WP3: Final Draft

Authors Note:

Although taking (rather given) option 2 to write a letter instead of writing a traditional essay analyzing the rhetorical elements of the sculpture, I still maintained a degree of analysis as my approach to the letter, discussing the argument and its support with the sculpture. The form is obviously different, given a different tone to fit a letter over a formal paper. A notable change is in that of grammar and structure, intentionally created small mistakes to make it read more poetic or artful than a straight description.

In terms of analyzing Superstructure on 4, it was much closer to the analysis of the photograph than of the comic relating to the arguments formation. Rather than starting with a fairly clear argument I relied on the elements to lead the arguments discovery which was yet revealed as its current state only upon the initial drafts of writing, a naturally fitting conclusion.

I had originally chosen this sculpture partly because it "spoke to me", but mostly because my (Arch) perceptual drawing class had just started a positive-negative drawing for which I was in search of a subject, the forms of Superstructure on 4 working nicely for it. Indeed the subject matter worked out making two successful pos-neg drawings. Choosing the sculpture to write a letter to also panned out, not requiring/presenting significant resistance, although it did take a long contemplation. My positive-negative analysis also revealed a couple things more clearly as noted in the letter.

The main changes made from first draft to final were a couple spots expanding on my concepts, such as the organic assembly arising from the geometric components. I didn't take any major changes of direction, especially because with only one review there was less time for change as it was.

Statement of Purpose

First Draft

Dear Superstructure on 4,

You are full of coherent conflictions, dichotomies several as you sit outside here among brothers and sisters. Although you appear simple at glance, you play as sculpture upon investigation, revealing new levels of thought, and I would discuss such.

First and most present is the burnishing of your surfaces. Although all of your structure is constructed geometrically, your stainless steel faces show the reflecting brushes of a free hand, nigh upon chaos. Your form upon glance is that of geometric, industrial, constructed origin. Your straight lines, right angles, even your ellipses and hexadecagon, your stainless steel materiality, your cleanly welded connections and planar restrictions suggest not a free amalgamation but strictly logical assembly, thought-out fabrication.

The surface patterns instead at once dematerialize your surfaces, conflicting your form simple, but fit so naturally, not seeming out of place. Certainly, in the suns of bright day the burnishing begins to override your physical voluminous shape. Beyond the play of shapes together, the brush makes each surface its own possible focus point drawing the eye for only its own contemplation. With far cry from geometric industrial construction, what do you tell us with this apparent conflict of themes?

Next comes from your still geometric assemblage, the totemic presence that many of Smith's other works carried. Your shape in this regard has been described as planar appendages jutting from a boxy torso upon four stilt-like legs. And although other may attribute this organic flow to other, but still organic, forms, your precedence and my freedom of analysis yet shows man in your form. As seen and noted, your form simple is constructed of geometry, each piece a panel of straight depth and each panel simple shape. The most free-form of your components is yet a foci-bound ellipse.

Although irrefutably reduced and abstracted to near non-objectivism your stance portrays still of the organic. I believe it comes from the organic assembly, more rather the angular progression of those planar appendages, flowing in an arc over your tilted head, showing not many arms but a movement or form of just two. Your geometric construction betrays again its origin to display free-form expression, leaving the nature of its simple abstracted components to create life.

Even your name gives duality to your existence. Superstructure on 4. Where Superstructure with 4 or even Superstructure 4 would combine your stance as one, your title makes us break your shape in two. Cut at the top of your stilt-like legs, the superstructure lies on top, based by your boxy torso with planar appendages attached, resting on top of the separated 4 that serve as a stand for the rest to sit upon. No longer can you be looked at as one geometrically flowing stance but now as one form resting upon an equally abstracted pedestal.

Indeed this separation emphasizes this third dichotomy in your being. Although only forming a third of your height, your superstructure, your extraordinary construction, contains two thirds of your elements and exponentially more interplaying complexity. The two-thirds tall legs are in fact pressed to such simplicity as to further repeat this difference. First and especially noted in my positive-negative analysis of your form, your legs seem much too straight and narrow to be true to your physical form. I checked several times of my measurements and my drawing before I could convince myself that the proportions were true to your life. Thankfully for form and possibly stability, your legs are tied by this ellipse. Not only does this single piece tie and attach your legs together, but it serves as a much needed break from the straight and narrow of your stilt-like legs. Even when it seems out of place in first glance, as if fallen from the superstructure above, this piece as the rest seems all so natural when placed in a negative-positive eye.

So what do your dichotomies explain, do your conflictions portray, your differences exclaim? I know not specifically and I think not that it should be limited specifically in argument. Instead it talks to the simple appearance, existence, possibility of such apparent contradictions. Instead of contradicting they act more as colors, the opposites not being repulsive together but in fact, and they are called such, complementary. For just as complementary colors serve well together and are used as a simple implementations of color to create interest and cohesion, not confusion and disparity, your opposing combinations combine smoothly so to create that which is greater than the sum of its parts. But what for these oppositions exist? What you ask of art, of me, of us, is to look for such plays of conflict and hidden dichotomies as we travel the day, to seek revel and understanding in these acknowledgements, and to leave our own distinctive complements as well.

WP3: First Draft

Dear Superstructure on 4,

You are full of coherent conflictions, dichotomies several as you sit outside here among brothers and sisters. Although you appear simple at glance, you play as sculpture upon investigation, revealing new levels of thought. I would discuss such.

First and most present is the burnishing of your surfaces. Although all of your structure is constructed geometrically, your stainless steel faces show the reflecting brushes of a free hand, nigh upon chaos. Your form upon glance is that of geometric, industrial, constructed origin. Your straight lines, right angles, even your ellipses and hexadecagon, your stainless steel materiality, your cleanly welded connections and planar restrictions suggest not a free amalgamation but strictly logical assembly, thought-out fabrication.

The surface patterns instead at once dematerialize your surfaces, conflicting your form simple, but fit so naturally, not seeming out of place. Certainly, in the suns of bright day the burnishing begins to override your physical voluminous shape. Beyond the play of shapes together, the brushed makes each surface its own possible focus point drawing the eye for only its own contemplation. With far cry from geometric industrial construction, what do you tell us with this apparent conflict of themes?

Next comes from your still geometric assemblage the totemic presence that many of Smith's other works carried. Your shape in this regard has been described as planar appendages jutting from a boxy torso upon four stilt-like legs. And although other may attribute this organic flow to other, but still organic, forms, your precedence and may freedom of analysis yet shows man in your form. Although irrefutably reduced and abstracted to near non-objectivism your stance portrays still of the organic. I believe it comes from the angular progression of those planar appendages, flowing in an arc over your tilted head, showing not many arms but a movement or form of just two. Your geometric construction betrays again its origin to display free-form expression.

Even your name gives duality to your existence. Superstructure on 4. Where Superstructure with 4 or even Superstructure 4 would combine your stand as one, your title makes us break your shape to two. Cut at the top of your stilt-like legs, the superstructure lies on top, based by the boxy torso with planar appendages attached, resting on top of the separated 4 that serve as a stand for the rest to sit upon. No longer can you be looked at as one geometrically flowing stance but now as one form resting upon an equally abstracted pedestal.

Indeed this separation emphasizes your this third dichotomy in your being. Although only forming a third of your height, your superstructure, your extraordinary construction, contains two thirds of your elements and exponentially more interplaying complexity. The two-thirds tall legs are in face pressed to such simplicity as to further repeat this difference. First and especially noted in my positive-negative analysis of your form, your legs seem much too straight and narrow to be true to your physical form. I checked several times of my measurements and my drawing before I could convince myself that the proportions were true to your life. Thankfully for form and possibly stability, your legs a tied by this ellipse. Not only does this single piece tie and attach your legs together, but is serves as a much needed break from the straight and narrow of your stilt-like legs. Even when it seems out of place in first glance, as if fallen from the superstructure above, this piece as the rest seems all so natural when placed in a negative-positive eye.

So what do these dichotomies explain, do these conflictions portray, these differences exclaim? I know not specifically and I think not should it be limited specifically in argument. Instead it talks to the simple appearance, existence, possibility of such apparent contradictions. Instead of contradicting they act more as colors, the opposites not being repulsive together but in fact, and they are called such, complementary (colors) they serve well together and are used as one of the most simple implementations of colors to create interest and cohesion, not confusion and disparity. What Superstructure on 4 asks of art, of me, of us, is to look for such plays of conflict and hidden dichotomies as we travel the day, to seek revel and understanding in these acknowledgements, and to leave our own distinctive complements as well.

WP3: Statement of Purpose

My meta-purpose of writing this letter is to earn a good grade in my class and learn in the process. My purposes within writing the letter will be to include "descriptive observations about the sculpture, reflections, meditations, and insights that the aforementioned observations stimulate, and filter both the observations and reflections through a specific aesthetic-conceptual paradigm." This letter is to be read aloud for its final presentation.

My primary audience for this presentation will be the sculpture Superstructure on 4, to whom the letter will be addressed. Inanimate objects are not typical audiences to communication. In this case, Superstructure on 4 will serve as a port to communicate to art in the complete sense including past and future processes and implementations of particular techniques and concepts.

My first secondary audience will be my professor for whom I will be writing and presenting this letter for the goal of receiving a good grade in my class which has prescribed it writing. For this audience I will try to implement discussions of the techniques and themes that have been talked about in general and in specific regards to my chosen sculpture.

My next secondary audience will be my class who will all witness my verbal presentation of my letter to my sculpture. One of them in particular will read my a draft of my letter in a digital context as a peer-review. For this audience I will try not to be unintentionally embarrassing.

My final secondary audience contains all who may happen upon my letter or its presentation. Like the past two writing projects, this one will remain online, posted on my public blog for any and all to read. The verbal presentation also creates for a small group a much higher probability to its exposure whether just noticing or, less likely, actively paying attention although in regards to my presentation this will still be a random selection. For this audience I will try to make my letter and presentation more universally relatable (this will be even easier than the last two projects which had a heavier reliance on a particular wording).

The primary context of my letter will be its final presentation, being read aloud by myself outdoors in front of my selected sculpture outside the Sheldon. For this I will practice at least a little reading my letter aloud making sure everything sounds right when verbalized and further familiarizing myself with its content for more fluid presentation. My letter will have a secondary context of being posted on my blog where it can be viewed by anyone. For this context, additional hyperlinks and multimedia elements will be included that would be superfluous in the verbal presentation.

WP3: Prewrite 4

Superstructure on 4 was created by David Smith (1906-1965) in 1960. Working as a welder and a riveter gave him the metal working experience that would play an important role in his future of welded sculpture that he would pioneer in the United States. After starting his constructions in the early 1930's, Smith took a break during the second world war to work in a defense plant welding tanks and locomotives.

Smith received a background cubism, surrealism, and constructivism from several influential teachers, combining elements of biomorphic figuration and geometric abstraction. Although he defied the traditions of vertical, monolithic sculpture following World War II, working in open-ended horizontal formats, his work had returned to the vertical by the creation of Superstructure on 4. We worked on several sculptural series in the 1950's including works that incorporated scavenged metal parts from old farm machinery and other metal components. In the latter part of the 50's he worked on the series "Setinels", many of which were strongly anthropomorphic and resembled primitive totems recreated in industrial materials.

Superstructure on 4 also follows this, suggesting a totemic personage with its boxy torso and planar appendages sitting atop its 4 stilt-like legs. It is partially a transitional piece as it also contain elements of his later more geometric series "Cubis". Superstructure on 4 was meant to be situated outside; Smith placed it out in his sculpture field to contemplate it through the year. Part of this intentionality comes from the sun's reflections on the swirling patterns on the burnished surfaces to dematerialize the forms.

WP3: Prewrite 3

The piece of artwork, Superstructure on 4, is made of stainless steel. Not painted, the metalic sheen of the material gives the work a silvery appearance. Futhermore, visible only by reflected light (or very close inspection), the metal''s surface is brushed. The sunlight's reflections on Superstructure reveal the turbulant and apparently chaotic pattern which breaks from the very constructed and geometric sense of the works primary structure. Viewed with the sun to the sculpture's back, these patterns are very difficult to see. Viewed with the sun reflecting on it however, these patterns are very difficult to not see, especially on the larger planes of the box and "circles" atop it. Furthermore, the effect increasing with distance, the highlighting patterns appear to physically change the shapes of the surface, bending and rippling them, or even leave them more ambiguously as positive space.

Apart from the brushed surface, the object is ineed very constructed. All the elements consist of flat planes, the curved edges of the "circular" pieces being the most free-form aspect found. The pieces are welded together with enough for stability but because it is so minimal and of the same color, the welding goes largely unnoticed and was not intended as a focus of the work as some emphasizing the process might draw attention to. This constuction gives the work very high "craft", not appearing rough as some other pieces of modern art do (like Birth of Venus does intentionally).

The context of the work is on the small, south-facing, raised jut, outside, in the sculpture garden surrounding the Sheldon, on the UNL campus, in Lincoln. Even the Sheldon is free but being an outside sculpture, the works audience includes every passing person who happens to glance in its direction, although the majority of such an audience will be paying it little attention let alone giving it any depth of analysis. Through the context of being in a sculpture garden its purpose is that of sculpture and not simply for decoration as some works fall to.