1965.32.McD, David Smith, Cubi XVII, 1963, polished stainless steel

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

David Smith's Cubi series represents a new paradigm for contemporary sculpture in the 1960s. In a work of great force and scale, Smith fuses ideas of abstraction borrowed from European modernists, with the psychological content and newfound freedoms of scale and gesture seen in postwar American art. One of a series of twenty-eight Cubi sculptures that date from 1961 to 1965, Cubi XVII is composed of a precarious jumble of simple metal shapes set atop an elegant round column. Smith proudly brought to his art the talents of the welder and the mechanic, readily evident not only in this piece's shiny, even luxuriant surface of brushed metal, but in its engineering as well. The juxtaposition of a myriad of burnished shapes creates a dynamic composition that becomes fully apparent only upon seeing it in the round; angles converge and split off as the viewer walks around the work, while light plays on and over the form's elegantly crafted surfaces. Smith prompts an active, participatory relationship between his viewers and the abstract forms, a type of interaction that would play an important role in minimalist, process, and conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s, attesting to Smith's influential importance in postwar art.

Adapted from

Charles Wylie, "Cubi XVII," in Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection, ed. Charles Venable (New Haven, NJ: Yale University Press, 1997), 277.
Bonnie Pitman, ed., Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 295.

NOTES

updated geo x ref to Bolton Landing, NY, based on studio location

Catalogue essays

Artist/designers

David Smith (1906-1965)

Cultures

Geography

Process/materials

Historical periods

Individuals

Subject terms

RELATED OBJECTS

PROVENANCE

1963-65: David Smith, Bolton Landing, NY

1964-1965: Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, NY

From 1965: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc., purchased from above [1]

[1] The name of the Dallas Museum of Fine arts, founded in 1933, was changed to the Dallas Museum of Art in 1983.

AUDIO ASSETS

VIDEO ASSETS

Collections smARTphone video; Jeffrey Grove discusses Cubi XVII by David Smith (DMA collection 1965.32.McD)

12937494: UMO

IMAGE ASSETS

WEB RESOURCES

ARCHIVAL RESOURCES

FUN FACTS

This sculpture weighs 556 lbs.

TEACHING IDEAS

RULES

Apply to objects where number equals 1965.32.McD

General Description

David Smith's Cubi series represents a new paradigm for contemporary sculpture in the 1960s. In a work of great force and scale, Smith fuses ideas of abstraction borrowed from European modernists, with the psychological content and newfound freedoms of scale and gesture seen in postwar American art. One of a series of twenty-eight Cubi sculptures that date from 1961 to 1965, Cubi XVII is composed of a precarious jumble of simple metal shapes set atop an elegant round column. Smith proudly brought to his art the talents of the welder and the mechanic, readily evident not only in this piece's shiny, even luxuriant surface of brushed metal, but in its engineering as well. The juxtaposition of a myriad of burnished shapes creates a dynamic composition that becomes fully apparent only upon seeing it in the round; angles converge and split off as the viewer walks around the work, while light plays on and over the form's elegantly crafted surfaces. Smith prompts an active, participatory relationship between his viewers and the abstract forms, a type of interaction that would play an important role in minimalist, process, and conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s, attesting to Smith's influential importance in postwar art.