The Phillips Collection was recently given a David Smith sculpture, Bouquet of Concaves, and a gestural egg-ink drawing (both 1959). The lateral steel assemblage of irregular metal concave and convex shapes, set atop a slender pole, contrasts with the densely drawn web of staccato black strokes on white paper. Their differences reflect essential aspects of Smith’s yin-yang creative forces, poles vital to understanding the scope of his ambition and achievement. From these seeds, Susan Behrends Frank developed a small but richly textured exhibition using concave and convex forms as visual glue to relate diverse two- and three-dimensional works from around 1960, including five additional sculptures, works on paper, paintings, and photographs. This exhibition and its accompanying catalogue, the first to focus on Smith’s work in Washington, DC, for twenty-five years, hinges on his evolution from multipart linear, expressionist works to a more planar style.

The exhibition was tightly installed in four galleries, including one that easily was overlooked, and included some beautiful and rarely seen works, such as a small orange-and–green, hatched oil painting on Masonite (1956). Judicious object choices and carefully considered installation overcame much of the spatial limitations.

The first gallery featured the masterwork Tanktotem IV (1953), a quirky, over-life-size figure that Smith assembled by incorporating industrially fabricated boiler tank tops, open tubes of steel, and an elongated constructed polygon. He used a circular sander to clear rust off the tank tops and, for the first time, left the incised drawn gestures on the inside of the concave forms, presaging his dynamic reflective steel works five years later.

A large spray painting, White Egg with Pink (1958), and two beautiful smaller, more cosmic sprays (1962) shared this gallery. This new means of image making evolved after the aerosol spray can was invented. Beginning in 1957, Smith placed bits of metal and other items on a flat surface and sprayed over them with a can of aerosol paint. When he removed the items, the ghostly negative forms had a remarkable presence, much like a photogram or a child’s sun-print. Their proximity to Tanktotem IV here announced the fluid dialogue in Smith’s work between two- and three-dimensions, and positive and negative form.

The second and third galleries were anchored by the Concaves—Bouquet of Concaves I and II, and Black Concaves (1960), shown together for the first time. The horizontal format of the sculptures was echoed in several drawings on the gallery wall, but narrow vertical paintings from this period were included as well. The selection enabled visitors to gain a sense as to how Smith worked his way artistically through the implications of a formal problem, like the theme and variation of a musical fugue.

Bouquet of Concaves consists of cut metal tubes and bits of steel of various lengths. The rough-edged curved steel elements seem pinched and welded together in an uneven horizontal format, symmetrically disposed around a raised central pole, like a seesaw. The overall format feels animated, as it cascades from the taller vertical toward its opposite horizontal. This abstract steel arrangement could be trees in the forest or musical notes on a staff. While it clearly does not represent a literal bouquet, its horizontal massing may have inspired Smith to think of it poetically as an organic gathering of potentially unwieldy floral stems. The attached irregular metal scrap (to the left of the central pole) mimics the shapes and density of his contemporary thickly brushed, abstract egg-ink drawings—or is it vice versa? The truncated cross sections of hollow steel pipes, which served as connectors in Tanktotem IV, are appropriated building blocks of the later Concaves, which push beyond representation to abstraction; they are pulled back from the precipice only by Smith’s evocative title: Bouquet.

The exhibition’s scope was enriched and expanded with Smith’s own photographs, some of which presented his sculptures in new and unfamiliar ways; they also enabled Frank to allude to much larger work, like Zig III (1961), that could not be included in this modest exhibition. A black-and-white annotated photograph of Bouquet of Concaves from the special Arts magazine issue dedicated to Smith’s work in 1960 described his working process. The metal sculpture parts were initially placed flat on the whitewashed studio floor (like a Jackson Pollock painting) before being raised vertically. They were ordered and reordered until Smith felt they had “cured into the whole.” (Smith’s use of the term “cured” reinforces his intuitive, organic attitude toward making art, one that takes time and was completed with his physical intervention.) The transformation from two to three dimensions is a pivotal aspect of the work. The exhibition made it clear that ambiguous form and content is embedded in the Bouquet of Concaves structure.

Raven V (1959) was an interesting addition to the mix. Its elevated horizontal format is similar to the contemporaneous Bouquet of Concaves, and its agglomeration of small metal pieces also shares a sensibility with the previously cited 1959 egg-ink drawing. Raven V is an example of works that incorporate simultaneously convex and concave boiler tank top elements, but were not included in Smith’s designated Tanktotem group. The overall format of a horizontal sculpture set atop a tall slender pole is similar to the Bouquet of Concaves, but it is ultimately a more narrative piece, with one of its sides representing two birds shot out of the sky.

Bouquet of Concaves was enriched at the Phillips by the company of the more compact, asymmetrical Bouquet of Concaves II and Black Concaves. Smith created the rustic patina of both Bouquet of Concaves and Raven V by applying layers of paint and acids to accelerate the weathered surfaces. However, he used black paint in Bouquet of Concaves II to unify its separate elements, slashing a vibrant vertical line onto each side of the work, enlivening the monochromatic field. Black Concaves is painted in a strikingly different manner on each face: its front suggests a nineteenth-century Constable painting of clouds, while its back is a more restrained abstraction, reminiscent of a Barnett Newman painting. Is this a painted sculpture or a sculptural painting? Why did Smith choose to use sculpture as a canvas, intentionally giving himself the difficult task of painting on uneven, visually fragmented surfaces? Building on the tradition of double-sided paintings, he created a new experience, a double-sided sculpture. This modest work shows how Smith continued to use painting to challenge and push the boundaries of sculpture.

The stylistic development in the single year separating the two Bouquet of Concaves sculptures illuminates Smith’s turn around 1960 to more simplified, clearly delineated forms. The installation at the Phillips argued implicitly that this development is explained by looking only at his own work. While the exhibition enriched an understanding of Smith’s career at a critical junction and of its internal trajectory, perhaps the time is right to now reassess his mature work in its broader artistic and cultural context.

Smith’s exploration of convex and concave forms began with the boiler tank tops, but did not end there. This show made it clear that this unusual passion pervaded his work, extending far beyond the better-known series, even into cast bronze assemblages, like the Auburn Queen (1959), the surprise of this exhibition positioned as a counterpoint to Tanktotem IV. The relatively feminized bronze assemblage has a central spine, onto which Smith welded cast elements that are simultaneously convex and concave, like the boiler tops. The objects themselves differ, but the formal concerns remain constant.

Like the exhibition itself, the accompanying catalogue is well focused and uses the material at hand to expand an understanding of Smith’s work. Frank leads with a lucid and useful introduction. She focuses on Smith’s “intuitive and improvisational” approach to art making at mid-century, explaining his unique ability to join hard metal parts into fluid, organic “unities.” Sarah Hamill discusses Smith’s photographs of his sculpture and places them in a broad historical context, while Peter Stevens probes the meaning of Smith’s chosen working methods.

Despite presenting a limited group of work, the Phillips exhibition did an excellent job of highlighting important aspects of Smith’s development. Paintings did not always measure up to the sculpture, but they are clearly integral and vital to any study of Smith’s oeuvre. Frank not only contextualized new acquisitions, but also gathered a group of works often overlooked and previously seldom studied. The focus of scholars has been primarily on Smith’s major series and has consequently missed the range of his ambition and achievement, as well as the depth of his commitment to exploring three-dimensional form. His work is well served by creating new constellations, which highlight new stars and galaxies in Smith’s universe.