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Dimensions: 99 by 34 1/2 by 8 1/2 in. 251.5 by 87.6 by 21.6 cm.
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Provenance: Estate of the artist
M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1986
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Exhibited: New York, M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., David Smith: Drawing and Sculpture, October - November 1986
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Literature: Rosalind E. Krauss, The Sculpture of David Smith: A Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1977, cat. no. 501, illustrated
Exh. Cat., The National Gallery of Art, David Smith, Washington, D.C., 1982, p. 31, illustrated
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Notes: David Smith is widely considered to be one of the most important American sculptors of the twentieth century. His innovative use of welded steel and iron - he was the first American artist to employ iron in a work of art - and his ability to break the traditional 'rules' of sculpture led to a career of individualistic style in which he created a new aesthetic fusion of abstraction and figuration. Smith was continually able to convey volume without density in his unending search for new ways to display shape, surface and structure. Untitled, created in 1960, serves as an important bridge between Smith's earlier works and his monumental Cubi works which came just a few years later.
Smith often acknowledged the influence of Cubist, Surrealist and Futurist sculptors such as Pablo Picasso, Julio Gonzalez and Naum Gabo in his transition from painter to sculptor in the early 1930's. Like other artists from his generation including Gorky and de Kooning, Smith was introduced to the art of the Modernists primarily through John Graham, a highly sophisticated connoisseur and authority on primitive and modern art. Smith first encountered the welded sculptures of Picasso and Gonzalez in the French magazine Cahiers d'Art and was awakened to the possibilities of working with iron and steel. Smith was already comfortable working with these materials since he had worked at an automotive factory in the mid-1920's. He later said of his work, "The equipment I use, my supply of material, come from what I learned in the factory, and duplicate as nearly as possible the production equipment used in making a locomotive. I have no aesthetic interest in tool marks, surface embroidery, or molten puddles" (David Smith, David Smith, New York, 1968, p. 52). A few years after leaving the car factory, Smith began to experiment with large scale welding at a machinist shop in Brooklyn called the Terminal Iron Works (a name he would adopt for his own studio in Bolton Landing a few years later). While there he forged both friendships and skills he would come to use for the rest of his career.
By definition, "sculpture", from the Latin root sculptur, means to carve. Traditional sculptors were always seen as giving birth to a figure from a large piece of marble or stone. Sculptures through the ages, made from the technique of carving, were always monolithic, figurative works of art which possessed a central core, or spine. Starting in the 1950's, Smith refused to adhere to these traditional sculptural rules and rejected the fundamental idea that all sculptures needed a fixed center. The Cubist sculptors that so heavily influenced Smith were never quite able to translate their discoveries into large-scale freestanding sculptures. By using a technique new to fine art, welding, Smith was able to convey weight, presence and volume in sculpture that is freed from the conservatism of sculptures past. Instead of carving, Smith assembled or constructed through the practice of welding pre-fabricated iron and steel.
Untitled, 1960, is an important work which bridges Smith's past works and his future works to come. The upper third of the work seems to harken back to Smith's "drawings in air", a term coined by Clement Greenberg in reference to some of Smith's earliest works where the artist attempted to three-dimentionalize drawings or paintings. Similar to Hudson River Landscape, 1951, this top portion of the work could be seen as a horizontal abstraction of an exterior setting. On the other hand, the piled up and repeated use of an I-beam module in a totemic fashion could also be seen as a figurative abstraction. In addition, the squared shapes seen in the bottom half of Untitled seem to predict the monumental Cubi works which would be executed by Smith within the next few years. The sense of flattened linearity, encompassed in a shallow space lends itself to multiple connotations. As Smith notes, "When I begin a sculpture I am not always sure how it is going to end. In a way it has a relationship to the work before, it is in continuity to the previous work - it often holds a promise or a gesture towards the one to follow" (David Smith, David Smith, New York, 1968, p. 56). The rough and rusted surface of Untitled lends the work a feeling of Smith's earliest works and his time in Brooklyn at the Teminal Iron Works factory. Although this work has the appearance of using found or discarded scraps of metal, the parts are carefully finished to his chosen patina and the end effect is a quality of brute and innovative strength used to achieve high art. Untitled beautifully exhibits how Smith was able to blend the high and low, his roots and his future, in an eloquent, poetic and wholly unique aesthetic.
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