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The Leon Polk Smith Collection SMITH’S ART CAME OF AGE around 1959 with Correspondences, THE LEON POLK SMITH the first of two series that won him national recognition. COLLECTION of works on paper provides the backstory to Smith’s This series embodies his Mondrian-derived they gain a monumentality that is magnified in principles of achieving a compositional his now mural-scale paintings. Smith used colors remarkable life and art. equilibrium through creating “a continuity of in trios or pairs to achieve this exchange of form space and form” with the assistance of color and space through “equivalences of unlike color As the drawings tell, he virtually became an and a new, more expansive character of space areas, balanced by the artist’s judgment,” as artist overnight. His earliest drawings reveal (Figs 8, 9). The compositions vary from excerpts he explained. Smith linked his distinctive bright him to be a prodigy who would pursue art with a of dusty miller leaves and offspring of sports colors in combination or with neutrals to the single-minded passion. The Collection enriches ball silhouettes to angular and free forms. The Native American palettes that he grew up with in our knowledge about Smith’s best-known periods line was the starting point. He explained, “I am Oklahoma. There, he said, “my Indian neighbors and fills in important gaps in his development. drawing two forms with one line, and I am having and relatives used color to vibrate and shock in Importantly, it reveals his dedication, capacity, LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS* Fig 10 to think of both sides of the line, feel both sides, all its intensity with equal rampancy.” Together, and innovation over a lifetime. Working within the know both sides, . .”5 The emerging divisions Smith observed, line and color “create two narrow formal parameters he established for his Cover: Untitled, 1960, acrylic and pencil on paper, Fig 10: Untitled, 1969, gouache on paper, bleed off the edges of the composition or are worlds, in direct opposition to each other and yet In the mid-1960s, Smith moved on to another abstraction, Smith created an art that is at once 8 1⁄2 x 5 3⁄8 in., 2015.011.549. 11 7⁄8 x 9 1⁄4 in., 2015.011.655. suspended in an unbounded ground to suggest an so well related that they fit into each other as a formal problem with his series Constellations— cohesive yet dynamic and visually provocative, endless space. Large in scale, filling the paper, jigsaw puzzle must.”6 to introduce a greater sense of space to his proving the adage that simple is not easy. Fig 1: Untitled, 1957, torn paper on board, Fig 11: Untitled, 1972, cut paper and pencil paintings. As witnessed in drawings for this major 7 1⁄8 x 3 7⁄8 in., 2015.011.400. on paper, 15 1⁄4 x 10 1⁄2 in., 2015.011.672. Fig 11 series, he returned to geometric forms—circles, Fig 2: On the Farm in Oklahoma, November 1934, Fig 12: Untitled, 1979, gouache on paper, Fig 8 Fig 9 ovals, squares, and triangles—and a palette of pencil and ink on paper, 17 x 13 1⁄2 in., 2015.011.002. 14 3⁄4 x 20 in., 2015.011.704. primary and secondary colors plus black and designs or structures that project or recede white (Figs 10, 17). The multiple geometric forms in space (Fig 11). The linear extensions—wood NOTES Fig 3: Oklahoma Cattle Brands, 1937, poster paint Fig 13: Untitled, 1995, tape on paper, floating on the gray or white paper background strips in the paintings—invoke radiating surface on paper, 21 3⁄4 x 16 1⁄2 in., 2015.011.017. 20 x 14 1⁄8 in., 2015.011.720. represent groups of shaped canvas paintings, space. Where works from this series resemble 1 In a 1963 interview, Smith explained that he had no exposure Fig 4: Untitled, 1943, crayon and ink on paper, Fig 14: Pipets, 1940, watercolor on paper, which are to be read as single artworks. With this diagrams or mechanical drafting, the Form to art before his discovery of a studio class when he was in 8 x 5 in., 2015.011.143. 19 x 24 1⁄2 in., 2015.011.108. new format, the wall becomes an integral part Space compositions lean toward the structural college. He said his “only inkling” of his interest in becoming of the paintings. Together, they represent much character of architecture. Designating shaped artist was that “I know as a child I liked to copy the cartoons in Fig 5: Untitled, 1954, acrylic on board, Fig 15: Untitled, 1955, acrylic on canvasette, the paper, drawings.” Leon Polk Smith, Interview with Dr. K. larger compositions because, in Smith’s words, canvases positioned on a white wall, the triangles 8 1⁄2 x 8 1⁄2 in., 2015.011.231. 19 7⁄8 x 16 in., 2015.011.304 Osis, May 28, 1963, p. 2, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian they are “reaching out in every direction.”7 of Untitled, 1979, in tandem with the intervening Institution, Washington, DC, Box 5, Folder 37. Fig 6: Untitled, 1953, marker and pencil on paper, Fig 16: Untitled, 1946, gouache and pencil on paper, Smith initiated new variants of his abstraction white paper, become the image of a building (Fig 2 Brooke Kamin Rapaport, A Tape-Recorded Interview with 13 x 10 3⁄4 in., 2015.011.211. 10 x 8 1⁄2 in., 2015.011.151. in the early 1970s. Now in his sixties, having 12). By the 1990s. Smith had reduced the Form Leon Polk Smith, transcript, July 12 & 21, 1993, p. 9, Archives, gained national renown, he moved away from Space series to single rectangular and circular Brooklyn Museum of Art. Fig 7: Dusty Miller, 1953, gouache on paper, Fig 17: Untitled, 1968, acrylic on paper, 3 Brooke Kamin Rapaport, A Tape-Recorded Interview with the Constellations series toward an increasingly formats filled with simple geometric forms or From top: Figs 12, 13 18 x 14 in., 2015.011.203. 20 x 12 1⁄2 in., 2015.011.652. Leon Polk Smith, transcript, July 12 & 21, 1993, pp. 37-38. spare aesthetic that would characterize his art lines that dominate solid-color or white grounds. 4 See Arthur Wesley Dow, Composition: A Series of Exercises Fig 8: Untitled, 1961, acrylic on paper, Fig 18: Untitled, 1980, cut paper and pencil into the 1990s. While walls remain an essential Lines assume a thin but assertive character, in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers. First 10 3⁄8 x 6 5⁄8 in., 2015.011.585. on paper, 24 x 18 1⁄8 in., 2015.011.706. part of the artwork, Smith introduced the positioned tangentially, in counterpoint to forms, published in 1899, Composition served as a teaching manual illusionistic space system of linear perspective or in sequences. Intended for a rectilinear complete with hands-on exercises. Composition has continued 6 Leon Polk Smith, “Line, Color, and the Concept of Space,” 1961, Fig 9: Untitled, 1955, gouache on paper, THE LEON POLK SMITH COLLECTION to enjoy a following and today is widely available online and in in Leon Polk Smith, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshaften am as the basis for the interplay of space and painting, the composition of clustered black tape 7 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2 in., 2015.011.305. form. Associated with the new Extended Space lines in Untitled, 1995, (Fig 13) plots out a three- print and digital formats. Rhein and Musée de Grenoble, exhibition catalogue, 1989, p. 9; Oklahoma State University Museum of Art 5 “The Paintings of Leon Polk Smith. A Conversation Between “The Paintings of Leon Polk Smith. A Conversation Between series, Untitled from 1972 represents shaped dimensional space that is suggestive of a wooded Leon Polk Smith and d’Arcy Hayman,” in Ina Prinz, Leon Polk Leon Polk Smith and d’Arcy Hayman,” p, 19. canvases that alternately appear to be flat landscape receding into depth. Smith in Arithmeum, exhibition catalogue, Bonn, Germany: 7 Brooke Kamin Rapaport, A Tape-Recorded Interview with *All works are Gift of Leon Polk Smith Foundation, New York, New York. Bouvier, p, 19. Leon Polk Smith, transcript, July 12 & 21, 1993, p.40. AN OKLAHOMA NATIVE, SMITH OVERCAME MANY home state and subsequently held full-time Drawings from the later 1930s document Leon Polk Smith (1906-1996), pioneered CHALLENGES to become an artist. teaching positions in various locales until 1958. Smith’s exploration of European modern art. the pared-down abstraction that The eighth of nine children, he was born Beginning in 1952, Smith made New York City A visit to Albert E. Gallatin’s Gallery of Living his permanent home, later adding a second Art in New York in 1936 introduced him to the became known as Hard-edge painting. near Chickasha, to parents who were both residence on Long Island. first public collection of modern art in the half Cherokee. The family lived a bare- From the outset, Smith demonstrated a talent country and an alternative source of insight. The In the mid-twentieth century, this movement that was as extraordinary as his dedication to art, novice artist was a quick study. Within six years was part of a groundswell of interest in creating bones life on homestead land. previewed in his command of naturalism by the from 1934 to 1940, he tried out the cubist and art forms of extreme economy. The subject time he graduated from college in 1934. During surrealist styles of internationally renowned was the fundamental elements of art, identified Smith continued to help them out after finishing his first years of teaching and graduate studies, artists Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró, on view at as the abstract building blocks of line, form, high school in 1924, working construction jobs Smith drew much of his imagery from his daily life Gallatin’s gallery (Figs 3, 14).
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