{"id":18499,"date":"2018-04-04T19:53:47","date_gmt":"2018-04-05T00:53:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.conservators-converse.org\/?p=18499"},"modified":"2018-04-04T19:53:47","modified_gmt":"2018-04-05T00:53:47","slug":"it-took-about-thirty-years-for-smith-to-get-his-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/2018\/04\/04\/it-took-about-thirty-years-for-smith-to-get-his-law\/","title":{"rendered":"It took about thirty years for Smith to get his law"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a review of the exhibit \u201cLike Life: Sculpture, Color and the Body\u201d at the Met Breuer, published  in the April 2, 2018 issue of  The New Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl notes that  the ideal of a monochrome surface  for sculpture persisted well into modern times and mentions that in the 1960s Clement Greenberg in his capacity as executor of the estate of David Smith had paint removed from a number of Smith\u2019s sculptures. Until reading this, I had been embarrassingly ignorant of Greenberg\u2019s actions. However, I found  article by Hilton Kramer in the September 13, 1974 issue of The New York Times (\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1974\/09\/13\/archives\/altering-of-smith-work-stirs-dispute-stripped-of-paint.html\">Altering of Smith Work Stirs Dispute<\/a>\u201d ) in which Rosalind Krauss is quoted as writing that the trustees  had  allowed several of Smith\u2019s sculptures to be \u201cdeliberately stripped of paint\u2014sandblasted, allowed to rust, then glossily varnished\u201d  and that others had been \u201cleft outdoors, unprotected over the years; their surfaces are flaking off under the pressures of heat and cold, rain and sun.\u201d<br \/>\n A number of years before his death, Smith had complained about the removal of paint from one of his sculptures in letters to art journals  writing, \u201cThis willful work of vandalism causes me to deny this work and refuse any future sale to any of those connected with this vandalism. Possibly we should start an action for protective laws.\u201d It took about thirty years for Smith to get his law\u2014 the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a review of the exhibit \u201cLike Life: Sculpture, Color and the Body\u201d at the Met Breuer, published in the April 2, 2018 issue of The New Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl notes that the ideal of a monochrome surface for sculpture persisted well into modern times and mentions that in the 1960s Clement Greenberg in his &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/2018\/04\/04\/it-took-about-thirty-years-for-smith-to-get-his-law\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;It took about thirty years for Smith to get his law&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}