PALM SPRINGS — Howard Smith, who handed away in 2021 at age 92, was an African-American artist, designer, and instructor, born in New Jersey and educated on the Philadelphia Academy of Tremendous Arts. In 1962, he was invited by a buddy to take part in Younger America Presents, a cultural competition in Helsinki, publicly sponsored by the US however secretly funded by the CIA. Smith, who felt marginalized by the mainstream White artwork world and misplaced with the Black artwork world in the US, discovered an viewers and a house in post-Chilly Warfare Finland, the place he was one of many solely Black artists. Over the following 50 years, Smith produced a powerful vary of work, sculptures, textiles, ceramics, and mixed-media assemblages. He received the Finnish State Design Prize in 2001, and in 2003, he was acknowledged as a nationwide treasure when he was awarded an artist’s pension from the Finnish state. Regardless of his fame within the European nation, nevertheless, Smith has remained nearly unknown within the States. The Artwork and Design of Howard Smith on the Palm Springs Artwork Museum is the primary retrospective of Smith’s works in his dwelling nation.
The retrospective is beguiling as a result of it blurs the distinctions between artwork, design, and décor. I used to be struck by the tensions between Smith’s minimal black and white works, the just about wall-sized floral textiles, and a few smaller however blockier items, harking back to second-wave Colour subject artists like Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Helen Frankenthaler. The lineup of the exhibition writ giant appears like a weird mashup of Joan Miró, Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell, and William Baziotes.
Howard Smith, “Black Angel” (1970), screenprint on paper
Smith’s surfaces are much less energetic and fewer technically expert than these, however extra playful. It’s Smith’s playfulness (but in addition his talent) that permits him to supply huge textiles that one way or the other transcend design to flirt with what we’d name “art.” Among the extra memorable items on view straddle the seemingly paradoxical world of design and politics, similar to “Untitled” from 1985. Right here, the massive graphic patterns and expressive kinds that got here to embody Finnish design morph into serpentine facial particulars. The lengthy, slender necks and elongated heads evoke African sculptural traditions like Dan Masks and even the Clayman Fang Head. Smith’s illustration of Blackness inside an overwhelmingly White Scandinavian artwork world is a profound occasion of simultaneous engagement and resistance.
Howard Smith, “Untitled” (1985), paper lower on handmade paper (picture courtesy Palm Springs Artwork Museum)
Extra profitable is “Black Angel” (1970), a beautiful display screen print on paper that marries Smith’s signature Scandinavian sense of design with the Japanese notion of ma — the harmonious use of damaging area. I like the proportionality of the angel with its block backside and winged torso, suggesting each groundedness and flight. The skinny pink vertical line, barely diagonal, connects the interior vitality of the angel with the pink crown or pink dome or pink heaven above. The starkness of the angel connotes energy, energy. This piece does comparable cultural work to “America?” however doesn’t get misplaced within the rhetoric of figuration and explication, as an alternative hitting the candy spot between artwork, design, and cultural commentary. The work concurrently talks to American Summary Expressionism, Scandinavian Design, and Japanese minimalism, however however stays totally Smith.
Smith’s astonishingly broad physique of labor made me rethink the slightly arbitrary distinctions between the assorted tiers of aesthetic manufacturing. It will likely be fascinating to see if this exhibition and the beneficiant bilingual exhibition catalog will alter Smith’s fame on this nation. I think — and hope — they are going to.
Howard Smith, “Yellow Iris 4 X” (1978), industrial screenprint (picture by and courtesy RJ Sánchez/Solstream Studios)
Set up view of The Artwork and Design of Howard Smith
The Artwork and Design of Howard Smith continues at Palm Springs Artwork Museum (101 North Museum Drive, Palm Springs, California) by February 23, 2026. The exhibition was co-organized by the Espoo Museum of Trendy Artwork in Finland, and curated by Steven Wolf.
