David Smith

David Smith: CUBES AND ANARCHY

David Smith (1906-1965) is a sculptor in the United States. His sculptures are geometric forms such as squares and circles, and he also used industrial materials and technique. He admired European abstract artists in particular Constantin Brancusi who was one of the Russian constructivists and Piet Mondrian who was the Dutch De Stijl painter.

First, his sculpture, The Hero (1951-1952) shows that he is interested in the human figure because he used a geometric Vocabulary and explained the human body in the form of rectangular and triangular. The author (The Brooklyn Museum, no date) states that, “She is revealed frontally, balanced on a pedestal, with a rectangle for a torso, two triangular forms for breasts, and fragments of a tank top for a head.” If there were no explanation, many people could not realize the hero was a woman, so it was very simple and eliminated expression. The sculpture was a full size of woman, and it was totally balanced, he emphasized the balance of the sculpture.

Second, his sculpture, Tanktotem VII (1960) is one of the Tanktotem series. It incorporated part of a manufactured boiler tank. Eliel (David Smith in Focus: Tanktotem VII, 2011) mentioned that “Cubes and Anarchy looks at Smith’s self-constructed blue-collar identity and his interest in the artistic vocabulary and the beliefs of early modernists who saw basic geometric form as a way to express their utopian optimism”. His sculpture expressed only black and white colors, and it was abstract color and it would divide space and mind in that society.

David Smith’s sculptures are very geometric and use industrial materials because he wanted to show the power and scale of modern life. Moreover, he created the synthesis to redefine the aesthetic and ambition.

Citation

Collection: Contemporary Art: The Hero (no date), The Brooklyn Museum.

Retrieved from http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/1170/The_Hero

Eliel Carol S. (2011) David Smith in Focus: Tanktotem VII,The Lacma Blog.

Retrieved from http://lacma.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/david-smith-in-focus-tanktotem-vii/