Accession Number
1974/2.51

Title
Spitball

Artist(s)
Tony Smith

Object Creation Date
designed 1961; created 1970

Medium & Support
granite

Dimensions
12 3/16 in. x 14 3/8 in. x 13 11/16 in. ( 31 cm x 36.5 cm x 34.8 cm )

Credit Line
Gift of W. Hawkins Ferry

Label copy
March 28, 2009
Tony Smith was an established architect when a serious car accident in 1961 obliged him to change professions. His Minimalist sculptural forms were modeled from the built environment and geometries found in nature—molecular and crystalline structures, for example—and derived from plans drawn on flat pages. Thus, it was more accurately a new art form of flat surfaces in space than sculpture. The artist himself avoided the term “sculpture,” preferring to call his works “presences” and noting that, “they just exist. They are just present.”
The titles of his works came from a range of sources, and often had double meanings. The “spitball” was a controversial type of pitch that was headline news in professional baseball in 1967. It was a fast knuckle ball with little or no spin, and so called because the pitcher would spit on the ball before throwing it to further reduce spin. This is an ironic title for for a work composed of angular turns or “spins” in space.

Subject matter
Tony Smith's abstract sculpture resonates between the mathematical and the organic, the material and the spiritual. It also shows some of the architectural sense that came from his early career as an architect. Solid and powerful, the piece nevertheless exhibits a kind of movement and flux as viewers move around it.

Physical Description
A black granite abstract sculpute. Two "legs" rise up toward one another to meet at a point, making a basic triangle shape. At the bottom of the "legs," two horizontal "feet" protrude away from the object's center and end in four-sided points.

Primary Object Classification
Sculpture

Primary Object Type
abstract sculpture

Collection Area
Modern and Contemporary

Rights
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Keywords
Abstract (fine arts style)
Minimal
abstraction
geometric abstraction
modern and contemporary art
sculpture (visual works)
stone (worked rock)