Richard Smith Artworks 1956-2016

"Richard Smith has a passionate following amongst a small number of people. He seems to be a very well-kept secret. This is the first substantial publication on him, as until now there have only been small exhibition catalogues or inclusion in several broader surveys of painting to mark him out. And yet there’s a great body of artwork, which isn’t particularly well known, and possibly under-appreciated even where he is known. His work is pivotal for understanding British Modernist painting. There was in particular a show at the Barbican Centre about the art of the 1960s which set the stage for the rediscovery of Smith’s early work—big, brightly coloured paintings, three-dimensional, cigarette packet-based, shaped canvases. But, you know, there’s a whole series of equally groundbreaking works that followed which haven’t been revisited and which deserve to be. He had something of a revival in the 1990s, but still has not had his due considering the moment in which he worked, his circle of contemporaries and the prism that his work represents for the abiding concerns of painting in his day. “Richard Smith has a passionate following amongst a small number of people. He seems to be a very well kept secret” No one had previously looked at Smith’s career in its entirety. I think there’s a growing sense in looking back at this period in British painting that there isn’t a single modernist trajectory. Someone like Smith can be understood as a painter who was testing the boundaries of painting. His work has a kind of renewed relevance, not to mention an inherent beauty and power. He deserved revisiting from a social-historical perspective too, because he comes just before David Hockney and Co., but just after artists whose careers were basically delayed and defined by the war. In this way I believe he’s crucial to understanding Modernism in Britain. Smith is an artistic figure between London and New York in a historical moment when there were barely any regular flights. In the mid-1950s these two cities were very far apart. We forget this nowadays. That transatlantic cultural traffic that we are now so familiar with was very muted in Smith’s day. He was truly a pioneer importing cultural influences into Britain at a time when it was less than obvious. In these ways, I think he’s a really instrumental figure in the evolution of North Atlantic art in the 20th century. His painting incorporates a lot of the iconography of American consumerist culture. It’s surprising to see that reinterpreted for a British audience. Pop art may appear superficial on the surface, but in drawing on the genre Smith is actually dealing with some quite serious arty questions, fundamental questions such as ‘What is art?’ and ‘What is painting?’. He did so, however, wanting to play with subject matter that was relevant to him, and that subject matter for him was pop music, pop cultural references, advertising, and whatever. Absolutely. Not that he wasn’t interested in sculpture, but he was insistent that he was first and foremost a painter. There was one point where he made a series of works called ‘Sphinx’, which started off against the wall the way paintings might typically be exhibited. They were then projected from the gallery wall much more than they were hanging on it. These paintings became freestanding at that point. With this transformation of the two-dimensional plane into three dimensions, what he’s doing is asking how far can you stretch painting, if you’ll excuse the pun. How far can you stretch canvas without it becoming something other than a painting? The great challenge for painting in a digital age is what is to become of the uniquely handmade, physical sensory object that is an artwork. Are digital reproduction and communication capable of creating an artefact? An aesthetic experience comparable to analog ways of making art? Hockney is constantly engaging with this dilemma. In a way, his interests allow him to because he’s interested in the language of images. They don’t need to be painted for him to do that. I believe painting will persist, as there’s a particularity about the physical act of painting that is unlike writing; it is a means of communication that’s unique."