Monday, July 27, 2009

Art Smith



Art Smith (1917-1982) has a couple of things that made my research easier. One, you can find lots of information and images of his work. Two, some of his creations truly resemble Calder's work (explaining why Jenn gave me the assignment, I think).

The Brooklyn Museum of Art recently hosted a small exhibit of his work and provided on their site a nice biography of the artist.

"Born in Cuba to Jamaican parents, Smith grew up in Brooklyn and majored in sculpture at Cooper Union. He subsequently trained with jewelry designer Winifred Mason and worked in her studio in the Village before opening his own studio. Though his jewelry was clearly not mainstream, he did have business relationships with several other stores including Bloomingdales and his work was featured in Vogue, Harpers and the New Yorker. Considering that Smith was a gay, black man designing avant-garde jewelry in the 1950s, it’s a testament to his skills as a designer and artisan that his work was admired and commissioned outside of the downtown, bohemian world in which he lived and worked.

Smith also designed jewelry for many black dance companies and as Barry Harwood, Curator of Decorative Arts at the Brooklyn Museum comments, “These commissions encouraged him to design on a grander scale than he might otherwise have done, and the theatricality of many of his larger pieces may well reflect this experience.”

Art Smith wrote in the 1969 catalog of his one man exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Craft: “A piece of jewelry is in a sense an object that is not complete in itself. Jewelry is a ‘what is it?’ until you relate it to the body. The body is a component in design just as air and space are. Like line, form, and color, the body is a material to work with. It is one of the basic inspirations in creating form.”

I find it fascinating that Art Smith verbalized the connection between jewelry and the body. Even though his background was in sculpture and many of his pieces appear to be to difficult to wear, he was aware of how the piece is to be displayed (on a human body). From a practical commercial purpose this is crucial. Beautiful jewelry that can only be used on a display case or a static body, in my opinion, does not accomplish the ultimate goal of adorning the ultimate subject, that is, the human body.

Make sure to check this link http://www.925-1000.com/amx_smithA.html. It includes an obituary that appeared in the New Amsterdam Post and many "calderesk" (I just made up that word) images of Art Smith's work.

One last aspect of his work that I found mentioned thru out many postings is the fact that he maintained a certain style through his entire career. Making it very difficult, if not impossible to date his work... Interesting....



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