This drawing of Smith’s – one of a number dated in mid-April 1961, other examples of which are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art – exemplifies an important aspect of his working method, designing many of his works before they were fabricated. His relationship to the final object was therefore often mediated through representation. This 1961 ink drawing on paper in fact predates most of his large-scale steel sculptures, which were first produced beginning in 1962. During this period Smith was simultaneously working as an architect (he had studied with Frank Lloyd Wright) and developing the geometric forms that would become his sculptural vocabulary, including the tetrahedron, the cube, all forms derived from closely-packed geometry. It was his friend and admirer Michael Fried’s view that Smith’s work represented the limit of Modernist sculpture before Minimalism’s “theater” took over. Whatever the truth of that statement, it happened that both Smith and Aardt’s founder were born and raised in South Orange, New Jersey, where the latter’s best friend lived across the street from Smith. There among the other modest and admittedly uninspired homes of that neighborhood was one whose yard was increasingly populated by Smith with massive plywood mockups of what were later cast as bronze cubes, tetrahedrons, and other brilliantly designed and fabricated geometries. At the time (this is the mid-60’s), the models were a source of intrigue and admiration to some, but a neighborhood nuisance to others, yet as Smith’s stature grew so did his hometown’s appreciation, such that this little village now boasts a monumental black steel version of his iconic sculpture TAU, centrally installed in its main park where, the town informs the public, “it is viewable at all times and at no cost.”
