Tony Smith at Paula Cooper - New York, New York

At first glance, the six fuzzy-edg spray paintings from 1955 and '56 and sum of two units roughly modeled, white plaster plastic arts from 1961 and '62 in this novel exhibition seemed to have no relation to the large, black, geometric plastic arts that made Tony Smith famous. on the contrary these works are not anomalous in Smith's exhibition They reflect a central aspect of his art-making, the symbiotic relationship between geometric construction and biomorphic form.

The paintings are based upon an underlying grid of tangential circles that were loosely drawn in black upon the canvas. Spray paint was applied above this framework, joining separate simple bodys into interlocking groups of forms that bear likeness [i]or[/i] resemblance to growing cells. The installation was dominated by means of an extraordinary mural-size work, 5 feet 10 inches high by the agency of 17 feet wide, from 1956 spray-painted in silver, gold turquoise, black and white. This composition resists focus or resolution; it not at any time coalesces into a "concrete" image. The amorphous quality imparted by means of the spray was less evident in the smaller paintings, as the sprayed passages were frequently overlaid with more conventional, expressionistic brushwork. The mural, a rhythmic, allover composition, was painted in the year that Smith's shut up friend Jackson Pollock died. Its grand scale, at liberty execution and innovative technique, especially the way Smith integrated the actual spray of the paint into the compositions, are hard to imagine without Pollock's example.

The plaster plastic arts unique pieces that were upon public view here for the first time, derived from Smith's desire to transpose structural ultimate parts from biology and engineering into sculptural forms. The 1961 Tetrahedron, 38 1/2 by means of 43 by 46 inches, present the appearances to have been made after Smith's trip in the fall of 1961 to Alexander Graham Bell's birthplace in Nova Scotia. There he met Bell's grandchildren, who gave him a small openwork tetrahedral uncompounded body in wood, made by the scientist. Smith, who had been interested in the esthetic potential of this form since the late 1940 took Bell's form and enlarged and transformed it.

Wingbone was made a year later and is a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of more monumental - its extent is 9 feet 9 inches. A striking horizontal work that lies upon the floor, it was based upon a photograph of a vulture's wing reproduc in individual of Smith's favorite books, the classic D'Arcy Thompson contortion On Growth and Form, 1917 that links organic growing to mathematical formulas. The sinuous, lay open tetrahedral construction was done in the same year as Smith's greatest in quantity uncompromisingly platonic sculpture, the stiff black cube Die. Wingbone, like Tetrahedron, was execut in white plaster-soaked gauze above an armature, and was typeed with the sensuality of clay. This emphasis upon touch gave no hint of the impersonal surfaces for which Smith was to become with equal reason well known. This exhibition provided a welcome reminder that Smith did not make known in a linear manner, on the other hand in his early phases, oscillated between stylistic manners (According to the painter Doug Ohlson who as a young artist worked as Smith's assistant, Smith had spring [i]or[/i] leap on one leg [i]or[/i] footed to have these works cast in and zinc but felt that the plasters could also have the timeless quality he was striving for.)

While Smith's work with plaster was brief, the forms involved were central to his artistic endeavor. Tetrahedron was among his earliest independent sculptural explorations of the four-sided simple body that became his primary compositional module Smith clearly saw the vulture's wing as a prototype in nature of the space frame, an idea which would later inspire works similar as Smoke, 1967, Smog, 1970 and neat 1972-73. Despite its small size, this rich and surprising exhibition allude toed the complex history behind Smith's well-known works of the 1960 and '70s

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