American Sculpture Liberated....Cubes and Anarchy ...David Smith...the Archetypical Abstract Expressionist Sculptor

    Cubes and Anarchy...the exhibition of David Smith's sculpture and other artwork at LACMA in Los Angeles through July 24,2011 is the first major exhibit of Smith's art on the West Coast in almost half a century.LACMA celebrated its 46th anniversary with the return of David Smith also after 46 years...the exhibit now in the Resnick Pavilion is a poignant remembrance of the major exhibit of his work at the newly opened LACMA  in 1965 during the planning of which Smith died when his truck rolled over near Bennington, Vermont.Smith was only 59...but he left a monumental body of work, and he is now considered the greatest American sculptor of the 20th century.

                                                                   LACMA                                                                                 

                                                                      

David Smith established sculpture on par with painting in America, and although his burly blacksmith's build has led some people to romanticize him as a kind of blue-collar modernist,he was,like Jackson Pollock, an intensely lyrical artist who possessed extraordinary visual intelligence.

With the elevated physical and metaphysical scale of his sculpture, Smith drew in space with a fierce joy.He became increasingly absorbed with making "series of work" such as the "Cubis" which he made before his death...they are probably the most famous  abstract sculpture of the postwar period.As one critic has said, the "Cubis" seem "more alive than most figurative sculpture does"...made of burnished stainless steel,"the shapes have a surface dazzle that can transform mass into light".

Smith remarked on his sculptural lyricism....
                   
                     "The poetic vision in sculpture is fully as free as in
                      painting. Like a painting, sculpture now deals in the
                      illusion of form as well as its own particular property
                      of form itself."

"There is no conceptual difference between painting and sculpture....The position of creating does not change...just because the medium changes."

"Sometimes when I start a sculpture I begin with only a realized
part; the rest is travel to be unfolded, much in the order of a dream."

"Sculptors are not supposed to paint even painters think so except for Matisse+Picasso - but sculptors are always for painters sculpture...."

As critic Frank O'Hara observed in 1961, Smith's sculpture is "never sculpture being painting, it is sculpture looking at painting and responding in its own fashion."

"Art is made from dreams, and visions, and things not known, and least of all from things that can be said. It comes from the inside of who you are when you face yourself. It is an inner declaration of purpose, it is a factor which determines artist identity." 
~David Smith

"Form doesn't need to be full rounded...permitting the sculpture on a whole to have varying and different aesthetic purposes."

"I will not change an error if it feels right, for the error is more human than perfection."

Along with the David Smith exhibit, abstract expressionist artist, Davyd Whaley and I had lunch at LACMA's new upscale restaurant,Ray's...named after the late Hollywood producer and LACMA Board Member, Ray Stark.....

Davyd's response to the hysterical menu items,including "ramps",was "You've got to be kidding!...you can keep the "ramps"...I'll just have a hamburger!"....very pricey...and barely edible...try Marie Calender's down on Wilshire.....

For further reading:  1.David Smith Invents, Susan Behrends Frank, The Phillips Collection and Yale
                                    University Press.
                                  2.David Smith, Personage, Alex Potts, Gagosian Gallery.
                                  3.David Smith, Related Clues, Drawings, Paintings & Sculpture, 1931-1964,
                                     Gagosian Gallery.
         

The Artist in All His Dimensions
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204323904577038062880928468.html                          

The Artist's Search for a Fearful Symmetry...Did It All Begin With Zeus.....

The primal artistic search for order and balance in our world, in our life,in our relationships, and in our art and creativity may have started with Zeus... as explored by Plato in his Symposium...he quotes the ancient Greek playwright,Aristophanes:

               "In primal times people were globular
                 spheres who wheeled around like clowns

                 doing cartwheels.
There were three sexes: the all male, the all female, and the "androgynous", who was half man, half woman. The creatures tried to scale the heights of heaven and planned to set upon the gods. Zeus thought about just blasting them to death with thunderbolts, but did not want to deprive himself of their devotions and offerings, so he decided to cripple them by chopping them in half...Ever since that time, people run around saying they are looking for their other half because they are really trying to recover their primal nature."

Leonardo da Vinci created perhaps the most iconic vision of this same primal artistic and human rage for symmetry circa 1487...with his pen and ink drawing of the "Vitruvian Man" which was accompanied by his notes based on the work of the famed architect,Vitruvius who believed architecture should have the same symmetry as the human body. Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man is his image of the essential symmetry of the human body, and by extension of the universe as a whole.
Da Vinci rendered Vitruvius's proportions of a man's body(not of a woman's body)as one circle and square image overlaid on top of each other...first standing with arms outspread inscribed in a square, and then with feet and arms outspread inscribed in a circle. This symmetrical anthropocentric image represents not only Da Vinci's keen interest in proportion, but also it is a cornerstone of his attempts to relate man and nature...he envisaged "the great picture chart of the human body as a "cosmografia del minor mondo"...a cosmography of the microcosm"...he believed the symmetry and workings of the human body to be an analogy for the symmetry and workings of the universe.

Later the English visionary poet, William Blake explored this same artistic search for "fearful symmetry" in his 1794 poem,The Tyger in his Songs of Innocence and Experience....

                   Tyger! Tyger!burning bright

                    In the forests of the night,

                    What immortal hand or eye

                    Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Again in Blake's 1795 "Glad Day",he seeks to free Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man from his constraining square and circle...and Blake infuses his Vitruvian Man set free with a new dynamism and joy...he takes Da Vinci's diagrammatic figure and converts it into a dynamic god of energy, and turns its static pose into a centrifugal fling.

Unlike Da Vinci, Blake felt that ideal forms should be constructed not from observations of nature, but from inner visions. He emphasized imagination over reason,and it is therefore ironic that he should adapt a work by Da Vinci who was so focused on observation and the measurement of proportions.

Contemporary artists with feminist-themed art works have once again riffed on Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, and morphed his iconic anthropomorphic image into that of a latter day Vitruvian Woman...

April Greiman in her seminal use of computer tecnology in her landmark fusion of technology and graphic design...used "hybrid symmetrical imagery" in her 2'X6' poster(which served as a "folded cover" for the magazine) of a contemporary Vitruvian Woman(a nude image of herself) for the 1986 Design Quarterly #133:Does It Make Sense?April's poster was a life-size collage created entirely on the Macintosh computer which was made of many different text and graphic elements,and composed entirely on screen without any conventional design "paste-up"...the graphic design world was irrevocably changed forever by Greiman's female Vitruvian "experiment"!

Another contemporary feminist vision of a Vitruvian Woman which resonates Blake's "Glad Day" in setting the Vitruvian figure free of its enclosing and constraining geometry...is Sculptor Jane Dedecker's "Vitruvian Woman"...

Recently the radio show,Radiolab collaborated to create a short film for their Desperately Seeking Symmetry episode,delving deeper into symmetry's role in shaping how we live,find love, and create art:http://www.psfk.com/2011/04/is-our-world-full-of-deep-symmetries-and-ordered-pairs-video.html

As the French philosopher of science,Henri Poincare has said,"It is the harmony of the diverse parts, their symmetry,their happy balance;in a word it is all that introduces order, all that gives unity, that permits us to see clearly and to comprehend at once both the ensemble and the details."

The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect...Paul Valery

Symmetry....a beauty of form arising from balanced proportions....is everywhere... in art,architecture, and the universe!

                                                         The Galettes
                                                         Claude Monet

Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe

                   
                                                  Charis in Doorway
                                                  Edward Weston
                                                                      c.1936

                                                  Bronze Sculpture
                                                  Edgar Degas
                                              

                                                     
                                                              Karl Jung,The Castle,1928


                    

Leonardo da Vinci,The Last Supper, Tempera and mixed media on plaster,mural on an entire back wall,Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie,Milan


For Further Reading......1.Hybrid Imagery  The fusion of technology and graphic design,April Greiman,
1990,Watson-Guptill Publications,New York... 2.Fearful Symmetry A Study of William Blake,Northrop Frye,1947,an intense study completed over a period of a decade,Frye made Blake's voice and vision intelligible...a landmark of Blake criticism.

M.C. Escher, Drawing Hands, 1948

M.C.Escher, Circle Limit III,1959

PATTERNS....Leanne Shapton's illustrated series catalogs designs and textiles observed in passing...

The ghosts of Gertrude Stein and J. Alfred Prufrock...A Salon is a Studio is a Gallery is a Salon

104 Rue de Santa Fe...Davyd Whaley's Salon...SODO...South of

                 Downtown...Another Saturday Evening Revisited....

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky...

Let us go and make our visit.

...prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,...

And for a hundred visions and revisions...

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,T. S. Eliot

On a balmy recent Saturday afternoon south of downtown in Los Angeles, a new incarnation of Gertrude Stein's Salon...both an animated and stimulating "gathering of people" under the studio roof of Abstract Expressionist artist, Davyd Whaley,and his working studio transformed into an "art gallery" for the occasion...manifested a panoply of multicolored,multilayed,and multitextured  dreams and visions on canvas...spread out over the studio's walls and placed on artist easels around the "great space" of 104 Rue de Santa Fe...Davyd's studio at the Santa Fe Art Colony...

Davyd's studio and Salon  are a richly dimensioned creative oasis in the heart of the gritty Arts District on the outskirts of downtown Los Angeles...this studio at the Santa Fe Art Colony is part of an original brick building built in 1906 by entrepreneur C. B. Van Vorst, and originally used as a mattress factory until the 1940's.

There are still atmospheric,architectural and environmental remnants of its historical hardcore past in the surrounding "cinema verite" of the nearby manufacturing district...a huge sign is hung on the side of one of the multi-storied buildings that says in huge black capital letters...LEGALIZE LA....and on the street below,a black homeless man sits on the sidewalk up against a chain link fence and dozes in the late afternoon sun.

But inside ...Davyd's beautifully renovated and customized artist studio, and for this afternoon and evening,tastefully appointed Salon...looks out on the "cinema verite" world down below on the street and lights the environs as a beacon of burgeoning creativity...

In the room the women,and men, baby and English spaniel...come and go...talking,laughing,and drinking in the colorful artistic abundance...

Davyd's multicolored,multilayed,and multitextured paintings... all,he says,"originate with my dreams" which he journals at night and during the week takes in to discuss with his Jungian analyst.

Davyd's "livre de reve"...his Dream Book is on display this afternoon backed by his "Galerie des reves"...his Gallery of Dreams..on the right above the display table... his mystical painting "Alchemy Manifest"...

Davyd's creative process as a painter begins with these phantasmagorical,fantastical and highly metaphorical multicolored subconscious images...his dream imagery.

Using a wide array of mediums...canvases,boards, and paper...he paints his narrative subconscious and his nightly dreamscapes.

Although many of the 40 of his newest paintings were displayed this afternoon on artist easels of varying sizes around the "great space" of his studio, he typically paints on the floor...thus even the floor of Davyd's studio looks like one of his fantastic abstract expressionist paintings...

Davyd says his finished paintings often have "many under paintings with different stories"...

I paint by building up thick layers of pigment with a palette knife to more effectively achieve special color effects. A raised surface is important in my paintings to convey feelings and contribute a three-dimensional effect to the overall piece.Creating thick layers of vibrant color is a technique that master artist Vincent Van Gogh also used. My finished pieces contain meandering strokes, thick with color and texture.

The deep spiritual and metaphysical influence of Jungian dream symbolism and mythology is abundantly evident in Davyd's "episodic" approach to creating his glorious canvases:

I believe dreams are meant to happen in series, like a set of books, which have chapters. We do not get all the information on how to live our everyday lives in just one dream. They come in short little bursts like thunderstorms. Just like storms, dreams have layers and patterns. If we piece them together, they build stories...

He goes on to say,

I paint in episodes, each work expressing a moment; each canvas a spiritual sequence, like dreams linked in our subconscious by ethereal themes or meanings. 

Just as we don't get all of the information in just one dream...we don't get all of the information in just ONE of Davyd's gloriously convoluted, multicolored,multitextured paintings.

Davyd's attraction to his subconscious and his dream manifestations, as well as to "asymmetrical forms and the energy and power provoked from the contrast of light, depth and color" were all monumentally expressed in the huge 72x164 inches canvas...Fields of Play..the engrossing,and overpowering, centerpiece of his recent Saturday afternoon Salon.

A videographer friend of Davyd's was present to capture the exhilaration of the viewers as they drank in the joyous playfulness of Fields of Play...however, he said he found that many of the guests were too self-conscious to talk about the canvas on camera...and one presumes just too overwhelmed by its monumental power and colorful emotions...a "candid camera" approach would most certainly have been intense and revealing.

There was a richly textured audience of fellow artists like Magda Audifred from the Brewery Artists Colony across town,and photographers,actors,dancers and other creative soul-mates from Davyd's "creative circle" of friends, as well as his co-host and life partner the brilliant and cutting-edge television Director and filmmaker, Norman Buckley.

Davyd's creative circle of friends, and his dazzling paintings created an unforgettable and inspiring afternoon Salon with the backdrop of old,historic industrial Los Angeles.

This is a "virtual" cinema verite walk around Davyd's Salon,from front door to back door...play your favorite background music,as Davyd and Norman did on this Saturday afternoon,  and you will surely hear "the mermaids singing"....just as I, and all those fortunate to be there,heard the mermaids singing for them!

"Cadence"...Davyd's huge companion painting to "Fields of Play"...exemplified the beautiful rhythmic flow of people,and one very bright and lively English spaniel named Chaucer,throughout Davyd's studio and Salon on this inspired and inspiring afternoon...

                                                    

Ionesco's ghost seemed strangely present along with Les Chaises...the inscrutable Chairs....one wonders what "invisible" guests were sitting in these abstract creations....

Davyd Whaley...abstract expressionist.."artist of dreams"...

"cher Maitre"..Norman Buckley..co-host,Davyd's life partner,and television Director and filmmaker extraordinaire...Alice B. Toklas said that Gertrude Stein always referred to Matisse as "cher Maitre"...but with a decided edge in her voice...which may just have been Alice's Byzantine version of Gertrude's term of endearment....

As guests came through the back door,and once they were inside,there was a wonderful catered lunch of hotdogs and all the fixings....even the caterers were "installed" artistically...surrounded by three knockout Whaley paintings....

Guests coming in and meeting new compadres....

The Expatriates...Neil (an actor from Canada) and Pablo ( a delightful raconteur from Argentina)...

This guest's bag was an abstract expressionist painting in itself...

The viewing and social dynamics continue....

My imagination titled this painting "Thirsty Horses"...

There were even a few Whistling Girls at the Salon....

Dancer Donna King (aka "Bombalu in the original Broadway production of CATS)

The actress,writer, and photographer....Karen Huie....

Some more amazing Whaley paintings...

There were even abstract paintings hung in the loft...

And back downstairs again........

Tom Keegan who actually had dinner one evening with Joseph Campbell after a play Campbell's wife,Jean Erdman,was directing...Tom said Campbell even paid the check while his wife protested that the actors could afford to pay it themselves...and while he paid  the bill, he explained to everyone the symbolism on the dollar bill...

One of the attendees, Yael Russcol who is developing a series called,Dogpark,brought her English spaniel,Chaucer, with her...he seemed more interested in the hotdogs than the paintings....

Chaucer entertains the guests....

Norman practices his yoga stretch.....

Davyd and photographer Yael Russcol.....

Rain and her Daddy.....

Karen Huie and Rain.........

Kathleen Fennessy....Yael Russcol kindly took these "portraits"...

Norman Buckley...staying connected...he has thousands of followers on Facebook and Twitter.....

Rain and her proud parents......

Davyd strikes a few poses......

Norman makes a point...and Chaucer contemplates sitting on his lap....

Chaucer  found a decorative ball on one of the tables and quickly made it his favorite "toy"....

Ketzigirl's discerning girlfriend exits with her very astute painting purchase......

Norman relaxes at the end of a brilliant Salon....

Waterlilies...by Davyd Whaley and fellow abstract expressionist painter and friend,Andy Berg...Waterlilies wasn't on display at the Salon, but it is on display in my heart...and once it's framed...it will be on glorious display in my home.......

I want the inaccessible.Other artists paint a bridge, a house, a boat and that's all. I against it want to paint the air which surrounds the bridge, the house, the boat....

Or the ebullient joy, passion, conflict, and tempestuous beauty of ephemeral,transitory dreamscapes at play in the fields of the subconscious mind......

See David Whaley, "Dreamchaser",illuminating article in ARTWORKS Magazine, Spring 2011 Edition.

(photos by Norman Buckley)

All photographs were taken with a Panasonic Lumix digital camera with a Leica lens by Kathleen Fennessy (except as noted).