Minimal art with maximum impact

Interview, Sept, 1998 by Brooks Adams

In the '50s, while living in Germany, he painted the Louisenberg series of buoyant circular grids that anticipated the work of the minimalists by a decade. in the '60s his daughters, Kiki, Seton, and Beatrice, along with their school friends, helped dad make tetrahedral modules for his environmental sculpture Bat Cave; both Kiki and Seton have since become commanding '90s artists.

(Seton Smith's work will be shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art in November.) These are among the revelations of Smith's first-ever retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City (through September 22), which runs concurrently with an exhibition of his drawings at the Seagram Gallery (375 Park Avenue; through September 30). Also, in MOMA's garden and scattered around midtown is a show, cosponsored by the Public Art Fund, of large sculptures - including Light Up! (1971), a yellow painted steel behemoth that, in its current position in front of the Seagram Building, suggests an explosion of daffodils.