhibitions of his work in the Midwest in recent decades. After viewing the show at LACMA and learning that it was not slated for travel, we persuaded our colleagues there (and the Smith Estate) to allow us to present the exhibition at the Wexner Center. I’m convinced that the juxtaposition of Smith’s sculpture with and within the center’s Eisenman-designed building will be revelatory in itself.”

Christopher Bedford, the Wexner Center’s chief curator of exhibitions and a contributor to the catalogue, says, “We are indeed honored to present this ambitious thematic account of one of this country’s most important artists. As heir to the constructivist avant-garde and a precursor to American minimalism, Smith occupies a unique and complex position in the history of sculpture that this exhibition helps illuminate. The relationship Smith identified between his politics and his contributions as an artist were subtle and incisive, and remain relevant to a younger generation of artists working today.”

Exhibition overview

Widely heralded as the greatest American sculptor of the 20th century, Smith has often been presented as a counterpart to the abstract expressionist painters or as a draftsman in space. Most scholarship has viewed Smith’s early work as developing in a linear fashion, from the European influences of Picasso and cubism in the 1930s; to a figuratively based, highly detailed, American surrealism in the 1940s; to a lyrically abstract, expressionist expansiveness in the 1950s; culminating with the seemingly disconnected breakthrough embodied in the reduced, geometric monumentality of his final works.

Cubes and Anarchy offers a fresh interpretation of Smith, revealing geometric abstraction as a constant focus throughout his career, a leitmotif that was deeply connected to the artist’s self-definition as a working man and his need to reconcile that, through his interest in constructivism, with his pioneering commitment to forging a unique personal identity as a modern artist. From his earliest small-scale sculptures to his last monumental works, what Smith called “basic geometric form” was a powerful touchstone for the artist. The exhibition title derives from Smith’s recollection that his concept of “cubes and anarchy” stemmed from the painter John Sloan, his teacher at New York’s Art Students League in the 1920s, who exposed him to cubism, constructivism, and progressive social movements. As art critic Dore Ashton noted, Sloan “not only brought [Smith] into the modern art world, but also into the world of political commitment.”

Politics and art

Smith’s sympathies for the cause of the American worker came in part from his own experiences. While a college student, Smith worked as a welder and riveter at the Studebaker automobile factory in South Bend, Indiana, a formative experience that introduced him to manufacturing techniques and processes. Smith worked again as a welder in the early 1940s, supplementing his meager income as an artist by making army tanks at the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) in Schenectady, New York. A member of Local 2054 United Steelworkers of America, Smith deliberately retained his union membership for years. He later explicitly affirmed the parallels between his working methods as an artist and those used by factory laborers. In his own words, he had learned from manufacturing “to assemble the whole by adding its unit parts,” the same method of direct metal construction Smith used for his sculpture: “The building up of sculpture from unit part...is also an industrial concept, the basis of automobile and machine assembly.”

Artistic influence

On seeing reproductions of Picasso’s and Julio González’s early welded iron constructions in 1932, Smith immediately realized that what he had previously considered to only be an industrial material and technique could also be used to make art. Knowledge of their work—especially that of González, who like Smith, was trained to weld in an automobile factory—liberated Smith to make welded steel sculptures such as Saw Head (1933), combining a worker’s tool (the saw) and methods (welding) with his interest in found geometries (the circular blade). Smith was similarly fascinated with the Russian constructivists’ use of industrial materials as well as their artistic vocabulary of abstract geometries used in service to populist ideals. The influence of Vladimir Tatlin, El Lissitzky, and others can be seen in Smith’s sculptures ranging from the 1930s (Unity of Three Forms, 1937, and Suspended Cube, 1938) to the 1960s (Cubi V, 1963 and Zig III, 1961).

Constantin Brancusi, Piet Mondrian, and Vasily Kandinsky likewise provided Smith with models of the avant-garde artist interested in geometric forms who also had populist roots or utopian aspirations. Smith paid homage to Brancusi, whose sculptures reflected roots in his native Romanian folk art and architecture, in various sculptures including The Hero (1951-52) as well as in drawings such as Untitled (1946). Smith alluded to Mondrian’s strict geometries and made specific references to the Dutchman’s compositions and palette in sculptures such as Zig III (1961) and Circle IV (1962). Smith and Kandinsky both understood and revered the circle in the sweeping context of human history. Smith’s Circle IV as well as a number of his spray drawings demonstrate this shared love.

As David Smith: Cubes and Anarchy makes clear, Smith adopted and adapted, throughout his career, the pure geometries of the constructivist avant-garde, creating a body of work that remains among the most powerful and influential ever made.

The exhibition is organized by Carol S. Eliel, curator of modern art, LACMA and is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue with a lead essay by Eliel and additional essays by Wexner Center Chief Curator Christopher Bedford and scholars Alex Potts and Anne M. Wagner.

About David Smith

Smith was born in Decatur, Indiana in 1906, attended high school in Paulding, Ohio, and studied art at Ohio University for one year. In 1926 he moved to New York City, where he studied at the Art Students League. After establishing his studio in a foundry on the Brooklyn waterfront in the 1930s, in 1940 Smith moved to Bolton Landing, on Lake George in the Adirondacks of upstate New York. He showed regularly in New York City beginning in 1938 and already by the 1940s was championed by critic Clement Greenberg; in the 1950s Smith developed friendships with abstract expressionist painters, including Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, and Franz Kline. Smith’s sculptures were exhibited not only across the United States but also internationally, including in the Venice Biennale (1958), the São Paulo Bienal (1959), and Documenta (1964). His work in the early 1960s brought Smith to the forefront of international recognition. Smith died (during the planning of a major exhibition for LACMA) in an automobile accident in 1965, at the age of 59.

Low-resolution press image selection

These images are provided exclusively to the press and may only be used for promotional purposes directly related to the corresponding Wexner Center for the Arts exhibition, or surrounding events. All reproductions must be accompanied by the proper credit line and copyright information provided below. Images must be reproduced as presented here and may not be distorted, mutilated, or cropped without permission. For hi-res images or more information, please contact Karen Simonian at (614) 292-9923.

Click each image to view.

1.	2.
David Smith Blue Construction, 1938 Sheet steel with baked-enamel finish 36 1/4 x 28 1/2 x 30 inches The Estate of David Smith, courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington © The Estate of David Smith/VAGA, New York Photo courtesy the Estate of David Smith, NY	David Smith Big Diamond, 1952 Painted steel 28 1/8 x 27 5/8 x 8 7/8 inches Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester; The Charles Rand Penney Collection of the Memorial Art Gallery © Estate of David Smith / VAGA, New York Photo courtesy the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY
3.	4.
David Smith Untitled, 1961 Stainless steel 12 x 10 x 3 inches The Estate of David Smith © Estate of David Smith / VAGA, New York Photo: Robert McKeever, courtesy Gagosian Gallery	David Smith Zig III, 1961 (detail) Painted steel 93 × 124 × 61 inches The Estate of David Smith, New York; courtesy Gagosian Gallery © The Estate of David Smith/VAGA, New York Photo: Jerry L. Thompson
5.	6.
David Smith Saw Head, 1933 Iron and bronze, painted 18 1/2 x 12 x 8 1/4 inches The Estate of David Smith, courtesy Tate, London © Estate of David Smith / VAGA, New York Photo courtesy The Estate of David Smith	David Smith Suspended Cube, 1938 Painted steel 23 x 16 x 20 1/4 inches Private collection, courtesy The Estate of David Smith © Estate of David Smith / VAGA, New York Photo courtesy The Estate of David Smith, photo by Ellen Page Wilson
7.	8.
David Smith Unity of Three Forms, 1937 Steel and painted wood base 14 x 17 1/2 x 5 inches Private collection, courtesy The Estate of David Smith Photo courtesy Gagosian Gallery, NY, photo by Robert McKeever	David Smith Untitled, 1963 Spray enamel on paper 14 x 19 inches Jon and Mary Shirley © The Estate of David Smith/VAGA, New York Photo courtesy of the Estate of David Smith, NY
9.	10.
David Smith Cubi I, 1963 Stainless steel 124 x 34 1/2 x 33 1/2 inches Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, Special Purchase Fund © The Estate of David Smith/VAGA, New York Photo © Detroit Institute of Arts/licensed by The Bridgeman Art Library	David Smith Untitled, 1946 Gouache and conté crayon on paper 29 x 22 7/8 inches The Estate of David Smith © Estate of David Smith / VAGA, New York Photo courtesy Gagosian Gallery, NY, photo by Robert McKeever

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Exhibition support

This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and was made possible by Alice and Nahum Lainer, the National Endowment for the Arts, Gagosian Gallery, and the Steven F. Roth Family Foundation. Additional support was provided by the Steaven K. and Judith G. Jones Foundation, Myron Laskin, Agnes Gund, Dorothy R. Sherwood, Terri and Michael Smooke, the Dedalus Foundation, Ellie and Mark Lainer, and the Lipman Family Foundation.

This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

SUPPORT FOR DAVID SMITH:
CUBES AND ANARCHY AT
THE WEXNER CENTER
Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities
Jon and Mary Shirley Foundation

GENERAL SUPPORT FOR
THE WEXNER CENTER
Greater Columbus Arts Council
The Columbus Foundation
Nationwide Foundation
Ohio Arts Council

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