DOI issue:
Nr. 4
DOI article:Artykuły
DOI article:Błotnicka-Mazur, Elżbieta: Davida Smitha rzeźbiarska inskrypcja przestrzeni
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.71008#0784
770
Elżbieta Błotnicka-Mazur
David Smith 's Sculptural Space Inscriptions
According to Rosalind Krauss the greatest changes
in modern American sculpture occurred in the 1930s
and 1940s together with the introduction of the
welding technique into artistic practice. David
Smith, directly drawing from the accomplishments
of the European Modernism, is one of the leaders
among American innovators. Already at the turn of
the 1920s and 1930s, fascinated by the works of
Picasso and Gonzalez, he introduced iron and
mechanical forging as well as welding techniques
into his own sculptural forms. His works became a
sculptural completion to the climax of American
Modernism that can undoubtedly be seen in
painterly abstract Expressionism.
It was through Clement Greenberg that Smith
found himself in the epicentre of the theoretical
argument between the American critic and Herbert
Read, related to the superiority of optical values over
tactile ones in modern sculpture. The English
scholar regarded the works of Henri Moore as the
most exquisite example of tactility. Greenberg, in
turn, saw the embodiment of what modern sculpture
should be, spoken of in a Cubist collage, in the works
of David Smith. It was to be sculpture giving up on
the monolith of a compact solid, turned towards
linear values and a peculiar two-dimensionality, up
to then associated exclusively with painting.
Smith himself saw sculpture in a broad perspec-
tive of phenomena, not limiting his vision to linear or
monolithic forms, or to closed or open ones. Through-
out all his creative life he was simultaneously practising
painting and drawing, while expressing this continuous
discipline confrontation in a flat two-dimensional
concept of sculpture constructed similarly as a painting,
for which natural landscape served as the backdrop.
His oeuvre evolved from the structures from the
1930s, combining wood, wires, and other found
objects, as well as the first electrically welded
compositions, through war surrealistic sculptures
imbued with symbolism, to lyrical and abstract forms
on a much larger scale, from the mid-1950s onwards
placed within the open space around his Bolton
Landing house and studio.
It is Smith's metal structures, presented in the light
of Clement Greenberg's, Rosalind Krauss's, and the
sculptor's own views that are shown and analysed.
Questions such as sculptures' structure, reference to
human figure, application of ready-made objects, as
well as the problems of colour and relation with space
are tackled. All these aspects have a close reference to
the issues of a peculiar two-dimensionality and optical
qualities of the works of David Smith, the latter most
frequently being openwork "sculptural space
inscriptions".
Translated by Magdalena Iwińska
Elżbieta Błotnicka-Mazur
David Smith 's Sculptural Space Inscriptions
According to Rosalind Krauss the greatest changes
in modern American sculpture occurred in the 1930s
and 1940s together with the introduction of the
welding technique into artistic practice. David
Smith, directly drawing from the accomplishments
of the European Modernism, is one of the leaders
among American innovators. Already at the turn of
the 1920s and 1930s, fascinated by the works of
Picasso and Gonzalez, he introduced iron and
mechanical forging as well as welding techniques
into his own sculptural forms. His works became a
sculptural completion to the climax of American
Modernism that can undoubtedly be seen in
painterly abstract Expressionism.
It was through Clement Greenberg that Smith
found himself in the epicentre of the theoretical
argument between the American critic and Herbert
Read, related to the superiority of optical values over
tactile ones in modern sculpture. The English
scholar regarded the works of Henri Moore as the
most exquisite example of tactility. Greenberg, in
turn, saw the embodiment of what modern sculpture
should be, spoken of in a Cubist collage, in the works
of David Smith. It was to be sculpture giving up on
the monolith of a compact solid, turned towards
linear values and a peculiar two-dimensionality, up
to then associated exclusively with painting.
Smith himself saw sculpture in a broad perspec-
tive of phenomena, not limiting his vision to linear or
monolithic forms, or to closed or open ones. Through-
out all his creative life he was simultaneously practising
painting and drawing, while expressing this continuous
discipline confrontation in a flat two-dimensional
concept of sculpture constructed similarly as a painting,
for which natural landscape served as the backdrop.
His oeuvre evolved from the structures from the
1930s, combining wood, wires, and other found
objects, as well as the first electrically welded
compositions, through war surrealistic sculptures
imbued with symbolism, to lyrical and abstract forms
on a much larger scale, from the mid-1950s onwards
placed within the open space around his Bolton
Landing house and studio.
It is Smith's metal structures, presented in the light
of Clement Greenberg's, Rosalind Krauss's, and the
sculptor's own views that are shown and analysed.
Questions such as sculptures' structure, reference to
human figure, application of ready-made objects, as
well as the problems of colour and relation with space
are tackled. All these aspects have a close reference to
the issues of a peculiar two-dimensionality and optical
qualities of the works of David Smith, the latter most
frequently being openwork "sculptural space
inscriptions".
Translated by Magdalena Iwińska