Someone coined the phrase "there's no getting around it" for times like this. A six-foot black cube named Die dares anyone to face it, to play with it, to run away from it, or to call it art.
With a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art and around the city, there is no getting around Tony Smith's sculpture these days. I had literally a field day. If Die takes nerve and a sense of play, so does reclaiming a city, landfill by landfill, block by block.
New York artists have been doing it for decades, of course. They have turned abandoned factories and school houses into studios and the core of vibrant neighborhoods.
In place of junkyards, people now have parks and their place in the sun. This summer and fall, sculpture exhibitions show the new urban parks to best advantage. Along with gamesmanship, art also takes patience, desperation, and humility. Neighborhoods that artists have reclaimed soon give way to shops and housing that artists cannot afford. A die may sound like child's play, but museums and galleries make sculpture more of a risk every year.
Can art sustain a sense of play and community? How can artists themselves survive? As seen in his retrospective , Smith competed for massive commissions, for museums, campuses, private buildings, and public squares.
