David Smith Invents
(Feb 12–May 15, 2011)
Phillips Curator Susan Behrends Frank gives insight on special exhibition David Smith Invents.
David Smith Invents explores an extraordinarily fertile period in the career of the sculptor David Smith (1906--65) from the early 1950s to the early 1960s. On exhibit are 40 works, including sculptures, paintings, drawings, and Smith's own photographs of his sculptures.
Smith famously recognized no distinction between sculpture, painting, and drawing, except for one dimension, asserting that the act of creating does not change just because the medium changes. Instead, he used such widely varying materials as steel, bronze, oil paint, aerosol spray enamels, ink, and tempera to explore his ideas in two and three dimensions.