6-59, 1958, spray enamel, graphite, guache and
masking tape on paper, 17 5/8 x 11 5/8 in.

Ambitious exhibitions of this scale offer an opportunity to consider if artists of renown still seem relevant given the dramatic societal shifts of the last few decades. These are also new opportunities to examine what works mean given our recently gained hindsight. "David Smith: A Centennial" does not disappoint--it fosters valuable rereadings of this mid-century giant. It is a show that will reward close study and surprise those who have become accustomed to seeing works by this canonized artist.

The exhibition's narrative is a chronology that emphasizes Smith's use of paint and drawing in the conceptualization and execution of his sculptures. As the exhibition makes clear from the outset, Smith was a painter who turned to sculpture. Anyone familiar with Smith's work likely knows of his concern for surfaces---the burnished "Cubi" constructions in high-profile sculpture gardens and museums are perhaps the most obvious examples. The centennial exhibition drives home Smith's painterly concerns; his expression is not to be found only in grand arcs and (later) large scale, but in the surface textures, mattes, glosses, patinas and paint. For instance, the rusting steel of House in a Landscape (1945) is quite layered and expressive, and the erotic sensuality of the smoothed, central figure of Cloistral Landscape (1946) is heightened by the dark, rough-hewn steel surrounding it; though neither of these pieces are painted. Royal Bird (1947-48), on the other hand, shows a muted paint finish that seems a natural and integral patina. Later, Smith applies unabashed layers of bright paint--the surfaces of Tanktotem VIII (1960) heighten the tectonics through coloration. Tanktotem IX (1960) is an unequivocal easel. Dozens of sculptures reveal this variety of surface treatment, but the inclusion of a gallery of gestural paintings by fellow Abstract-Expressionists, and another gallery dedicated to Smith's drawings on paper give this painterly point a curatorial direction.

Several dozen works on paper drive home the idea that for Smith, painting, drawing and sculpture were fused and did not separate by medium. For instance, one can see similar gestures brushed onto paper and cut into metal with an oxyacetylene torch. Though the idea that Smith “drew in space” has become an art historical cliché, it is refreshing to confirm this gesture with the selected drawings.

This exhibition's strength is the display of many small sculptures that stand on their own and anticipate Smith's later monumental constructions. It is a pleasure to view so many smaller pieces in which one can see Smith's experimentation and playful humor. The show's one drawback is the display of large works in an alienating gallery white box. The even lighting on the "Cubis" is deadly and prevents the burnished, space-defying holographic effect clearly perceived out-of-doors.

Smith's endeavors are those of the proletarian aesthete. His work satisfied Marx-informed critics who needed an alternative to Stalin's Socialist Realism. Smith's welds, cuts and forges are not just heroic in the sense that he is Hephaestus' progeny. He is a working-class hero, the assembly-line welder who repurposes his trade not for exploitation by Ford or GM, but for his own aesthetic will.

But this centennial review of Smith's oeuvre accidentally locates a political turn in which industry as a political tool, a mark and force of labor and communism, is neutralized through aestheticization. Smith's "Voltri" and "Voltri-Bolton" assemblies seem a political allegory insofar as they incorporate tools such as pincers, wrenches and wheels from a shuttered iron works to negate their use value and to create an artistic idiom. Like the artist, whose skills were learned in industry and later turned to expressionistic play, these pieces become monuments that mark the end of the west's industrial era. Beyond form, texture and paint, herein lies a larger though understated social relevance.

William V. Ganis

"David Smith: A Centennial" is at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York,
February 3 - May 14, 2006; Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris,
June 14 - September 11, 2006; Tate Modern, London, October 4, 2006 - January 3, 2007.