David Smith Sculpture: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1932–1965
THE ESTATE OF DAVID SMITH ANNOUNCES THE PUBLICATION OF
DAVID SMITH SCULPTURE: A CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ, 1932–1965
"In these elegantly produced volumes . . . [w]e see [Smith's] achievement whole, the individual sculptures often united with preparatory drawings and archival photographs of works in progress. We feel Smith reaching in different directions. We're closer to appreciating the tangled metamorphoses that animate his work." - Jed Perl, New York Review of Books
The Estate of David Smith is pleased to announce the publication of David Smith Sculpture: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1932–1965 in a three-volume boxed set. Two volumes of catalogue entries describe 869 objects, most reproduced in fine color reproductions. An introductory volume includes forewords by the artist’s daughters and essays on key aspects of Smith’s oeuvre: how his series express his creative thought, his innovative uses of materials and methods, his uses of photography, and his sculpture’s critical reception and how he helped to shape it.
The postwar art of David Smith, contemporary with the New York School of painting, decisively changed the direction of modern sculpture. Embracing materials and methods of American industry, he constructed sculptures directly by torch-cutting and welding, overturning European traditions of direct carving and casting. At the time of his death, in a road accident in May 1965, the poet and Museum of Modern Art curator Frank O’Hara wrote that Smith “was considered by many to be the finest sculptor North America has produced.” His art continues to delight viewers, intrigue critics, and inform the work of contemporary artists.
The Estate catalogue is the first to sequence Smith’s sculptures chronologically within the years they were made. It takes full advantage of the expansive art book format to present Smith’s works in majestic reproductions, with many of his iconic photographs of them, and includes numerous drawings and archival images that illuminate his working process. Unparalleled in its scope and comprehensiveness, the book is not only an essential scholarly tool, but a sumptuous expression of Smith’s creative thought as expressed in his sculpture.
That catalogue departs from earlier efforts to survey Smith’s sculpture in emphasizing Smith’s series as the “armature” of his work. The catalogue recognizes seventeen series, beginning with the provocative 1938–40 Medals for Dishonor, Smith’s ferociously satiric response to war and social corruption, and culminating with the series of the 1960s for which Smith is perhaps best known, the Voltris, made in Italy in 1962, and Smith’s most extensive series, the 1962–65 Cubis. An essay by critic and Smith biographer Michael Brenson examines the ways that Smith’s “serial imagination” informed his work and thought. A section of the introductory volume reproduces Smith’s series in the order he numbered them, which often differs from the order in which they were made.
The essayists include the art historian Sarah Hamill, who pioneered consideration of Smith’s photography as a medium of his creative expression. Her essay demonstrates not only how he used photographs to help shape viewers’ impressions of his work but also how the camera became a tool to reimagine his sculpture and, as she writes, “bring to life a visual encounter with them.” Conservator Marc-Christian Roussel, who has worked for many years to preserve and restore Smith’s sculptures, provides in his essay the first systematic account of the development of the artist’s materials and methods. Smith’s epochal redirection of sculpture, from its traditional reliance on casting and carving to hollow forms and “drawing in space,” and his adaptation of factory production methods to the making of highly personal works of art, can now be understood in terms of historically and technically grounded processes and mediums.
Christopher Lyon looks at the reflection of Smith’s work in writings, beginning with the earliest criticism of it in the late 1930s until the decade following his death, when Rosalind E. Krauss became established as the leading authority on his sculpture. He identifies seven topics, framed as binary oppositions—for example, surface and core, tactile and optical values, and monoliths versus drawings in space—that emerged in commentary on Smith’s sculpture, and he shows how Smith’s own lectures, writings, and photographs shaped attention to his work. The catalogue also features a detailed and generously illustrated chronology of Smith’s life and career, assembled by Tracee Ng.
The Estate catalogue is built on earlier efforts. For the publication accompanying the 1966 David Smith memorial exhibition at Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum, the show’s organizer, Jane Harrison Cone—the first to recognize the central role of series in Smith’s work—assembled a comprehensive handlist, as she called it, of his sculptures. That catalogue became the starting point for a catalogue raisonné conceived the same year for a David Smith monograph that was planned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The monograph eventually was abandoned, but the catalogue raisonné, largely completed by 1969 under the direction of Rosalind Krauss, was published in 1977 with Krauss as its author. In about 2013, the Estate, having determined that her long out of date catalogue needed to be replaced, inaugurated research for a new catalogue with Susan J. Cooke, as Research Editor, guiding the effort.
In mid-2018 Christopher Lyon took on direction of the project, supervising completion of research and assembling an editorial, design, and production team to produce the catalogue raisonné. Lyon observes, “The Estate catalogue is less a summing up than a beginning. For the first time, David Smith’s entire body of sculpture can be experienced in high-quality color reproductions and in a sequence that follows or closely approximates the order in which the works were made. The entries set out what is known about each work without speculation, assumptions, or interpretation—providing a level playing field, as it were, for future study and appreciation. The essays in this volume are likewise meant to offer starting points for investigations yet to come.”
Christopher Lyon, Editor and Project Director
Susan J. Cooke, Research Editor
Forewords by Rebecca Smith and Candida Smith
Contributions by Michael Brenson, Sarah Hamill, Christopher Lyon, and Marc-Christian Roussel
Chronology by Tracee Ng
Distributed for The Estate of David Smith by Yale University Press
Three volumes, slip-cased; 1,360 pages, 10 x 12 inches; approximately 1,850 illustrations; $500.