Then and Now

It was 1980 and we were sitting in the waiting room of the New York Presbyterian Hospital. Jane Smith, Kiki Smith, her two sisters Seton and Bebe, my business partner Fred Muller and I, comforting each other and waiting for the inevitable outcome of the day. Tony Smith was dying. Kiki sat quietly working on a piece of paper, churning it between her fingers into a kind of origami, all through the day. The feel of paper, which would become part of the currency of her practice, was a comfort. I didn’t pay much attention to the object she was making. I couldn’t have imagined she was already an artist.

The Pace Gallery represented Tony Smith, and he was such an overpowering presence that I hardly noticed Kiki in those ear- ly years. Kiki’s job was making maquettes for Tony from his care- fully worked plans. Coincidentally, the maquettes were also made of paper. Paper would permeate her career. Her massive drawings may begin on one sheet of paper, until the lines come to the edge and require an additional sheet, then another, and another. The drawing, and the paper, are in an inseparable race as this patchwork paper quilt reaches for conclusion.

It’s rare for a family to produce a group of significant artists. However, in addition to Tony, Jane was an opera singer, an artist on her own, and Kiki, well, became Kiki. Seton is a photographer of hauntingly beautiful images, and Bebe, who would sadly meet an untimely death, was a promising actress.

Tony died, and in a moment of grief Kiki decided to cast his hands and face in plaster, a gesture of keeping him alive. I contacted George Segal for her, and she contacted her friend John Ahearn, asking for directions in making the body casts. These were the first casts that Kiki made in plaster, and it too became a material that she would use again and again throughout her distinguished career.

This exhibition, The Moon Watches The Earth, also watches over early paper figures and the most recent bronze bird sculptures that comprise the exhibition. The tragically fragile and the permanently beautiful inspire as optimistic avatars of the persistent value of life. The Moon Watches The Earth marks our 12th exhibition together in our 31-year history as friends at Pace, and now at 125 Newbury.