Page 18 - Studio International - August 1966

personal cost of what he wanted. His confidence allowed
him to appreciate the work of the modern masters with-
out being overwhelmed; he may have been conscious
of them as theorists, but he understood them as craftsmen.
Smith's serious acquaintance with modern art began in
his Art Students' League days. He started his painting
studies there with Richard Lahey; the following year
(1927) he met and was befriended by the abstract
painter, Jan Matulka, who had come to teach at the
League. It was Matulka who introduced Smith to
Cubism and Constructivism; as Smith put it, 'Then the
world kind of opened for me.'
What opened was, in fact, Smith himself. The late
twenties and early thirties were the years when the
American art world staggered under the impact of
Cubism. There were those who hated, but more who
adored and imitated. Smith's concern—if it were any-
thing so conscious—was to relate the new idiom to his
own sensibility. Technique stirred his imagination as
much as image (the Cubist image, the Cubist construc-
tion, was to be his point of departure, while technique—
the art of doing—was a creative stimulus, a source of
ideas, throughout his career). He told the critic Katherine
Kuh, 'I ... learned a lot... from just looking at reproduc-
tions mostly in European magazines. I first saw Picasso—
then his iron construction in Cahiers d'art—and I realized
that I too knew how to handle this material.'
Part of David Smith's metal the best of my ability...' He went on, 'Not everybody In another context Smith wrote, 'Before I had painted
workshop—built and does work to the extent of their ability, and not everyone very long I ran across reproductions in Cahiers d'Art of
equipped by Smith himself
has the privilege—but anything one man does will have Gonzales's and Picasso's work which brought my con-
some response by other people. That is enough.' ciousness to this fact that art could be made of iron. But
The thirties, with its social programmes and foreign iron-working was labour, when I thought art was oil
threats to freedom, threw Smith back upon himself and paint.'
made him think of the virtues of American individualism, Smith's first constructions, made in the early thirties,
its knack for learning through doing, its energetic, self- were of wood (projected from the canvas). It was per-
sustaining pragmatism. His roots were in that very inde- haps difficult to act all at once upon an enlarged notion
pendence and optimistic temper. He was mistrustful of of what could be art. Metal—the material of the mundane
entanglements and dependencies, of governments and world of work—appeared at first gradually as 'an intro-
academies—indeed, of any sort of restraint that was not duction of metal lines and found forms'. There was a
self-discipline. period when Smith soldered—a small enterprise for so
Smith was a product of the Middle America that had large a man. At length, he began to weld; he painted his
moved from the farm and forge to the sprawling factories sculpture, but his conceptions were truly of metal and
and railroad yards without loss of a belief in indivi- not of colour. The material itself began to provide the
dualism. Here was labour that didn't have to fight for raison d'être, the material inseparable from the tech-
the franchise, that kept its dignity and appreciation of niques for exploiting its properties. By the forties, he
craft in a shifting world of new machines and new ideas developed an aesthetic, founded in technique, but not
and accepted these as a reasonable challenge. dominated by it.
In an interview with Thomas B. Hess in 1964, he said : In the symposium, 'The New Sculpture', held at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1952, Smith
Well, let's remember my heritage. When I was a kid, I had
stated a mature case for 'the material called iron or
a pretty profound regard for railroads. I used to sit down on
the edge of town and watch the trains go through. I used to steel' that he held 'in high respect' :
hop trains, ride on the tops of boxcars. We used to play on
trains around factories. I played there just like I played in What it can do in arriving at form economically, no other
nature, on hills and creeks. I remember when I first sat in my material can do. The metal itself possesses little art history.
father's lap and steered a car. In fact, I've always had a high What associations it possesses are those of this century: power,
regard for machinery. It's never been an alien element; it's structure, movement, progress, suspension, destruction, bru-
been in my nature. tality. The method of unifying parts to completion need not
be evident, especially if craft evidence distracts from the
As important as Smith's background to the under-
conceptual end. Yet the need to observe the virtue of the
standing of his art is the fact of his confidence in that material, its natural planes, its hard lines, its natural oxides,
background. It gave him an ease and openness of regard; its need for paint or its unifying method is only valid when
it made his ambitions seem possible and created in him with concept. These points related to the steel concept are
the disposition to accept the responsiblity and pay the minor, and depend wholly upon the conceptual realization of