TONY SMITH: PLAYGROUND

PLAYGROUND

TONY SMITH: PLAYGROUND

by Joan K. Yanni

One of MAG’s outdoor sculptures that has been a favorite ever since it was installed in 1970 is Tony Smith’s Playground (70.57).

The five-foot high steel sculpture came to MAG partly as a gift of the artist and partly through the Marion Stratton Gould fund.  Its name and mysterious look invite children to climb on it.  (But docents are asked not to permit this because of the liability which might be incurred by the Gallery. Walk under it, maybe?)

Smith represents the best of the minimal sculptors of the ‘60s, whose works are sometimes called "primary structures."  He creates simple, massive, geometric forms which have a dignity and strength reminiscent of ancient monuments.  Former MAG director Harris Prior, in a letter to the Gallery art committee urging the acquisition of the piece, described it as resembling a "great claw which has survived from some earlier civilization."  Yet the sculpture has a familiar presence, a stability that reassures.

Tony Smith, painter, architect, sculptor, (not to be confused with David) was born in 1912 in South Orange, New Jersey.  Ill with tuberculosis as a child, he amused himself by making Pueblo villages out of medicine boxes.  His father and grandfather ran an iron foundry, and Tony learned to love "black iron" in its natural state as it comes from the rolling mill.

He attended the Art Students League in New York City form 1933 to 1936, then Chicago's New Bauhaus School.  In 1938, though he had no formal training in architecture, he joined Frank Lloyd Wright in Wisconsin as an apprentice and worked with him for two years. 

Smith spent the next 20 years painting and working on architectural commissions of his

own.  He taught classes in art and three- dimensional drawing at New York University, Pratt Institute, Bennington, and Hunter.  Bob Goodnough and Alfred Leslie were his students.

By 1960 he was dissatisfied with both painting and architecture.  He disliked catering to the whims of his painting patrons and seeing secondary buyers make changes in his houses.  He returned to the permanence of the box shapes and the iron of his youth.

His career from then on is an example of the suddenness with which even a known artist can be "discovered."  His first piece of sculpture was shown in 1963, and he had his first one-man show of that medium at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia only two years later

Though Smith was a friend of Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still and Jackson Pollock, he always worked independently.  He was said to be a minimalist, but he noted that while the minimalists worked toward a preconceived plan, he did not.

The impact of his works depends on their unfinished roughness, bulk, and self containment, all emphasized by matte black surfaces.  Strength, mystery, and stability are inherent in this design; yet the large, flowing surfaces are filled with energy.

Smith died of a heart attack in January, 1981.  In his obituary, Time magazine quoted his own description of his work:  "My sculptures are on the edge of dreams; they come close to the unconscious in spite of their geometry."

References:  Curatorial files and Lippard, Lucy:  Tony Smith, New York, Harry Abrams, 1972; Tony Smith, Exhibition catalog, Maryland University Art Gallery, College Park, MD., 1971.