Posted on Friday, July 22, 2005 - 3:20 pm:

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The Public Needs to Know
The Tau Is More Than a "Black Thing"
Lee Cohen

Elaina Royter's first impression of the big black sculpture adjacent to the Hunter West Building was not that much different from many students. "Wow," she said, referring to it as the "big black thing in the courtyard. I saw it from one angle and it looked like half of a house."

Some students congregating between classes in front of Hunter West often hide under the wings of the big black sculpture when it rains. Contrary to popular belief, "the black thing" is not a refuge for rainy day smokers nor a wall to lean on for those chatting or checking out potential dates between classes. The sculpture symbolizing the Greek letter Tau is one of the last sculptures erected by the late Hunter professor Tony Smith.

Smith built the Tau in 1965 using painted steel. The architect, painter, and sculptor used geometric figures in his designs. The Tau is a 14-foot structure comprised of one figure bounded by eight equilateral triangles on one side and four equilateral triangles on the other side. Smith taught at Hunter College from 1962 until 1974 and then returned in 1979. Smith died in 1980, but his legacy remains outside Hunter West. The College purchased the sculpture for $160,000.

Some students who've taken art history can actually identify it. Royter, of Bay Ridge, Brooklyny, is not the only one unaware of Smith's architectural styling. "I thought it was a seven," said Jennifer Amabile, 18, a freshman from Park Slope. "I thought it was part of the address." While Royter said that she finds it almost magnetic, Amabile said there should be a plaque on it or that the Tau be replaced with something living like a tree.

Her friend, Lindsay Camp, 18, said, "It's an architectural mishap. It's so boxy and big, and it doesn't match," said Camp. She said that something representative of Hunter, like a statue of Thomas Hunter, or something with the names of special alumni or donators to the college.

Amabile was not the only student who spoke of adding life to the courtyard. Junior Robert Cleeve, an art major, said that there should be flowers on top. "It would bring it to life," says the 23-year-old Cleeve. If the sculpture was to be replaced with another work of art, Cleeve says he wants it to be inspiring. "If there was something really beautiful there, it might inspire students to read," he said.

Could another sculpture do justice to Tony Smith, who has had his work in museums around the world and across New York City? Camp said, "Something should be attributed to Tony Smith, acknowledging him."

The thousands of students who gather in front of it, gaze at it and touch it don't know that it was built by one of Hunter's most esteemed professors. Only Cleeve, the art major, of those interviewed for this article, knew the significance of this sculpture but everyone had something positive to say about it.

"It symbolizes something," said Royter.

"It's part of the ambience of Hunter," said Amabile.

"It kind of stands out ... gives me a sense of pride," Cleeve said,

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Posted on Friday, July 22, 2005 - 3:41 pm:

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This "gift" is like giving a door for a homeless person!

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This type fo art belongs in a park

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Posted on Friday, July 22, 2005 - 3:49 pm:

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It seems to me, that on this board at least, the majority of the citizens do not want this thing.

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Posted on Friday, July 22, 2005 - 5:06 pm:

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The genesis of Blue Poles attracted a good deal of attention following the publication of an article by Stanley P. Friedman in the New York Magazine in 1973, in which he reported that he had been told by Tony Smith, a close friend of Pollock, that Smith himself had initially painted on the canvas that subsequently became Blue Poles.3 Smith told Friedman that he visited Pollock early in 1952:

We were drinking. We decided to paint something together. I wanted to get him out of himself and into colour again. We spread out a large piece of Belgian linen. It must have taken an hour, because it was wrapped in a canvas sack, and inside, it was wrapped in a kind of wax paper.

Jackson started taking down paint. Tube after tube of cadmium red. Jackson said, 'I can't start a painting in red'. The tubes came in sets of three. He kept discarding them. And I thought, hell, we are getting away from what I'm trying to do. So I said I'd start. And by luck, the next tube was cadmium orange. It was the fifteenth tube so I squiggled it on. We had eighteen feet of canvas rolled out. And then I laid the wax paper over the squiggles because they were just lines, and I walked on the paper. I flattened the paint out, and then I took the waxed paper off. And Jackson said, 'So that's the way you do it. Here's how I do it,' end he took a pot of Duco that was black and threw the paint on. It turned out a sort of bilious green. And then we started to lay it on. We were drinking. The paint ended up a half-inch thick on the canvas. You can see it. We took off our shoes because we were walking on it. Jackson was using glass tubes filled with paint. They were basting tubes, with rubber bulbs on one end and about an eighth-of-an-inch opening. But he was gripping the bulbs so hard — because he was in this state — that they clogged. He would throw them down and they would break. So he broke them all.

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