Page 30 - Studio International - January 1968

Tony Smith
The snake is out
wood mock-up in
Bryant Park, New York
Facing page
Alexander Calder
Spiral 1966
steel with motorized parts
The Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum

facts of physical existence. We no longer want the means are themselves inevitably stretching our concep-
sculpture in the park to be lost under pigeons or in tions and the conceptions of artists. Kinetic and light-
shrubbery. We want to be reminded of ourselves, of programmed sculptures point to the computer.
what we've done and what we mean to do. This is to add At the same time, the new means refreshes traditional
a mystique to common sense. sculpture. The present technology has given us important
Of course, technology is transforming the aesthetic. works by older artists; these might not otherwise have
Today's sculpture has simple, unfussed surfaces. Steel, been available. It has encouraged the environmental
fibreglass, plastic, weather-resistant paints, and many treatment in sculpture and has allowed for monumental
other materials and processes coming into use dictate scale—indeed, for abstract monuments.
how they must be handled if good effects are to be The public has responded with vivid interest to these
achieved. But there are now so many techniques and developments. The whole of Bryant Park in New York
materials available to the artist that he can almost City was given over to an exhibition of Tony Smith's
always find, given the funds in the first place, the means plywood mockups for steel sculpture. More recently, the
to realize his conception. Often, now, it will be merely a City of New York sponsored an exhibition of contem-
matter of sending the design to the factory, or of super- porary sculpture that was sited all over town. Phila-
vizing a few stages along the way. delphia had a similar exhibition somewhat earlier and
Coincidental to the developments I have been describ- was recently host, at the Philadelphia Museum of Fine
ing has been a shift in the sculptural rationale. Modular Arts, to 'American Sculpture of the Sixties,' organized
systems are used by such artists as Tony Smith, Donald by the Los Angeles County Museum, where it was shown
Judd, Sol LeWitt, Robert Smithson, and Robert Morris. originally.
For Smith, the module is a sheerly plastic instrument, In general, the interest in sculpture grows in America—
yielding a sculpture that is fully expressive in the tradi- even alarmingly. I'm not contending that every work is
tional sense. Smithson's approach to modularity involves masterful. But the interest in the long run must be to the
sequence and variation. For Judd, the sculptural form is good. In the meantime, the crowds at the exhibition of
the module repeated and played against a space or Picasso's sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art and
interval. For Morris, the modular system provides for those at the Guggenheim International, 'Sculpture of
several sculptures in one, through re-arrangement. Twenty Nations,' are one with the chap gazing up at
LeWitt uses the module to create an environment or to Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk as it stands in the plaza
define space. of the Seagram Building on New York's Park Avenue.
In short, we have a tendency in American sculpture to About that Newman, it stands also outside the Corcoran
a more intellectual art. Not only are more sophisticated Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and there's another
means used to achieve the sculptural effect, but these fellow looking at it. q