David Smith (1906-1965)

By Annabel van Grenen

David Smith, Hudson River Landscape, 1951, welded painted steel and stainless steel, 123.8 x 183.2 x 44cm. Whitney Museum of American Art. Image courtesy of the Estate of David Smith.

When one thinks of Abstract Expressionism, names like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko automatically spring to mind as globally renowned painters, whilst the movement’s sculpture seems to have faded into obscurity. In reality, it had an active presence within the period despite its suppression, of which David Smith and his welded compositions were its shining star. Born 9 March 1906 in Indiana, David Smith is celebrated as one of the greatest sculptors of the 1950s/60s. The modern art whisperer, Clement Greenberg, said Smith was ‘possibly the most powerful yet subtle sculptor […] this country has yet produced.’

This notion of Smith's work being simultaneously powerful and subtle encapsulates the inherent juxtapositions of his practice. During World War Two, he worked for the American Locomotive Company where he assembled trains and joined the United Steelworkers union; this influenced his choice to use metal. Steel as a medium was a unique decision in which the strength of the material often contrasted the delicacy of its structure. Take, for example, Smith’s Hudson River Landscape (1951), pictured above. Inspired by the Surrealists’ automatic drawing, Smith swapped their pencils for a welding torch to achieve what he called ‘drawing in space.’ This sculpture was produced from a myriad of sketches taken on ten train rides from Albany to Poughkeepsie. In it, Smith fused both the natural and industrial landscape with man-made metal. At first glance the conglomeration of flora and metal, depicted as fragile yet solid, may appear jarring, though it could alternatively offer a sense of balance and harmony.

Landscape was fundamental to Smith's work. His sculptures were scattered across the hills of his farm, Bolton Landing, in the Adirondack Mountains. However, they were merely temporary signs of his presence as they were later removed following Smith’s fatal car crash in 1965. More recently, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park hosted an exhibition dedicated to his works in 2019/20, honouring the artist by returning his sculptures to the landscape. It received a four-star review by The Guardian, in which Smith is nicknamed the ‘Self-made man of steel’. Whilst he may not be able to fly, Smith has certainly produced a great deal of work worthy of our attention, particularly prominent in today’s world where the relationship between nature and modernity is particularly fraught.

Smith himself stated that his sculptures focused on the ‘unity between modern concepts, modern materials, and modern tools’. This begs the questions: how do we observe these works contextualised in the modern day? How do we approach these works displayed in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in an age where our climate is rapidly deteriorating and modern tools are exponentially more advanced than anything Smith would have been familiar with? Smith’s constructions in the age of modernity seem to emanate ‘a subliminal rattle and clang that […] is the sound of the 20th century.’ Perhaps the question is what do we hear now? I wonder what the 21st century would sound like.

Bibliography

Agency Report. “Drawing in Space – Structural Ingenuity of David Smith.” Independent Newspaper Nigeria. July 17, 2019. https://independent.ng/drawing-in-space-structural-ingenuity-of-david-smith/

Bissonnette, Meghan. “From ‘The New Sculpture’ to Garden Statuary: The Suppression of Abstract Expressionist Sculpture.” Journal of Art Historiography 13 (2015): 1–19.

Cooke, Rachel. “David Smith review - self-made man of steel.” The Guardian, Saturday 31st August 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/aug/31/david-smith-review-yorkshire-sculpture-park-self made-man-of-steel

Whitney Museum of American Art. “David Smith Hudson River Landscape 1951.” https://whitney.org/collection/works/687#

Wisotzki, Paula. “More than a Man, Less than a Painter: David Smith in the Popular Press, 1938–1966.” Arts 12, no. 4 (2023): 153. https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12040153