David Smith at the Whitney

David Smithʼs exhibition, Cubes and Anarchy, at the Whitney feature his
sculptures he made throughout his career with a focus on his works from the 1960s. His
sculptures seem to be his representation of paintings in a three dimensional form. Smith
began his career as a painter, then moved to sculpture after being inspired by the
welded steel sculptures of Pablo Picasso and Julio González. Smith was also inspired
by the Cubism movement, and he used overlapping geometric shapes in much of his
work. One of my favorite examples of this from the exhibition was ZIG IV, 1961. Walking
around Smithʼs pieces, it seems that the element of balance plays a role in his most of
work. Not only do the individual components of his sculptures balance on each other, as
seen in CUBI I, 1963, but the entire sculptures seem to have an even balance with
weight and space. Although Smith creates these abstract, non representational
sculptures, when you walk around the gallery you can relate to them as human forms
because of their scale. I can imagine his work outside in nature. His structures may be
made out of steel, but still seem very organic.
Works Cited
http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/DavidSmith. Web. 30 Nov 2011.