Cubi XVII

David Smith

1963

Polished stainless steel

Dallas Museum of Art

“Cubi XVII” is one of a series of twenty-eight sculptures of this type that David Smith created from 1961 to 1965. Comprising an elegant jumble of simple geometric shapes set atop an elegant rectilinear column, “Cubi XVII” is at once precarious and refined. Smith proudly brought to his art the talents of the welder and the mechanic, readily evident not only in this piece's shiny, even luxuriant surface of brushed metal, but also in its engineering. Smith's juxtaposition of myriad burnished shapes creates a dynamic composition that becomes fully apparent only upon seeing it in the round: angles converge and split off as the viewer wa