Document Type
Contribution to Book
Publication Date
2007
Abstract
Artists of David Smith's generation often sought to produce artworks that challenged the conventions of artistic "expression" and the expectations—technical, formal, psychological, interpretative—that accompanied them. Smith (like his contemporaries Stuart Davis, Willem de Kooning, and Arshile Gorky) was one of a group of artists whose formal innovations were guided both by a desire to align themselves with avant-garde art and by a pressing need to distance themselves from European affiliation. In Barnett Newman's words, these artists wanted to liberate themselves from "the impediments . . . of Western European painting" in order to "create images whose reality is self-evident and which are devoid of the props and crutches" of European culture. A technical innovator, among other things, Smith would eventually become one of the first American artists to use welding as an art form in the 1930s.
Publisher
Frederick R. Weisman Philanthropic Foundation
City
Los Angeles
Repository Citation
Michael Schreyach, “David Smith’s Equivalence” in The Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation Collection (Los Angeles, 2007): 212-13.
ISBN
9780974090818
Publication Information
The Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation Collection