Page 39 - Studio International - January 1971
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ture in its presentation, its relation with the
earth, as well as in its internal articulation.
There has been some discussion of Smith
experiencing a 'problem' of how to deal with
the base; but in this respect he seems to me to
be more akin to Matisse, who virtually ignored
the problem, than to Brancusi, who was clearly
much exercised by it. The events in most of
Smith's work take place above the ground and
between the elements of the sculpture, not in
relation to the ground. As with Matisse's con-
ventional properties to keep his figures upright,
one can afford to disregard, or at least to half-
regard the various devices — pillars, legs, wheels,
etc. with which Smith bridges the awkward
gap between the sculpture and the ground. On
the few occasions when Smith tried to make
sculpture naturally structured by gravity the
results could be disastrously banal, as in the
lateral Cubi XXIII of 1964. This should be com-
pared with one of his most original and success-
ful sculptures Sentinel III of1957, where a more
or less gravitational piling of I-beam sections is
counteracted by the wilful contrast of anti-
gravitational lateral addition of further sections
of I-beam— building downward as it were.
The verticality of Smith's sculpture is often
held to be its central characteristic but I think
that a count of all Smith's pieces would show
that not so many are essentially vertical as is
generally assumed; though most, as I have
mentioned, relate to the ground at a single
point. However, in various groups of pieces,
notably the Tank Totems and Sentinels of the
50s, and in many of the Voltri and Voltri-Bolton
sculptures, Smith was engaged in making
sculptures which deliberately convey the pre-
sence of human figures, without in any sense
being naturalistic, or symbolic, in terms of
making reference part by part to elements of
the body. In comparison to Picasso's Bathers for
example, in which almost every part or mark
young man he had no training or experience in less-steel surfaces of solid volumes in the Cubi carries a reference to an element of the body, a
sculpture as volume, in carving or modelling, series. sculpture such as Tank Totem V is virtually ab-
in effect gave him the innocence and directness Smith's habit from the early 50s of laying out stract; its 'humanness' consisting in its verti-
of the primitive artist; an innocence beyond and tacking up elements of sculptures on the cality, its proportions, and its size. Where literal
the reach of those European artists who had ground relates to the use of the ground as an figure references do occur in Smith, they are
initially discovered in primitive art models area for painting by Pollock, and the later often extremely disturbing, creating a tension
for the revival of a traditional formal structure. extension of this idea by Morris Louis: in both that goes to affirm the fundamentally abstract
But the frontality of Smith's sculpture, coupled these painters a formal tension derives from basis of his work.
with the directness of his constructive means, the painting being made horizontally and pre- Indeed it is often through his mistakes, through
confronts us with an entirely new concept of sented vertically. With Smith the use of the his ambition to compete directly with the ele-
how sculpture might work. Its prime existence ground as a working base means that the ele- ments of European naturalism, the figure tra-
is as silhouette, and instead of reading round ments have to physically cohere as a unit dition that survives not only in imagery, but
it, one reads through it; modelling in Smith's before they can be raised off the ground; the also in the use of volume and the regard for
sculpture is not the articulation of surfaces, transposition of the assembled group of parts gravity that is manifest in various forms in the
but the degree to which the eye is allowed to from plan to elevation can only take place if a sculpture of Picasso, Brancusi and Matisse,
pass through the structure; drawing and mod- set of fundamental relations has already been that Smith reveals his originality, the almost
ulation in thickness of line, angling and super- imposed on the structure; it can be modified or total divergence of his aims from theirs. I have
imposing of elements through an implied elaborated when upright, but the internal compared him to Rodin, and he is like Rodin
plane, the rhythm of interval between joins conditions of its existence have been estab- in the almost wilful incompleteness of his
and of contrast or affinity between parts, lished. This process cannot be separated from achievement. He is someone who starts, rather
guide and tease the eye across, and in and Smith's isolation of the constructive technique than finishes; one has to take him whole; the
out of the structure. The state of trans- in steel, the joining of parts at points. The vast man often looms larger than the work. Nothing
parency in solid and resistant material, to majority of Smith's mature sculptures relate a could be more opposite to the contained,
which Smith's art increasingly tended, was base to ground at a single point also, demons- balanced and anonymous art of Brancusi and
eventually achieved in the reflective, stain- trating the gravity-defying nature of the sculp- Matisse. q
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