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Lot Essay
"I belong with painters in a sense; and all my early friends were painters... Painting and sculpture aren't very far apart"
(David Smith: Sprays from Bolton Landing, exh. cat., Anthony d'Offay, London, 1985, p. 2).
For David Smith, paintings were not merely an outlet to diffuse the pressure valve of his welding studio. Encompassing the same formal and mythic concerns as his sculptures, his graphic works were simply a different means of expressing them. In these three Sprays it is apparent that Smith is considering the works in sculptural terms through the mixing of air, pigment and overlaid collage elements resting on the paper.
While Smith's sculptures translate the modern canvas's content to three-dimensions, his paintings are an inversion of this process, returning objects of the world to the flat plane of vision from which they are initially perceived. Tackling this, Smith was at his most inventive with his Spray series, which he began at his Bolton Landing studio in 1957 and sustained until the early 1960s. This period would mark the beginning of Smith's canonization as an artist, coinciding with his major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1957, and his selection as the American representative at the 29th Venice Biennale in 1958.
Working additively, Smith made stencils of found objects, layering sprays of enamel paint over a changing arrangement of die-cut steel forms, tools in disuse, and natural elements; the dynamic compositions that result, hold much in common with the photocollages of the surrealists, specifically the photo-sensitive "Rayograms" patented by Man Ray. Photocollage was a form Smith had experimented with in his youth, the artist embraced methods that left aspects of the final composition to chance.
In these exceptional representations of David Smith literally "Drawing in Space" one is able to see the clearest statement of Abstract Expressionism's sculptural aspirations. Equally alchemist and artist Smith was experimental and open to chance effects; his impulse towards experimentation with new materials is easily understood. His early accomplishments with the medium of spray paint cannot be overstated, though he seems an unlikely forefather of urban graffiti, the spray can made its first artistic marks in his hands.
Each of the painted works offered herein are premiere examples of Smith's best Sprays. The artist's sculptures and paintings can be judged equally on the strength of their sculptural presence and surface qualities. Each work celebrates modern man through the subversion of primitive archetypes, their verticality and form create experiences for the viewer that range from the cerebral to the spiritual. Each form begs to be visually deconstructed yet this formal engagement is eventually eclipsed by the pure beauty and strength of each overall composition, each Untitled work is entirely unique in its treatment and interpretation. Like the figures in Plato's cave, the blurred mystery of each shape promises an ideal as yet determined. With an impulse towards "primitivism" the cryptic shapes are apiece with Smith's missive of abstraction as a formal strategy to elevate common objects towards an unexpectedly elegant and mythic dimension.
(David Smith: Sprays from Bolton Landing, exh. cat., Anthony d'Offay, London, 1985, p. 2).
For David Smith, paintings were not merely an outlet to diffuse the pressure valve of his welding studio. Encompassing the same formal and mythic concerns as his sculptures, his graphic works were simply a different means of expressing them. In these three Sprays it is apparent that Smith is considering the works in sculptural terms through the mixing of air, pigment and overlaid collage elements resting on the paper.
While Smith's sculptures translate the modern canvas's content to three-dimensions, his paintings are an inversion of this process, returning objects of the world to the flat plane of vision from which they are initially perceived. Tackling this, Smith was at his most inventive with his Spray series, which he began at his Bolton Landing studio in 1957 and sustained until the early 1960s. This period would mark the beginning of Smith's canonization as an artist, coinciding with his major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1957, and his selection as the American representative at the 29th Venice Biennale in 1958.
Working additively, Smith made stencils of found objects, layering sprays of enamel paint over a changing arrangement of die-cut steel forms, tools in disuse, and natural elements; the dynamic compositions that result, hold much in common with the photocollages of the surrealists, specifically the photo-sensitive "Rayograms" patented by Man Ray. Photocollage was a form Smith had experimented with in his youth, the artist embraced methods that left aspects of the final composition to chance.
In these exceptional representations of David Smith literally "Drawing in Space" one is able to see the clearest statement of Abstract Expressionism's sculptural aspirations. Equally alchemist and artist Smith was experimental and open to chance effects; his impulse towards experimentation with new materials is easily understood. His early accomplishments with the medium of spray paint cannot be overstated, though he seems an unlikely forefather of urban graffiti, the spray can made its first artistic marks in his hands.
Each of the painted works offered herein are premiere examples of Smith's best Sprays. The artist's sculptures and paintings can be judged equally on the strength of their sculptural presence and surface qualities. Each work celebrates modern man through the subversion of primitive archetypes, their verticality and form create experiences for the viewer that range from the cerebral to the spiritual. Each form begs to be visually deconstructed yet this formal engagement is eventually eclipsed by the pure beauty and strength of each overall composition, each Untitled work is entirely unique in its treatment and interpretation. Like the figures in Plato's cave, the blurred mystery of each shape promises an ideal as yet determined. With an impulse towards "primitivism" the cryptic shapes are apiece with Smith's missive of abstraction as a formal strategy to elevate common objects towards an unexpectedly elegant and mythic dimension.