About the Artwork
Tony Smith came to sculpture from architecture and design. In about 1960 he turned his professional attention to organically derived, and then to crystalline and modular, three-dimensional forms. A friend of the Abstract Expressionists, and a teacher who impressed students by correlating the experience of art and sculpture with that of life and the environment, Smith saw his career take off late, almost contemporaneously with that of minimalists Donald Judd and Carl Andre.
Inspiration for “Gracehoper” goes back to 1963, a reflection on the tetrahedrons and octahedrons Smith had encountered in crystallography. One of his most complex sculptures, it took eight years for him to realize it on the intended scale. The six separately fabricated steel units were assembled on the museum’s north lawn in 1972. The title, a pun on the grasshopper it resembles, derives from the mythical beast of the same name in James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake.”
Gracehoper
1961
Tony Smith
1912 - 1980
American
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Steel and paint
Overall: 23 × 22 × 46 feet (7 m 1 cm × 6 m 70.6 cm × 14 m 2.1 cm)
Sculpture
Contemporary Art after 1950
Founders Society Purchase with funds from W. Hawkins Ferry and Mr. and Mrs. Walter Buhl Ford II Fund, Eleanor Clay Ford Fund, Marie and Alex Manoogian Fund and members of the Friends of Modern Art
72.436
Non-commercial all standard museum
Markings
Signed, plaque inside of sculpture: Tony Smith
Dated on plaque inside of sculpture: 1961 [Note: Smith prefered to date his work according to date of concept rather than fabrication.]
Provenance
1972-present, purchase, commissioned from the artist by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)For more information on provenance, please visit:
Provenance pageExhibition History
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The exhibition history of a number of objects in our collection only begins after their acquisition by the museum, and may reflect an incomplete record.
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Bulletin of the DIA 50, no. 2 (1971): pp. 18-22 (cover ill.).
Bulletin of the DIA 52, no. 1 (1973): pp. 1, 23, 72 (ill.).
Green, Eleanor. "The Morphology of Tony Smith's Work." Artforum (April 1974): 54-59 (ill.).
Ocvirk, O.G.,et al. Art Fundamentals: Theory and Practice. Dubuque, 1975, fig. 224 and back cover.
Rose, Barbara. American Art since 1900. New York, 1975, p. 278, fig. II-54.
Armstrong, Tom, et al. 200 Years of American Sculpture. Boston, 1976, fig. 321, p. 220, (ill.).
100 Masterworks from the Detroit Institute of Arts. New York, 1985, pp. 232, 233 (ill.).
Tony Smith: Selected Sculptures 1961-1973, Part I. New York, 1985, (ill.).
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Credit Line for Reproduction
© Tony Smith Estate/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Tony Smith, Gracehoper, 1961, steel and paint. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase with funds from W. Hawkins Ferry and Mr. and Mrs. Walter Buhl Ford II Fund, et al., 72.436.
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