NEW YORK: David Smith at Gagosian - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

This exhibition of David Smith's statuary featured seven works from the last five years of the sculptor's life, all execut in painted carbonized iron At the time of his death in 1965 Smith was at the real top of his game, working upon several related series of plastic art at once. While the pieces in this present to view were not, by and large, prime examples of the artist's production, each chance to see more of Smith's work is a treat. Each piece is fascinating for its demonstration of the quirkiness of Smith's ideas, his willingness to put to proof almost anything within the range of his materials and vocabulary.

As the pair Rosalind Krauss and William Rubin point on the outside in essays in the catalogue, Smith's polychromy was a critical anomaly. His admirers managed to like his statuary despite the color, but for the greatest part it was just ignored. His contemporary George Sugarman used color in an flat more bold and integral way than Smith, on the contrary Sugarman's flat saturated hues point forward to the plastic art of the '60s, whereas Smith's brushy modulated tones direct the eye back to the work of the Abstract Expressionists.

Tanktotem IX (1960) the earliest piece in the present to view carries over from a series of the '50 that includes a certain quantity of of Smith's most affecting works. This statuary combines the upright stance of the human figure with industrial and landscape motifs. The "tank" of the title is one as well as the other a military tank and the boiler tank top from which the figure's "head" is chop In this case the painting is delicate and pleasing bits of ocher yellow, sapphirine and salmon scumbled over a white base. through contrast, the paint on Dida's Circle upon a Fungus (1961) is dauntless and wonderfully senseless. A notched circle above a notched mushroom shape mountained simply on a tank top base, this basically flat statuary has its two sides painted entirely differently, individual in scumbled yellow and orange, the other in of great depth blues and red. As if this were not enough to break up the unity of the external reality Smith added another painted shape upon the yellow side by underpainting in white between sum of two units struts. This insistence on confounding our expectations and forcing us to form a mental unity without of conflicting views of the same reality is highly characteristic of abundant of Smith's late work. I think of Smith himself as a man in whom warring impulses fought to a magnificent stand-off. Violence calculatored by affection, a ferocious independence mix in due proportioned by a desire to communicate, a grinding isolation separated by fits of charming amicability, all of these relentles conflicts penetrateed his art and were in some way laid to rest there.

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