Leon Polk Smith: Back to Oklahom : simplebooklet.com

Booklet published to support art show at the Oklahoma State University Museum of Art.

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#6412

Cover:

Leon Polk Smith, Untitled, 1954, opaque

watercolor and metallic paint on cardboard, 8 1/2

inches x 8 1/2 inches. Collection of Oklahoma

State University Museum of Art. Gift of Leon Polk

Smith Foundation.

Acknowledgments

The Museum is most grateful to the Board of the Leon Polk Smith Foundation

who made this generous gift of works on paper possible. Special thanks go

to Patterson Sims, President of the Foundation, and Maryanna Vermonte,

Registrar, Leon Polk Smith Foundation Collection for their knowledge

about the art and assistance with access to the online database of Leon

Polk Smith’s art. My deep gratitude to Senator Jonathan and Mrs. Nichols

for the loan of their Leon Polk Smith painting to the exhibition. Thanks

also to Dr. Taryn Chubb, Associate Professor of Art History and Director

of the Pogue Art Gallery at East Central University, Ada, OK, for giving

me access to University archival materials on Leon Polk Smith and for a

very informative discussion about the artist. Thanks to OSU photographer

Phil Shockley for coming to our assistance on very short notice to shoot

the images used in this essay. Art history master’s candidate Tiffany Sides

assisted with the research, and OSU Museum of Art Director Victoria R.

Berry provided me with a valuable sounding board for working out the

exhibition and brochure content.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition

Leon Polk Smith: Back to Oklahoma

Oklahoma State University Museum of Art

May 31 – September 3, 2016

Exhibitions and programs at the Oklahoma State University Museum of Art are supported by

OSU/A&M Board of Regents, OSUMA Art Advocates, and the Oklahoma Arts Council.

Designer: D. Mark Pennie, Assistant Director, Oklahoma State University Marketing

Photography: Phil Shockley, Oklahoma State University Marketing

Published by the Oklahoma State University Museum of Art

720 South Husband Street, Stillwater, OK 74074, USA

Tel. 405.744.2780 Fax 405.744.2800 www.museum.okstate.edu

ate in 2015, the Leon Polk Smith Foundation in New

York City brought the artist back home. The Foundation

gifted more than 700 works on paper to the Oklahoma

State University Art Museum, to be shared with art

institutions across the State. Leon Polk Smith (1906 – 1996)

gained national recognition in the 1960s in pioneering the

Hard Edge painting movement, which favored abstract,

clean-edged forms, attened space, simple color schemes,

and economic compositions.

Leon Polk Smith: Back to Oklahoma

offers an introduction to his works on

paper. Never widely exhibited or studied,

these works offer a more nuanced pic-

ture of Smith’s development and working

habits. They represent the more famil-

iar periods of his development from his

early gurative work and his testing of dif-

ferent styles of European modernism to

the pared-down, hard-edge abstractions,

which were rened over the remainder

of his career. Drawings from the 1950s,

however, reveal new insights about his

development—a stepping stone to better

understanding how this body of work

relates to his paintings.

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mith’s earliest work draws on his expe-

riences growing up near Chickasha,

Oklahoma. After nishing high school

he worked seven years, rst on ranches

in Oklahoma and then on road and tele-

phone systems construction in Arizona. He

then enrolled in what is now East Central

University in Ada and earned a degree

in English in 1934. During his senior year

he discovered art. After seeing a paint-

ing class in session, he persuaded the

professor to let him sit in. So began his

career. Between 1934 and 1940, Smith

taught elementary and secondary educa-

tion in Oklahoma. In 1936, he attended

the rst of three summer school sessions

at Columbia University Teachers College

in New York City to complete a master’s

degree in arts education and ne art.

Smith’s rural life in Oklahoma frequently

inspired paintings and drawings during

these years: cowboys, cattle branding,

the dustbowl, and college life. While

these subjects reect the preference of

the Regionalist art movement for local

scenes, his stylized treatment of gures

and landscape anticipates his later turn

to abstract form and economic composi-

tions. Smith tested different approaches to

simplifying his forms. In Leo’s Bay (1939,

Fig. 1) he used attened forms encased

in curvilinear black lines to describe a

cowboy on horseback riding through a

hilly landscape. Unifying the background

and gure, a dull red wash animates

the image with drop and spray patterns.

Looking backward with his chest full of

hearts, the cowboy appears to be yearn-

ing for something lost or found.

lthough Smith later described his

technical training as limited, his early

drawings suggest that he was inher-

ently talented and a quick study. Within a

six-year period he had leap frogged over

any interest in naturalistic rendering to

increasingly abstracted forms. His summer

stays in New York accelerated his prog-

ress. While taking courses at Columbia

University Teachers College, the artist

was also exploring modern art outside

the classroom. An advanced course in

painting with artist Ryah Ludins the rst

summer was a signicant turning point

in his education and artistic path. Along

with adopting her exercises in free draw-

ing to liberate himself from conscious

thought processes, he followed her advice

to look at modern art in New York. In

1936, accompanied by Ludins, Smith vis-

ited Albert E. Gallatin’s Museum of Living

Art, the rst public collection of modern

art in the country. The novice artist sub-

sequently worked in a range of different

styles in the later 1930s, responding to a

Oklahoma State University

MUSEUM OF ART

Fig. 1

Leon Polk Smith,

Leo’s Bay, 1939,

watercolor on paper,

19 3/4 x 24 5/8 inches.

Collection of Oklahoma

State University

Museum of Art. Gift

of Leon Polk Smith

Foundation.

Oklahoma State University

MUSEUM OF ART

Fig. 2

Leon Polk Smith, Untitled,

1940, opaque watercolor

on paper, 26 x 20 inches.

Collection of Oklahoma

State University Museum

of Art. Gift of Leon Polk

Smith Foundation.

Oklahoma State University

MUSEUM OF ART

variety of examples he had viewed in the Museum

of Living Art and elsewhere.

A cornerstone of the Museum of Living Art col-

lection, Cubism shaped Smith’s Untitled of 1940,

a geometricized composition suggestive of male

and female gures (Fig. 2). The

artist adapted the collage-like

compositions, solid color forms,

and linear patterns of the later

phase of Cubism known as

Synthetic. He may well have

been inspired by Picasso’s Still

Life with a Glass and a Package

of Tobacco [Composition] (1922),

which Gallatin had purchased in

June 1936.

n the late 1930s and early

1940s, Surrealism, with its

emphasis on a stream-of-con-

sciousness process, also com-

manded Smith’s attention. Pipets

(1940, Fig. 3) shows his close

study of Joan Miró. Smith had

the opportunity to see four superb examples of the

Spanish artist’s work once again at the Museum of

Living Art, in particular, Painting of 1933. A series

of biomorphic forms merging animal and human

anatomy plus a guitar populate the multicolored

atmospheric space of Pipets, echoing Miró’s hybrid

images and variegated backgrounds of the 1930s. This

array of strange creatures conforms to Surrealism’s

Fig. 3

Leon Polk Smith, Pipets,

1940, ink and opaque

watercolor on paper, 19 x

24 1/4 inches. Collection

of Oklahoma State

University Museum of Art.

Gift of Leon Polk Smith

Foundation.

Oklahoma State University

MUSEUM OF ART

arbitrary juxtapositions of invented images

emerging from the human subconscious.

While it is easy enough to identify the art-

ists and styles that Smith “tried on” during

these years, his outcomes demonstrate the

artist’s independent and selective adap-

tations of European modernism. Whether

by imagery and/or style Smith imprinted

these works with elements of the singu-

lar vision that shapes his mature work.

mith’s rst viewing of a painting by

Dutch modernist Piet Mondrian in

1936, once again at the Museum of

Living Art, was a turning point for his art

a decade later. A major memorial retro-

spective at the Museum of Modern Art in

the spring of 1945 offered another oppor-

tunity for him to revisit the Dutch artist’s

work. Living in New York between 1945

and 1949, Smith set the abstract direction

of his art with a group of works inspired

by Mondrian’s minimalist geometry, two

being tributes to Mondrian’s New York-

inspired Boogie Woogie paintings. The

American artist focused on the formal

implications of Mondrian’s art, leaving

behind its utopian social theories. In

particular, he embraced the Dutch artist’s idea of

“the interchangeability of form and space,” as Smith

termed it, wherein “space and form were compli-

mentary to each other as well as interchangeable.”

Fig. 4

Leon Polk Smith,

Untitled, 1943, crayon,

ink, and marker on

paper, 14 3/4 x 11

inches. Collection

of Oklahoma State

University Museum of

Art. Gift of Leon Polk

Smith Foundation.

Oklahoma State University

MUSEUM OF ART

Fig. 5

Leon Polk Smith,

Untitled, 1946, pencil

and opaque watercolor

on paper, 14 3/4 x

11 inches. Collection

of Oklahoma State

University Museum of

Art. Gift of Leon Polk

Smith Foundation.

Oklahoma State University

MUSEUM OF ART

Oklahoma State University

MUSEUM OF ART

He added to this goal the challenge of using

Mondrian’s idea “in a curvilinear manner, in curved

lines, free forms.”

Smith’s drawings track his transition from Cubism

to Mondrian. In a 1943 example, Smith aban-

doned the quasi-gurative imagery of the 1940

Cubist-inspired drawing (Fig. 2) for a grid com-

position (Fig. 4). Though the work moves a step

closer, Smith’s freely drawn rectangular forms and

striping have yet to comply with Mondrian’s ruled

grid. Smith adopts a more restricted but less regi-

mented palette than the Dutch artist’s, which was

limited to black, white, and the primary colors—

red, yellow, and blue.

Another drawing from 1946 shows Smith impro-

vising to create his own distinctive congurations

(Fig 5). It represents a more simplied version of

the 1943 grid with closed rectilinear forms. Their

overlapping creates an interplay between the solid

and void references, with the gray becoming a con-

trasting painterly plane. Once again, Smith departs

from the Dutch artist’s strict formal vocabulary in

introducing C and L shapes to his grid composi-

tion, eliminating line, and varying his color scheme

with a combination of black, gray, red, and orange.

he 1948 work on paper and NUSH’KA are the

most direct adaptations of Mondrian’s style,

conforming to his palette and rectangular forms

(Figs. 6, 7). The similarities stop there, as Smith sets

up some alternative formal problems to investigate.

Fig. 6 (opposite page)

Leon Polk Smith,

Untitled, 1948, pencil

and colored paper on

cardboard, 17 x 13

5/8 inches. Collection

of Oklahoma State

University Museum of

Art. Gift of Leon Polk

Smith Foundation.

Fig. 7

Leon Polk Smith,

NUSH’KA, 1949, oil

on board, diameter:

12 inches. Jonathan

and Talitha Nichols

Collection.

Oklahoma State University

MUSEUM OF ART

Smith broke with Mondrian’s strict grid composition

by introducing diagonal axes. Further, in the work

on paper, not all the blue blocks are contained by

lines or paper edges but rather anchored at corners

(Fig. 6). These blocks read as solid forms suspended

in space, again sidestepping Mondrian’s notion of

interchangeability.

NUSH’KA exemplies Smith’s early efforts to imple-

ment his concept of interchangeable form and space

based on curves, here through a shaped canvas

(Fig. 7). This painting combines closed and open-

ended rectilinear forms of the earlier 1940s draw-

ings. The textured white areas give the painting a

physicality that transforms background into sur-

face. As a result, the lines and rectangles sink into

a space behind the white plane, another spinoff

on the Mondrian interchangeability of form and

space concept.

n the 1950s, Smith continued working in an

exploratory vein. He pursued two alternative

models that advanced his art to its maturity and

recognition as Hard Edge, one of which has not

been previously recognized. Representing a signif-

icant body of work, studies of plant forms suggest

that Smith returned to the lessons of art educator

Arthur Wesley Dow that he had studied at Columbia

University Teachers College. First appearing in 1899

and last published in 1940, Dow’s text Composition

was an early prototype for teaching what today is

known as design—principles of line, form, space,

color, and composition in the abstract (Fig. 8). Smith

Fig. 8

“Notan. IX. Flower Compositions. Two

Values—Variations—Design,” in Arthur

Wesley Dow, Composition. A Series

of Exercises in Art Structure for the

Use of Students and Teachers, ninth

edition, revised and enlarged. Garden

City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company,

1914, p. 85.

Fig. 9

Leon Polk Smith, Dusty

Miller, 1955, opaque

watercolor on paper,

23 3/4 x 17 7/8 inches.

Collection of Oklahoma

State University

Museum of Art. Gift

of Leon Polk Smith

Foundation.

Oklahoma State University

MUSEUM OF ART

Fig. 10

Leon Polk Smith,

Untitled, 1956, paper

on paper, 11 x 14

inches. Collection

of Oklahoma State

University Museum of

Art. Gift of Leon Polk

Smith Foundation.

Oklahoma State University

MUSEUM OF ART

Fig. 11

Leon Polk Smith, Untitled,

1954, pencil, ink, and

opaque watercolor on

cardboard, 8 1/2 x 3

3/4 inches. Collection

of Oklahoma State

University Museum of Art.

Gift of Leon Polk Smith

Foundation.

Oklahoma State University

MUSEUM OF ART

followed Dow’s strategies of “arranging lines in

space,” with attention to the distribution of form,

color, and values to create an all-over patterned

space—what Dow termed Notan.

A series of studies of dusty miller illustrate how

Dow’s exercises of framing and cropping guided

an avenue of organic abstraction. More naturalistic

descriptions from the early 1950s evolve into more

economic, stylized forms and colors seen in Dusty

Miller (1956, Fig. 9). Smith’s plant studies are logi-

cal outcomes of Dow-inspired strategies of closing

in on an image, simplifying and cropping the form,

and reducing composition and color to a two-color

surface pattern fundamental to the breakthrough

painting series Correspondences (Fig. 10).

n 1954, Smith discovered another of his visual

models, which is well known. A chance view-

ing of a sporting goods catalogue enabled him to

resolve his other Mondrian-inspired formal challenge.

Illustrations of tennis balls and baseballs showed

him “how to use the curvilinear form within an inner

circle” and advanced his abstraction.

He quickly

progressed from images closely resembling base-

balls in the orange-and-beige study (1954, Fig. 11)

to the frontal composition of the gold-and-white

drawing (1954, Fig. 12), which takes on an iconic

presence. Smith then applied this curvilinear model

to rectangular and square formats; and, in tandem

with the Dowian insights, the Correspondences

series was born.

Fig. 12

Leon Polk Smith, Untitled,

1954, opaque watercolor

and metallic paint on

cardboard, 8 1/2 inches x

8 1/2 inches. Collection

of Oklahoma State

University Museum of Art.

Gift of Leon Polk Smith

Foundation.

Fig. 13

Leon Polk Smith, Untitled,

1958, opaque watercolor on

paper, 16 1/8 x 13 inches.

Collection of Oklahoma State

University Museum of Art. Gift

of Leon Polk Smith Foundation.

Oklahoma State University

MUSEUM OF ART

n 1958, Leon Polk Smith left teach-

ing and turned to art full time. His

1940s and 1950s experimentations

crystallized into a set of formal goals

that guided his mature abstractions. The

Correspondences series created in the

late 1950s established Smith’s reputation

as a major artist. An example from 1958

conrms his account of beginning with

“three shapes, three forms, but I reduced

it to two. I would paint this one colour

and that one colour” (Figs. 10, 12)

The

forms in this series vary from free form to

angular, rendered in two colors. Seen as

early as 1955 in his drawings, this econ-

omy also involved eliminating line. The

interfaces of color elds and the support

edges replace line as boundaries. With

these reductive measures the scale of

forms increases, amplied through their

cropping and framing.

Smith’s overarching goal was visual

“equilibrium” as he termed it, starting

with line. For him drawing a line cre-

ated “two worlds in direct opposition to

each other and yet so well related that

they t into each other as a jigsaw puzzle

must.”

The color choices, their intensity,

proportions, and solidity, made equally

important contributions to this balance.

Smith thereby eliminated the spatial hier-

archy of foreground and background in

favor of adjoining elds of equal sub-

stance. Collectively these formal deci-

sions impart a monumentality that gives

the drawings a heightened presence and

importance. The impact is all the more so

with his paintings on canvas, which had

increased in size to mural scale.

The artist evoked a still greater sense

of space with the Constellations series

begun around 1967 (Fig. 14). Instead of

increasing the size of individual paintings,

he introduced multiple units as single

compositions. Smith returned to geomet-

ric forms—curved and rectilinear—and

vivid hues plus black. These components

are arranged in tangential sequences that

imply their unlimited expansion. The

alignment and partitioning of the com

ponents suggest fragmented large-scale

forms. With this new format, his paint-

ings break out of their canvas boundaries

and expand across the walls, integrating

them into the compositions.

mith simplied his compositions still

further beginning in the 1970s while

continuing to incorporate wall space

into the artworks. He repeatedly explored

formal issues through black-and-white

compositions, as he had throughout his

career. The deceptively austere composi-

tion of this 1979 work on paper integrates

Fig. 14 (opposite page)

Leon Polk Smith, Untitled,

1966, acrylic paint on

paper, 24 3/4 x 17 3/4

inches. Collection

of Oklahoma State

University Museum of Art.

Gift of Leon Polk Smith

Foundation.

Oklahoma State University

MUSEUM OF ART

Oklahoma State University

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Fig. 15

Leon Polk Smith, Untitled,

1979, acrylic paint on

paper, 14 3/4 x 20 inches.

Collection of Oklahoma

State University Museum

of Art. Gift of Leon Polk

Smith Foundation.

Oklahoma State University

MUSEUM OF ART

a white eld with black modules to set

up provocative perceptual experiences

(Fig. 15). The sequence of forms moves

the eyes simultaneously in two directions,

upward and to the left, over the support

surface and beyond. Designating shaped

canvases, the black forms become, as

Smith explained, “the nucleus for a much

larger area [of wall].”

iewed in hindsight, Leon Polk Smith’s

career shows the very self-contained

character of his art in the best sense.

As the artist repeatedly stated, beyond

Mondrian’s art very little outside his

vision shaped his development. Like

other movements from the 1960s and

1970s such as Minimalism, Smith’s Hard

Edge compositions reduced art to its most

basic elements. He sought to identify the

essential components of art and to resolve

related formal problems. In effect, Smith’s

work is art about art. From the audience’s

perspective, the viewing of his art com-

bines perceptual and intellectual experi-

ences to understand what makes art art.

Arlette Klaric, Ph.D., Associate Chief

Curator / Curator of Collections

1 For further information on A. E. Gallatin and his museum, see Gail Stavitsky, “The A. E. Gallatin Collection: An Early

Adventure in Modern Art,” Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, 89, No. 379/380 (Winter – Spring, 1994): 1, 4-47.

2 A. E. Gallatin donated his collection the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1943. To learn more about the specic artworks

discussed in this essay, go to http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/search.html and search the museum’s online col-

lections database.

3 Artist Statement, c. 1961, typescript, Galerie Chalette, New York, NY, 1968; and “A Conversation between Konstanze

Chrüwell-Doertenbach and Leon Polk Smith,” Nike, No. 19 (July/August/September, 1987); reprinted in Leon Polk Smith,

exhibition catalogue, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshaften am Rhein, and Musée Grenoble, 1989, p. 105.

4 Arthur Wesley Dow, Composition; A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers, seventh

edition, revised, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1913, p. 53.

5 “A Conversation between Konstanze Chrüwell-Doertenbach and Leon Polk Smith,” p.105.

6 Ibid.

7 “The Paintings of Leon Polk Smith. A Conversation between Leon Polk Smith and d’Arcy Hayman,” in Leon Polk Smith im Arithmeum,

exhibition catalogue, Arithmeum im Forschungsinstitute für diskrete Mathematik, University of Bonn, Germany, 2001, p. 19.

8 Brooke Kamin Rapaport, “An Interview with Leon Polk Smith,” in Leon Polk Smith: American Painter, 1996, exhibition

catalogue, Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, p. 23.

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