David Smith's Writings and Lectures Collected in New French Publication

Éditions des Beaux-arts de Paris has published 'David Smith, Ecrits et discours', a collection of the American sculptor's writings, lectures, and interviews spanning thirty years. The volume reveals Smith's complex relationship with language, which he considered a limitation to thought yet employed extensively. Key themes include tradition, nature, the conflict between architecture and sculpture, the primacy of vision, and the importance of drawing. The book offers candid insights into the daily challenges of a sculptor: financial problems, material constraints, and peripheral elements that influence creation, such as external distractions, sexual desires, hunger, and fears. Smith's statements challenge modernist myths, asserting that nothing is truly abstract and that artists must work from their existence. The collection includes an interview with David Sylvester.