David Smith: The formative years : sculptures and drawings from the 1930s and 1940s

TO an extent not rivaled by any other artist, David Smith bears a sacred name in the American art of our century. Even in the art of the American past, only Thomas Eakins enjoys a comparable immunity from hostile comment. On moral, as much as on esthetic grounds, the work of Smith, like the work of Eakins, is believed to have inaugurated a new level of American awareness, and one of which posterity is proud. This is a difficult state of affairs to sustain. It is possible to think, for instance, that there is in Smith's late ''Cubi'' series an element of simpleminded semaphoring. Here and there an antic, macho element in the work does not wear well. The all-American image that Smith projected so well and so truly does not exclude inspired borrowings from Picasso, from Julio Gonzales, from Giacometti and from Miro. But when we are faced with an exhibition of Smith - more especially, with one that has been carefully thought through - we are captivated all over again by the thrusting intelligence, the depth and sureness of feeling and the fertility of invention.